Sunday, September 11, 2022

Mark Twain, “On The Damned Human Race”

“On The Damned Human Race”
by Mark Twain

“I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used what is commonly called the scientific method. That is to say, I have subjected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result. Thus I verified and established each step of my course in its turn before advancing to the next. These experiments were made in the London Zoological Gardens, and covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work.

Before particularizing any of the experiments, I wish to state one or two things which seem to more properly belong in this place than further along. This, in the interest of clearness. The massed experiments established to my satisfaction certain generalizations, to wit:

1. That the human race is of one distinct species. It exhibits slight variations (in color, stature, mental caliber, and so on) due to climate, environment, and so forth; but it is a species by itself, and not to be confounded with any other.

2. That the quadrupeds are a distinct family, also. This family exhibits variations (in color, size, food preferences, and so on; but it is a family by itself).

3. That the other families (the birds, the fishes, the insects, the reptiles, etc.) are more or less distinct, also. They are in the procession. They are links in the chain which stretches down from the higher animals to man at the bottom.

Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the course of my reading I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals; and ate part of one of them and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the difference between an anaconda and an earl (if any) I caused seven young calves to be turned into the anaconda’s cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves, and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas; always with the same result. The fact stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn’t; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn’t. This seemed to suggest that the anaconda was not descended from the earl. It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda, and had lost a good deal in the transition.

I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially appease that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter’s supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by chicane. In order to bolster up a tottering reputation the ant pretended to store up supplies, but I was not deceived. I know the ant. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: he is avaricious and miserly; they are not. In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals.

Roosters keep harems, but it is by consent of their concubines; therefore no wrong is done. Men keep harems but it is by brute force, privileged by atrocious laws which the other sex were allowed no hand in making. In this matter man occupies a far lower place than the rooster. Cats are loose in their morals, but not consciously so. Man, in his descent from the cat, has brought the cats looseness with him but has left the unconsciousness behind (the saving grace which excuses the cat). The cat is innocent, man is not.

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity (these are strictly confined to man); he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is The Animal that Laughs. But so does the monkey, as Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No! Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it or has occasion to.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals. The cat plays with the frightened mouse; but she has this excuse, that she does not know that the mouse is suffering. The cat is moderate (unhumanly moderate: she only scares the mouse, she does not hurt it; she doesn’t dig out its eyes, or tear off its skin, or drive splinters under its nails) man-fashion; when she is done playing with it she makes a sudden meal of it and puts it out of its trouble. Man is the Cruel Animal. He is alone in that distinction.

The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out, as the Hessians did in our Revolution, and as the boyish Prince Napoleon did in the Zulu war, and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.

Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country, takes possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him. Man has done this in all the ages. There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.

Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some man’s slave for wages and does that man’s work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his mouth.

Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion, several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet’s time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a couple of centuries, he was at it in England in Mary’s day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light, he is at it today in Crete (as per the telegrams quoted above) he will be at it somewhere else tomorrow. The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one. In truth, man is incurably foolish.

One is obliged to concede that in true loftiness of character, Man cannot claim to approach even the meanest of the Higher Animals. It is plain that he is constitutionally incapable of approaching that altitude; that he is constitutionally afflicted with a Defect which must make such approach forever impossible, for it is manifest that this defect is permanent in him, indestructible, ineradicable. I find this Defect to be the Moral Sense. He is the only animal that has it. It is the secret of his degradation. It is the quality which enables him to do wrong. It has no other office. It is incapable of performing any other function. It could never have been intended to perform any other. Without it, man could do no wrong. He would rise at once to the level of the Higher Animals.

Since the Moral Sense has but the one office, the one capacity (to enable man to do wrong) it is plainly without value to him. It is as valueless to him as is disease. In fact, it manifestly is a disease. Rabies is bad, but it is not so bad as this disease. Rabies enables a man to do a thing, which he could not do when in a healthy state: kill his neighbor with a poisonous bite) one is the better man for having rabies: The Moral Sense enables a man to do wrong. It enables him to do wrong in a thousand ways. Rabies is an innocent disease, compared to the Moral Sense. No one, then, can be the better man for having the Moral Sense. What now, do we find the Primal Curse to have been? Plainly what it was in the beginning: the infliction upon man of the Moral Sense; the ability to distinguish good from evil; and with it, necessarily, the ability to do evil; for there can be no evil act without the presence of consciousness of it in the doer of it.

And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor (some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance) insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirch-less innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development (namable as the Human Being). Below us, nothing.”

"Not Knowing..."

“Not knowing you can’t do something
is sometimes all it takes to do it.”
- Ally Carter

"Journey to the End of the Earth, Part II"

"Journey to the End of the Earth, Part II"
Life in Argentina, from the cost of living to safety, 
education to healthcare and more...
by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Barely a month has gone by since we returned to our little pied-à-terre down by the Rio de la Plata and yet, in many ways, it feels as though we never left. The morning light reflecting off the grand, cupola-crowned buildings up and down Avenida Libertador... the lively tones of the first patrons meeting at our favorite café, down on the corner... the smell from the little French bakery opposite our apartment. It’s all so... familiar. Maybe this is what being “home” is supposed to be like?

Full disclosure: Hardly one to speak of the sedentary lifestyle, your walkabout editor is (at best) an incurable peripatetic. Our own wanderlusting journey has (so far) spirited us across ~85 countries, in many of which we received snail mail, paid utility bills and knew the name of our local barkeep.

Over a quarter of a century or so “on the road,” we’ve found ourselves living in a Lucky Country/Nanny State (Australia), a Constitutional Monarchy/Jilted Empire (England), a Constitutional Republic/Corporatocracy (the USA), an Authoritarian Theocracy/Squabbling Brotherhood (United Arab Emirates), a Paper Democracy/Dragon Snack (Taiwan), a Federal Republic/Kleptocracy (Mexico), a Democratic Republic/Narcocracy (Colombia) and of course, in our present country of residence... the Constitutional Ineptocracy of Argentina...with plenty of other “isms,” “ocracies” and misguided debacles along the way.

Martyrs and Knaves: One of the upsides of living like a primitive nomad is that one gets to compare and contrast systems more responsible folk might take for granted, to see the world with childlike (many would say childish) eyes. Like someone who has stumbled out of a bizarre religious cult, only to discover there is a world outside the canon, we gaze upon each new and shiny political arrangement with equal parts awe and incredulity.

It goes without saying that all cultural mythologies have their saints and their sinners, their high priests and priestesses, their martyrs and their knaves. Civic religions are no different. There are hymns (anthems) to sing and icons (flags) to salute, along with holy (oil) wars to be won and heathens to be converted (to Capital “D” Democracy). Each place, each population, each individual person is different. What is to one man the heavenly promise of seventy-two virgins is to another the living hell of seventy-two mother-in-laws. To each his own.

But for all that, one still has to live... somewhere. And with macroeconomic and geopolitical trends shaping up as they are presently – deglobalization, consumer price inflation + financial asset deflation, bifurcation of the international monetary system, the rumblings of a very real energy crisis, the growing threat of nuclear war etc. – where you invest your precious time may well prove to be just as important as where you invest your capital in the years ahead.

To that end, many dear readers have written in to question your weekend editor’s sanity, having chosen for his place of residence the literal “fin del mundo.” We addressed some of these concerns in an essay a couple of months back: "Journey to the End of the Earth." A few more points we promised to meet in a future Sunday Session. Welcome to that Session. Please enjoy Part II of our little Ode to Argentina, below...

"Journey to the End of the Earth, Part II"
by Joel Bowman

"'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

"During the seventy year period from 1880 to 1950, Argentina found herself among the ten wealthiest countries on the planet. Indeed, “To be rich like an Argentine,” was a phrase people used without irony... and without a tear of nostalgia in their eyes. And yet, for the past seven decades, since 1950, the country has been in inexorable, sometimes violent, decline. Her grand old buildings, broad avenidas and sophisticated older generations hint at a noble and dignified past, but the headlines at the local newsstand paint a very different picture of today. One wonders: Is it better to have had wealth and lost it, than to never have known riches at all?

At the turn of the 20th century, Argentina was ranked as the 8th most prosperous nation on earth. Only Belgium, Switzerland, Britain and a handful of former English colonies – including the United States – were more favorably positioned, economically. In 1913, Argentina’s bustling, cosmopolitan capital, Buenos Aires, had the thirteenth highest per capita telephone penetration rate in the world. Her per capita income was, around the time, 50% higher than in Italy, almost twice that of Japan and five times greater than her northern neighbor, Brazil.

Argentina’s industry churned out quality textiles and an extensive rail network, laid down by the British, carried her prized beef, first introduced in 1536 by the Spanish Conquistadors, from the fertile plains of the Pampas to port... where it was shipped north, off season, to the farthest reaches of the known world. The agricultural show at nearby La Rural, in which prize cattle were paraded before wealthy estancieros, was considered a “must-attend” event of the social season. And when the great Pavarotti performed Puccini’s La bohème in Teatro Colon in 1987, almost 80 years after the magnificent building was inaugurated, he told adoring fans the theater had but one flaw: “The acoustics are so perfect, if the artist should make a mistake, the whole world will notice.”

But by the time the fat man had sung, the curtain was already coming down on Argentina’s glorious past. The well known Argentine investor, entrepreneur and author , Federico Tessore, took up the story as the decline was getting underway in his excellent book, "Argentina Power: How to be the Richest Country in the World Again": "The turning point was the year 1950, when we stopped starring in the ranking of the ten countries with the highest GDP per capita in the world, and we never recovered. On the contrary, we entered a long and sad decline: in 2019 we ranked 77th in per capita GDP globally. Seventy years plummeting, in which dictatorships and democracies, Peronists, radicals and independent governments ruled. None could stop the decline."

Ruin Aplenty: In "Argentina Power," Sr. Tessore examines a half dozen foreign lands – Norway, Germany, Ireland, China, South Korea and neighboring Chile – all poorer than Argentina at the midpoint of the 20th century... all richer than Argentina today. What policies did the above countries adopt, what fortune did they encounter, that Argentina missed entirely? What self-inflicted wounds did Argentina suffer that these others avoided, whether by design or by chance?

War, currency debasement, civil unrest, military rule and the catalyzing agent of political aspiration, swelling the breast of the corrupt and the inept alike, all conspired to stultify this once-proud nation’s potential. The great Argentine poet and essayist, Jorge Luis Borges, described one such misadventure with characteristic flair and wit: “The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.”

And yet, as the great moral philosopher, Adam Smith, one observed: there is a lot of ruin in a nation. That is to say, despite the best efforts of the political class and their spineless apparatchiks in the academies and the media, there remains in Argentina the bones of a once-great nation. Your editor lives in a Belle Époch-style building, built around the turn of the last century, during Argentina’s glory years. In his short story, "The Immortal", Sr. Borges himself alludes to the building as “a labyrinth, a house built to confuse men, its architecture lavish in symmetries, subordinated to that end.” (Rather an appropriate residence for your frequently confounded correspondent...)

A similar residence in the “Paris of the North” (known among podean circles, simply, as Paris) would require of the inhabitant some special talent or industry or pedigree... or at least the favor of a very rich and lately deceased relative. Here, even failed novelists drift off to sleep under double-overhead ceilings, visions of well attended book signings dancing in their heads. As long as one eschews the tacky glass and steel highrises, favored by the nuevos ricos down in Puerto Madero, real estate prices here in the capital – both to rent and buy – compare very favorably with major cities regionally and around the world.

The site Expatistan estimates the cost of living in Buenos Aires to be 27% cheaper than in Barcelona... and 53% cheaper than neighboring Santiago de Chile. And that, as far as we can tell, is taking the national currency at face value, which is to say, the official rate. The “blue market” – or unofficial rate, which can easily be obtained at any one of a thousand-plus cuevas around the city – offers roughly double that rate... effectively halving the “official” cost of living.

Of course, money is but one (albeit rather important) consideration among many when deciding where to invest that most precious of your resources: Time. What about health, safety and education, for instance? Let us address these non-trivial line items, by way of personal anecdote, in reverse...

The Three Rs:
School: Your editor’s seven year old daughter attends a top tier private school in our barrio, where she takes classes in Spanish in the morning and English in the afternoon.Twice a week students take a half-day excursion to the campo, where they do physical activities and play team sports (girls: field hockey; boys: football). After school (also twice weekly), dear daughter attends violin practice with the primary school orchestra. Hot meals are served daily in the cafeteria, although mom and/or dad are usually on hand for lunch in a nearby café.

Monthly fees – including materials, meals, extra curricular activities, excursions, etc. – come to ~$85,000 pesos... or ~US$600 (official); ~US$300 (unofficial). Annually (fees are charged all 12 months of the year), this amounts to ~US$7,200 (official) or ~$3,600 (unofficial). NB: We’ve had it gently suggested to us on more than one occasion that this is an outrageous expense and that a quality, private school education here can be enjoyed for half this amount. Probably so.

You can make your own comparisons as you like. We were shocked when we looked up the price of primary school education in our native Australia. According to one website, fees at the top 30 private primary schools in Sydney ranged from about AUD$16,000 (US$11,000) per year to over AUD$31,000 (US$21, 250) on the top end. Other Australian capital cities were more or less in line. In the UK, the average came in at about £14,940 per year (US$17,300) for private day students. In the USA, this might be considered a bargain.

Fair warning: Price aside, Argentine schools are mercifully “behind the times,” meaning they focus on old fashioned things like reading, writing and arithmetic in lieu of more fashionable programming in equity, diversity and antiracism. Among other quaint anachronisms... teachers still hug the kids when they fall and bump their knees... on sports day, only the winning team gets a trophy... and on birthdays, students are encouraged to bring cakes and snacks to share... even ones that (gulp!) may contain peanuts.

Healthcare: Family coverage at Swiss Medical, arguably the best private provider in the country (although there are others to choose from), runs about $70,000 pesos per month, or ~US$500 (official), ~US$250 (unofficial) for a family of three for the highest plan offered. It’s worth mentioning that comprehensive coverage here includes things like full dental, Lasik and even certain elective surgeries, depending on the plan. It’s not uncommon for people to use their private care to cover rhinoplasty, for example, or even augmentation mammoplasty. Again, to each his (or in this case, her) own.

Care, in our experience, is absolutely top notch. We live within a 5-7 minute drive to three private Swiss Medical clinics, and there are plenty more throughout the city and around the country. Whether you arrive for a routine consultation or scheduled test, or you’re delivered by ambulance to the emergency room, you don’t have to fear what’s in (or not in) your bank account – there is no copay. Simply present your medical card and the rest is taken care of. Many plans also cover international travel, including to the US (and is why ours is about double the price of most others).

Safety: Government websites are practically designed to scare citizens into cowering invalids, convinced the big bad world is full of danger and menace at every turn. And certainly, risk management is part of life. The truth is, crime is very much like real estate in that, even within a given city, it is all about location, location, location. There are parts of Buenos Aires your editor would not dream of walking, even during the daytime. So it goes for practically every major metropolis on the planet. We’ve lived in New York, London, Mexico City. We’ve seen a gang of teens attack a group of Chinese shoppers on the Paris metro... witnessed a young woman mugged outside a tapas bar in Madrid... and heard gunshots echo across the night when we lived in Baltimore. (While residing in Charm City, we even had an intruder break into our 5th floor apartment via the fire escape... while we were still home!)

Every city has its desirable areas... and its not so desirable ones. Oftentimes, as is the case in Baltimore, the difference is measured by a matter of blocks. And yet, the best neighborhood of a “dangerous” city is often much safer than the seediest neighborhood of a “safe” one. As anyone who has visited many metropolises will know, a little common sense goes a long way. We’ve lived in Argentina’s capital now (on and off) for over a decade and never had any problems. The few times we’ve heard of someone running into trouble, it’s usually because they were playing on the proverbial train tracks. Of course, a man might never leave his bunker, bolt the doors, monitor every delivery, isolate himself from society entirely... and still slip in the shower and crack his lonely skull.

For the most part, crime in Buenos Aires happens unseen. You're more likely to get ‘robbed’ with a counterfeit note, or lose an unseen bag (Note: don’t hang purses or backpacks from the back of your chair).

There are myriad other considerations one must take into account when choosing one’s own paraíso (to the extent that it even exists); language, climate, culture, lifestyle, etc. Uncertainties abound, to be sure, but they must not become so stifling that one forgets to live. “Nothing is built on stone,” Borges once wrote, “all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.” After seventy years in the sun...and seventy years in darkness...one wonders whether Argentina will ever rediscover her lost fortune. Either way, at this strange moment in our life, it feels like home."

The Daily "Near You?"

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

"Lemons..."

"When life hands you a lemon, say
"Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else you got?"
- Henry Rollins

The Poet: Maya Angelou, "Alone "

"Alone"

 "Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home,
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone.
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong,
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use,
Their wives run round like banshees,
Their children sing the blues.
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone,
But nobody,
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know...
Storm clouds are gathering,
The wind is gonna blow.
The race of man is suffering,
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody,
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody,
Can make it out here alone."

- Maya Angelou

"The Thing Itself: C.S. Lewis on What We Long for in Our Existential Longing"

"The Thing Itself: C.S. Lewis on What We
 Long for in Our Existential Longing"
by Maria Popova

"Nothing kidnaps our capacity for presence more cruelly than longing. And yet longing is also the most powerful creative force we know: Out of our longing for meaning came all of art; out of our longing for truth all of science; out of our longing for love the very fact of life. We may give this undertone of being different names - Susan Cain calls it “the bittersweet” and Portuguese has the lovely word saudade: the vague, constant longing for something or someone beyond the horizon of reality - but we recognize it in our marrow, in the strata of the soul beyond the reach of words.


No one has explored the paradoxical nature of longing more sensitively than the philosopher, storyteller, beloved Narnia creator, and modern mystic C.S. Lewis (November 29, 1898–November 22, 1963) in a sermon he delivered on June 8, 1941, which later lent its title to his 1949 collection of addresses "The Weight of Glory."

Lewis - who thought deeply about the significance of suffering and the secret of happiness - writes: "This desire for our own far off country is the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering."

As Lewis considers the illusory nature of these shorthands for our longing, we are left with the radiant intimation that “the thing itself” is not something we reach for, something beyond us, but something we are: "The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.

For Lewis, who was religious, this notion of “the thing itself” - the ultimate object of longing - was anchored in his understanding of God. For me, it calls to mind Virginia Woolf’s exquisite epiphany about the meaning of art and life, found while strolling through her flower-garden: "Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern… the whole world is a work of art… there is no Shakespeare… no Beethoven… no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself."
Freely download "The Weight of Glory", by C.S. Lewis, here:

"How It Really Is"

"9/11"

Down the rabbit hole, indeed...

"9/11"


"We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, it's not a choice but a calling. Sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter from the fragile fortress of our mind, allowing the monster without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss, into the laughing face of madness."
- Fox Mulder, "X-Files"

Saturday, September 10, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "Must See! The Numbers Don't Lie, NATO Is Terrified! WW3"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/10/22:
"Must See! The Numbers Don't Lie, 
NATO Is Terrified! WW3"
"The numbers reveal what the future looks like."
Comments here:

"Kroger Rolls Out New Sale Tactic! Is It Worth It? What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 9/10/22:
"Kroger Rolls Out New Sale Tactic!
 Is It Worth It? What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to go over a new sale tactic that Kroger is trying! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
Full screen recommended:
St. Petersburg - Me, 9/10/22:
"6 Months of Sanctions. 
Prices in Russia Went Down! Oh Really?"
"I made a historical video on Russian prices on February 23, 2022. A few hours before... And I also promised to give you an update about the prices in Russian stores. So it's 6 and a half months of sanctions today, and I'm doing an update. Also I have seen a few articles on the Western media that prices in Russian stores went down compared to prices in Europe. Let's check this out!"
Comments here:

Look carefully, Good Citizen, do stores near you look like this?

Musical Interlude: Alan Parsons Project, “Ammonia Avenue”

Full screen recommended.
Alan Parsons Project, “Ammonia Avenue”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What are those red clouds surrounding the Andromeda galaxy? This galaxy, M31, is often imaged by planet Earth-based astronomers. As the nearest large spiral galaxy, it is a familiar sight with dark dust lanes, bright yellowish core, and spiral arms traced by clouds of bright blue stars.
A mosaic of well-exposed broad and narrow-band image data, this colorful portrait of our neighboring island universe offers strikingly unfamiliar features though, faint reddish clouds of glowing ionized hydrogen gas in the same wide field of view. These ionized hydrogen clouds surely lie in the foreground of the scene, well within our Milky Way Galaxy. They are likely associated with the pervasive, dusty interstellar cirrus clouds scattered hundreds of light-years above our own galactic plane.”

Chet Raymo, “Retreat From Reason”

“Retreat From Reason”
by Chet Raymo

“Is there a flight from reason in the United States? Everywhere we look, science is under attack. In government. In the schools. In the churches. We are offered faith-based substitutes. The “Left Behind” series of apocalyptic novels outsells everything else on the shelves. People are more interested in astrology than astronomy. Intelligent design is championed at the highest levels of government. Alternative medicine - faith healing, homeopathy, energy therapies, New Age healing, and the like - is more popular than ever. Scripture and revelation are embraced as more reliable sources of knowledge than anything we might learn empirically.

We are entering, it seems, a new Dark Age. For a substantial number of our fellow citizens, it's as if the Enlightenment never happened.

Let me take you back to the Hellenistic city of Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile River in Egypt, in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. Alexandria was then the seat of a magnificent flowering of mathematical and scientific thought. The city welcomed all comers - Eratosthenes from Cyrene, Aristarchus from Samos, Archimedes from Sicily, Apollonius from Rhodes, Hipparchus from Nicaea, Galen from Pergamon, and so on - the only requirement being an inquisitive mind and a bent for explaining the world in terms that made no reference to the gods. Geography and astronomy became mathematical sciences. Eratosthenes measured the size of the Earth. Aristarchus deduced the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon.

These spectacular achievements get no more than passing mention in textbooks of Western Civilization. We learn in school about the Golden Age of Greece and the glory that was Rome, Sophocles and Ovid, the Parthenon and the Pantheon, triremes and aqueducts, but very little of the invention of scientific thinking in the white city at the mouth of the Nile.

Alexandria was built on a ribbon of land between Lake Mareotis and the Mediterranean Sea. It was graced with forums, temples, marketplaces, palaces, a double harbor with a famous lighthouse, quays, warehouses, and, prominently, a museum ("place of the muses"), and the famous library over which Eratosthenes presided. The museum and library were together the equivalent of a great modern university. It was the dream of the first rulers of Alexandria - the Ptolemys - that the library would possess a copy of every book in the known world, and within a century hundreds of thousands of scrolls were collected within its walls. By the middle of the first century B.C. Diodorus of Sicily could say that Alexandria was "the first city of the civilized world, certainly far ahead of all the rest in elegance and extent and riches and luxury."

In his book "The Greeks and the Irrational", the scholar E. R. Dodds was thinking of the Greek culture of Alexandria when he wrote: "Despite its lack of political freedom, the society of the third century B.C. was in many ways the nearest approach to an 'open' society that the world had yet seen, and nearer than any that would be seen again until modern times." It was a society confident of its powers. Aristotle had asked his fellow citizens to recognize a divine spark within themselves: the intellect. Men and women who exercise reason can live like gods, he said. For Zeno, the human intellect was not merely akin to God, it is God, a portion of the divine substance. Temples are superfluous, he said; God's true temple is the human intellect.

Of this supreme confidence in rational thought, the Alexandrians created a new empirical, mathematical way of knowing. But the seeds of irrationality were also there, embedded in popular culture, or perhaps embedded in the human soul. Soon enough, supernaturalism returned. Astrology and magical healing replaced astronomy and medicine. Cults flourished, rationalists were scapegoated, and scientific culture began to decline.

The old dualisms - mind and matter, God and nature, soul and body - which the rationalists had striven to overcome, reasserted themselves with fresh vigor. Dodds calls it "the return of the irrational." He writes: "As the intellectuals withdrew further into a world of their own, the popular mind was left increasingly defenseless. . .and left without guidance, a growing number relapsed with a sigh of relief into the pleasures and comforts of the primitive. . . better the rigid determinism of the astrological Fate than the terrifying burden of daily responsibility."

Harvard historian of science Gerald Holton sees a similarity between Dodds' description of the decline of Greek culture and the resurgence of anti-science in our own time. Once again, astrology, magical healing, and other kinds of superstitious thinking are in ascendancy. Once again, cults flourish and rationalists are scapegoated.

The Greek experience shows that movements to delegitimize science are always present, says Holton, ready to bend civilization their way by the glorification of folk belief, violence, mystification, and the rabid ideologies of ethnic and nationalistic passions. Dodds calls it "the fear of freedom - the unconscious flight from the heavy burden of individual choice which an open society lays upon its members."

Science can only prosper in a free and open society, in an atmosphere of rational skepticism where traditional patterns of thought are challenged and subjected to critical scrutiny. Science will only flourish when a people have confidence in the power of the human intellect to make sense of the world."

"Imagination Land"

"Imagination Land"
by The Zman

"All of us live in a silo of our own making to some degree. We read news sites we like and we like them because they tend to cover the stuff we think is important, in a way we hope is accurate. We admire opinions with which we agree. We hang out with people who share our interests. That’s normal. It’s also normal to know it and know others have different opinions and interests. Most normie conservatives get that Fox News is biased toward the Republicans, but they know all of the other stations are heavily biased to the Democrats.

This self-awareness has never applied to the Left. Every normal person has had a conversation with a Progressive friend where they claim the news is biased against them or is too easy on some conservative they currently hate. They will argue that Fox News is poisoning the minds of the public. When you point out that 90% of the mass media is run by hard left true believers, they scoff and say you’re nuts. The hive mind of Progressives has always allowed them to pretend they are surrounded by a sea of their enemies.

One point made by some on the Dissident Right is that this blinkered view of the world has infected the so-called conservatives. They are blind to the intellectual revolution going on over here, because they stare at Lefty all day. Like people looking directly into the sun, they are blind to everything else. As a result, the legacy conservatives carry on like it is 1984 and Dutch Reagan is riding high. Much of what so-called conservatism is these days is just a weird nostalgia trip, celebrating a fictional past with no connection to the present.

There are many reasons why so-called conservatives are becoming irrelevant, but the main reason is that their good friends on the Left are racing off into a fantasy land of their own creation. Listen to a modern Progressive talk and it is a weird combination of echolalic babbling and paranoia about dark forces that are imaginary. Replace “Russian hacking” with “work of the devil” and their howling makes more sense. Things like “foreign meddling” and “institutional racism” are just stand-ins for Old Scratch.

This increasingly weird disconnect between the Left and this place we call earth shows up in their main propaganda organs. Those old enough to remember reading English versions of communist newspapers can recognize the unintended humor on the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. This front page item is a good example. Everything in that “news” story describes a world that only exists in the fevered imaginations of the Left. It was a fictional account of present reality written for believers.

This Andrew Sullivan piece bumps up against this reality a little bit, but from a different angle. His argument is that the fantasy land of academia is casting a long shadow over American society, so it is imperative that the college campus be reformed to look something like reality. His framing of things is mostly wrong because he is just a slightly less berserk member of the hive he is trying analyze. His description of the dynamic on campus, though, is correct. It is a world untethered from reality.

The fact is, the college campus is the apotheosis of Progressive spiritualism. It has been dominated by the Left for as long as anyone has been a live. The constant flow of credit money into American higher education has removed all restraints on the people in charge. They are free to indulge whatever fantasies they have at the moment, as no one ever gets fired and the money spigot stays open. As a result, the American college campus is the full flowering of the Progressive imagination. It’s Wakanda for cat ladies.

This lurch into madness is the result of plenty. Up until recent, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the lack of universal prosperity has reined in the excesses of the Left. In order to win elections, Progressive politicians had to focus on better economics and expanding opportunity. Of course, the Cold War kept everyone focused on practical reality, as a mistake could have set off a nuclear exchange. That’s no longer the case, in human terms, and there are looming threats.

Progressivism has always been a spiritual movement. It is the quest for cosmic justice based on the notion that we are only as good as the weakest among us. That is a fine and noble sentiment, as long as it remains a sentiment. The reality of scarcity has always kept this spiritualism in check. As we enter into a post-abundance world, Progressives are free to explore the far reaches of their mysticism. The result is a ruling class that is looking more like eastern mystics, than pragmatic rulers.

It is why civic nationalism is a dead end street. You see it in the Andrew Sullivan piece about the campus culture. What he is arguing in favor of is the same things we hear from civic nationalists. They all agree with Progressives that we need a unifying religion. They just want a debate about the contours and end points of the religion. The fact that no one has ever pulled this off without ushering in a bloodbath never gets mentioned, Instead, all of these folks prefer to frolic in imagination land, where all their dreams come true.”

“Father, O father! what do we here
In this land of unbelief and fear?
The Land of Dreams is better far,
Above the light of the morning star.”
- William Blake, “The Land of Dreams”

"What Is The Joy About?"

“There are meaningful warnings which history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy. But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their offensive; you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?”
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"These are the Best of Times - It’s All Downhill from Here"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 9/10/22:
"These are the Best of Times - It’s All Downhill from Here"
"There’s so many signs in the economy that things are headed in a more problematic direction. What if these are the best of times right now? What if they will not be as good as they are today for a decade? Are you ready?"
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Downers Grove, Illinois, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Free Download: Omar Khayyám, "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám"

“The moving hand once having writ moves on. 
Nor all thy piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line.”
- Omar Khayyám, "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám"

Freely download here:

"The Monstrous Thing..."

"The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off."
- Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer”

The Poet: James Broughton, "Having Come This Far"

"Having Come This Far"

"I've been through what my through was to be,
I did what I could and couldn't.
I was never sure how I would get there.
I nourished an ardor for thresholds,
for stepping stones and for ladders,
I discovered detour and ditch.
I swam in the high tides of greed,
I built sandcastles to house my dreams.
I survived the sunburns of love.

No longer do I hunt for targets.
I've climbed all the summits I need to,
and I've eaten my share of lotus.
Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided,
and for every foolhardy choice.
I cherish my wounds and their cures,
and the sweet enervations of bliss.
My book is an open life.

I wave goodbye to the absolutes,
and send my regards to infinity.
I'd rather be blithe than correct.
Until something transcendent turns up,
I splash in my poetry puddle,
and try to keep God amused."

- James Broughton

"The Great Thing About The Internet..."

"The great thing about the internet is that you get to meet people you
would otherwise only meet if you were committed to the same asylum."
- Robert Brault

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Latest On the Ukrainian Counter-Offensive in the East"

"The Latest On the Ukrainian 
Counter-Offensive in the East"
by Chris Black

"Recently there has been news about a major counteroffensive by the Ukrainian armed forces (UAF) in eastern-southern Ukraine. Both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries are large, professional organizations backed by institutions designed to produce qualified warriors. Both militaries are well led, well equipped, and well prepared to undertake the missions assigned them. They are among the largest military organizations in Europe.

The Russian military is staffed by officers of the highest caliber, who have undergone extensive training in the military arts. They are experts in strategy, operations, and tactics. They know their business.

The Ukrainian military has undergone a radical transformation in the years since 2014, where Soviet-era doctrine has been replaced by a hybrid doctrine which incorporates NATO doctrine and methodologies. This transformation has been accelerated dramatically since the outset of the Special Military Operation, with the Ukrainian military virtually transitioning from older Soviet-era heavy equipment to an arsenal which more closely mirrors the table of organization and equipment of the NATO nations which are providing billions of dollars of equipment and training.

The Ukrainians are, like their Russian counterparts, military professionals adept at the necessity of adapting to battlefield realities. The Ukrainian experience, however, is complicated by the complexity associated by trying to meld two disparate doctrinal approaches to war (Soviet-era and modern NATO) under combat conditions. This complexity creates opportunities for mistakes, and mistakes on the battlefield often result in casualties - significant casualties.

Russia has fought three different style wars in the six months that the Special Military Operation has been underway. The first was a war of maneuver, designed to seize as much territory as possible to shape the battlefield militarily and politically. The Special Military Operation was conducted with approximately 200,000 Russian and allied forces, who were up against an active-duty Ukrainian military of some 260,000 troops backed by up to 600,000 reservists.

The standard 3:1 attacker-defender ratio did not apply - the Russians sought to use speed, surprise, and audacity to minimize Ukraine’s numerical advantage, and in the process hoping for a rapid political collapse in Ukraine that would prevent any major fighting between the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces. This plan succeeded in some areas (in the south, for instance), and did fix Ukrainian troops in place and cause the diversion of reinforcements away from critical zones of operation. But it failed strategically - the Ukrainians did not collapse, but rather solidified, ensuring a long, hard fight ahead.

The second phase of the Russian operation had the Russians regroup to focus on the conquest/liberation of the Donbas region. Here, Russia adapted its operational methodology, using its superiority in firepower to conduct a slow, deliberate advance against Ukrainian forces dug into extensive defensive networks and, in doing so, achieving unheard of casualty ratios that had ten or more Ukrainians being killed or wounded for every Russian casualty.

While Russia was slowly advancing against dug in Ukrainian forces, the US and NATO provided Ukraine with billions of dollars of military equipment, including the equivalent of several armored divisions of heavy equipment (tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery, and support vehicles), along with extensive operational training on this equipment at military installations outside Ukraine. In short, while Russia was busy destroying the Ukrainian military on the battlefield, Ukraine was busy reconstituting that army, replacing destroyed units with fresh forces that were extremely well equipped, well trained, and well led.

The second phase of the conflict saw Russia destroy the old Ukrainian army. In its stead, Russia faced mobilized territorial and national units, supported by reconstituted NATO-trained forces. But the bulk of the NATO trained forces were held in reserve. These are the forces that have been committed in the current phase of fighting - a new third phase. Russia finds itself in a full-fledged proxy war with NATO, facing a NATO-style military force that is being logistically sustained by NATO, trained by NATO, provided with NATO intelligence, and working in harmony with NATO military planners.

What this means is that the current Ukrainian counteroffensive should not be viewed as an extension of the phase two battle, but rather the initiation of a new third phase which is not a Ukrainian-Russian conflict, but a NATO-Russian conflict. The Ukrainian battle plan has “Made in Brussels” stamped all over it.

The force composition was determined by NATO, as was the timing of the attacks and the direction of the attacks. NATO intelligence carefully located seams in the Russian defenses, and identified critical command and control, logistics, and reserve concentration nodes that were targeted by Ukrainian artillery which operates on a fire control plan created by NATO.

The tactics used by Ukraine appear to be completely new. Probing attacks are launched to force the Russians to reveal their defensive fires, which are then suppressed by Ukrainian counterbattery fires directed by drones and/or counterbattery radars. Then highly mobile Ukrainian forces rapidly advance through identified seams in the Russian defense, driving deep into largely unprotected territory. These main columns are supported by raids carried out by vehicle mounted troops which strike Russian rear area positions, further disrupting any Russian response. In short, the Ukrainian army that Russia is facing in Kherson and around Kharkov is unlike any Ukrainian opponent it has previously faced. Advantage, Ukraine.

Russia, however, is a capable military opponent. The potential for a Ukrainian counteroffensive has been known for some time. To think that Russia has been taken completely unawares is to be dismissive of the professionalism of the Russian armed forces. But there are some operational realities that accrue when Russia has self-limited itself to a forces structure of around 200,000 men, especially when fighting on a battlefield as large as the one that exists in Ukraine.

There are simply not enough forces to go around, and as a result, Russia has deployed forces in low-priority sectors more thinly than would be otherwise advisable. These forces occupy strongpoints that are designed to cover the gaps between strongpoints with firepower. The Russians have also identified forces who would reinforce these thinly held areas of the front as required.

It is possible to have a situation where Russia anticipated the potential for a concerted Ukrainian counterattack, and yet was still taken by surprise at the combination of new factors that presented themselves once this attack materialized. The speed of the Ukrainian advance was unexpected, as were the tactics used by Ukraine. The level of operational planning support and intelligence provided by NATO in support of this counterattack likewise appeared to have taken the Russians by surprise.

But the Russian army is extremely adaptive. They have shown a willingness to save lives by giving up territory, allowing the Ukrainians to expend resources and capability without conducting a decisive engagement with Russian troops. Where required, Russian troops matched the audacity and courage of the Ukrainian forces with their own courage-laced tenacity, holding out in an effort to delay the Ukrainian advance while other Russian forces redeployed.

At the end of the day, it appears that Ukraine will exhaust its carefully gathered reserve forces before the bulk of Russia’s response engages. The Kherson offensive appears to have stalled, and whether by design or accident, the Kharkov offensive is shaping up to become a trap for the Ukrainian forces committed, who find themselves in danger of being cut off and destroyed.

At the end of the day, this counteroffensive will end in a strategic Ukrainian defeat. Russia will restore the front to its original positions and be able to resume offensive operations. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, will have squandered their reserves, limiting their ability to respond to a new Russian advance.

This doesn’t mean the war is over. Ukraine continues to receive billions of dollars of military assistance, and currently has tens of thousands of troops undergoing extensive training in NATO nations. There will be a fourth phase, and a fifth phase…as many phases as necessary before Ukraine either exhausts its will to fight and die, or NATO exhausts its ability to continue supplying the Ukrainian military. I said back in April that the decision by the US to provide billions of dollars of military assistance was ‘a game changer.”

What we are witnessing in Ukraine today is how this money has changed the game. The result is more dead Ukrainian and Russian forces, more dead civilians, and more destroyed equipment. But the end game remains the same - Russia will win. Its just that the cost for extending this war has become much higher for all parties involved."
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom,
"Scott Ritter - Ukraine Russia War Latest"