Nazis are people too.

And Nazism had considerable popularity in Europe and the US, along with their own variants of Fascism. The roots are deep in the Colonial attitudes of racial superiority that still run as an undercurrent through all our cultures. Therefore, send not to ask at whom the finger wags, it wags at thee. It would be pleasant to distance ourselves from all that horror, but such indulgence is dangerous.

By all means look for the nazi in Heidegger, but look closer to home also. Do you also worship power?

Yeah... Only Obama wouldn't send lethal aid to Ukraine, Trump gets in, and the first Javelins go off to help their fight against Russian separatists. — Isaac

It's boring when sarcasm is the whole argument. It becomes an irritating straw man. I'm saying that Putin saw Trump rightly as a disrupter of American society in the same way he saw Boris and Brexit as disrupters of UK society. That there turn out to be downsides to that for him does not make my argument or Putin's tactics foolish.

but the whole 'president-installed-by-foreign-evil-dictator-to-do-secret-bidding-says-spy' is just your run-of-the-mill, bona fide goings on. You'd have to be some kind of 'extremist' no doubt to not believe such a plausible story. — Isaac

The conspiracy I heard about wasn't that, but 'Psychopath leader secretly supports election of easily manipulated Narcissist Fantasist as leader of enemy power to undermine from within. Manages to sow enough confusion and dissent to be able to invade neighbouring country unopposed.'


Trump winning was a bonus, but just the campaign served to promote internal conflict. The conspiracy to spread conspiracy theories amongst the enemy has indeed been universally successful and exploits the very principles of freedom to undermine it. But the idea that Trump has the smarts or the principles to be a proper agent of anything but his own fantasy image is ridiculous.

Yes, it wasn't my intention to suggest that enlightenment was easy. Rather to bring out the contrast between the enchantment of talk, and the disenchantment of disciplined silence. But You're probably right to disabuse the reader of any romantic notions.

In the story towards enlightenment it seems dis-enchantment is a necessary intermediate step, because it's a dis-spell meant to sent an enchanted one on a quest or path which will unfold the original enchantment — Moliere

Not really, the way I'm telling it. Which is that 'disenchanted' is the identification of the 'gritty realist' who stalks the boards explaining to us primitives how our beliefs keep us detached from reality. Instead of examining their own beliefs – 'Life has no meaning' as a meaningful fact. It is a step off the path, rather than a step on it, like Bunyan's Slough of Despond. But everything one reads about a real enlightenment suggests that there is no path. One requires a disciplined intention to strip oneself of unnecessary baggage, but the step out of oneself is a single step, not a journey; a step that one cannot take oneself, but that is given by grace, or comes as a sudden insight, unexpectedly when the ground has been prepared.

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow

[Refrain]
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now — Bob Dylan

The attainment of youth, you see, is the real cure. One dies every day and thus remains Forever Young.

I don't think the world needs to be saved, — frank

I mean your faith is cute, but unappealing, whichever way you express it. The system that you ask us to have faith in is rather a meat grinder, as @Isaac details above.

A summary. I propose/suppose:—

1. Enchantment. The magician, or the enchantress, tells you that you are Mummy's special little boy, or God's beloved creation, or a terrible sinner, or whatever, brave or cowardly, smart or stupid, rich or poor, a Roman or a Jew. You believe.

2. Disenchantment. The magician, or the enchantress, tells you that you that The Enlightenment has happened and you no longer believe anything except the truth. You believe.

3. Enlightenment. There is no you, no belief, no enchantress or magician, and no enlightenment, and yet there is sleeping and waking and eating. The narrative has stopped.

Have a little faith in the system, man. — frank

That, sir, is a very third rate religion you're espousing, I'm afraid. Not because it has proven false, for religion does not deal in fact, but because it entirely lacks ambition.

The discussion is re-framed so as to move on. — Banno

And also is not reframed, and does not move on.

You do for your own posts, and you should exercise the capability more often. — Changeling

I do that a lot; I'm glad you approve.

[def]Inherited wealth = inherited power= the establishment.[/def]

Another hint is that establishment figures don't try to arrange coups. — frank

That's like saying that policemen do not commit crimes. Dangerous falsehood. Hitler came to power democratically and then established his dictatorship. Likewise any revolutionary government comes to power in a coup and immediately becomes established or is overthrown by a counter coup by the disestablished establishment. Trump is a corrupt member of the establishment, seeking to exploit the establishment and resentment of the establishment in equal measure and with no loyalty to either.

My understanding of Kant's antinomies is that they aren't mere undecidable alternatives, but necessary contradictions. Cue for example the singularity of the beginning of time giving rise to "how did it begin?" which presupposes a time before time. And likewise, the idea of 'beyond space' that supposes both a finitude of space and the space beyond it. Limits of thought, therefore. One cannot think outside the box of spacetime. One has to invent 'another space' — Riemann space or Hilbert space, or some such.

Trump, his Republican supporters... are all entrenched part of "the establishment".
— Fooloso4

No, I don't think so. — frank

I think so. Rather in the same way that a corrupt policeman is still a member of the police.

Aren't they all busy messing up their own country's housing situation? — Vera Mont

We have quality billionaires who can multi-task, ripping folks off in more than one place at a time.

My friend convinced me Canada intends to kill off its homeless and poverty-stricken citizens through neglect to make room for its current and impending foreign residents and working-class native citizens. — Bug Biro

If you need a conspiracy theory, a better one is that the wealthy are few and maintain their dominance by means of divide and rule. by keeping poor citizens in conflict with poor immigrants, they prevent the poor from making common cause and - say - voting for decent affordable housing for all, something that is not beyond the wit of an Amazonian tribe, and should be uncontroversial to the point of not worth talking about somewhere like Canada.

Maybe people are increasingly escaping the spell of ideology—it’s just that there seems to be nothing they can do about it. — Jamal

Because without the magic, there is only the bald monkey? 'The naked ape does not (any more) proclaim his naked-apeitude, he throws his shit about.'

Disenchantment seems to be done in one of two ways, though. This looks like the other way:–

Bankei, a Zen teacher, was giving a talk to a gathering of students interested in learning from his wisdom.

In the midst of the talk, a follower of another teacher arrived and expressed their doubtsabout Bankei’s authority in comparison to their own teacher. The individual interrupted Bankei and began speaking proudly of the impressive feats of their own teacher…

”The founder of our sect can stand on one side of the river, hold a brush in his hand, and write calligraphy on a scroll on the other side of the river. He has many miraculous powers.”

He then asked Bankei, ”Can you perform such miracles?”

Bankei gently replied, ”These are impressive tricks, but that is not the manner of Zen. My miracle is that when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel thirsty I drink.”

Whereas the naked ape eats when not hungry, and lies awake when tied.

Yeah, no, not me, not you, fair enough. But you posit self and spell. I am asking about the ontology.

Let's say a spell is made of words, or maybe possibly a picture, some communication – I assume that; you can correct me. What is a self made of? My inclination is to say that a self is a narrative self — also made of words, images associations, identifications'.

A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces. — Wole Soyinka

By which I understand that my unenlightenment is a proclamation, whereas the tiger's tigritude is his pounce. Just as the enlightenment was/is a mass proclamation, and not an act (of what? Compassion?).

Here's another proclamation:

We have all been processed on Procrustean beds. At least some of us have managed to hate what they have made of us. Inevitably we see the other as the reflection of the occasion of our own self-division. The others have become installed in our hearts, and we call them ourselves. Each person, not being himself either to himself or the other, just as the other is not himself to himself or to us, in being another for another neither recognizes himself in the other, nor the other in himself. Hence being at least a double absence, haunted by the ghost of his own murdered self, no wonder modern man is addicted to other persons, and the more addicted, the less satisfied, the more lonely. — R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience/The Bird of Paradise

So I posit two somethings: a self and a spell. — Moliere

What would you say is this 'self'? Is that I that posits?

I'm not sure I follow. Religion and nationalism clearly exist in the world, so why would they be necessarily supernatural in any respect? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do they? What are they made of? You see I think they are things that exist in the mind. And as soon as we stop thinking about and talking about and identifying with a nation, it ceases to exist.

maybe someone will find it interesting. — Jamal

I did. Nice pulling together of many threads within the thread.

Your fear, your anger, or your love can be invoked, or evoked, as can mine, by the feeble power of a troll, for example, who, impotent in the world, works a little mischief by way of self assertion. Multiply by millions, and there is the war. The war is not something different, or outside the mind.

Speaking of trolls... Water into wine is difficult, but water into blood...

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood" — Enoch Powell

(quoting Virgil)

Now blood is certainly a magical substance. According to tradition, one spills it to assert and preserve its purity, Here the noble invokes it to rouse the rabble to a cause that still obsesses them, and is still being used to sway them to vote for Brexit, and perhaps soon to abandon the human rights act.

I think we can make claims about ourselves without invoking powers or spells. — Moliere

There is, in the Christian context, no reason to assume that anything supernatural occurs in the Bible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are at this moment, soldiers in trenches in Ukraine trying to kill and being killed without invoking powers or spells, and without assuming anything supernatural occurs. For what are they killing and dying? We do not know and cannot ask in general, and I invoke them here only to show that a claim of nationality, or of religious or cultural tradition, has more power (word in thread title) over the secular such as your good selves than you seem to think. Whatever explanation you might put forward, it will not do to rely on avowed nonsense as a motive force, because that would be irrational, wouldn't it?

And from the enlightenment comes the white man, conquerer of the world and civiliser of Johnny Foreigner with his kilts and scarification and dreadful table manners. I don't know if it worked the same with the plaid, but the tradition with Aran knitting was that each village had its own pattern so that bodies washed up further along the coast could be identified. So I heard.

I visited Culloden in my youth and found it a very haunted place. There were several large mounds with my name on the stone.

Those interested should read Black skin white masks. It might even be worth a thread. It's a difficult book, but goes right into the way the white man having destroyed the indigenous culture then sentimentalises it and tries to preserve it, while the remaining natives try desperately to adapt, giving rise to a second inverted conflict, rather like the way Cecil Sharpe and other aristocrats tried to preserve the English folk traditions in music, while the peasants moved on to Music-hall and other travesties. Hence an ongoing conflict between the 'traditionalists' and those dreadful innovators who dare to use electric instruments. See Bob Dylan, and the infamous cry of 'Judas', for example.

can we repudiate the enlightenment? — Moliere

I can claim to be unenlightened at least, but I have to live in a post enlightenment world, being no angel.

If we are magic, and we're still around to say, then the dis-enchantment must be some kind of an illusion. — Moliere

I think that's right. We speak a nihilist language of moral subjectivity and subjectivity eliminationism. But this self negation must obviously fail. I am determined not to be, therefore I am. The Nazis failed and the capitalists will fail because when the Monopoly is complete, the money game is over, but the world remains.

One feels on all sides these limits of objective science We are still talking about the workings of brains more that 2000 years dead. There can be no logical or scientific explanation for that. There is meaning that communicates across millennia , and to deny it is to affirm it. There is value, and we discover the cost of denying it.

Any minute now I'm going to be talking about not living on bread alone, and rich men not getting into heaven. We are still waiting for the double blind trials on these...

"People are stupid.", says @Banno

I think we have been stupefied, not by conspiracy, but by the veneration of blindness in the name of objectivity, and we have been selling our souls for a mess of pottage. And all of this has been down to the failure of Western philosophy to defend the good.

That already answers my question, then, about whether the self is a spell -- no! The self is already there, as is an interpretation too. There's a lot already going on before we can say, here's a distortion of an interpretation. — Moliere

Yeah, but no, but... one is not born with the right interpretation, or any interpretation, one is indoctrinated with here and now, already haunted by 'once upon a time'. In other words, magic is what we are made of, – magic is subjectivity itself, and the repudiation of it is the repudiation of humanity itself in the name of "rational control", alias "total war". The scientist has thrown himself out of the bath with the bathwater, and has become Death.

And if that doesn't convince everyone to repudiate the enlightenment then nothing else I can think of will.

It's not personal, that's the point. It was Oppenheimer who quoted the Bhagavad-Gita in 1945. "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

You were taught to worship Shiva. — frank

Speak for yourself Frank; everyone already knows I'm insane!

No path led from the magical religiosity of the non-intellectual classes of Asia to a rational, methodical control of life. — Max Weber, Sociology of Religion

You have to laugh, surely, at such hubristic naivety? And written just after WW1, that fine exemplar of rational methodical control —not.

A thermostat controls the temperature by allowing it to fluctuate between limits. Where is the thermostat of humanity, and whose hand is upon it? Poor Max is clearly in the thrall of his own magic if he thinks it is a human hand.

It's partly the way you're interpreting events. We naturally look for repetition, so we highlight the similarities between now and the 1930s, using words like "mirroring.". This view is melancholic per Kierkegaard. — frank

Magic is something maybe only seen from the outside. In which case, it's hard to identify if it's magic, because you sort of have to know how it works "from the inside" too. In which case it's no longer magical, so how do you spot the spell if it's lost its potency? — Moliere

Let's not psychologise, let's philosophise.

That it's partly the way I'm interpreting events is partly the way you're interpreting events. Interesting that you have recourse to the medieval humours to understand me.

My interpretation of the notion of "magical powers", is that it is an 'undue' influence, a misleading, or distortion precisely of my interpretation of the world. Folks may recall my threads on psychology as just such a systematic misleading tool. Every experiment begins with misdirection in order to prevent the natural human response of compliance with the other's wishes, or its opposite. The main successes being in the field of advertising and brainwashing; this has now reached the level of seriously interfering with elections by tailored posts based on individual data for example. Other techniques might include 'love-bombing' for example used by cults and others to recruit. There might be talk of memes here too.

So much for the secular magicians.

But we are already haunted by our selves. Billions of people all haunted by the way they interpret events, all seeing the magic from the outside, or not seeing it because it is inside. I was brought up with "The Bomb". It was the new thing in the world, to be accommodated by psyche; by pretty much everyone in the world. "When you hear the alarm, crouch under your desk, put your head between your knees, and kiss your arse goodbye." It was transformative, this new destructive power, and more shocking even than the revelation of the depths of human depravity exposed in the deliberate mass starvation in Russia, and the Final Solution in Europe. This is my interpretation of events: we haunt ourselves. The secular magicians are playing with forces they cannot comprehend because they cannot comprehend themselves.

So how to philosophise the forces that guide philosophy? First, breathe.
Now let us speak as equals round a campfire in the dark, of stories we have heard of faraway places and forgotten monsters, and the wonder of the stars, and the brevity of life.

And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way. — Trent Reznor, Hurt

Yeah, about that. Are you sure Trump, Boris, Berlusconi and friends are in charge? — Banno

I didn't have you down as a conspiracy theorist. If that counts as an explanation at all, it's less convincing than the demonic tides in the collective unconscious theory.

People are stupid. — Banno

It doesn't really work for me. Are you saying that Trump is sufficiently plausible, convincing, a clever manipulator of people? He doesn't look that good to me, that he is the explanation of his own success. It's the same with our Boris; he's fucking turnip, always has been and always will be, and rarely makes enough sense to even achieve falsehood. If people are stupid why aren't the smart people in charge?

Do you have a decent explanation for how such transparent bullshitters (Trump, Boris, Berlusconi, etc) manage to convince enough people to gain power? And the synchronicity ,of their arising, that mirrors the rise of fascism around the world in the 30s?

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. — Karl Marx

Ok Karl, you da man. But what is the mechanism that determines it to be so?

Anyone?

So what’s the ethical or moral consideration of breaking a bloody egg ? — invicta

It's a reference to the cliche that the ends justify the means, analogised as "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." But to answer your question directly, it would be wrong of me to break an egg on your head to humiliate you, but perfectly fine to do so (with your permission), to condition your hair as part of a beauty treatment.

That every egg is sacred is not part of my personal ethics, though I am, as it happens a vegetarian by habit. :love:

Ends are ideas, means are behaviour.

My behaviour is to break eggs, with the end in mind to make an omelette.

But eventually, my end is achieved (or not) and becomes perhaps a means to a new end - breakfast in bed with my wife.

The law already has cognisance of this in the notion of mens-rea, or criminal intent, which is a necessary component of the crime of murder, but not in the same way of manslaughter, which requires only a criminal disregard for foreseeable outcomes of behaviour.

So I think if you keep clear that ends are ideas, and means are behaviour, your separation will work. But you need I think to give priority to behaviour, as the law does – eggs are broken, someone has died. The intention is important but the act is crucial. My diary entry where I plan the murder is important evidence of my criminal intent, but only if I at least attempted to carry out the plan.

To be open to understanding is to be open to misunderstanding; apologies for reading too much between the lines. One more word before I wake up to the real world:

To be possessed of reason is a great gift, but to be possessed by reason is to suffer a life-long tyranny.

How do I know that someone is enchanted? How does one learn the linguistic expression of enchantment? What does it connect up with? With the expression of bodily sensations? Do we ask someone what he feels in his breast and facial muscles in order to find out whether he is feeling enjoyment? But does that mean that there aren't any sensations after all which often return when one is enjoying music? Certainly not. (In some places he is near weeping, and he feels it in his throat.) A poem makes an impression on us as we read it. — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology 2

―

I tend to experience romantic love more like being hit on the head with a mallet, causing brain damage, madness, and aberrant behaviour — Jamal

Your experience is only half the romance: it takes two to tango. Alas my instruction to breathe came too late. The whole point is the mutuality of relationships of understanding.

What you describe is what magicians call 'possession' and psychiatrists call 'obsession'. Not entertaining or accommodating an idea in your mind, but the idea taking over your mind. Trump is such a magician. Magicians recite their spells without for a moment entertaining them, so they work on others and not themselves. @Banno calls it "bullshit" which is a defensive warding counter-spell, whose effect is very limited because it lacks poetic power.

Are you saying that we cannot be unenchanted, but that we can be enchanted well, genuine understanding and romantic love being the models we should look to? — Jamal

I'm saying that magic is part of everyday life, and we are well advised to recognise how it works. I am saying that it works best on those who deny it.

A note on understanding.

(For your own comfort and safety, please breathe between paragraphs.)

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle

To reach an understanding is to find a mutual accommodation. Therefore, to understand something or someone, one requires some vacancy of mind together with the ability to reach out with empathy to the thing or person.

For example:– you read this post, and to understand it, you have to entertain the ideas it presents, and consider the significance for your other significant understandings of believing them. If your mind is too full of other stuff you won't have room to entertain a new thought

We all love to be entertained, and to entertain. Entertainment distracts the mind from its own conflicts and confusions.

And some of us have reached an understanding with a significant other. This is the enchantment of romantic love - a mutual accommodation.

The enchantment to beware is the one sided accommodation where the ideas of others find a home in you, but you find no home in them. Heroes and idols, one sided love affairs manipulations. Beware especially the one-sided media that disguise themselves as poly-vocal; the chat show, the discussion, and do not mistake a claim to be unbiased as any kind of accommodation.

A uniform is an enchantment. One puts on the accoutrements of a nurse, or the police, or a soldier, or a bank robber, and one becomes that identity; one behaves and is treated in a different way, as if one had special powers. One has united ones' being with the Orisha of Nursing, and one really has healing and comforting hands, and one speaks with the comforting authority of the healer.

You talking about me‽ — Jamal

If the pointed hat with the big D on it fits :monkey: ... I am actually in battle with the huge army that serves under the banner of "The Enlightenment", as anyone who pays attention to my posts will be aware.

Surely the most dangerous and potent enchantment is the one that induces the belief in the person that they are not enchanted and are immune from enchantment and the enchantment does not exist? Such blind and absolute faith in oneself makes one open to every horror See for example Stalin. Or here look for "I'm not affected by ads"

The thought that springs to my mind is the G K Chesterton quote, 'When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything. — Wayfarer

I fear I may have enchanted you. My profound apologies.

Under the influence of scientific assumptions, not only the psyche but the individual man and, indeed, all individual events whatsoever suffer a levelling down and a process of blurring that distorts the picture of reality into a conceptual average. We ought not to underestimate the psychological effect of the statistical world-picture: it thrusts aside the individual in favour of anonymous units that pile up into mass formations…As a social unit he has lost his individuality and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. He can only play the role of an interchangeable unit of infinitesimal importance. — Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self

https://academyofideas.com/2017/06/carl-jung-spiritual-problem-modern-individual/

"We ought not to underestimate the psychological effect..." the dreadful locution of self-exaggeration:–
'we'. Even Jung could not bear the helpless inadequacy of the modern individual.

If you scratch around in Jung, you will come across hints that the zeitgeist can manifest the archetypes in proportion to the totality of their denial. Think here of the rise of fascism, or the civil rights/hippy revolution of the sixties. Understand these archetypes as Orisha, Greek god, or meme according to your religion. Try to allow a little accommodation to the next wave of irrationality that will no doubt pour over us.

When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything. — G.K. Chesterton

...the more I learned about Yoruba religion the more I realised that that was just another interpretation of the world, another encapsulation of man's conceiving of himself and his position in the universe; and that all these religions are just metaphors for the strategy of man coping with the vast unknown.
[...]
...the corpus of Ifa is constantly reinforced and augmented, even from the history of other religions with whom Ifa comes into contact. You have Ifa verses which deal with Islam, you have Ifa verses that deal with Christianity. Yoruba religion attunes itself and accommodates the unknown very easily; unlike Islam, because they know: they did not see this in the Koran - therefore it does not exist.
[...]
The Roman Catholics until today they do not cope with the experience and the reality of abortion! They just shut the wall firmly against it. — Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka in Conversation with Ulli Beier on Yoruba Religion. 1992

Well I think one can find the same kind of rigidity on these boards very easily. There is no science of morality, or subjectivity, or aesthetics or value, therefore these things do not exist. And no doubt there will be those here who will disdain to learn anything of, let alone from, the 'primitive' religions of Africa.