somethingsomethingsome
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User ID: 2075
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
Reading this instantly made me think of Clausewitz: either you believe your position to be an advancing one or you're banking on future provenance alone. The presumption is that the faltering side seeks to bring in new allies.
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
This debate is basically half linguistic where 'feminine' subtly alters through a variety of different meanings whilst without making clear which is meant, best shown by the simple 'feminine = bad'. Is success naturally masculine? What about obstinacy? in the face of evident failure?
Feminine =//= Female. This is the core confusion. When Lieutenant Napoleon kowtows to his superiors it is 'feminine' in the sense that he's not being a brash dictator who attempts to trample over everyone and 'masculine' in the sense that this is the optimum social strategy to achieve his ends. IMO a Platonically 'masculine' man would be absolutely self-assured in all his acts, however wrong, and never go back on anything. This is not a recipe for success of any sort, political, military or anything else.
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
'Nothing ever happens' is usually a pretty good maxim to live by, with our aversion to actually taking it into account when making predictions is usually caused by an inherent aversion to that very fact: Nothingness is a very boring prediction. Our entire beings scream out against it as much as they do against boredom, with a similarly good reason for doing so: inaction and nothingness can never produce anything of worth, whilst, on occasion, and especially when not overly concerned with the continued existence of the body that they spring from, errors can be extremely productive. Trying does get you someone in a way that apathy simply can't; it's just that the failed triers aren't actually the ones to see or benefit from the few successes.
And so too here. The difference is that things do occasionally happen, and when viewed from the historical perspective, earning the epithet of 'thing' at all means that they're sufficiently of note to be memorialised. One of the great advances of the modern world is a plentiful enough catalogue of data that enables us to see the environing factors that did or did not contribute to the production of that noteworthy 'thing', as well as the consequences of the positive or negative predictions that anticipated the formation of that 'thing' in the chaotic and unordered times which always precede the creation of anything of lasting importance.
'Nothing ever happens' is a good, historically proven heuristic: most things come to nothing. But when something does happen, it has to happen with sufficient strength to overcome the imbalance of possibilities that worked against the thing happening at all, producing something far more impactful than was predicted by anyone. Anthropomorphic bias here works against our quantitatively humane heuristics because we don't usually think nor have a historical record for or have purpose in predicting humanity ending cataclysms: if you are to try to predict one, going on 'historical record' will necessarily condemn you to failure. Personally, I'm quite scared. Fortunately it if it is to happen, it will only belie the promises or modern technologists and send us back to former existentialist quandaries. Death is inevitable for us all, and a great many people were hoping to be the first to avoid that particular difficulty.
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
Emotions are the least consistent part of man, and the most removed from reality of all man’s components. All emotions (pathological or not, positive or not) insist they are eternal and uncreated, true and perfectly valid, up until the very moment they’re resolved and burst like a bubble, with little left to show they were ever there.
Isn't that merely indicative of their strength? 'We have always been at war with Eastasia' is not a statement weak governments produce. The fleeting yet totalitising nature of our emotions shows both their immediately unyielding face, and also the purpose that such a front, quite unknown to their host in the moment, is designed for.
The closest parallel I can think of is the confidence trickstering of credit instruments, best illustrated by old fashioned gold-backed systems: "Of course we have enough gold for you, sir." Being able to put a the maximum possible energy into effect by agitating a pre-existing body with the minimum of initial impetus—that's what emotions are, and they do their job very well, however unpleasant being their vessel is.
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
It's not worth much thought. Every worthwhile 'Right-wing' artist is either: A. Formerly left-wing; B. A revolutionary progressive at heart. That's it. People who kowtow to the status quo never have anything interesting to say. Here I shall invoke the views of Parmenides, being too lazy to try to quote him: the sole constant in the pantheon of artists' beliefs is that they always go against whatever has been most prominently arrayed against them. I.E., what's the sole thread which connects them all? The fact that they're all different is what shows that they're the same, not actual engaged in impartial or transcendental truth-seeking but just taking the dogmas as they're given and accepting/rejecting them.
Change or innovation of the beliefs-that-be is the preside of thinkers; advocacy or spurning of them that of artists, however much they might like to think otherwise.
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
Method is theory, theory is method. If you try to raise the one without the other it will slack and bring the other with it. Tying them together prevents the existence of any avenue for criticism.
I would say it's different from similar practices in Malaysia/Nigeria or wherever solely because it's America, and thus the top; everything under the principal is hidden in its shadow and not taken publicly to be the exemplal intention of that process. Like in law, the appearance of the thing is usually taken from how it appears at its highest strata, even when the actual events underlying the appearance differ drastically across the spectrum.
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
He said business, not general accomplishment, especially not in the sciences. I.E. He's asking if there is a *social *restriction in areas that aren't pursued solely through personal ability.
It should also be noted that Nietzsche here is very much speaking in the Aristotlean and Te Tocquevillean paradigm of gentlemen scholars working alone, rather than the modern science-as-business (one might argue) where there is a greater focus on gruntwork and ready intellectual liquidity in the system, rather than a focus on individual genius, which would thus be more likely to have possible social impediments to achievement.
And how have they accomplished that? And if so, why in heavens name would you seek to displace the first group ever to manage it? Such an innovation would instantly enable a utopia, and even if of an aesthetically malign sort, that must be better than our present straits? Surely on any remotely conservative principle such a breakthrough should be regarded as extraordinarily unique and not to be tampered with at all?
I personally very much doubt they have.
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
Power laws and competition don't disappear just because they're affecting your enemy. It can still be a decentralised process whilst appearing to be focused around a few key groups—this is a measure of success, the wheat winnowed from the chaff. There are very few moments where it's actually more efficient to create a thing/movement/site entirely from scratch rather than finding an already moving thing, no matter how fast, and boosting it.
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
Do you believe 17th century Puritans if shown Belle Epoque would believe that society had degenerated? My answer will mirror yours, turning on the fulcrum of whether technological progress can make up for a supposed societal malaise. The question is, do these social restrictions (since this is all historical social norms have ever been) exist as ends themselves, or solely due to their influence on the material basis of that polity? And if the former, how exactly IS the prognostic of degeneracy supposed to be declared if not from the factors that should be downstream of that taint?
If social norms can be essentially good in and of themselves then they must by worthwhile of themselves, and any supposed or perceived deficiencies of them must be either illusory or not of importance compared to the moral/eschatological rectitude of the principals. In which case it's as unfair to say that people in a degenerate society can't notice said degeneracy as to say that a morally assured people should be capable of seeing their own self-righteousness: they're right because they are, and they are because they're right. Anything beyond that doesn't have any verifiable basis in reality.
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
It's always easier to add the cherry on top to an already existing edifice and then claim that you made the whole thing, this certainly being how people remember it. You don't need to convert people properly, only strike at their capital, force them to do an exclusively Christian act such as undergoing a Mass, to then be able to claim that all their leftover superstitions are just variations on the Christian religion. Inverting a thing is the easiest way to prove master over it, whilst still allowing it to appear mostly as it once was. The final
Too fervent proselytizing will summon up a force to oppose it; far better to just cut off the head, as here was done through mainly inducements, there not being any strong reason for an Anglo-Saxon ruler to remain stolid in his mystic beliefs lacking both depth and expediency as they did, and then to allow the remnants to follow, trusting that there won't be any strong counter movement.
somethingsomethingsome
1yr ago
This is because the traditional conservative opinion is unique amongst political views: only the non-intellectual conservative who is anti-change is truly 'right-wing': all other politics, including reactionary and fascist, are a type of progressivism. The reason is the intellectuality of the thing: if you believe you can rewrite reality as you experience it from summoned up abstract concepts you are a progressive. Hence 'conservatism' continually loses because definitionally it can nothing else. It is a question of philosophical rationalism first, not politics.
Both reactionaries and leftists justify their views on a presumed success in a different time, with the leftists believing it lies in the future and the reactionaries the past. Neither is true, as neither can transpose the entirety of the agents or things which they believe can bring this about (or rejuvenate it) into the present moment all at once, but have to do it piece by piece, with reality then defeating them in detail. Reactionaries claim that their preferred state having once existed, whether as they claim it truly was or no, yet this is no stronger a plea than the progressives, as the events that conspired to destroy that past state did actually manage it even when the state was at its strongest. It's the old question of anti-revolution: we shouldn't have had a revolution because we don't know what it might bring on and the complex system of a state can never be interfered with without suffering: we must have a counter-revolution because this currently existing state is so bad that huge change must be wrought to bring things back to order.
Would you agree that modern regimes are, as a whole, nicer, that historical ones? Why is that? Is it a good thing? During the Napoleonic wars, which of the two main powers, England and France, were 'nicer' to the other powers of Europe?
To me there is a civilisational floor of 'incivility' below which the returns of cruelty are infinitely higher than above it. This is due to focus of states tending outside of its borders as its own stability, be it Republican longevity or Monarchic pedigree, increases. Or, to put it another way, when you have a group of neighbouring states that are primarily concerned with internal affairs, the likelihood of collective action to punish (/exploit their weakness for personal gain) any one is less likely. Cruelty gives a great excuse for intervention.
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