Where In The World

Off to Japan early in the morning: Nagoya and Tokyo this time. Bill J. in Tokyo: watch out. I'll be at The Okura and let's see if we can get together.

Y'all hang tough out there. The total fucking disaster of Endarkenment is getting worse every hour, but I'm still here and I still see it all. There is nothing to be done for it but to watch out, so please do.

God-fucking-dammit.

"Bad Ideas"

Hitting my post here yesterday pointing to TDC, Martin McPhillips minutes:

"That’s a philosophical history derivative — the ‘ideas have consequences’ lineage — of the zombie culture. I depart from Billy, and radically so, in my belief that at the deepest point of this metaphysical morass is a crisis in faith amidst the ruins of the Church."

In order of the two sentences, I say: yes and no.

Yes: it's crucially important to understand that ideas have consequences and that we're living all the really rotten ones right now, albeit not to their worst possible effects, yet. One might think it astonishing that this fact should require remindance, but it does, precisely because of the postmodernist disdain for ideas. One might call it a "pillar of the day's typical subconscious" now, but it's not: it's more like the swamp of the typical subconscious and seeped down from the intellectuals; the average person on the street now can relegate alarming amounts of life-action beyond the purview of ideas, and this is a basic disconnect of life from reality. Below-average mentalities now pretty seriously have no idea that reality even exists. (And they get to vote -- ed.) The "basic disconnect" lies in the fact that our minds are our only device of the conduct of our lives. Again: we don't fly, or run fast, with great big teeth or huge claws, we freeze or cook pretty easily, and are generally fairly physically feeble when it comes to making our way through reality. We have come as far as we have by applying our conceptual faculty to the problems of survival, and when a culture actually teaches whole generations that we cannot do that, then we are separated from the doom of our squishy little bodies only by the sheer inertia of what our thinking forebears wrought for us. (Note: it is great tribute to their achievements that it carries us this far, so far.)

No: this is not a metaphysical crisis. In deepest fact, that can't even happen. (Reality has no "crisis" with human -- or any other -- affairs. It just is.) This is an epistemic crisis, with terminal ethical and political implications redounding to metaphysical consequences: reality will manifest the effects of objectively defective value-selections and ways of acting for them. Sooner or later and one way or another, the attempt of everyone to live at the expense of everyone else will fail, simply because this is not what human beings are. The failure might run over decades and generations, as in a case like the Soviet Union, where untold millions had countless values (unto their very lives, commonly) destroyed to the cheers of defective mentalities who always called it a success. It was always a constant failure, and that was reality having its way.

Hell, man: Martin and I can agree that Amsoc is failing now. He continues:

"I was looking in on a blog thread today — I won’t say where — and it was plain to me that reason alone could not set this disorder right. The alphabet of reason, to turn a phrase, has been burned behind it, and the culture is at ‘z’ with the first twenty-five letters wiped out, destroyed."

Well, that may be so, but that doesn't stop thinking people from thinking. It's that simple, and as Jim May pointed out: "What is loose in the world is bad ideas."

"Off The Rails For Real"

C. August put up a superb post on the necessary implications of Immanuel Kant's "Critique Of Pure Reason". I keep telling people: "We're living-out an event of about two hundred years' duration -- so far". This is Endarkenment, and it has taken this long for these bloody vultures to come home to roost. Whether you know it or not, this is a fact:

"Kant is sometimes considered to be an advocate of reason. Kant was in favor of science, it is argued. He emphasized the importance of rational consistency in ethics. He posited regulative principles of reason to guide our thinking, even our thinking about religion. . . Thus, the argument runs, Kant should be placed in the pantheon of Enlightenment greats. That is a mistake.

The fundamental question of reason is its relationship to reality. Is reason capable of knowing reality—or is it not?. . . This is the question that divides philosophers into pro- and anti-reason camps, this is the question that divides the rational gnostics and the skeptics, and this was Kant’s question in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant was crystal clear about his answer. Reality—real, noumenal reality—is forever closed off to reason, and reason is limited to awareness and understanding of its own subjective products."

That is quoted from Stephen Hicks' book, "Explaining Postmodernism", and if you want to understand the fundamentals of how you have come to live in a culture of walking zombies, this is it. In my Recommended Books list, I said of the "Critique": "Where the Enlightenment went off the rails for real."

You'd better believe it. Go read the whole thing.

Going Nowhere

Whence this alien inertia by which a man can get handcuffed at an American airport for not answering official questions about how much money he earns but the querying grotesque is not instantly smashed on the spot for his impertinence?

Michael Yon gets the treatment; a bureaucratic convulsion in the wake of Umar Farouk Abdulmullatab, a maniac who was obvious at a glance before he actually lit-up on an airplane.

To watch Janet Napolitano cooing her sick noises just makes my spine creep sideways.

I watch everything lately from under the snow that doesn't stop falling; peering through the grey at great distance, safe and warm but still deeply sick at heart over what's going away, in long strides.

I'm telling you: I'm not the only one. None of us will be able to live like this... the ways that these zeroes have in mind for us.

"Still Alive And Well"

I will bring it back.

Look, to begin with; crazy technical nonsense has the Daisy Hollow desk in deep freeze. This is the second power supply blow-up in the past year, I think (first with the dual-core rig, though), and I'm damned about to snake a 240-volt drop straight through the whole house with welding cable if I have to in order to secure this. I heard the computer power supply fry, but I wasn't immediately sure what it was. I was knocking down the whole system; lights, AR speakers, printer, monitor, the Behringer audio mixer (I think that thing might've taken a hit -- it acted strangely on power-down), Alesis drum machine & other small bits, when I heard the cartoon sound-effect electric zorch somewhere to my left under the desk. I actually walked out of the room and then returned to test power at the computer before I discovered that it wouldn't fire. On a timeline, I couldn't dig on it for a couple of days, and I still haven't really confirmed the power supply burnout: I have a known good one but haven't swapped it in yet.

I'll be doing a ground-up re-wire, anyway, to work around the missing Behringer V-amp guitar processor, which is traveling with the Fender Vibrolux amplifier -- currently up at Brian's house in Perfect Accident sessions. Wherein, I recently checked-out on Toby's 1990 Gibson Flying V, which is a very cool and interesting guitar, on which we'll do some electrics work. None of this is taking place anywhere near my desk, which will be getting re-rigged for new recording sessions. Soon enough.

My brother Michael had his other hip replaced, and his shoulder gets some kind of bashing soon, now. My old mate Garry will have a heart valve repaired next month. Bruce calls everyone from North Carolina, commanding all to be well, goddammit, because he misses Michael Amdur horribly. My cousin Molly's son, Alan, has died suddenly at deer camp, at the age of forty-five. I spoke with her night before last and she still sounds like the woman who has adored me every day of my life since I came to her house from my hospital birth at her age of twelve. This, five days since the worst day of her life, and many years since I last spoke with her.

Indeed, many strange things do come to pass.

And they do not explain everything. Sometimes, they don't explain anything at all.

I hear, these late days, the resounds of the fall of my country crashing in some different frequencies than I did not very long ago. Events and implications are resonant to me lately in some different orders, and they have a lot to do with the pace of the disaster now. Time is shorter than ever and there is a lot to fit into what's left.

When I get back to this thing for real, which won't be too long from now, there will yet be a great deal of Endarkenment to annotate, almost certainly for as long as I live. In my very first post ordered that I would not necessarily post daily. I have kept my word, but I never actually expected it to run to something like the most recent weeks. Nonetheless, they do not interrupt my order of "the long haul". The place is still here -- go read it again -- I've paid up the hosting and the domain for another year, and I can publish any damned time I want to, and I will.

Having noted readers from around the world who appear to find value here regularly, I call them to an outlook for freedom, or, at least, in these dark days, then outrage at its pursuit by evil forces around the world and finally here in the home of its finest-ever appearance. Don't let this thing go without at least knowing what's been lost, if for no other reason than to perhaps cast a ray into a way through, someday, for someone who might be courageous enough to reach for what their forebears could not grasp. I'm telling you; you can use me, but you don't really need me.

I'll be here anyway, though. Don't doubt it. If ever comes a day when I won't, then I will have arranged a way to make that clear.

Let's keep moving onward, best we can.

{blink}

Speaking with Martin McPhillips on the telephone this evening, we have finally agreed that these people in Washington are not American patriots.

{rimshot}

I almost can't even believe what I see when I look at the news, and I'm stealing my own life as fast as I can.

I have to go now and work on a drawing. I think I might be able to start regular blog rounds tomorrow, but I'll be damned if I know what to say to any of it, right now.

It's just that it gets hard to think of what to keep saying about the comprehensive destruction of America.

Nonetheless, It Rolls

Happy birthday to me.

"The world began when I was born."

I'm still happy to be here.

Look Here...

Action here will be even less than averager until about Monday of next week. I hate to tell y'all this, but there it is.

With that, I'll tell you that I am beginning to consider this year since January as a fairly close comparison to events elsewhere in 1917, with the temporal slipped-disk of George Bush as Alexander Kerensky for eight years. If we take Obama as the first post-American president, then Bush was the president of a provisional government. In any case, the slow-motion revolution of Amsoc is no longer slow-motion. We're living a moment in history that will reverberate through history as the turn of a great wheel, into precisely what cannot be completely foretold right now, but it must surely be enormous in its consequences.

We are more and more in it, every day, and none it is anything good for anyone. As the struggle intensifies, every person's principles will be more clearly illuminated, right down to the street-level where you live. Pay close attention, and keep both hands on the wheel.

I wish every good heart the best of luck.

~~~~~

I'll be in & out.

The Worst Are Having Their Way

An intense all-day personal matter has me completely worn-out. It's really good, but I'm beat.

This post at Samizdata made me reach for my Hayek and pull this passage, for timely contemplation:

"Just as the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure. It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful in a society tending toward totalitarianism."

(F.A. Hayek, "The Road To Serfdom", chapter X, "Why The Worst Get On Top", p. 135)

They're just going to perpetrate this Deathcare disaster on us, kids. Nothing matters but the program, now.

My god; think about where we're all going.

"What Government Does"

"Nearly 35 years after taxpayers spent $55.7 million building the Pontiac Silverdome and a year after a $20 million sale fell through, city officials have sold the arena once called the most desirable property in Oakland County.

The price: $583,000."

(Detroit News)

You know, I really hope that, for example, all the old grandmothers who were never interested in team sports of any sort for all their lives, but who had to pay for it nonetheless, really enjoyed that.

(subject header stolen from Uncle)

Word

"If this be treason, make the most of it."

Symbolisis

McPhillips links Victor Davis Hanson with "Thoughts From The Later Republic". In a parenthetical, Hanson notes:

"I think we are in the age of the solely symbolic: you buy the gas-guzzling Volvo SUV, but put an 'Impeach Bush!' sticker on the back, or put a few solar panels on the roof tiles over the 10,000 square foot addition."

I would only point out -- again -- that people are mainly no longer in touch with reality anymore. Look: when they talk about "playing roles" (and listen to how many of them do), they really mean it, almost to a point that I think most of them don't realize how seriously they mean it. Even with the horrific plasticity of the language now, what's serious about it is how it abets the consequences of over a century of Pragmatism's dismissal of metaphysics. The fantasy-rash of the 1960's found extremely fertile ground in the wake of the Jamesian plow and Deweyan harrow. The results are florid and should surprise no one. Anyone can be a star, now, because some dimwit said so (that was, essentially, Dewey -- Warhol was the idiot bastard son). The welfare state increasingly inclines people away from facts of material life, only irritating the already basic alienation from reality, and an epistemic labor theory of value is constantly validated in a culture rife with impertinent pronouncements from every quarter.

These are not people -- certainly not Americans, who were once the most reality-driven people on the planet. These are ungulates making cooing sounds at each other.

More later on Hanson --

"One of the oddest things is President Obama’s continuing surprise at the rising unemployment rate. Indeed, we now have a new Orwellianism of 'jobs saved': as jobs are lost, we are told that some of those who do have them were 'saved' by President Obama (note the logic: you ignore the stats that quantify reality, but hype fantasy)."

No, what I think is one of the oddest things is that people put up with obvious horseshit in these affairs. On the other hand, given the facts that I've outlined above, it all figures out pretty sensibly.

Just War Principles

"In short, just war theory sanctifies the right of violent revolution within your own state if it is hostile to your well being. A bit of a sticky wicket there, eh what?"

Well, that goes both ways, Wendy. This is the part where the libertarians inclined to passivism must at least examine the value of war as a fundamental principle.

The necessity of war arises when people of evil intent join in a mass requiring a massed organization of the righteous in order to prevent the former from preying on the latter. This is a basic principle of human relations: there really are such things as bad guys in the world, and they really can get that big. The most important question here is organizational: how to meet them effectively. Certainly, no lover of freedom can abide forcing people into that against their will. Conversely, however, there is nothing wrong in individuals voluntarily agreeing to the project together in order to act for the value of freedom; no more than when they organize economically, through a division-of-labor economy, in order to produce refrigerators. Observe that the ethics drives the politics: the value of security against manifest military threat is the reason for the voluntary military organization of free people.

Understanding the basically military threat of the state, all of this applies to the matter of political rebellion. To reject the state is essentially an act of war, because of the state's radical claim on the use of force, and all else afterward is merely organizational.

Okay, Look...

This was strictly unnecessary.

Jeezis.

To Act Like Humans

"Human ingenuity, not wind, not sun, is the only truly renewable resource. Without it, nothing in nature would be transformed to further human life. Your car, your clothes, your food -- none of these things are naturally occurring. If all we can do is take what we get, then we are but hunter-gatherers without tools or any remnants of cognition to help us along. But because humans are rational animals, we can identify the materials in our environment and mold them to suit us.

Be it stones or soft metals or iron or oil or electricity or fusion -- or the sun -- the human mind is the inexhaustible resource that makes all others possible. It is time for the government to recognize this alternative energy source, and to unleash it fully upon the world by getting the hell out of our way."

Titanic Deck Chairs brings to clarity the function of humans in the world. It is our job to bring our only tool of survival -- our minds -- to bear on everything else that we find in the world, in order to adapt it all as values for the existence and advancement of human life. All government action prevents this, and to that degree it positively inhibits human survival and flourishing.

Why are you letting government kill you?