Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

  • Domestication by Family Unit

    —“It was precisely this domestication of men and women into family units that propelled Europeans forward. That the Germans were more monogamously disciplined than the Celts is why they went on to be the source of Northern European success, more so than the Irish. The eugenic footprint can be seen even to this day.”— Josh Jeppson

  • Spanish Rule?

    Q&A: —“I’ve been interested in the case of Spain for some time, as my ancestors are primarily Spanish. And I wanted to understand the reasons for the rise of the Spanish and if they had any philosophical contributions to the western World. If you saw no reason to comment on the Spanish, I don’t wish to take your attention away from something which could be more useful. But, if there is anything to say about the Spanish, I would certainly be willing to read what you have.”— David David, The Spanish question is interesting because Spanish philosophers were central to the Scholastic movement, the Spanish empire was so powerful, and so successful but rapidly evaporated under industrialization. So that the Spanish had lost their position by the time of the enlightenment’s transfer of power from the landed to the merchant classes, and the vast inte The argument for why this happened is well understood: 1) The Spanish were a hardworking people, and meaningful commercial leaders as trade spread from the Mediterranean to the atlantic.. 2) The peak in spanish contirbution to philosophy occurred in Catalan where the Translators of Toledo first translated greek texts from arabic into latin, then to catalan. This set of translations created what we know as the modern spanish language. And is probably the basis for what we call today ‘spain’. And it was the latin translations that reintroduced europe to science and philosophy. 3) The discovery of the new world created an enormous influx of gold (currency).Spain spent its wealth on wars, notably against the low countries (Netherlands). 4) As we see with Americans, unearned wealth tends to make a people lazy, and they seek status signals not productivity. And decline after wealth is very difficult for a people to work through. 5) With the people ‘ruined’ from this process of expansion, wealth, war, and failure to convert to industrialization, they did not produce an enlightenment on the scale of england, france, germany, or ashkenazi-dom (eastern europe and russia). And spain devolved into a relatively poor country despite being second only to the UK in the territorial expansion of spanish language and genetics. 6) Spanish cultural, military, and economic excellence was was the product of Austrian not Spanish rule. Just as eastern european excellence was the product of german and Austrian rule. (see Kennedy’s bookhttps://en.wikipedia.org/…/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great_P…) And when the Hapsburgs declined, so did aristocratic influence in spain. So, Spain went into decline, and she was unable to maintain her colonies when the Americans and British chose to deny her access to first the caribbean, and then south america. Read anything basic you can find on the rise and fall of Hapsburg Spain. But I will say something uncomfortable: That Spain ascended under Roman, Muslim, and Austrian rule, but could not maintain that ascent under her own rule. SO WHY IS THAT? Something we must ponder. But most of us probably attribute this to geographic location, and mediterranean (hot weather) culture, catholicism, and the failure of Spainish culture to join the Hanjal Line and develop the absolute nuclear family, and low corruption we see in protestant countries that still practice ‘the oath’. Curt Doolittle

  • Spanish Rule?

    Q&A: —“I’ve been interested in the case of Spain for some time, as my ancestors are primarily Spanish. And I wanted to understand the reasons for the rise of the Spanish and if they had any philosophical contributions to the western World. If you saw no reason to comment on the Spanish, I don’t wish to take your attention away from something which could be more useful. But, if there is anything to say about the Spanish, I would certainly be willing to read what you have.”— David David, The Spanish question is interesting because Spanish philosophers were central to the Scholastic movement, the Spanish empire was so powerful, and so successful but rapidly evaporated under industrialization. So that the Spanish had lost their position by the time of the enlightenment’s transfer of power from the landed to the merchant classes, and the vast inte The argument for why this happened is well understood: 1) The Spanish were a hardworking people, and meaningful commercial leaders as trade spread from the Mediterranean to the atlantic.. 2) The peak in spanish contirbution to philosophy occurred in Catalan where the Translators of Toledo first translated greek texts from arabic into latin, then to catalan. This set of translations created what we know as the modern spanish language. And is probably the basis for what we call today ‘spain’. And it was the latin translations that reintroduced europe to science and philosophy. 3) The discovery of the new world created an enormous influx of gold (currency).Spain spent its wealth on wars, notably against the low countries (Netherlands). 4) As we see with Americans, unearned wealth tends to make a people lazy, and they seek status signals not productivity. And decline after wealth is very difficult for a people to work through. 5) With the people ‘ruined’ from this process of expansion, wealth, war, and failure to convert to industrialization, they did not produce an enlightenment on the scale of england, france, germany, or ashkenazi-dom (eastern europe and russia). And spain devolved into a relatively poor country despite being second only to the UK in the territorial expansion of spanish language and genetics. 6) Spanish cultural, military, and economic excellence was was the product of Austrian not Spanish rule. Just as eastern european excellence was the product of german and Austrian rule. (see Kennedy’s bookhttps://en.wikipedia.org/…/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great_P…) And when the Hapsburgs declined, so did aristocratic influence in spain. So, Spain went into decline, and she was unable to maintain her colonies when the Americans and British chose to deny her access to first the caribbean, and then south america. Read anything basic you can find on the rise and fall of Hapsburg Spain. But I will say something uncomfortable: That Spain ascended under Roman, Muslim, and Austrian rule, but could not maintain that ascent under her own rule. SO WHY IS THAT? Something we must ponder. But most of us probably attribute this to geographic location, and mediterranean (hot weather) culture, catholicism, and the failure of Spainish culture to join the Hanjal Line and develop the absolute nuclear family, and low corruption we see in protestant countries that still practice ‘the oath’. Curt Doolittle

  • More On Spain

    I have learned this mostly from my friends in south america. And we now have the genetic data, testing data, and economic data to confirm it. But the problem facing south america is that there are just toooooo many people at the bottom for the people at the top to provide sufficient incentives to the middle class, who in turn will provide sufficient incenties to the lower class, so that it’s possible to productively organize society. It’s not as bad as islamic countrires, where people are highly illiterate and where Islam teaches people that they can be emotionally expressive and emotionally impulsive. At least south american s are still christian. But it’s just almost impossible to create a window within which the people can be organized, and a sufficient middle class developed, to raise the population out of poverty.

  • More On Spain

    I have learned this mostly from my friends in south america. And we now have the genetic data, testing data, and economic data to confirm it. But the problem facing south america is that there are just toooooo many people at the bottom for the people at the top to provide sufficient incentives to the middle class, who in turn will provide sufficient incenties to the lower class, so that it’s possible to productively organize society. It’s not as bad as islamic countrires, where people are highly illiterate and where Islam teaches people that they can be emotionally expressive and emotionally impulsive. At least south american s are still christian. But it’s just almost impossible to create a window within which the people can be organized, and a sufficient middle class developed, to raise the population out of poverty.

  • Russian Philosophy (From Routledge)

      —” ‘Russian Idea’ – … the most distinctive feature of Russian philosophy – can be explained in terms of Russian history. The Mongol yoke from the twelfth to the fourteenth century cut Russia off from Byzantium (from which it had received Christianity) and from Europe: it had no part in the ferment of the Renaissance. Its rise as a unified state under the Moscow Tsardom followed closely on the fall of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire, and the emerging sense of Russian national identity incorporated a messianic element in the form of the monk Philotheus’ theory of Moscow as the ‘Third Rome’, successor to Rome and Constantinople as guardian of Christ’s truth in its purity (see Medieval philosophy, Russian). ‘There will not be a fourth’, ran the prophecy: the Russian Empire would last until the end of the world. Russian thought remained dominated by the Greek patristic tradition until the eighteenth century, when the Kievan thinker Skovoroda (sometimes described as Russia’s first philosopher) developed a religious vision based on a synthesis of ancient and patristic thought. He had no following; by the mid-century Russia’s intellectual centre was St Petersburg, where Catherine the Great, building on the achievements of her predecessor Peter, sought to promote a Western secular culture among the educated elite with the aid of French Enlightenment ideas. But representatives of the ‘Russian Enlightenment’ were severely punished when they dared to cite the philosophes’ concepts of rationality and justice in criticism of the political status quo (see Enlightenment, Russian). The persecution of advanced ideas (which served to strengthen the nascent intelligentsia’s self-image as the cultural and moral leaders of their society) reached its height under Nicolas I (1825–55), when philosophy departments were closed in the universities, and thought went underground. Western ideas were the subject of intense debate in small informal circles of students, writers and critics, the most famous of which in Moscow and St Petersburg furnished the philosophical education of such intellectual leaders as the future socialists Herzen and Bakunin, the novelist and liberal Ivan Turgenev, the literary critic Belinskii (from whose ‘social criticism’ Soviet Socialist Realism claimed descent), and the future Slavophile religious philosophers Kireevskii and Khomiakov (see Slavophilism). As a critic has noted: ‘In the West there is theology and there is philosophy; Russian thought, however, is a third concept’; one which (in the tsarist intellectual underground as in its Soviet successor) embraced novelists, poets, critics, religious and political thinkers – all bound together by their commitment to the goals of freedom and justice.”— Like I said, russian philosophy is literary, not rational(rousseau), not rigorous (Kant), nor empirical (smith and hume), nor legal ( jefferson ). Russian philosophy is one of LAMENT OF LOSS. But loss of what? Byziantine fall? Why does russia tolerate islam if it is islam that caused byzantine fall?

  • Russian Philosophy (From Routledge)

      —” ‘Russian Idea’ – … the most distinctive feature of Russian philosophy – can be explained in terms of Russian history. The Mongol yoke from the twelfth to the fourteenth century cut Russia off from Byzantium (from which it had received Christianity) and from Europe: it had no part in the ferment of the Renaissance. Its rise as a unified state under the Moscow Tsardom followed closely on the fall of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire, and the emerging sense of Russian national identity incorporated a messianic element in the form of the monk Philotheus’ theory of Moscow as the ‘Third Rome’, successor to Rome and Constantinople as guardian of Christ’s truth in its purity (see Medieval philosophy, Russian). ‘There will not be a fourth’, ran the prophecy: the Russian Empire would last until the end of the world. Russian thought remained dominated by the Greek patristic tradition until the eighteenth century, when the Kievan thinker Skovoroda (sometimes described as Russia’s first philosopher) developed a religious vision based on a synthesis of ancient and patristic thought. He had no following; by the mid-century Russia’s intellectual centre was St Petersburg, where Catherine the Great, building on the achievements of her predecessor Peter, sought to promote a Western secular culture among the educated elite with the aid of French Enlightenment ideas. But representatives of the ‘Russian Enlightenment’ were severely punished when they dared to cite the philosophes’ concepts of rationality and justice in criticism of the political status quo (see Enlightenment, Russian). The persecution of advanced ideas (which served to strengthen the nascent intelligentsia’s self-image as the cultural and moral leaders of their society) reached its height under Nicolas I (1825–55), when philosophy departments were closed in the universities, and thought went underground. Western ideas were the subject of intense debate in small informal circles of students, writers and critics, the most famous of which in Moscow and St Petersburg furnished the philosophical education of such intellectual leaders as the future socialists Herzen and Bakunin, the novelist and liberal Ivan Turgenev, the literary critic Belinskii (from whose ‘social criticism’ Soviet Socialist Realism claimed descent), and the future Slavophile religious philosophers Kireevskii and Khomiakov (see Slavophilism). As a critic has noted: ‘In the West there is theology and there is philosophy; Russian thought, however, is a third concept’; one which (in the tsarist intellectual underground as in its Soviet successor) embraced novelists, poets, critics, religious and political thinkers – all bound together by their commitment to the goals of freedom and justice.”— Like I said, russian philosophy is literary, not rational(rousseau), not rigorous (Kant), nor empirical (smith and hume), nor legal ( jefferson ). Russian philosophy is one of LAMENT OF LOSS. But loss of what? Byziantine fall? Why does russia tolerate islam if it is islam that caused byzantine fall?

  • Russian Philosophy Encounters German Idealism

      Intellectuals matter, because intellectuals teach. And a lot of intellectuals teaching the same thing, transforms generations. —” in 1836 of Chaadaev’s ‘Philosophical Letter’, which posed Russia’s relationship to the West as a central philosophical problem, maintaining that Russia’s historical separation from the culture of Western Christianity precluded its participation in the movement of history towards the establishment of a universal Christian society. Chaadaev’s version of the march of progress was much indebted to French Catholic conservatism, while the nationalist riposte to his ideas drew heavily on the Romantics’ critique of the Age of Reason and Schelling’s organic conception of nationhood: the Slavophiles held that Western culture was in a state of terminal moral and social decline, suffering from an excess of rationalism, which had led to social atomization and the fragmentation of the individual psyche (see Chaadaev, P.I.; Schellingianism, Russian). These divisions could be healed only by religious faith in its purest form, Russian Orthodoxy, whose spirit of organic ‘togetherness’, uncontaminated by Western rationalism, they presented as a model for Russian society and a beacon for mankind. They thereby laid the foundations of a distinctively Russian tradition of cultural and religious messianism which includes Dostoevskii’s political writings, the Pan-Slavist and Eurasian movements (see Dostoevskii, F.M.; Pan-Slavism and Eurasian movement), and the apocalyptic vision of Berdiaev, whose philosophy was highly popular among the Soviet underground.”—

  • Russian Philosophy Encounters German Idealism

      Intellectuals matter, because intellectuals teach. And a lot of intellectuals teaching the same thing, transforms generations. —” in 1836 of Chaadaev’s ‘Philosophical Letter’, which posed Russia’s relationship to the West as a central philosophical problem, maintaining that Russia’s historical separation from the culture of Western Christianity precluded its participation in the movement of history towards the establishment of a universal Christian society. Chaadaev’s version of the march of progress was much indebted to French Catholic conservatism, while the nationalist riposte to his ideas drew heavily on the Romantics’ critique of the Age of Reason and Schelling’s organic conception of nationhood: the Slavophiles held that Western culture was in a state of terminal moral and social decline, suffering from an excess of rationalism, which had led to social atomization and the fragmentation of the individual psyche (see Chaadaev, P.I.; Schellingianism, Russian). These divisions could be healed only by religious faith in its purest form, Russian Orthodoxy, whose spirit of organic ‘togetherness’, uncontaminated by Western rationalism, they presented as a model for Russian society and a beacon for mankind. They thereby laid the foundations of a distinctively Russian tradition of cultural and religious messianism which includes Dostoevskii’s political writings, the Pan-Slavist and Eurasian movements (see Dostoevskii, F.M.; Pan-Slavism and Eurasian movement), and the apocalyptic vision of Berdiaev, whose philosophy was highly popular among the Soviet underground.”—

  • The West’s Other Promethian Fire

    THE WEST’S OTHER FIRE: THE FIRE OF THE MIND: “TRUTH” Prometheus may have stolen fire. But we gave mankind the Fire of The Mind: Truth. And from the Fire of the Mind, we gave mankind debate, reason, rationalism, science, physics, medicine, and testimonialism. We gave him testimony, the jury, natural law, the common law, the independent judiciary, the constitutional order: the contractual-order of mankind.

    To hell with equality and those who appeal to it – it’s a deceit by the weak to return us to dysgenic barbarism. We domesticated the human animal, and raised him from mysticism, ignorance, poverty, starvation and disease. We domesticated man through the incremental suppression of his natural parasitism, leaving productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchange in the market as his only possible method of survival: survival through the service of others. Using the common law, we changed the behavior of those we could. And we hung those we could not. And we built walls and armies to resist those who wish otherwise. We have no equals. We either rule or are ruled by and preyed upon by our inferiors, who, by their sheer numbers, like locusts, are parasites upon this earth, that with every birth, prevent man from achievement of his promise: godhood. Kill them all. Revel in your defense of man from another dark age of dysgenia, mysticism, ignorance, and suffering.