Bill Hicks Worst Gig Ever

Superb stuff.

America's Secret Establishment- Anthony Sutton- Hegelian Dialectic

Below is Hoover Institute historian Anthony Sutton's preface to his book America's Secret Establishment.

After 16 books and 25 years in basic research I thought I'd heard it all ... the world was a confused mess, probably beyond understanding and certainly beyond salvation - and there was little I could do about it.
Back in 1968 my Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development was published by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In three substantial volumes I detailed how the West had built the Soviet Union. However, the work generated a seemingly insoluble puzzle - why have we done this? Why did we build the Soviet Union, while we also transferred technology to Hitler's Germany? Why does Washington want to conceal these facts? Why have we boosted Soviet military power? And simultaneously boosted our own? In subsequent books, the Wall Street series, I added more questions - but no answers. I had more or less arrived at the conclusion that there was no rational answer that could be proven.

Then a year or so ago I received an eight-inch batch of documents - nothing less than the membership lists of an American secret society. Glancing through the sheets it was more than obvious - this was no ordinary group. The names spelled Power, with a capital P. As I probed each individual a pattern emerged ... and a formerly fuzzy world became crystal clear.
The book you will read here is a combined version of a series reporting on this research. Each volume builds on the previous volume in a logical step-by-step process. These volumes will explain why the West built the Soviets and Hitler; why we go to war, to lose; why Wall Street loves Marxists and Nazis; why the kids can't read; why the Churches have become propaganda founts; why historical facts are suppressed, why politicians lie and a hundred other whys.
This series is infinitely more important than the original Western Technology series on technological
transfers. If I have a magnum opus, this is it.
ANTONY C. SUTTON
July 30, 1983

A free online version of the entire work and all Sutton's works available at the bottom of Wikipedia's Sutton page.
And an introduction in the form of a previously posted video interview with Sutton here.

Some more from an updated introduction by Sutton some years later, someone who deserves to be one of the most valued minds of our time- for intellectual value involves courage as well as mental capacity:

America's Secret Establishment has had little publicity, few reviews ignored by mainline distributors yet, has sold steadily for the past 16 years at a rate of several hundred copies a month.
This activity, in turn, has generated other articles and books by other authors. But my real intent, to generate an exploration of Hegelian influence in modern America, has not been fulfilled. In great part, this can be attributed to
an educational system based on a statist-Hegelian philosophy, and which has already achieved the "dumbing down" of America.
This disastrous, destructive philosophy, the source of both Naziism and Marxism, has infected and corrupted our constitutional republic. Much of the blame for this corruption is with an elitist group of Yale "Bonesmen." Their symbol of Skull and Bones, and their Hegelian philosophy, says it all, although with typical duplicity, they would have you believe otherwise.

Hegelianism glorifies the State, the vehicle for the dissemination of statist and materialist ideas and policies in education, science, politics and economics.
Wonder why we have a "dumbed-down" society? Look no further than the Bonesman troika who imported the Prussian education system into the U.S. in the 19`h Century. A political philosophy in direct opposition to the classical liberalism nurtured in 19`h Century British and American history. In classical liberalism, the State is always
subordinate to the individual. In Hegelian Statism, as we see in Naziism and Marxism, the State is supreme, and the individual exists only to serve the State.
Our two-parry Republican-Democrat (= one Hegelian party, no one else welcome or allowed) system is a reflection of this Hegelianism. A small group - a very small group - by using Hegel, can manipulate, and to some extent, control society for its own purposes.
More than that, reflect on their pirate flag. An emblem found on poison bottles, the symbol of the Nazi Death Head Division in World War Two. Not only did Skull and Bones become a major force in drug smuggling (the Bush and Prescott families in the 1860s), but in true Hegelian fashion, generated the antithesis, the so-called "war on drugs." This hypocritical policy maintains the price of drugs, controls supply, and puts millions in jail while the gainers, in great part, are none other than the same "Bonesmen" who pass the laws to prohibit (Bonesman Taft, 1904).

Right and Left - A Control Device

For Hegelians, the State is almighty, and seen as "the march of God on earth." Indeed, a State religion. Progress in the Hegelian State is through contrived conflict: the clash of opposites makes for progress. If you can control the opposites, you dominate the nature of the outcome.
We trace the extraordinary Skull and Bones influence in a major Hegelian conflict: Naziism vs Communism. Skull and Bones members were in the dominant decision-making positions - Bush, Harriman, Stimson, Lovett, and so on - all Bonesmen, and instrumental in guiding the conflict through use of "right" and "left." They financed and encouraged the growths of both philosophies and controlled the outcome to a significant extent. This was aided by the "reductionist" division in science, the opposite of historical "wholeness." By dividing science and learning into narrower and narrower segments, it became easier to control the whole through the parts.

In education, the Dewey system was initiated and promoted by Skull and Bones members. Dewey was an ardent statist, and a believer in the Hegelian idea that the child exists to be trained to serve the State. This requires suppression of individualist tendencies and a careful spoon-feeding of approved knowledge. This
"dumbing down" of American education is not easily apparent unless you have studied in both foreign and domestic U.S. universities - then the contrast becomes crystal clear.

This dumbing down is now receiving attention. Two excellent books are The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt (Conscience Press, Revenna Ohio, 2001), and The Dumbing Down of America, by John Taylor Gotta. Both books trace this process to the impact of education, and both give remarkable detail of the process. We go further, in that we trace the import of the system to three Yalies members of Skull & Bones.
For Iserbyt, in The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, the American education system begins with Rockefeller and Gates. But in fact, this statist system is a reflection of the Hegelian ideas brought to the United States by the Skull and Bones "troika" of Gilman, White and Dwight, and then financed by Rockefeller.

A subsequent post on the same book here.

Attainment of Perfection

I have been reliably informed by no less an authority than someone whose identity, unfortunately, I am not at liberty to divulge, that with the last post I achieved that elusive intellectual holy grail, which writers through the centuries despite occasional fragmentary glimpses of this substance have strived and infallibly failed to attain- this being, needless to say, the perfect union of form and content.
I would like to thank noone in particular at this significant moment, as the achievement is mine and mine alone. I should also add that the attainment, or rather recognition of the attainment, barely scratches the surface of my being, as I do not deem the opinion of others to be of any intrinsic worth.
This might appear to be arrogance, but on the contrary it is a form of humility, as the total lack of concern for the intellectual opinion of all others means I cannot get excited by any public recognition of achievements attained. Vanity is strictly for the mediocre. It will also be recognised that this is not a form of contempt, as that would necessitate a category of mental relationship which is altogether absent. Contempt is naturally of a close kinship to the already mentioned vanity.

Any psychological connection between the author and the thoughts expressed above is entirely coincidental.

A Voice for Our Times

It was my privilege on behalf of all the staff here to interview the New Age author, Yevishna Blavatislavsky, recently. Yevishna is the best-selling author of several acclaimed works which have accomplished much in the important work of raising the consciousness of the planet, both on the group and individual level. She achieved early renown for her somewhat academically inclined You and Mother Earth- The Dialectics of Love, though subsequent books were more geared- and very successfully- towards the popular, more unrefined market. These have, of course, included Visualise Your Child's Path to Happiness and Wealth, also Cleanse Your Inner Ocean- The Detoxification of the Superfluous, as well as Healing the Channel of Love- A Guide to Spiritual and Material Success. Subsequently we were bequeathed You Are the Master and Mistress of Your Dreams- Realise Them, and then the beautifully seminal and timely Blessed Are the Poor And the Rich, which penetrated deeply into the zeitgeist thanks to endorsements and exposure on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Her latest work is the already deeply cherished Shit-Fuck.

Unfortunately the interview with Madame Blavatislavsky has been lost.

'Bush Knocked Down the Towers' - Immortal Technique ft. Mos Def & Eminem

Bush Knocked Down The Towers video. Not the greatest fan of Eminem's music, but hats off to this- though it's Immortal Technique is the main artist here, and about time music started to re-develop a social awareness and conscience.

And from Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth site:

As your own eyes witness(video at site) — WTC Building #7 (a 47 story high-rise not hit by an airplane) exhibits all the characteristics of a classic controlled demolition with explosives:

1. Rapid onset of “collapse”
2. Sounds of explosions at ground floor - a full second prior to collapse (heard by hundreds of firemen and media reporters)
3. Symmetrical “collapse” – through the path of greatest resistance – at nearly free-fall speed — the columns gave no resistance
4. “Collapses” into its own footprint – with the steel skeleton broken up for shipment
5. Massive volume of expanding pyroclastic dust clouds
6. Tons of molten Metal found by CDI (Demolition Contractor) in basement (What could have produced all of that molten metal?)
7. Chemical signature of Thermate (high tech incendiary) found in slag, solidified molten metal, and dust samples by Physics professor Steven Jones, PhD.
8. FEMA finds rapid oxidation and intergranular melting on structural steel samples
9. Expert corroboration from the top European Controlled Demolition professional
10. Fore-knowledge of “collapse” by media, NYPD, FDNY

And exhibited none of the characteristics of destruction by fire, i.e.
1. Slow onset with large visible deformations
2. Asymmetrical collapse which follows the path of least resistance (laws of conservation of momentum would cause a falling, to the side most damaged by the fires)
3. Evidence of fire temperatures capable of softening steel
4. High-rise buildings with much larger, hotter, and longer lasting fires have never “collapsed”.

Though many of the human slaves choose to believe the second idiot version above peddled by the kind of chaps pictured below. Coupled with the endless anomalies and scientific nonsense of their 911 official conspiracy theory, there's something about these ruling elites that makes me suspicious.

Thought is Also

Thought is history unfolding in the radical climate of accelerated time created by revolution and world empire.

We all remember the alliance of the two Georges- Steiner and Hegel- in the production of the above. My own contribution to the liberating effect of the above below:

Thought is the incarnation of itself within the hypertension of an increasingly compressed present, created by the weight of a future distillation of the accumulated past under the invocational strain of the dialectic of composite opposites, itself motivated by a timeless mind euphemistically embedding within finite historical time its own urge to ahistorical timelessnessness.

Bill Hicks and The Politics of Puppets

“I’ll show you politics in America,” he added. “Here it is, right here. ‘I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.’ ‘I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.’ ‘Hey, wait a minute, there’s one guy holding out both puppets!’ ” Bill Hicks

Though of course it would be stupid to think this is an exclusive American phenomenon. Think of the New Conservative Labour Party in Britain. Or one could be in China where the puppet master is only holding aloft one puppet. He could at least make an effort.

Eastern Christianity Painting

Regardless of one's notions of What's What, a painting of genuine, simple majesty.

The War on Democracy by John Pilger

Can be seen here. "A war being waged against all of us."

And speaking of war, A Battery Shelled by Wyndham Lewis.

Everything

Two figures are seated on a park- bench. One, with the feverish eyes of one who has entered realms he was not prepared for, turns to the other.
"It's all illusion."
"What is?"
"Everything."
"Including you telling me it's all illusion?"
He searches the scattered inwards of his self. "Yeah."
"Oh right."

Steiner, Hegel,Thought, a Kettle

Dipping into George Steiner's Grammars of Creation, I come across the following, where he is dealing with the philosophical world of Hegel:

Thought is history unfolding in the radical climate of accelerated time created by revolution and world empire.

Now whatever the nature of thought is in the mysterious, silent and invisible dimension of the mind, it seems to me that if in response to the specific question as to what is thought, that thought was to look into the pool of the mind from which it springs, and in pure reflection of itself to pour forth the response that thought is history unfolding in the radical climate of accelerated time created by revolution and world empire...then I would probably be forced to conclude that thought had gone insane.

It is as though one reached into a barrell containing millions of randomly assembled would-be definitions of radically varying degrees of connection to truth, and pulled one mad answer from the pile. Down what darkened and labyrinthine corridors did one have to travel to reach the treasured concept that the nature of thought is the above, and to proclaim it with such confidence?

Naturally, within this scheme of things the thought of thought being history unfolding in the radical climate of revolution and world empire is itself an instance of history unfolding in the radical climate of revolution and world empire in the form of thought. Which is illuminating. And naturally the thought of it being illuminating is a further example of same.

It might be timely to re-post an earlier piece on philosophy, and a definition of much of it described as: Philosophy is the creation of mental problems, the solution to which is forbidden unless it is seen that the solution givs birth to a new problem.

The Prosaic and Philosophy
There might be something to be said for viewing vast swathes of the enquiry into truth known as philosophy as occuring as a monologue within the mind of an individual seated within a rather shabby room, and engaged in the smoking of a regular intake of hashish.
It occurs to this individual that he would like a cup of tea. However, instead of this leading to what one might imagine to be the straightforward, uncomplicated process of getting up to turn on the kettle and the other prosaic processes leading to the desired conclusion of having and drinking the desired cup of tea , certain trains of thought are set in motion within his intoxicated and perhaps somewhat paranoid mind. Key thoughts might include:
Are the asking of this question and the physical activities it may lead to independent acts of a free-thinking and willing individual or is all this determined by processes of which I and the very concept I are mere elements?
To what extent can I consider the thought of the kettle to coincide with the actual kettle in itself?
If my experience of this external reality is received through the senses, and my senses place me at an inevitable distance from what I percive, to what extent can I in turn speak of a kettle in itself existing in a universe within which I also exist?
Do I dare undertake the conjectured tea-making processes, thus embarking on one particular life, and sending to oblivion all the infinity of other lives that I could have embarked upon were I to choose a different course of action.

The above thoughts are simply some key points from which the vastness of the resulting philosophical enquiries could ensue. In this ever expanding monologue, for the sake of clarity within the individual's mind, various tributaries of these lines of enquiry could be labelled under headings such as "Heidegger says" or "Kant claims" or some such. This helping him to keep track of the endless arguments and counter-arguments in the various discussions, such as to what extent it is reasonable to have thoughts about a kettle and tea within the broader context of one's language having a foundation in truth, as opposed to a kind of linguistic hallucination of convenience.

Ideally, having solved all the self-created problems, our hashish consuming individual would then with an easy mind make himself a cup of tea. However, the chances of this happy outcome are more than remote, and in all likelihood he will never arise from his seat, but to give him his due, he will benefit humanity by producing the most entangling of intellectual mazes within which a myriad of other souls can also wander to their great joy.

What, I wonder, happens to his mentioned questions if he simply arises and turns on the kettle?

"And You Know Something's Happening...

...but you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr Jones?" sang Bob Dylan.
Unfortunately it is self-evident that in many very serious ways, we inhabit a planet that in is very messed up, or at the very least that we are a species that is pretty confused. That the key figures of worldly power could reasonably enough be described as satanists/luciferians can hardly be said to be helping matters. See, for example, the Skull & Bones Society at Yale, its club logo shown above, including Daddy Bush, just left of clock- also known as the Brotherhood of Death Society- two of whose members, in Bush and Kerry, contested the last US Presidential election. The society's members are drawn from elite families of worldly power - strictly no riff-raff. George W. Bush described his experience there as "so secret we can't talk about it". And when asked what it meant that he and Bush were both Bonesmen, John Kerry said, "Not much because it's a secret." Democracy, don't you just love it.

A couple of secretly shot images of the society merged above, and a short extract of a recording from a Skull & Bones inititation ritual here, to give a clearer idea of what goes on in the hallowed temples of secrecy. Why the elites of US society are involved in extremely bizarre rituals, screaming about the devil and lying naked masturbating in coffins, is quite an interesting question. And if one were to try to slander the holy name of people like the Bushes, that they are invloved in such activities, about which they are sworn to secrecy: such notions would presumably be far, far beyond what anyone would claim, due to their being far too ludicrous to be believed. Except- an upset for expectations here- for the fact that it's true. As author Bill Cooper wrote:
Members of the Order (Skull and Bones) take an oath that absolves them from any allegiance to any nation or king or government or constitution, and that includes the negating of any subsequent oath which they may be required to take. They swear allegiance only to the Order and its goal of a New World Order...according to the oath Bush took when he was initiated into Skull and Bones, his oath of office as President of the United States means nothing." (Cooper, Behold A Pale Horse, p. 81-82).

And some very pointed words in a speech by the soon to be disposed of President, John F Kennedy:

The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

Someone it seems was beginning to stray from the script. A dramatic plotline was needed to put things back on course.

Skull and Bones is unsurprisingly- once one arises from psychological somnambulism- far from a unique instance of the death obsesesed elitist secret society in the US, as shown with this list here.
Tangentially, one should realise that the Nazis are often described as an instance of an atheistically motivated bunch. This is the laziest, most facile of interpretations, as with the merest of efforts one sees that the Nazis were a spiritually charged movement, intrinsically tied to occultism, such as the Thule Society - also called the Brotherhood of Death Society, of which the Skull and Bones/ Brotherhood of Death Society is a spiritual brother. This occultic essence the subject of this four part documentary, The Occult History of the Third Reich.

And to approach an end with a quote that has gained in attention of late, from the letter of Paul to the Ephesians, 6:12:
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the
darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
places.

Ever consider the version of reality presented via the mass-media might differ somewhat in essence from the essence of reality? As Victor Pelevin writes: "The dog watches the stick, but the lion watches the person who throws it." Though of course our eminent intellectual pygmies would service some wonderful reasons as to why all the above is of little interest, simply comical that anyone should find strange a US Presidential election contested by people of such a society. Though admittedly, they would more likely enact a performance of dignified silence, such issues being far beneath their inflated selves, and hope that silence would better remove the offending issues from undesired view. As Aldous Huxley wrote: Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

Even More of It

Sustained intense enthusiasm, particularly from eastern Scandinavia and the mountainous regions of China, has led to the continuation of the flurry of philosophical thoughts, both by myself and others. Even if the existence of these others is perhaps doubtful.

More Thoughts
Prior to existence, nature didn't exist with which to abhor the vacuum of its own absence. Therefore, it must be inferred that the vacuum abhors a vacuum, and gave birth to nature in an act of sacrificial suicide.
Out of compassion and gratitude, nature permitted non-existence to exist within itself in the non-existent form of the vacuum. However, nature still abhors a vacuum.

Non-existence gave birth to existence so as to not exist.
Non-existence gave birth to existence so as to have something within which to exist( in the form of the vacuum).
Non-existence gave birth to existence so as to have something within which to not exist( in the non-existent form of the vacuum).

What does a mirror look like when there is noone there to see it?

Without language, literature would be fucked. Without language, one could not even make the observation that without language literature would be fucked, nor would the observation be worth making even if one could make it.
Without language, language would be fucked.

The descent of the mind into the intellectual wasteland of athestic materialism is the reason one believes in atheistic materialism.

Copyright Laws Pertaining to Authorship: Where someone claims ownership of words placed in a particular order.

Death, Life- More of it

The Life-its-absence-and-presence post has drawn huge worldwide interest, and as a consequence some more words which should be of interest to the intellectually hungry hordes. I wrote: "Many humans have pondered the nature of life and death, each being apparently the absence of the other, but my definition is assuredly an improvement on all previous efforts in this noble art-form." I thought that some of these previous efforts might be worth displaying in their own right, and so below will follow some of same.

Death/Life Thoughts
Death is that which is there when life isn't, which is to say that when life is there, death isn't. Life is the presence of that which we call life, while death is the absence of this presence. Though if we were within that which we call death, we might find it to contain the presence rather than the absence of life, and within that death, that which we consider life might, in ignorance, be considered to be death.

Death is that which isn't. Therefore, death doesn't exist.

In a pure world of cause and effect, the non-existence of life is the cause of the existence of life.
Attempting to solve the apparent quandary of the above led to the following:
Nature abhors a vacuum, and so the universe came into existence to fill the void of its absence. The meaning of life is prevention of the vacuum.

Why does nature abhor a vacuum? In the vacuum is the non-existence of nature. Nature abhors a vacuum because existence abhors its own non-existence. For the same reason, the vacuum abhors nature: the cosmological struggle.
A vacuum does exist. Nothing exists within a vacuum. Therefore a vacuum doesn't exist.
A vacuum is the absence of existence. It is the non-existence of existence surrounded by the non-existence of existence's absence, which is to say existence's presence.
The vacuum requires existence within which to not exist.

Tintoretto- St Mark's Body Brought to Venice (1548)

A strange, perspective drenched and somewhat suffocating work. A kind of mathematically charged hallucination.

Life- its Absence and Presence

Death is the inability of the self to derive sustenance from air. If man can conquer this simple biological deficiency, which has conquered so many of our number, mortal immortality will be his. Which is admittedly a gruesome thought.
Some smart-arse may attempt to counter that many deaths are caused directly by processes other than the inability to derive sustenance from air, but it is clear that were they still deriving sustenance from air, then they would be still in the land of the physically living. One may admittedly be unable to derive sustenance from air for a shortened duration, such as when immersed in a liquid, but be still in a state of life, but were this state to extend beyond a very limited period, then the consquence will be mortal cessation.
Many humans have pondered the nature of life and death, each being apparently the absence of the other, but my definition is assuredly an improvement on all previous efforts in this noble art-form: that life in the physical encasement of the body is the ability of the self to derive sustenance from air, while death is the inability of same. Here kinetic potential is inextricably married to actual application. None that is capable of life is dead, while none incapable of life is alive.

The Greatest

On the back of a Borges book upstairs is the inferred recommendation of "Probably the greatest twentieth-century author never to win the Nobel Prize." I'd suggest for publishers and critics a host of eye-catching variations for their book reviews such as "Probably the greatest author never to win Olympic gold for the high-jump." Or, "Probably the greatest author never to be jailed for tax-evasion." "Probably the greatest author never to run a sub-four minute mile." Perhaps even, "Probably the greatest author never to write anything particularly good."

Salvator Rosa's Demand for Silence

On the previous post's stern faced artist holding aloft a stoical insistence on silence in the absence of something of greater worth than silence(shown again in miniature glory)... A thought, possibly not worth bothering to note, but since otherwise it will vanish into the nothingness of nothingness I may as well rescue it from such a non-existent fate. Here it is, or at least is about to attempt to be in approximate justice to itself, though here I remark that many thoughts are written in more than approximate justice to themselves-the padding of the linguistic verbiage masking the inner dearth of significant substance of the would-be idea at hand. The humble idea I intend on unfolding will, however, be clothed in the very language of itself; which is to say one will not have to crawl around in a morass of shite, eloquent or otherwise, and then attempt to distill the essence from the tedious dross. In other words, do the bloody work of the artist for him, his having failed in the task. The discerning reader may wonder if I have just read Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, a work which the artist ought to have distilled into roughly a third of its volume.

After all that, the embarassingly modest matter at hand. Which is the artist's demand for silence, or rather the figure in the painting's demand; an artist is no longer an element of an art-work; all we have is an art-work. The nature of a painting is its existence in the visual domain, just as music occupies the world of sound, and the lower spiritual species of literature inhabiting the much less pure world of language. So the experience of immersing oneself in looking at a painting is a pure sensory experience, a matter of light entering the mind. With music and the visual arts, one ideally makes of oneself a vacuum into which the pure sensory experience flows, an order of beauty and inner nourishing beyond the possibilities of language, in which the intellect is kept alive- the sense of self which guards the very doors of this self-surrender to pure experience.

Rosa's very request for silence in his painting is the sabotaging of this very silence that is the ideal painterly experience. Silence on the human level being essentially the absence of the linguistic world, Rosa has, in requesting the intellect's absence, allowed the intellect a gateway to reassert its existence. The nature of the thought the intellect feeds on is somewhat irrelevant, that it is present is all that it requires.
Given the existential anomaly of destroying silence by demanding it, the stern-visaged Rosa might still feel his point worth making, and fair enough. I wouldn't get too excited about the whole issue, and it is a superb painting.

One could theorise a little about much conceptual modern-art, thought to be a natural evolution of visual art, but instead merely the lower intellectual animal successfully staging a coup over the purity of painting, and sanctifying the incestuous analytical feeding on itself by the holy name of art. A possibly related extract from Victor Pelevin's latest:
"The bourgeoisie love Freud because he is so loathsome. For his ability to reduce everything to the asshole."
"But why should the bourgeoisie love him for that?"
"Because portfolio investors need prophets who will explain the world in terms they can understand. And who will prove yet again that nothing threatens the objective reality in which they have invested so much money."

The Inconsistent Materialist

Most people who think of themselves as Christian or spiritual, in the west at least, are merely inconsistent materialists; their notion of spirituality an intellectual icing atop a materialist ground, which they take to be the reality of 'this world'.

I suppose the belief in ideas can itself be seen as a form of materialism, mental materialism. Reality condensed into supposed solid distinct substance, edifices created by the building blocks of language, which the mind then treats as living truth. Though come to think of it, materialism, ie the idea of materialism, is itself an instance of this mental materialism in the first place.


Above a self-portrait by Salvator Rosa, the words the austere artist is holding are "Be silent, unless what you have to say is better than silence." I'd always assumed from the nature of this painting that Rosa was Spanish- the harsh disdain for the world of the senses inimical to normal Italian sensibilities- but he was Venetian, though very influenced by, and a pupil of, the Spanish artist, Jusepe Ribera, who had settled in Venice.
As an afterthought, I wonder was Rosa in the habit of carrying around this sign in everyday life. The life and soul of the party, such a figure probably wasn't.

Franklin Child Abuse Case- Conspiracy of Silence

"A homosexual prostitution ring is under investigation by federal and District authorities and includes among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, military officers, congressional aides and US and foreign businessmen with close social ties to Washington's political elite. Reporters for this newspaper examined hundreds of credit-card vouchers, drawn on both corporate and personal cards and made payable to the escort service operated by the homosexual ring. Among the client names contained in the vouchers - and identified by prostitutes and escort operators - are government officials, locally based US military officers, businessmen, lawyers, bankers, congressional aides and other professionals."
-- Washington Times, 6/29/1989

Conspiracy of Silence" is a powerful, disturbing documentary revealing a nationwide child abuse and pedophilia ring that leads to the highest levels of government. Featuring intrepid investigator John DeCamp, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and 16-year Nebraska state senator, "Conspiracy of Silence" reveals how rogue elements at all levels of government have been involved in systematic child abuse, pedophilia and ritual murder. So why have you never heard of the Franklin cover-up? Originally scheduled to air in May of 1994 on the Discovery Channel, "Conspiracy of Silence" was yanked at the last minute due to formidable pressure applied by top politicians.

One can watch the Yorkshire Televison documentary Conspiracy of Silence here, at which site much more more information is available.

Postscript

As an extension of the previous, and showing the diseased nature of a certain idea, imposing its supposed truth and thereby setting limits upon this reality. This idea would have no problem accepting the existence of the inner pathological reality of someone that is manifested by acts such as serial-killing. How could they deny this warped inner nature? However, this idea must deny for all its worth the inner reality manifested by so many of our greatest works of art, two recent ones that come to mind being the astounding Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles, and Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix.
This strange idea being the ultimate meaninglessness of life, the absence of truth, which feels no contradiction with the insane and diseased(Freud?), while the highest manifestations of sanity are rightly felt to be utterly contradictory to the limits set upon existence and must be denied absolutely; though since this denial becomes so impossible to uphold, the denial takes the form of ignoring the worlds of highest sanity, such as embodied withing the works of purest art.
A tangential illustration of this being Lenin's declaration that he had to stop himself listening to Beethoven as it made him want to stroke people's heads with love, whereas what was required was the smashing of heads. Truth was incompatible with the idea he was surrendering to.

Andrei Rublev/ Sufficient Unto Itself

I'll lazily use this to re-post some of an older piece, Sufficient Unto Itself, adding to paintints by Andrei Rublev; below The Annunciation(1405), and above Christ the Redeemer(1410).

The world of consciousness is boundless, which is to say that there are not a finite amount of possible mental states to fit all circumstances. Each of these states, if we were to commit the error of isolating them into supposed distinct realities, is in itself real; such states being for example terror, wonder, sorrow, joy. The works of Homer would seem to operate within an heroic but ultimately rather crude universe of finite states covering the multitudes of experience, while we could say that Shakespeare represents something more like the boundlessness of consciousness and its measureless subtleties.

The human mind can conceive of imaginary physical realities, but this cannot be said of psychological/emotional states which if capable of conception must be real, as the mind cannot create beyond itself in these terms. That they can be experienced means they are real. If we allow ourselves a self as a reality, then this self moves within an infinite world of itself, or Self.

To now move to the world of art & in particular art of a religious nature. The essence of great art of this nature, such as Bach's Matthew's Passion, is not a religious world that it points towards; the music is itself religious. This music cannot simply be said to be about an idea that is religious, but which may not exist; it is an emanation of an interior reality of the mind that is itself religious.

Such great works are themselves the world, and of the world, they point towards. The psychological, emotional reality of the given Rublev images is itself spiritual- the choice of colours, the manner of line, the whole inner essence. To stress, they are not about a projected spiritual dimension, an intellectual idea; this spiritual reality is the very nature of their existence within the world of consciousness. If you removed all knowledge of the context of the paintings, the significant inner substance would still remain. The truth here is not a matter of what the paintings are about, but what they are; and by extension the inner reality from which they are produced and with which they resonate.

And just for the hell of it, from a more prosaic sense of spirituality, Spring Outing of the Tang Court by Zhang Xuan (713－755 AD), showing the wonderful tonal simplicity of much of Far Eastern painting and music.

Education

The function of the public school is to stop thinking. You repeat what the teacher tells you. If you think for yourself, you get a lower mark. They think they're thinking when they're just repeating like parrots. Robert Anton Wilson

Andrei Tarkovsky

A shot from Andrei Tarkovsky's debut feature film, Ivan's Childhood.
And the great director himself with some thoughts on art here. And a longer extract from behind the scenes footage of the making of his final film, The Sacrifice, here.
Time cannot vanish without trace, for it is a subjective spiritual category. The time we have lived settles in our soul as an experience placed within time.

On This Day

On this day in 1847 Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, was born in Edinburgh. Ironically, prior to this telephones didn't exist.

Death Penalty as a Statement of Logic

State execution is essentially a simple statement that there is no evil or moral truth, since in the act of permitting itself this absolute action, it states that there is no absolute truth which can be violated. The reason state murder is employed is generally punishment for the absolute evil of murder, which naturally contradicts its own self. A state that employs the death penalty is either amoral in the sense of the implied non-existence of a moral universe, or immoral in the sense of being in direct violation of the existence of a moral universe.
It can so be seen as a statement that the state's purpose is to uphold control or impose social order, but not that this reflects any moral truth. The state tells the transgressing individual, I do as you do, but I have the greater power. And perhaps that is the greatest meaning behind the death penalty; it is the opportunity of the state to manifest to all its absolute authority and power. A hint of the nature of the beast.
It is an application of Dostoevsky's heroes pondering that in the absence of God there is no moral order, and all is permitted the individual. The state is king of the antheap, and there is no power beyond the state to punish it for its actions. "In the absence of God, I am God." So says Nietzsche's "coldest of cold monsters," the state.

Considering the desire for retribution in kind and the character upon whom death is to be inflicted as justification for execution is the clouding of the mind, the temptation towards evil by impure reasoning. As an ethical extension of such thinking, imagine a penal system of raping convicted rapists, evolving presumably from initially paid servants of the state doing the raping, but in time this possibly becoming done by technological means. The wonderful world of depraved moral nihilism.

What Do We Stand For?

Excellent article by former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury within the Reagan administration, Paul Craig Roberts, here.
Roberts quotes Arthur Silber:
The Bush administration has announced to the world, and to all Americans, that this is what the United States now stands for: a vicious determination to dominate the world, criminal, genocidal wars of aggression, torture, and an increasingly brutal and brutalizing authoritarian state at home. That is what we stand for."

Addressing his fellow Americans, Silber asks the paramount question, "why do you support " these horrors?

Why indeed. Old refrain of not learning lessons of history, doomed to repeat them.