Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Christopher M. Quigley,
31st January 2023
cmqesquire@gmail.com
I love scholarship, the search for new knowledge, wisdom and truth, it has been the joy of my life. Truth
leads to freedom, creativity, resourcefulness and individuality and boy never before has there been such
need for individuality.
I believe we are living through a rolling social transformation greater than the French or indeed the
industrial revolution, yet few are prepared, for our creativity and resourcefulness have been conditioned
out of us. In thought and in spirit we have become atomized.
This fracturing of the individual has resulted in the disintegration of intelligence, personality, mental
health, personal effectiveness and happiness.
We need to start "joining the dots" and to start thinking for ourselves. We need to stop being naive in
our thoughts and actions. We need to cease being small-minded and start being macro-conscious.
I recommend that one read comprehensively and transcend the " Trance Model” we have been educated
into.
Herein I have listed some books, quotes and personal summaries and essays that have helped me to start to
think for myself and pass through the veil of “group-think”, and once this veil is lifted life is never the
same.
I hope it motivates you to commence your own journey of scholarship, self-realization and conscious
growth, leading to a new awareness, peace of mind, renewed individuality, creativity, resourcefulness and
truth.
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Rene Guenon:
"Vincit Omnia Veritas"
(Truth conquers all).
Baruch Spinoza:
“God is not Anthropomorphic (the attribution of human traits to non-human things), God is Divinity itself
and this Divinity is immanent (existing throughout nature, the world and the whole universe).”
“If human beings were triangles, they would envisage God as a triangle.”
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of
ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weaknesses as to our strengths.
The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to
exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much work is not done by us. Or what if we
had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! Determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it. All day long
on the alert; at night we willingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties....”
Our psyche is set up to accord with the structure of the universe; and what happens in the macrocosm
likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche. For that reason the God-
image is always a projection of the inner experience…..
The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves
and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that
we become a particle in the mass ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity.”
“The danger that a mythology understood too literally, as taught by the Church, will suddenly be
repudriated, lock stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian
mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once?”
“His great idea (The Cantos) was a “revival” of American (western) culture.”
Paul Trejo (On Understanding Hegel):
“But it is one thing to have community spirit, and quite another thing to be excellent at it. To be excellent,
one must be able to communicate to others the details of one's consciousness, and explain to children the
reasons for decisions. One has to be more than an example at this level. To be a superior social leader one
must also be able to explain one's actions and motives and visions in detail, yet in simple terms. To do this
one must once again rise to a higher level of consciousness, the PHILOSOPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS.”
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Reference thread:
1. C. M. Quigley
“Being Baruch Spinoza”
2. Lord Macaulay
“England under William and Mary 1695”.
4. Claude Marks.
"Pilgrims, Heretics and Lovers"
5. Neil Postman
“Amusing Ourselves to Death”
6. Nicholas Shaxon
“Treasure Islands:
Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World”
7. Edwin Bernay
“Propaganda”
9. Samuel Beckett
A Samuel Beckett Reader:
"Dante... Bruno.. Vico. Joyce"
10. E. C. Riegel
“Flight from Inflation”
22. T. S. Elliot
Selected Poems”
40. G, M, Trevelyan
“A Shortened History of England”
43. Heraclitus
“Collected Works”
48. E. F. Schumacher
“Small Is Beautiful”
54. Kandinski
56. Tacitus
63. Ezekiel
81. R. F. Pettigrew
82. Epicurus
83. Picasso
86. R. Kipling
88. F. D. Roosevelt
90. Socrates
125. Plato
132. Lindberg
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1. Christopher Quigley
I love scholarship. Reading and books are one of the joys of my life. In particular I adore
philosophy. I have read books on Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche,
Schopenhauer and Hegel but no philosopher has inspired me more than Baruch Spinoza. I
think his perspective on the true meaning of “God” is inspirational and if we in the West
were to embrace his insight I think it could revitalise our dying civilization.
Born a Jew in 1632 in Amsterdam Baruch was a brilliant student, the son of a merchant. In
1656 he was summoned before the Jewish elders charged with heresy. He refused to change
his view of God and was accordingly excommunicated. They did so because Baruch was
fundamentally questioning the West’s view of God as anthropomorphic. (In the image of
Man). They felt the gratitude of their hosts in the Netherland’s who welcomed the Jewish
community after their exile from Spain. Spinoza took his exile from his beloved synagogue
with quiet courage and lived a simple life of reading, reflection and writing, until his
untimely death at the age of 44 in 1677. He lived simply and wrote because he believed the
following:
“After experience had taught me that all things which frequently take place in ordinary life
are vain and futile, and when I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had
nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them. (In other
words if I did not think about them they did not matter)……. The greatest good is the
knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole of nature … The more the mind
knows, the better it understands its forces and the order of nature; the more it understands
its forces or strength, the better it will be able to direct itself and lay down the rules for
itself; and the more it understands the order of nature, the more easily it will be able to
liberate itself from useless things; this is the whole method.”
In his quiet studies, as set out in his “Treatise on Religion and the State”, Spinoza
articulates what I love his so much in his philosophy;
“I take a totally different view of God and Nature from that which the later Christians
usually entertain, for I hold that God is immanent, and not the extraneous…. I say, All is in
God; all lives and moves in God…. What the law of circles are to all circles, God is to the
world. …….. Like substance, God is the causal chain or process, the underlying condition
of all things, the law and structure of the world. This concrete universe of modes and things
is to God as a bridge is to its design, its structure, and the laws of mathematics and
mechanics according to which it is built; these are the sustaining basis, the underlying
condition, the substance, of the bridge; without them it would fall.
I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would in like manner say that God is eminently
triangular……”
Thus in other words, for Spinoza God is the complete intelligence, the complete laws, the
complete reason, the “Logos”, behind life, behind Nature, behind the Universe, of which we
are a part. When we seek to understand ourselves we are growing in the knowledge of God
because we are part of the divinity which makes the whole mystery function. Thus when we
observe the stars we observe God; when we observe the vast oceans we observe God; when
we observe each other we observe God because we are all part of the whole. According to
Baruch the biggest mistake of philosophy was to see God in human subjective terms. Such
a view he believed was based on mythical not historical reality.
This is exactly the reason for the collapse of Christianity in Western Civilization; the
concept of the true nature of God has not kept pace with the growth in human
consciousness. According, humanity believes today that God is dead and thus we have lost
all religious luminosity, meaningfulness, spiritual groundedness and mystical connection.
All due to an error of intellect. Thus I believe it is time humanity matured and became
transcendental once more.
I believe that if the West begins to believe the philosophical truths of Baruch Spinoza a
spiritual rebirth could occur and this is exactly what Carl Gustav Jung was talking about
when the wrote the following in his brief classic “The Undiscovered Self”:
“We are living in what the Greeks called - Kaipos – the right time for a ”metamorphosis of
the gods”, i.e., of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time,
which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man
within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous
transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own science and
technology.”
“As at the beginning of the Christian era, so again today, we are faced with the problem of
the moral backwardness which has failed to keep pace with our scientific, technical and
social developments. So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological
constitution of modern man. …. Does he know that he is on the point of losing the life-
preserving myth of the inner self and which Christianity has treasured up for him. Does he
realize what lies in store should this catastrophe ever befall him? Is he even capable at all
of realizing that this would be a catastrophe? And finally, does the individual know that he
is the makeweight that tips the scales?”
“Happiness, and contentment, equability of soul and meaningfulness of life – these can be
experienced only by the individual and not by the State, which, on the one hand, is nothing
but a convention of independent individuals and, on the other, continually threatens to
paralyze and suppress the individual.”
Carlo Rovelli in his brilliant brief book “Seven Brief Lessons On Physics” also truly
indicated that he understood the current crisis and the importance of the insights of
Baruch Spinoza;
“…. As the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza understood with marvelous lucidity in the
seventeenth century ……. There is not an “I” and “the neurons in my brain”. They are all
the same thing. An individual is a process: complex, tightly integrated. …. Our moral
valuees, our emotions, our loves are no less real for being part of nature, for being shared
with the animal world, or for being determined by the evolution which our species has
undergone over millions of years…… All of this is part of the self-same “nature” which we
are describing. We are an integral part of nature; we are nature, in one of its innumerable
and infinitely variable expressions. … That which makes us specifically human does not
signify our separation from nature…… Nature is our home, and in nature we are at home.
“In the beginning was the logos (the Word) and the Logos was with God and the Logos was
God.”
John 1:1
King James Bible.
2. Lord Macaulay
England under William and Mary 1695.
The evils produced by this state of the currency were not such as have generally been thought worthy to
occupy a prominent place in history. Yet it may well be doubted whether all the misery which have been
inflicted on the English nation in a quarter by bad Kings, bad Ministers, bad Parliaments, and bad Judges,
was equal to the misery caused in a single year by bad crowns and bad shillings..... The misgovernment
of Charles and James, gross as it had been, had not prevented the common business of life from going
steadily and prosperously on...... When the great instrument of exchange became thoroughly deranged,
all trade, all industry, were smitten as with palsy.... Nothing could be purchased without a dispute....The
simple and the careless were pillaged without mercy by extortioners whose demands grew even more
rapidly than the money shrank.
In the midst of the public distress one class of people prospered greatly, the bankers; and among the
bankers none could in skill or in luck bear a comparison with Charles Duncombe. He had been, not many
years before, a goldsmith of very moderate wealth. He had probably, after the fashion of his craft, plied
for customers under the arcades of the Royal Exchange, had saluted merchants with profound bows,
and had begged to be allowed the honour of keeping their cash. But so dexterously did he now avail
himself of the opportunities of profit which the general confusion of prices gave to a money-changer
that, at the moment when the trade of the kingdom was depressed to the lowest point, he had laid
down near ninety thousand pounds for the estate of Helmsley in the North Riding of Yorkshire.
Within the walls of the Parliament the debates continued during several anxious days.... It was resolved
that the money of the kingdom should be re-coined according to the old standard both of weight and
fineness; that all the new pieces should be milled; that the loss of the clipped pieces should be borne by
the public; that a time should be fixed after which no clipped money should pass ....... It was impossible
to estimate with precision the charge of making good the deficiencies of the clipped money. But it was
certain that at least twelve hundred thousand pounds would be required. Twelve hundred thousand
pounds the Bank of England undertook to advance on good security........ Such was the origin of the
window tax, a tax which, though doubtless a great evil, must be considered as a blessing, when
compared with the curse from which it was the means of rescuing the nation.
The Bank of England was formed in 1694 ...... In the reign of William old men were still living who could
remember the days when there was not a single banking house in the city of London. So late as the time
of the Restoration every trader had his own strong box in his own house, and, when an acceptance was
presented to him, down the crowns and Caroluses on his own counter. Before the end of the reign of
Charles the second, a new mode of paying and receiving money had come into fashion among the
merchants of the capital. A class of agents arose, whose office was to keep the cash of the commercial
houses. This new branch of business naturally fell into the hands of the goldsmiths, who were
accustomed to traffic largely in the precious metals, and who had vaults in which great masses of bullion
could lie secure from fire and from robbers. It was at the shops of the goldsmiths of Lombard Street that
all the payments in coin were made. Other traders gave and received nothing but paper. Old fashioned
merchants complained bitterly that a class of men, who thirty years before, had confined themselves to
their proper functions, and had made a fair profit by embossing silver bowls ....... were fast becoming
the masters of the whole City....... The new system, it was said, saved both labour and money. Two
clerks, it was said, seated in one counting house, did what, under the old system, must have been done
by twenty clerks in twenty different establishments. A goldsmith's note might be transferred ten times
in the morning; thus a hundred guineas, locked in his safe close to the Exchange, did what would
formerly have required a thousand guineas, dispersed through many tills,
Gradually even those who had been loudest in murmuring against the innovation gave way, and
conformed to the prevailing usage. The last person who held out, strange to say, was Sir Dudly North.
When, in 1680, after residing many years abroad, he returned to London, nothing astonished or
displeased him more than the practice of making payments by drawing bills on bankers...... With
difficulty he was induced to put his money into the hands of one of the Lombard Street men, as they
were called. Unhappily, the Lombard Street man broke; and some of his customers suffered severely.
Dudley North lost only fifty pounds: but this loss confirmed him in his dislike of the whole "mystery" of
banking. It was in vain, however, that he exhorted his fellow citizens to return to the good old practice,
and not to expose themselves to utter ruin in order to spare themselves a little trouble. He stood alone
against the whole community.
No sooner had banking become a separate and important trade, than men began to discuss with
earnestness the question whether it would be expedient to erect a national bank... (Along the line of the
Bank of Saint George of Genoa which had started business circa 1390).
(Note: History
The pound sterling is the world's oldest currency still in use.
Anglo-Saxon
A pound = 20 shillings = 240 silver pennies (formerly)
The pound was a unit of account in Anglo-Saxon England, equal to 240 silver pennies and equivalent
to one pound weight of silver. It evolved into the modern British currency, the pound sterling.
The accounting system of 4 farthings = 1 penny, 12 pence = 1 shilling, 20 shillings = 1 pound was adopted
from that introduced by Charlemagne to the Frankish Empire.
The origins of sterling lie in the reign of King Offa of Mercia (757–96) who introduced the silver penny. It
copied the denarius of the new currency system of Charlemagne's Frankish Empire. As in the Carolingian
system, 240 pennies weighed 1 pound (corresponding to Charlemagne's libra), with the shilling
corresponding to Charlemagne's solidus and equal to 12d. At the time of the penny's introduction, it
weighed 22.5 troy grains of fine silver (32 tower grains; about 1.5 g), indicating that the Mercian pound
weighed 5,400 troy grains (the Mercian pound became the basis of the tower pound, which weighed
5,400 troy grains, equivalent to 7,680 tower grains). At this time, the name sterling had yet to be
acquired. The penny swiftly spread throughout the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and became the
standard coin of what was to become England).
Thus in 750 AD a "pound" sterling was a true 16 ounces of silver. We can see that from the above that in
the time of William and Mary that a "pound sterling" only weighed 4 ounces of silver. Thus in just less
than a Millenium the currency had been debased by approximately 400%).
3. Seraphim Rose
Despite the intellectual elitism of his youth, Eugene was the first to admit that everything he had
ever learned with his mind meant nothing beside true wisdom. What he called the "vision of the
nature of things." "The nature of things is non-intellectible in essence, can never be known by the
intellect ," he said, "it was Rene Guenon who taught me to seek and love the Truth above all else,
and to be unsatisfied with anything else."
Guenon believed that intellectual elite was needed to restore meta-physical knowledge to the West. In
his writings Eugene found things he had always felt without being able to understand, having never had
a clear perspective on them. He had always felt that there was something wrong with the modern
world; but since that was the only world he had known, he had had nothing by which to judge the
matter; and had thus been inclined to think that there was something wrong with himself. Guenon
taught him that it was in fact not him, but the modern world that was abnormal....... In essence, Guenon
convinced him that the upholding of ancient tradition was valid, and not just a sign of becoming
unenlightened, as the modernists would claim. Whereas the modern mentality viewed all things in
terms of historical progress, Guenon viewed them in terms of historical disintegration....... Without a
traditional worldview to bring all into a coherent whole, modern life becomes fragmented, disordered,
confused, and accordingly the modern world heads towards a catastrophe.
In his book "The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times," Guenon explained how the elimination of
traditional spiritual principles had led to a drastic degeneration of humanity. He showed how modern
science, with its tendency to reduce everything to an exclusively quantitative level, has corrupted man's
conception of true knowledge and confined his vision to what is temporal and material. In his journal
Eugene wrote: "our age has been taught to believe in nothing higher than the human mind, and in the
ideas of the mind; that is why the conflicts of our day are "ideological" and why TRUTH is not in them for
truth is only in living communion with Christ; apart from him there is no life, no TRUTH."
In his writing, Eugene wanted to do more than confirm his new-found faith. His conversion (to
Orthodoxy) was not only a finding of the truth, but also an emerging out of untruth. He came from a
society built upon apostasy, the historical "stepping away" from the revelation of Christ the God-man.
As a result of this apostasy, he saw everywhere signs of the deterioration of culture; of humanity
reverting to a kind of "sub-humanity," of noble values being replaced by crude materialistic ones....
Eugene, then, did not deny the truth contained in non-Christian religions; he only indicated its
incompleteness. He took a similar approach when comparing Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism: "the
Catholic Church, however much it has capitulated - and continues to capitulate - to the modernist
mentality, has remained in contact with the Truth.... But what has been transmitted with imperfect
understanding in the Catholic Church has been transmitted in full by the Orthodox East, which has even
to the present day preserved intact that whole truth from the fullness of which the Catholic West
departed in schism nearly a millennium ago..... Orthodoxy has preserved the authentic mystical Christian
tradition.... Modernism, indeed, was no sudden arbitrary movement, but had roots that reach far into
the character of Western European man. It is in the Orthodox Christian East alone then, that is to be
found the whole standard wherewith to measure the denial of Christian truth that is modernism."
In the political sphere one wonders whether the collapse of the iron curtain and communist power in
Russia and Eastern Europe correspond to the "withering away of the nihilistic State" described by
Eugene, after which there is to be a "world-order" unique in human history. Communism has done its
job: it has effectively destroyed the OLD ORDER. Now there can be an "opening up" to make way for
the next stage of the nihilistic program, directed by the international forces. As Eugene wrote. "the final
epoch will not, after all, be characterized by national disputes and the communist stifling of man's
spiritual needs, but by a superficial unity and a fulfilling of these needs by means of clever (untrue)
substitutes."
Precisely three decades before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Eugene wrote the following words,
sobering in their prophetic import: "violence and negation are, to be sure, a preliminary work; but their
operation is only part of a much larger plan whose end promises to be not something better, but
something incomparably worse than the age of nihilism. If in our own times there are signs that the era
of violence and negation is passing, this is by no means because nihilism is being "overcome" or
"outgrown," but because its work is all but completed and its usefulness is at an end. The REVOLUTION,
perhaps, begins to move out of its more violent phase and into a more "benevolent" one. Not because
it has changed its will or direction, but rather because it is nearing the attainment of its ultimate goal
which it has never ceased to pursue. fat with its success it can prepare to relax in the enjoyment of its
goal."
In 1989, during the era of glasnost and perestroika, immediately preceding the fall of the Soviet Union,
General Secretary of the communist party Mikhail Gorbachev mad a revelatory statement that chillingly
echoed Eugene's predictions from the early 1960's: "having embarked upon the road of radical reform,"
Gorbachev said. "the Socialist countries are crossing the line beyond which there is no return to the
past. Nevertheless, it is wrong to insist, as many in the West do, that this is the collapse of Socialism. On
the contrary, it means that the Socialist process in the world will pursue its further development in a
multiplicity of forms." (CMQ Note: Be it the European Union, The United Nations, The World Court, The
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, The European Central Bank, The World Bank, The Federal
Reserve and NATO).
4. Claude Marks
The Cathars in Languedoc (1200's)
Ever since the beginning of the Church of Rome heresy had been a problem in many parts of
the Christian world. The lands south of the Loire (Provence) came to be regarded by the Popes
as breeding grounds for dangerous ideas and doctrines. The Visigoths, who ruled in Poitou,
Aquitane and Languedoc for three centuries after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and
founded the original kingdom of Toulouse, had adopted Christianity, but in the form of
Arianism.
Arians were strict Monotheists. They believed that Jesus Christ was neither equal nor eternal
with God the Father, but rather was a perfect being, not quite human and not quite divine. Arius,
its founder, had taught in Alexandria in the 4th. Century. In addition to the refusal to identify
Chris with God, the Arians rejected the cult of saints, whose number the Catholic Church was
steadily multiplying.
Like the disciples of Mahatma Gandhi in modern times, the Cathars renounced all violence.
Homicide, war and secular justice were rejected, along with any form of lying or evasion of the
truth. They repudiated not only the outward symbols of Catholicism but the entire hierarchy of
the Church with the Pope as head. To the Cathars, the official Catholic Church, in assuming the
mantle of Imperial Rome, had abandoned the pure simplicity of the gospels.
Innocent III, Pope from 1198 - 1216 declared "Holy War" on Catharism, through his
instrument Simon De Montfort. This was the first "Crusade". Over 100 years southern France
(Provence) was systematically destroyed as lamented in this sonnet of the time:
The concept:
Paratge is a word that combines:
A duty to a natural order and balance moral code - "Paratge". That is more than a religious precept - do
this because a deity says so, says someone. It is a universal. Paratge stood for what ought to be done to
foster the natural order, balance. A noble subject, such as a Duke, could even remind a Pope of the duty
to paratge. The duty to paratge makes sense as a duty to an ethos.
5. Neil Postman
What Huxley teaches us is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual
devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from
one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate.
Here is ideology pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the
more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a
population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this
sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is
moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the
force behind that movement.
When Marshall McLuhan said “the medium is the message” by medium he meant:
“the social and intellectual environment a machine creates.”
6. Nicholas Shaxon
The time has come to claim back our culture.
The quarter century that followed from 1949, in which Keynes’ ideas were widely
implemented, is now known as the golden age of capitalism. ……From 1950 to
1973 annual growth rates amid widespread capital controls averaged 4 per cent in
America and 4.6 per cent in Europe. …. In the 1980’s, as capital controls were
progressively relaxed around the world and as tax rates fell and the offshore
system really began to flower, growth rates fell sharply. “Financial globalization
has not generated increased investment or higher growth in emerging markets,”
top ranking economists Arvind Subramanian and Dani Rodrik explained in 2008.
The stateless “Euromarkets” linked all the (Tax Haven) zones with each other
and with onshore economies, helping to free banks from reserve requirements
and other restraints on their behaviour.
The biggest “offshore” tax zones are the City of London and the State of
Delaware. In this offshore space multinational and personal tax evasion
mixes with spying, bribery, criminal money laundering, insider stock market
dealing, quant-trading market manipulation, political corruption and IMF/EU
“special purpose vehicle scamming.
7. Edwin Bernay
(Relative of Sigmund Freud and the inventor of modern “public relations”).
Those who manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses
constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of the
country……. It remains a fact in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in
the sphere of politics or business or in our social conduct or our ethical
thinking, we are dominated by this relatively small number of persons……. As
civilization has become more complex and as the need for invisible government
has been increasingly demonstrated the technological means have been
invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.
Every principal institution in our culture is a partner with the particular form of
corporatism which began to dominate America at the end of WWII. …..Unlike
Plato's guardians whom they otherwise resemble, this meritorious elite is not poor
but is guaranteed prosperity and status in exchange for its over-sight. An essential
feature of this kind of central management is that the population remains
mystified, specialized, dependent and childish……..
9. Samuel Beckett
Understanding Finnegan’s Wake.
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A Samuel Beckett Reader:
Beckett’s Excerpt: "Dante... Bruno.. Vico. Joyce"
It is first necessary to condense the thesis of Vico, the scientific historian. In the beginning was the
thunder: the thunder brought “awe” which led to “awe-thority”. The thunder set free Religion, in its
most objective and unphilosophical form - idolatrous animism: Religion produced Society, and the
first social men were cave-dwellers, taking refuge from a passionate Nature. This primitive “religious”
family life receives its first impulse towards development from the arrival of terrified vagabonds:
admitted, they are the first slaves: growing stronger, they exact agrarian concessions, and a despotism
has evolved into a primitive feudalism: the cave becomes a city, and the feudal system a democracy:
then an anarchy: this is corrected by a monarchy: the last stage is a tendency towards inter-destruction:
the nations are dispersed, and the Phoenix of Society arises out of their ashes.
To this six-termed social progression corresponds a six-termed progression of human motives:
necessity, utility, convenience, pleasure, luxury, abuse of luxury: and their incarnate
manifestations: Polyphemus, Achilles, Caesar and Alexander, Tiberius, Caligula and Nero.
His (Vico's) treatment of the origin of language proceeds along similar lines. Here again he rejected the
materialistic and transcendental views: the one declaring that language was nothing but a polite and
conventional symbolism; the other, in desperation, describing it as a gift from the Gods.
As before, Vico is the rationalist, aware of the natural and inevitable growth of language. It its first
dumb form, language was a gesture. If a man wanted to say "sea," he pointed to the sea. With the
spread of animism this gesture was replaced by the word: "Neptune." He directs our attention to the fact
that every need of life; natural, moral and economic, has its verbal expression in one or other of the
30,000 Greek divinities. This is Homer's "language of the Gods." Its evolution through poetry to a
highly civilized vehicle, rich in abstract and technical terms, was as little fortuitous as the evolution of
society itself.
(According to Vico the root of any word whatsoever can be traced back to some pre-lingual
symbol). (In "Finnegan's Wake) Mr. Joyce has desophisticated language. And it is worth remarking
that no language is as sophisticated as English. It is abstracted to death. (Vico and Mr. Joyce) both
saw how worn out and threadbare was the conventional language of cunning literary artificers;
both rejected an approximation to a universal language.
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The Wake is a very difficult book to read if you do not realise what it is all about but once
you have the “key”, it all falls into place.
For me this key is Giovanni Battista Vico’s “New Science” which deals with constructivist
epistemology. (The history of knowledge traced through the development of language: i.e. every
word has a history).What Joyce, Vico and Beckett tried to do in their lifetimes was
revolutionary in its objective and scope.
They tried to make people understand what language was. For them language was the basis of
reason, logic, religion, culture, society and civilization itself. The development of language is
the development of man. However “language” is a double-edged sword. As well as bringing
“rationality” and “reason” it can also bring “conditioning” and “brain-washing”. This is why, in
the old days, those who could not read thought that people who were reading were “spell-bound”
and under a “spell” i.e. tranced into a conditioned space and no longer “natural”.
Joyce believed that modern man was under such a spell through the use of the English language:
“the most artificial language in the world”, according to him. By writing “Finnegan’s Wake” Joyce
sought to help modernity understand what language was and thereby break the “Spell” which
modern man was under. He sought to end the conditionality of contemporary society and so
revitalize mankind so that it could “escape the night-mare cycle of history” which can be
encapsulated in the word formula: “poet-priest-emperor-politician-general-thug”. Contemporary
society is now entering the “thug” latter stage of this cycle as national economies around the world
degenerate under the pressure of corporate globalization. This globalized process is leading to the
unwinding of the social contract promoted by the French Revolution and the American founding
fathers and will eventually lead to anarchy and dispersion as foretold by Vico (take Detroit at the
moment as an example). According to Joyce the only way to combat this spiritual, social and cultural
disintegration is to break the “conditioning” of language and
become an engagingly conscious and passionate individual. This is the purpose of “Finnegan’s
th
Wake, the most important piece of Western literature of the 20 . Century.
Now I come to my last statement. I regret ending on what is, I suppose, such a
pessimistic note-- I'm not personally pessimistic. The final result will be that the
American people will ultimately prefer communities. They will cop out or opt
out of the system. Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed
people who are not personalities are trained to fit into this bureaucratic structure
and say it is a great life--although I would assume that many on their death beds
must feel otherwise. The process of coping out will take a long time, but notice: we
are already coping out of military service on a wholesale basis; we are already
copping out of voting on a large scale basis. I heard an estimate tonight that the
President will probably be chosen by forty percent of the people eligible to vote for
the fourth time in sixteen years. People are also copping out by refusing to pay any
attention to newspapers or to what's going on in the world, and by increasing
emphasis on the growth of localism, what is happening in their own
neighborhoods.
In this pathetic election, I am simply amazed that neither of the candidates has
thought about any of the important issues, such as localism, the rights of areas to
make their own decisions about those things affecting them. Now I realize that if
there's a sulphur mine or a sulphur factory a few miles away, localism isn't much
help. But I think you will find one extraordinary thing in this election: a
considerable number of people will go to the polls and vote for the local
candidates, but will not vote for the President. That is a reverse of the situation
fifty years ago.
Now I want to say good night. Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun. And
if a civilization crashes, it deserves to. When Rome fell, the Christian answer
was, "Create our own communities.
What we appear to have forgotten is that the money system exercised the most
perfect control by the individual over institutions which has ever been devised. It
was a voting system besides which political franchises are the crude devices of
a barbaric savagery. By allowing the essential nature of the money system to be
perverted and distorted by coupons and licenses to buy and so forth, we are
throwing away the perfect mechanism of our salvation. All these facts are clearly
known to our plotters and planners; that is why they are in so great a hurry to
supplant rather than to perfect the money system by administrative control.
There is a sound military maxim that if you can find out with certainty what your
enemy doesn’t want you to do, it is worth taking big risks to do it.
Fix your objective in relation to your resources.
What the alchemists sought, then, to help him out of his dilemma was a chemical
operation which we would today describe as a symbol. …………
Thus the modern man cannot even bring about the Unio Mantalis unless he
learns to actually accept the fact of his dreams and fantasies and begins to
engage with them. This is where insight, the Unio Mentalis, begins to become
real. What you are now creating is the beginning of Individuation, whose
immediate goal is the experience and production of the symbol of totality.
The Individuation process subordinates the many to the one. But the One is
God, and that which corresponds to him in us is the Imagio Dei, the God image.
The God-image expresses itself in the mandala.
The political and social isms of our day preach every conceivable ideal, but, under this
mask, they pursue the goal of lowering the level of our culture by restricting or
altogether inhibiting the possibilities of individual development.
They do this partly by creating a chaos controlled by terrorism, a primitive state of
affairs that affords only the barest necessities of life and surpasses in horror the
worst times of the so-called Dark” Ages. It remains to be seen whether this
experience of degradation and slavery will once more raise a cry for greater
spiritual freedom. The problem cannot be solved collectively, because the masses
are not changed unless the individual changes. At the same time, even the
bestlooking solution cannot be forced upon him, since it is a good solution only when
it is combined with a natural process of development. The bettering of a general ill
begins with the individual, and only when he makes himself and not
others responsible.
Our (Christian) myth has become mute, and gives no answers. The fault lies not in
it as it is set down in the Scriptures, but solely in us, who have not developed it
further, who, rather, have suppressed any such attempts.
By virtue of his reflective faculties, man is raised out of the animal world, and by
his mind he demonstrates that nature has put a high premium precisely upon
the development of consciousness. Through consciousness he takes
possession of nature by recognising the existence of the world and thus, as it
were, confirming the Creator.
Truth will always be paucorum hominum (of few men). Life is short, but truth
works far and lives long; let us speak the truth.
How can we explain mind as matter, when we know matter only through the mind.
No: it is impossible to solve the metaphysical puzzle, to discover the secret essence
of reality, by explaining matter first, and then proceeding to examine thought: we
must begin with that which we know directly and intimately – ourselves. We can
never arrive at the real nature of things from without. However much we investigate,
we can never reach anything but images and names.
The will is the only permanent and unchangeable element in the mind. The
intellect tires, the will never. Will then is the essence of man. The will, of course, is
a will to live, and a will to maximum life.
In reality there is only the species, only life, only will. The motto of history should
run: Eadem, sed aliter ( The same things, but in different ways).
Everyone believes himself a priori to be perfectly free,……But a posteriori,
through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected
to necessity.
But if the world is will, it must be suffering……because will itself indicates want, and
its grasp is always greater than its reach. For every wish that is satisfied there
remains ten that is denied……fulfillment never satisfies.
Life is evil because as soon as want and suffering permit rest, ennui (boredom) is
at once so near, that we necessarily require diversion, i.e., more suffering. The
more successful we become the more we are bored.
Life is evil because the higher the organism the greater the suffering. He that
increaseth knowledge, therefore, increaseth sorrow.
Finally life is evil because life is war. Everywhere in nature we strive; there is
everywhere competition, conflict, and a suicidal alternation of victory and defeat.
Every species fights for the matter, space, and time of the others…. A happy
life depends on our not knowing it too well.
Consider…..the absurdity of the desire for material goods. Fools believe that
if they can only achieve wealth, their wills can be completely gratified………..
Nevertheless, a life devoted to the acquisition of wealth is useless unless we know
how to turn it into joy; and this is an art that requires culture and wisdom.
Not wealth but wisdom is the way. …This power of the intellect over the will
permits deliberate development; desire can be moderated or quieted by
knowledge. So philosophy purifies the will. But philosophy is to be understood as
experience and thought, not as mere reading or passive study….The constant
streaming in of thoughts of others must confine and suppress our own; and indeed
in the long run paralyze the power of thought.
Within these limitations, the pursuit of culture, even through books, is valuable,
because our happiness depends on what we have in our heads rather than on what
we have in our pockets.
Even fame is folly; other people’s heads are a wretched place to be the home of a
man’s true happiness.
The way out of the evil of endless willing is the intelligent contemplation of life.
Most men never rise above viewing things as objects of desire – hence their
misery; but to see things purely as objects of understanding is to rise to
freedom. Genius is the highest form of will-less knowledge……it is simply the
completest objectivity.
The deliverance of knowledge from servitude to the will, this forgetting of the
individual self and its material interest, this elevation of the mind to the will-less
contemplation of truth, is the function of art.
The object of science is the universal that contains many particulars; the object
of art is the particular that contains a universal.
It dawned upon Schopenhauer’s maturity that his theory of art – as the withdrawal
of the will, and the contemplation of the eternal and the universal – was also a
theory of religion.
The power of the system lies in the fact that ordinary patterns of personality, those
very habits of heart and mind that we tend to dismiss as merely neurotic, are seen
as potential access points into higher states of awareness.
Joyce finally found in “The New Science” an intricate sense of human evolution that
refused to reduce history to a process in which discrete individuals in discrete
generations act separately at moments discretely isolated in time. In Vico, the whole of
gentile history determines the consciousness, language, society, and material
circumstances in which anyone finds himself in the present; so that no one,
consequently, would have the life and mind that he does were it not for an infinitude of
people in the past: Vico’s first men, whose bodies determined the structure of all
subsequent reality and whose hardly imaginable outcries made all subsequent
language possible; the nomadic men of patriarchal Israel who made possible the
coming of Christ and the millennia during which the image of the Crucifixion and the
Resurrection shaped the perceptions of the whole of the Western world; the Greek
thinkers who made possible the ongoing enterprises of philosophy, natural science,
and mathematics; and billions of men more. A book that treats with studious intensity
“all matters that fall under the ban of our infrarational senses”, Finnegans Wake
absorbs Vico’s vision of history to make its readers conscious on every page of the
universe of people who have generated the
possibility of his individual existence.
26. J. P. Sartre
Man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be.
27. F. Nietzsche
(Men) they hide behind customs and opinions……At bottom every human being
knows very well that he is in this world just once as something unique……But
what is it that compels the individual human to fear his neighbors, to think and
act herd fashion, and not be glad of himself? ….Artists hate this slovenly life in
borrowed manners ……On account of this men have the appearance of factory
products and seem indifferent and unworthy of companionship or instruction.
28. S. Kierkegaard
Only the one attains the goal….the communicator of the truth can only be the
single individual…….for a crowd is untruth.
That the present unworkable financial system would become exploited and
distorted by various fraudulent "Ponzi" schemes, etc. is entirely to be expected.
When financial costs cannot be liquidated and the problem accelerates with every
advance in production efficiency all manner of dishonest and unsound activities are
almost certainly to arise. People have an natural survival instinct and when
threatened with insecurity it sometimes takes extreme forms. This all has nothing
whatsoever to do with a functioning Social Credit economy and one must guard
against allowing oneself to be confused by such schemes and manipulations. We
should not become preoccupied with looking out into this distorted and injured
world but rather to looking back to visualize the properly functioning financial
economy that Social Credit offers and perfecting our understanding of Douglas's
analysis and proposals. We need clarity of vision, not corruption and confusion of
our thought processes. The existing system is in my opinion the dispensation of
the Anti-Christ. Why would we want to wallow around in it. Sufficient unto the day
is the evil thereof. Surely we should get our priorities right.
The central problem is a clearly discernible fatal error in financial cost accountancy
which causes an increasing shortage of cost-liquidating consumer income--which
shortage is countered only by increasing obligations against the future, i.e.,
financial debt. We can admit that less than admirable motives are extant in our
world. But Douglas was not convinced by a simple ascribing of evil to "original sin."
He warned against transferring blame from the financial system
itself to the mores of the people. This is the ruse of the Puritan and ensures that
no solution is ever attainable for a problem--a thoroughly satisfactory situation for
those who have a vested interest in the existing financial order. If people exhibit
negative forms of behaviour because they are increasingly harassed and annoyed,
Douglas said that surely this should be good reason for stopping the annoyance.
Social Credit does not seek to change human nature (which we did not create) but
to provide to it an environment wherein the best traits rather than the worst are
allowed to emerge and flourish. What is the incentive to super-acquisitiveness of
either wealth or power when one is provided absolute economic security --which
Douglas said was the basis of the new civilization that Social Credit would
engender, the exact evolution of which we cannot predict with certainty but only
wait to visualize as it unfolds.
Our psyche is set up to accord with the structure of the universe; and what happens
in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches
of the psyche. For that reason the God-image is always a projection of the inner
experience…..
The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we
understand ourselves and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of
his roots and his guiding instincts, so that we become a particle in the mass
ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity.
31. J.V. Luce
Intellectual excellence is an even more important component of the good life than
moral excellence. Aristotle holds that we need prudence or practical wisdom to
assess correctly the factors in any given situation where moral action is required. It
is the virtue which enables us to select right means to achieve our desired goals. As
such it deals with concrete situations and problems which calls for deliberation and
operates in the sphere of contingent fact. Like the moral virtues, it is a disposition
to make good choices and it can be improved and strengthened with practice.
32. O. Spengler
To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery that
hardly any one can attain to the inner detachment that is required for a clear view of
the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operates under a pure democratic disguise,
has accomplished its task so well that the objects sense of freedom is actually
flattered by the most through-going enslavement that has ever existed. What is the
truth? For the multitude that which it continually reads and hears…..
What the press wills is true. Its commanders evoke, transform, interchange truths.
Three weeks of press work and the “truth” is acknowledged by everybody.
Prowess and exploit may still remain the basis of award of the highest possible
esteem, although the possession of wealth has become the basis of common place
respectability and of a blameless social standing.
The predatory instinct and the consequent approbation of predatory efficiency are
deeply ingrained in the habits and the thoughts of those peoples who have passed
under the discipline of a protracted predatory culture. According to popular award,
the highest honours within human reach may, even yet, be those gained by an
unfolding of extraordinary predatory efficiency in war, or by a quasi-predatory
efficiency in statecraft.
In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to
possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence; for
esteem is awarded only on evidence.
The leisure class lives by the industrial community rather than in it. Admission to
the class is gained by the exercise of the pecuniary attitude – aptitudes for
acquisition rather than for serviceability. There is, therefore, a continued selective
shifting of the human material that makes up the leisure class, and this selection
proceeds on the basis of fitness for pecuniary pursuit. But the scheme of life of the
class is in large part a heritage from the past, and embodies much of the habits and
ideas of the barbarian period.
The first consideration with me in advancing my own insight was the problem of
refuting the conception of the limitation of knowledge. I wished to turn away from
that road to knowledge which looked toward the sense-world, and which would
then break through from the sense-world into true reality. I desired to make clear
that true reality is to be sought, not by such a breaking through from without, but
by sinking down into the inner life of man. Whoever seeks to break through from
without and then discovers that this is impossible – such a person speaks of the
limitation of knowledge. But this impossibility does not consist in a limitation of
man's capacity for knowledge, but in the fact that one is seeking for something of
which one cannot speak in true self-comprehension. While pressing on farther
into the sense-world, one is there seeking in a certain sense a continuation of the
sensible behind the perceptual. It is as if one living in illusions should seek in
further illusions the causes of his illusions.
The sense of my conception at that time was as follows: While man is
evolving from birth onward he stands consciously facing the world. He attains
first to physical perception.
But this is at first an outpost of knowledge. In this perception there is not at once
revealed all that is in the world. The world is real, but man does not at first attain to
this reality. It remains at first closed to him. While he has not yet set his own
being over against the world, he fashions for himself a world-conception
which is void of being. This conception of the world is really an illusion. In
sense-perception man faces a world of illusion. But when from within man
sense-free thought comes forth to meet the sense-perception, then illusion is
permeated with reality and ceases to be illusion.
Then the human spirit, living its own life within, meets the spirit of the world
which is now no longer concealed from man behind the sense-world, but
weaves and breathes within the sense-world.
I now saw that the finding of the spirit within the sense-world is not a question
of logical inferences or of projection of sense perception, but something which
comes to pass when man continues his evolution from perception to the
experience of sense-free thinking.
40. G. M. Trevelyan
It will therefore be seen that when England was invaded in 1066 (By William the
Conqueror of Normandy), she was being attacked not merely by a band of
cosmopolitan adventurers enlisted for the nonce under a single war chief – though
that was one element of the affair; England was being attacked by the most
highly organized continental state of the day, which possessed peculiar
institutions capable of rapid development in the free field of a vast and inchoate
conquered territory. And even more important to England than the institutions of
the Norman State were the habits of mind and action which the Norman Duke and
his subjects brought over with them.
Last but not least, the church in Normandy was in league with the Ducal power. The
later Dukes, zealous converts from Danish Woden to the French Christ, had restored
and re-endowed the Abbeys and Bishoprics overthrown by their heathen ancestors.
The leaders of the Church were therefore servants of the Ducal policy. The
(indigenous) men of Wessex, of the Severn valley, and of Danelaw might each and
all dislike the Normans, but they knew not one another and had no common loyalty.
The appeal to unite in defense of England as a whole was never
made to them in the Eleventh Century, because it would not have been understood.
If it had been understood, a few thousand armoured cavalry would not have been
able to conquer and share up England after Hastings.
43. Heraclitus
All life is a flux. (Everything flows). (“Panta Rhei”).
No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and
he’s never the same man.
Ignorant of the cause of life, ignorant of the purpose of life, ignorant of what lies beyond the
mystery of death, yet possessing within himself the answer to it all, man is willing to sacrifice
the beautiful, the true, the good within and without upon the blood stained alter of worldly
ambition. The world of philosophy - that beautiful garden of thought wherein the sages dwell in
the bond of fraternity - fades from view. In its place rises an empire of stone, steel, smoke and
hate - a world on which millions of creatures potentially scurry to and fro in the desperate effort
to exist and at the same time maintain the vast institution which they have erected and which,
like some mighty Juggernaut, is rumbling inevitably towards some unknown end. In this
physical empire, which man erects in the vain belief that he can outshine the kingdom of the
celestials, everything is changed to stone. Fascinated by the glitter of gain, man gazes at the
Medusa-like face of greed and stands petrified.
In this commercial age science is concerned solely with the classification of physical knowledge
and investigation of the temporal and illusionary parts of Nature. Its so-called practical
discoveries bind man but more tightly with the bonds of physical limitation. Religion, too, has
become materialistic: the beauty and dignity of faith is measured by huge piles of masonry, by
tracts of real estate, or by the balance sheet. Philosophy which connects heaven and earth like a
mighty ladder, up the rungs of which illumined of all ages have climbed into the living presence
of Reality - even philosophy has become a prosaic and heterogeneous mass of conflicting
notions. Its beauty, its dignity, its transcendency are no more. Like other branches of human
thought, it has been made materialistic - "practical" - and its activities so directionalized that they
may also contribute to the erection of this modern world of steel and stone.....
What do the lofty concepts of the world's illumined saviours and sages have in common with
these stunted, distorted products of the "realism" of this century? All over the world men and
women ground down by the soulless cultural systems of today are crying out for the return of the
banished age of beauty and enlightenment - for something practical in the highest sense of the
word. A few are beginning to realise that so-called civilization in its present form is at the
vanishing point; that coldness, heartlessness, commercialism, and material efficiency are
impractical, and only that which offers opportunity for the expression of love and ideality is truly
worth while. All the world is seeking happiness, but knows not in what direction to search. Men
must learn that happiness crowns the soul's quest for understanding. Only through the realization
of infinite goodness and infinite accomplishment can the peace of the inner Self be assured. In
spite of man's geocentricism, there is something in the human mind that is reaching out to
philosophy - not to this or that philosophic code, but simply to philosophy in the broadest and
fullest sense.
The great philosophic institutions of the past must rise again, for these alone can rend the veil
which divides the world of causes from that of effects. Only the Mysteries - those sacred
Colleges of Wisdom - can reveal to struggling humanity that greater and more glorious universe
which is the true home of the spiritual being called man. Modern philosophy has failed in that it
has come to regard thinking as simply an intellectual process. Materialistic thought is as hopeless
a code of life as commercialism itself. The power to think true is the saviour of humanity.
Briefly stated, the true purpose of ancient philosophy was to discover a method whereby
development of the rational nature could be accelerated instead of awaiting the slower processes
of Nature. This supreme source of power, this attainment of knowledge, this unfolding of the
god within, is concealed under the epigrammatic statement of the philosophic life. This was the
key to the Great Work, the mystery of the philosopher's Stone, for it meant that alchemical
transmutation had been accomplished. Thus ancient philosophy was primarily the living of a life;
secondly, an intellectual method. He alone can become a philosopher in the highest sense who
lives the philosophic life. What man lives he comes to know. Consequently, a great philosopher
is one whose threefold life - physical, mental and spiritual - is wholly devoted and completely
permeated by his rationality.....
The one hope of the world is philosophy, for all the sorrows of modern life result from the
lack of a proper philosophic code. Those who sense in part the dignity of life cannot but
realize the shallowness apparent in the activities of this age....
War - the irrefutable evidence of irrationality - still smoulders in the hearts of men; it cannot die
until human selfishness is overcome ....
Philosophy reveals to man his kinship with the All. It shows him that he is a brother to the suns
which dot the firmament; it lifts him from a taxpayer on a whirling atom to a citizen of Cosmos.
It teaches him that while physically bound to earth, there is nevertheless within him a spiritual
power, a diviner Self, through which he is one with the symphony of the Whole.....
If the Infinite had not desired man to become wise, He would not have bestowed upon him the
faculty of knowing. If He had not intended man to become virtuous, He would not have sown
within the human heart the seed of virtue. If he had predestined man to be limited to his narrow
physical life, He would not have equipped him with perceptions and sensibilities capable of
grasping, in part at least, the immensity of the outer universe. The criers of philosophy call all
men to a comradeship of the spirit: to a fraternity of thought: to a convocation of the Selves.
Philosophy invites man out of the vainness of selfishness; out of the sorrow of ignorance and the
despair of worldliness; out of the travesty of ambition and the cruel clutches of greed; out of the
red hell of hate and the cold tomb of dead idealism.....
When once the rational consciousness of man rolls away the stone and comes forth from its
sepulchre, it dies no more; for to this second or philosophic birth there is no dissolution. By this
should not be inferred physical immortality, but rather that the philosopher has learned that his
physical body is no more his true Self than the physical earth is his true world. IN THE
REALIZATION THAT HE AND HIS BODY ARE DISSIMILAR- THAT THOUGH THE
FORM MUST PERISH THE LIFE WILL NOT FAIL - HE ACHIEVES CONSCIOUS
IMMORTALITY. (CMQ Note: this is the objective of initiation into the mysteries).
Man is not the insignificant creature that he appears to be; his physical body is not the true
measure of his real self. The invisible nature of man is as vast as his comprehension and as
measureless as his thoughts. The fingers of his mind reach out and grasp the stars; his spirit
mingles with the throbbing life of Cosmos itself. He who has attained to the state of
understanding thereby has so increased his capacity to know that he gradually incorporates
within himself the various elements of the universe. The unknown is merely that which is yet to
be included within the consciousness of the seeker. Philosophy assists man to develop the sense
of appreciation ; for as it reveals the glory and the sufficiency of knowledge; it also unfolds those
latent powers and faculties whereby man is enabled to master the secrets of the seven spheres......
Thus godhead is born within the one who sees, and from the concerns of men he rises to the
concerns of the gods.....
The criers of the Mysteries speak out again, bidding all men welcome to the House of Light. The
great institution of materiality has failed. The false civilization built by man has turned, and like
the monster Frankenstein, is destroying its creator. Religion wanders aimlessly in the maze of
theological speculation. Science batters itself impotently against the barriers of the unknown.
Only transcendental philosophy knows the path. Only the illumined reason can carry the
understanding part of man upward to the light. Only philosophy can teach man to be born well,
to live well, to die well, and in perfect measure be born again. Into this band of the elect - those
who have chosen the life of knowledge, of virtue and utility - the philosophers of the ages invite
YOU.
48. E. F. Schumacher
This brief essay is a summary of the idea "Meta-Economics" as introduced my
E.F Schumacher in his classic book; "Small is Beautiful."
The neglect, indeed the rejection, of wisdom has gone so far that most of our
intellectuals have not even the faintest idea what the term could mean. But
where can wisdom be found? It can only be found inside oneself. To find it
one must become liberated. Through such liberation one can become relevant.
Wisdom enables us to see the hollowness and fundamental unsatisfactoriness
of a life devoted primarily to the pursuit of material ends, to the total neglect of
the spiritual and the sustainable.
To get out of this "economic crisis" governments must now start thinking in
Meta-Economic modalities. Thus we must acknowledge that to sort out the mess
we must go beyond "classic" quantative economic thought. In the new
paradigm, wisdom must prevail. The fatal flaw of lack of adequate purchasing
power, under the current "credit" model, must be acknowledged. Without this
conceptual breakthrough the crisis will never be adequately solved.
Simply put; goods cannot be purchased on minimum wage jobs. “Global
Efficiency” contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction and no one in
“official economics” will own up to the problem. Thus we are caught up in a
continuous cycle of needless “booms” and “busts” and “depressions”.
In addition current economic conditioning only touches the surface of things
and takes for granted so much that should be accounted for; i.e. clean air,
fresh water, moral integrity of the majority, faith in authority, civil honour,
etc. etc. In a sense this quantative model promotes total institutional
selfishness and gross irresponsibility. This is all very well as long as the
problem is small but, unfortunately it is now global and systemic.
Gross irresponsibility and selfishness has taken the sacredness out of life. The
macro crisis is not simply an academic one. It is becoming very personal in the
form of corporate and personal bankruptcy, depression, loneliness, isolation,
meaninglessness, exhaustion, marriage break-up, atomization, pharmamedicinal
dependence, addiction and suicide. To bring about change in this
zeitgeist quality must be brought back into the quantative social model. We
must strive to bring LIFE back to the process of living. The formula for this is
to reintegrate simplicity, integrity and constraint into the functioning of our
institutions, enterprises, thought processes and behaviour. Patterns of
action must be championed that honour human satisfaction on all levels not
just financially.
For economics to become valuable and relevant again to sustainable society its
practitioners must realise the truth that economics is a social science and as
such it deals with human beings, not atomised ciphers. Rationality must
reconstitute itself with morality, ethics and philosophy. If national and
international economists continue to lose these classical thought centres,
social disintegration will spiral out, uncontrollably. Governments and
economists must begin to see the whole picture again. We have foolishly and
recklessly abandoned our great Western-Christian heritage. The task now is one
of metaphysical regeneration. Economics must stop being taught where
awareness of human nature is lacking. We are suffering from a metaphysical
disease and therefore the cure is meta-physical: meta-economical. It is time
for economics and accounting to grow up and transcend there historical roots.
"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods
(1845), a mile from any neighbour, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden
Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labour of my hands only....
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through much ignorance or mistake, are so
occupied with the factitious cares and superficial course labours of life that its finer fruits
cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too
much for that. Actually, the labouring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he
cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; to do so would mean his labours would
be depreciated in market; he has no time to be anything but a machine....
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but
somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro slavery, there are so many keen and subtle
masters that enslave all, both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse
to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a
divinity in man....
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of
himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate....
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed
desperation but it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.....
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care
of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weaknesses as
to our strengths. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of
disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much
work is not done by us. Or what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! Determined
not to live by faith if we can avoid it. All day long on the alert; at night we willingly say our
prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties....
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only dispensable, but
positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind....
Not long ago, a strolling indian went to sell baskets at a house of a well know lawyer in my
neighbourhood. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part; and
then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for
him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was. I too
have woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I have not made it worth anyone's while
to buy them. Yet, in my case, did I think it not worth my while to weave them, and instead of
studying how to make it worth mens while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the
necessity of selling them....
When I consider my neighbours, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as the
other classes, I find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty or forty years,
that they may become the real owners of their farms .... On applying to the assessors I am
surprised to learn that they (the assessors), cannot at once name a dozen in town who actually
own their farms free and clear. What has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority,
even ninety seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, this is equally true of the farmers.....
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature
slumbers...He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the
divine being established..... Everyman is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the Lord he
worships. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our flesh and blood and bones.
Any nobleness begins to refine a man's features....
I learned this, at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his
dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined; he will meet with a success
unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary.
New, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within
him; or the old laws expanded, and will be interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense, and
he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life,
the laws of the universe will appear less complex and solitude will nor be solitude, nor poverty
poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your world need not be
lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
On Ezra Pound
----------------------------------------
(Ezra Pound was a flawed character.
His support for fascism and anti-Semitism led to his utter ruin,
He later admitted such near his death.
However, he is one of the greatest poets of all time.
Here are some excerpts to help understand his life and work.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“The “Christian virtues” are there in the emperors who had responsibility in their hearts and
willed the good of the people; who saw that starvation can gnaw through more than the body
and eat into the spirit; who saw, above all, that in so far as governing went, it begins with a
livelihood, and that all talk of morals before that livelihood is attained, is sheer bunkum and
rotten hypocrisy”. Implicit there is Pound’s judgment that in this world the Christian virtues
were not active in government.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The criminal he wants to put away is the banking system which has usurped the power to create
credit and which exercises it for private profit and against the public interest. The confession
was made by William Paterson, one of the speculators who set up the Bank of England in 1694.
In its prospectus or charter. The Bank, he wrote, “Hath benefit of interest on all the moneys
which it, the bank creates out of nothing”.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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“His great idea (The Cantos) was a “revival” of American (western) culture”.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“The colours of the doctoral hood which the President then placed over Pound’s head (in 1939)
were buff and blue, in commemoration, it is said, of the colours of the uniform of the American
Revolution.
But the revolution had been betrayed-was being betrayed- right then, it had seemed to Pound,
in Washington, in New York, at Yale and Harvard and Hamilton.
Even if he stood alone, perhaps all the more because he felt he stood alone, he would not give
up his fight for the revolutionary democratic idea. He would deploy such weapons as he had,
words in print, words in the air, words addressed from Italy to America out to the coming war”.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P80.
The war at Troy lies behind the Cantos from the start as the archetypal instance of possession
leading to catastrophe…. The intelligence to rise above possessiveness comes from being
mindful of the divinity in things, as Acoetes and Tiresias are mindful of Dionysos …
P81. The story of honest virtue prospering by devoted saving and investing is aimed to show up
the respectable bankers. Here the tone is not comic. The bankers, “whining over their 10% and
the hard times”, represent the complacent greed that would enslave Dionysos:or, in modern
terms, the greed which changes producers into debt-slaves, and which restricts the distribution
of “the abundance of nature”, by charging excessive rates of interest and generally pursuing
private profit without regard for the common good.
P190.
A young Jewish Lutheran sculptor turned up broke in Rapallo in April 1934. This was Heinz
Clusmann (1906 -1975), who renamed himself Heinz Henghes. He wanted to see Pounds
Gaudiers (sculptors), and Pound took him in, fed him, put him up in what Laughlin described
as “a large dog kennel” on his roof-top terrace, found him some stone and tools from the
cemetery stone-cutter, and let him get to work. ”New sculptor loose on roof, and marble dust
dappertuuto”, everywhere, Pound wrote by way of explaining the seal on the envelope of his
letter to an American college student. (He was telling her what her generation should be up to.)
Henghes had offered the seal, a little animal carving, to show what he could d; and had shown a
drawing of a seated centaur which later became the New Directions’ very Gaudier-like book
colophon. According to Laughlin, Pound persuaded Signora Agnelli, wife of the head of Fiat,
to acquire some of his first works at a good price, and Henghes went on to become a successful
sculptor and to win, after the war, prestigious commissions in London and New York.
P217.
Usura rusteth the chisel
It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
It gnaweth the thread in the loom
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern
Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisy is unbroidered
Emerald findeth no memling
Usura slayeth the child in the womb
It stayeth the young man’s courting
It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
Between the young bride and her bridegroom
P218
(In Canto 46 now) He is no longer a searcher of archives, nor the preacher against usury. Now
he is a contemporary investigator and prosecutor of crime. He has been on the case for
seventeen years and longer, ever since he grasped what Douglas (Major Clifford Douglas, the
founder of Social Credit) was going on about in the New Age office in 1918, that is that the
government can create credit and distribute purchasing power to its people. He can see the
crime, has the evidence and a confession, but can he get the conviction.
The criminal he wants to put away is the banking system which has usurped the power to create
credit and which exercises it for private profit and against the public interest. The confession
was made by William Paterson, one of the speculators who set up the Bank of England in 1694,
it its prospectus or charter. The Bank, he wrote, “Hath benefit of interest on all the moneys
which it, the bank creates out of nothing”.
P234.
The ideal becomes real only in action.
P237.
Dr Schacht had been charged even before September 1934 with the economic preparation of
Germany for war, and in a secret law of 21 May 1935 he was appointed Plenipotentiary-
General for War Economy. Everything in the economy was to be subordinated to the build-up
towards war, and it was that policy which brought about the reconstruction of Germany. In
January 1933 there were 6 million unemployed-by 1937 there was full employment. The
transformation was effected by the state taking total control of credit and doing away with
private banks and Leihkapital (borrowed (meaning international) capital); by strict regulation
of wages, prices and dividends; by stat-financed public works-such as the new autobahen,
designed for the rapid deployment of armoured troops; and by the stimulation, regulation, and
direction of both private enterprise and the labour-force.
Schacht’s creation of credit in a country that had been effectively bankrupt by printing money
at need within a tightly controlled economy demonstrated that the Social Credit theory did
work in practice. That it was directed by a totalitarian dictator towards bringing on the hell of
war, and not at all towards the more just and more humane democracy and the Social Creditors
dreamed of, was another of the terrible contradictions of the time.
P246.
(He believed) Once the political situation is understood in terms of laissez-faire economics on
the one side, and state-controlled economics on the other, it becomes clear that in the one
freedom to vote went with having a very limited claim upon the state in respect of one’s basic
human needs; whereas in the other state, while denying the individual a voice, did provide for
the basic needs of all who served it. ……
The free democracies though had a worm of contradiction at their core-the contradiction
between the spirit of democracy and the spirit of capitalism. From the founding principle of
universal equality should flow equal rights for all to a fulfilling life, and for that there must be
government of, by, and essentially for the good of the whole people. But capitalism does not
favour the ideal of the common wealth; and it rejoices it its freedom to use its accumulations of
financial power to shape societies to serve private ends…..
Pound was not against democratic equality and social justice; he was against the subversion of
democracy by the injustices and inequalities of the capital system. But even his friends in
America and Britain had little patience with his claim that this was why he endorsed
Mussolini’s Fascism. He was isolating himself and alienating a good many people by his
singular idea of how the disorders of the time might be put right.
P248.
What the Greek philosophers lacked was a sense of social responsibility, “a feeling for the
whole people”; and Christian thought was just as bad…….. The sense of coordination, of the
individual in a milieu is not in them.
P249.
The (Chinese) characters read in this way, as visible signs rather than sounds, would serve, or
so Pound believed, as “a door into a different modality of thought”, into a different way of
perceiving and being in the world from that of western capitalism. It avoided the Western way
of thinking in abstractions and indefinite generalizations, and of speaking in words
disconnected from anything in particular and so conveying and effecting nothing in particular.
The Chinese written character “abstracts or generalizes in the known concrete”, it gives
universal in the particular, so spring is “the sun under the bursting forth of plants”, and male is
“rice field plus struggle”….. Written and read as a poetic language it preserves a direct
experience of things and persons as they are, not just in themselves but in their interactions, and
that, in Pound’s view, is the basis of Confucian wisdom in government. It meant that “at no
point does the Confusio-Mencian ethic or philosophy splinter and split away from organic
nature”, as European thought has tended to. Because its intelligence was rooted in the total
process of nature, it honoured all that is alive and growing, and “was for an economy of
abundance”. In government it accepted responsibility for improving the whole social order-in
Mencias’ words.
“The “Christian virtues” are there in the emperors who had responsibility in their hearts and
willed the good of the people; who saw that starvation can gnaw through more than the body
and eat into the spirit; who saw, above all, that in so far as governing went, it begins with a
livelihood, and that all talk of morals before that livelihood is attained, is sheer bunkum and
rotten hypocrisy”. Implicit there is Pound’s judgment that in his world the Christian virtues
were not active in government.
P271.
As Hitler was driving his people towards a criminal war which would devastate Europe morally
as much as materially, Pound was condensing into verse the epic story of how the civilization
of China was founded upon, and renewed itself dynasty after dynasty upon, the Confucian
conviction that good emperors brought peace and abundance for all their people, and that those
who did not would be rightly be overthrown. It was a simple enough ethic, this idea that the
true aim of government was to secure the welfare, liberty, and contentment of its citizens, and
it had serves China well through the vicissitudes of its 5,000 year history. According to its own
historians the empire flourished under good rulers, those who observed the processes of nature
and distributed its abundance equitably among the whole people; and under bad rulers, those
who went against the natural law or who let particular interests come before the common good,
the empire fell apart and the people suffered…..
With the betrayal of the American revolution very much on his mind, and with Europe
descending into political chaos, Pound had written in 1937 of an immediate need for
Confucius, meaning specifically a need for his model of responsible government. He had done
something towards meeting the need by translating the Ta Hio and by making a digest of the
Analects in Guide to Kulchur. Then in the autumn of 1837 he bought the thirteen volume
Histoire Generale de la China (Paris, 1772 – 85), a translation of the Comprehensive Mirrors
for the Aid of Government made at the court of the Manchu emperor K’ang Hsi by the French
Jesuit Joseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla (1889-1749). His “China Cantos” would be
cantos “having to do with instruction” – the second part of his long poem as he had first
conceived it at Hamilton College in 1904 or 1905- and they would be addressed implicitly to
the governments of Europe and America, and in a few places directly to Italy’s Il Duce.
P284.
John Adams, in Pound’s vision of him in cantos 62-71, was an exemplary governor, but more
than that, he was to America what Confucius was to China, the man who most enlightened and
formed the nascent mind of his nation. He did this, as Confucius and his followers had done it,
by gathering together, and digesting and refining into clear principles, the tradition of common
law and of natural law available to him; and by working out how the powers inherent in
English law could be made to serve the cause of American independence.
Pound’s part, as the poet of the cantos, is like that of the Confucian scholars who kept alive in
their own time and passed on to future generations the shaping idea of their civilization.
P287.
(After Adams) Then “a new power arose, that of fund holders”. This was the enemy within,
financial interests looking to profit from the banking system set up by Alexander Hamilton
while he was Washington’s secretary of the treasury(1789-95), a system modelled upon the
Bank of England and designed to allow the few fund holders or private bankers to profit the
public credit while accumulating “perpetual debt” to the nation…..
“These the betrayers”, Pound thunders, meaning betrayers of the essential spirit of the
American Revolution, “these the sifilides”, the diseased spreaders of the contagion of money-
lust. In his judgement Hamilton’s financial schemes had planted the evil of greed in the United
States financial system at its foundation.
P299.
His great idea was a “revival” of American culture… as something specifically grown from a
nucleus of the American Founders”. About February 1939 he isolated this nucleus in his
Introductory Text Book (in four chapters), each consisting of a single brief quotation from one
of the Founders. First was John Adams, attributing “All the perplexities, confusion, and distress
in America to “downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation”, Next there
was Jefferson’s statement of the right way to issue the national currency so that “no interest on
them would be necessary or just”. Then Lincoln’s …”and gave to the people of this Republic
the greatest blessing they ever had – their own paper to pay their own debts”. And finally, what
had become for Pound the foundation stone of the Republic, Article I Legislative Department,
section 8 of the Constitution of the United States, “The Congress shall have power: To coin
money and regulate the value thereof ….” A note declared, “The abrogation of this last
mentioned power derives from the ignorance mentioned in my first quotation”.
Pound was urging in 1939 that those four quotations, as comprising the “Fundamentals of
American politico-economic history”, should be taught in all American Universities as the
basis of a true American culture. He wrote to his old teacher and friend at Hamilton, Joseph
Darling Ibbotson, “I consider it utter treachery to any student, whether specializing in U. S.
history or economics to allow him to leave college ignorant of the issues raised in these four
quotations.
P306.
Louis Zukofsky was at Serly’s (New York City) on one occasion, and there was what
Zukofosky later termed, when Pound was on trial for treason, an “exchange of frankness”
….This had nothing to do with his (Zukifisky) being a Jew – “I never felt the least trace of anti-
Semitism in his presence”, Zukofosky affirmed. It had to do with Pound’s political action.
P309.
(In June1939) After spending the night with Willams Pound went up to Clinton In upper New
York State, to Hamilton College, his alma mater, where he would stay for nearly a week. The
College has asked if he would accept an honorary doctorate… At the dignified academic ritual
in the College Chapel this citation, judicious and sympathetic summing up, had been read by
the Dean:
“Ezra Pound: Native of Idaho, graduate of Hamilton College in the Class of 1905, poet, critic,
and prose writer of great distinction. Since completing your college career you have had a life
full of significance in the arts. You have found that you could work more happily in Europe
than in America and so have lived most of the past thirty years an expatriate making your home
in England, France and Italy, but your writings are known wherever English is read. Your feet
have taken paths, however, where the great reading public could give you few followers – into
Provencal and Italian poetry, into Anglo-Saxon and Chinese. From all these excursions you
have brought back treasure. Your translations from the Chinese have, for example, led one of
the most gifted contemporary poets to call you the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time.
Your Alma Mater, however, is an old lady, who has not always understood where you were
going, gut she has watched you with interest and pride if not always with understanding. The
larger public has also been at times amazed at you political and economic as well as your
artistic credo, and you have retaliated by making yourself – not unintentionally perhaps, their
gadfly. Your range of interests is immense, and whether or not your theories of society survive,
your name is permanently linked with the development of English poetry in the twentieth
century. Your reputation is international, you have guided many poets into new paths, you have
pointed new directions, and the historian of the future in tracing the development of your
growing mind will inevitably, we are happy to think, be led to Hamilton and to the influence of
your college teachers. You have ever been a generous champion of younger writers as well as
artists of other fields, and for this fine and rare human quality and for your achievements in
poetry and prose we honour you”.
The colours of the doctoral hood which the President then placed over Pound’s head were buff
and blue, in commemoration, it is said, of the colours of the uniform of the American
Revolution. But the revolution had been betrayed-was being betrayed- right then, it had seemed
to Pound, in Washington, in New York, at Yale and Harvard and Hamilton. Even if he stood
alone, perhaps all the more because he felt he stood alone, he would not give up his fight for
the revolutionary democratic idea. He would deploy such weapons as he had, words in print,
words in the air, words addressed from Italy to America out to the coming war.
P330.
(Below a perfect example, according to Pound, of how bankers were dishonouring the spirit
and grace of the American Founding Father’s Constitution. An information circular 1863,
(unconfirmed), issued by a New York law firm outlining the “benefits” to its clients of
investing in banks, now being authorized under the new U.S. National Banking Act). Note:
CMQ.
2. Except in cities having 6,00 inhabitants or less, a national bank cannot have less than
$1,000,000 capital.
7. To start a national bank on the scale of $1,000,000 will require the purchase of that amount
(par value) of U. S. Government bonds.
9. These bonds must be deposited with the U.S. treasurer at Washington, as security for the
national bank currency, that on the making of the deposit will be furnished by the government
to the bank.
10. The U.S. government will pay 6% interest on the bonds, in gold, the interest being paid
semi-annually. It will be seen that at the present price of bonds, the interest paid by the
government, will of itself amount to 12% in gold, on all the money invested.
11. The U.S. Government, under the provisions of the national banking act, on having the
bonds aforesaid deposited with its treasurer, will on the strength of such security, furnish
national currency to the bank depositing the bonds to the amount of 90% of the face of the
bonds, at an annual interest of only ONE PER CENT PER ANNUM. Thus the deposit of
1,000,000 will secure the issue of $900,000 in currency.
13. The demand for money is so great that this currency can be readily loaned to the people
across the counter of the bank at a discount at the rate of 10% at 30 to 60 days time, making
about 12% interest on the currency.
14. The interest on the bonds, plus the interest on the currency which the bonds secure, plus the
incidentals of the business ought to make the gross earnings of the bank amount to 28% to 33
½ per cent. The amount of the dividends that may be declared will depend largely on the
salaries the officers of the bank vote themselves, and the character and rental charges of the
premises occupied by the bank as a place of business. In case it is thought that the showing of
profits should not appear too large, the now common plan of having the directors buy the bank
building and then raise the rent and the salaries of the president and cashier may be adopted.
15. National banks are privileged to either increase or contract their circulation at will and, of
course, can grant or withhold loans as they may see fit. As the banks have a national
organization, and can easily act together in withholding loans or extending time, it follows that
they can by united in refusing to make loans, cause a stringency in the money market and in a
single week or even in a single day cause a decline in all the products of the country. The
tremendous possibilities of speculation involved in this control of the money in a country like
the United States, will at once be understood by all bankers.
16. National banks pay no taxes on their bonds, nor on their capital, nor on their deposits. This
exemption from taxation is based on the theory that the capital of these banks is invested in
U.S. securities, and is a remarkable permission of the law.
Source:
“Ezra Pound: Poet
A Portrait of the Man & His Work Vol. II”.
A. David Moody.
Oxford University Press 2014.
Mark 8:36
“The first revolutionaries (French 1789) smashed the feudal basis to pieces and struck off the feudal
heads which had grown onto it. Then came Napoleon. Within France he created the conditions which
made possible the development of free competition, the exploitation of the land by small peasant
property, and the application of the unleashed productive power of the nation’s industries. Beyond the
Borders of France he swept away institutions so far as this was necessary for the provision on the
European continent of an appropriate modern environment for the bourgeois society in France. ……
The real leaders of the bourgeois army sat behind office desks while the fathead Louis XVIII served as
the bourgeoisie’s political head …….
A century earlier, in the same way but at a different stage of development, Cromwell and the English
people had borrowed for their bourgeois revelation the language, passions and illusions of the Old
Testament. When the actual goal had been reached, when the bourgeois transformation of English
society had been accomplished, Locke drove out Habakkuk…..
After the first revolution had transformed the peasants from a state os semi-serfdom into free landed
proprietors, Napoleon confirmed and regulated the conditions under which they could exploit
undisturbed the soil of France, which had now devolved on them for the first time, and satisfy their
new-found passion for property. But the French peasant is now succumbing to his smallholding itself, to
the division of the land, the form of property consolidated in France by Napoleon. It was the material
consolidation which made the feudal peasant a small proprietor and Napoleon an Emperor. Two
generations have been sufficient to produce the inevitable consequence: a progressive deterioration of
agriculture and a progressive increase in peasant indebtedness. The “Napoleonic” form of property,
which was the condition for the liberation and enrichment of the French rural population at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, has developed in the course of that century into the legal
foundation of their enslavement and their poverty. …….. In the course of the nineteenth century the
urban usurer replaced the feudal lord; the mortgage on the land replaced its feudal obligations;
bourgeois capital replaced aristocratic landed property. The peasant’s smallholding is now only the
pretext that allows the capitalist to draw profits, interest and rent from the soil, while leaving the tiller
himself to work out how to extract the wage foe his labour…….. The Code Napoleon is now merely
the law-book for distraints on chattels, forced sales, and compulsory auctions. To the four million
(including children) officially admitted paupers, vagabonds, criminals and prostitutes in France must be
added five million who totter on the precipice of non-existence and either wander around the
countryside itself or, with their rags and their children, continually desert the country for the towns and
the towns for the country”.
“To me the life of a businessman who eats his breakfast early in the morning, catches the train for the
city, stays there in the dingy, dusty atmosphere of the commercial world, and goes back to his house in
the evening, and after supper to sleep, is worse than the life of a galley slave – his chains are golden
instead of iron (but he does not even realise he is a slave, a slave to money conditioning).
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their
passion’s a quotation.
Prison life makes one see people and things as they really are. That is why it turns one to stone. It is the
people outside who are deceived by the illusion of a life in constant motion”.
54. Kandinski
“To summarize, quantum mechanics is the discovery of three features of the world:
1. Granularity. The information in the state of a system is finite, and limited by Plank’s
constant.
2. Indeterminacy. The future is not determined unequivocally by the past. Even the more rigid
regularities we see are, ultimately, statistical.
3. Relationality. The events of nature are always interactions. All events of a system occur in
relation to another system.”
“There is a detectable difference between the past and the future only when there is a flow of heat”.
“The ‘present’ does not exist in an objective sense any more than ‘here’ exists objectively.”
“The passage of time is internal to the world, is born in the world itself in the relationship between
quantum events that comprise the world and are themselves the source of time”.
“I believe that our species will not last long. It does not seem to be made of the stuff that has allowed
the turtle, for example, to continue to exist more or less unchanged for hundreds of millions of years;
for hundreds of times longer, that is, than we have ever been in existence. We belong to a short lived
genus of species. All of our cousins are already extinct. What’s more, we do damage. ……. We are
perhaps the only species on Earth to be conscious of the inevitability of our individual mortality. I fear
that soon we shall also have to become the only species that will knowingly watch the coming of its
own demise, or at least the demise of its civilization. As we know more or less how to deal with our
individual mortality, so we will deal with the collapse of our civilization. It is not so different. And it’s
certainly not the first time that this will have happened. The Maya and Cretans, amongst many others,
have already experienced this. We are born and die, both individually and collectively. Thus is our
reality.”
“The length Lp, determined in this fashion, is called the Planck length. It should be called the Bronstein
length, but such is the way of the world. In numerical terms, it is equivalent to approximately one
millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimetre.”
“The End of Infinity: Quantum gravity is the discovery that no infinitely small point exists. There is a
lower limit to the divisibility of space. The universe cannot be smaller than the Planck scale, because
nothing exists which is smaller than the Planck scale.”
"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well.
Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they (the
“elite”) are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely
call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."
"Where does the truth lie? Should one go off and build a little house with flowers outside the
windows and a garden outside the door and extol and thank God and turn one’s back on the world and
its filth? Isn’t seclusion a form of treachery, of desertion? I am weak and small, but I want to do what
is right."
“After experience had taught me that all things which frequently take place in ordinary life are vain and
futile, and when I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them
save in so far as the mind was affected by them. (In other words if I did not think about them they did
not matter)”.
The children of earlier elites will not succeed because they are born with a silver spoon in their mouth,
and an automatic ticket to the Ivy League. They will succeed because they have inherited the talent,
energy, drive, and resilience to overcome the many obstacles they will face in life."
"There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.”
63. Ezekiel
"You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bandaged the injured or brought back the
strays or looked for the lost; rather, you have ruled them with harshness and tyranny. Shame on you”
"Having fallen from the eternal, the evil one's desires are endless, insatiable. Having fallen from pure
Being, he is driven by the desire to possess, to fill his emptiness. But the problem is insoluble, always.
He is compelled to have and to hold, to possess and consume, and nothing else. All he takes, he
destroys. Certainly he rules the material, as he is called the Prince of this World in the gospels."
"When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They
were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such
disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the
rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”
Don Hontar: “What has happened is unfortunate but inevitable, we must work in the world;
the world is thus."
Cardinal Altamirano: “”No, thus have we made the world. Thus have I made it.”
67. Stan V. Henkles (“Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States).
Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I
have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank
to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country.
When you won, you divided the profits among you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. You
tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand
families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin!
Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of
vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, I will rout you out."
(From the original minutes of the Philadelphia bankers meeting with President Jackson February 1834).
“Politics ruined the rebel confederacy. The southern states believed the individualism of “states-rights”.
This prevented the centralized control necessary to run a successful war against the federal northern
Yankee union, which was the essence of centralism”.
“The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great
enough to wear his boots ….. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will
eventually control the exuberant riches of America, and use it systematically to corrupt modern
civilization. They will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into wars and chaos in order that
the earth should become their inheritance.”
“In the colonies we issue our own scrip. (Paper money not backed by gold). We issue it in the proper
proportion to the demands of industry. To make the products pass easily from the producers to the
consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing
power, and we have no interest to pay.”
“The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government but it
is the government’s greatest creative opportunity ….. By the adoption of these principles the taxpayers
will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of
humanity.”
Milton Friedman
“ The Federal Reserve definitely caused the great depression by contracting the amount of currency in
circulation by one third from 1929 – 1933.”
“The disaster of the Dark Ages was caused by decreasing and falling prices …. Without money,
civilization could not have had a beginning, and with a diminishing supply, it must languish and unless
relieved, finally perish …… At the Christian era the metallic money of the Roman Empire was $ 1.8
billion. By the end of the 15th century it had shrunk to no less than $ 200 million.”
“The war at Troy lies behind The Cantos from the start as the archetypal instance of possession leading
to catastrophe ….. (Having) the intelligence to rise above possessiveness coming from being mindful of
the Divinity in things.”
“The crowd is untruth. Only the one can know the truth”.
"Now he had learnt to see the great, the eternal, the infinite in everything; and therefore – to see it and
revel in its contemplation – he naturally threw away the telescope through which he had hitherto been
gazing over men’s heads, and joyfully feasted his eyes on the ever-changing, eternally great,
unfathomable and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked, the more tranquil and happier he
was. The awful question that had shattered all his mental edifices in the past – the question why? no
longer existed for him."
103 years ago, in 1914, the Federal Reserve opened-up for business as the carnage in northern France
was getting under way.
And it brought to a close the prior magnificent half-century era of liberal internationalism and honest
gold-backed money.
The Great War was nothing short of a calamity, especially for the 20 million combatants and civilians
who perished for no reason discernible in any fair reading of history, or even unfair one.
Yet the far greater calamity is that Europe’s senseless fratricide of 1914-1918 gave birth to all the great
evils of the 20th century — the Great Depression, totalitarian genocides, Keynesian economics,
permanent warfare states, rampaging central banks and the follies of America’s global imperialism.
Indeed, in Old Testament fashion, one begat the next and the next and still the next.
The old liberal international economic order — honest money, relatively free trade, rising international
capital flows and rapidly growing global economic integration — resulted in a 40-year span between
1870 and 1914 of rising living standards, stable prices, massive capital investment and prolific
technological progress that was never equaled either before or since.
In the case of Great Britain, for example, its national debt increased 14-fold, its price level doubled, its
capital stock was depleted, most off-shore investments were liquidated and universal wartime
conscription left it with a massive overhang of human and financial liabilities.
Yet England was the least devastated. In France, the price level inflated by 300% its extensive Russian
investments were confiscated by the Bolsheviks and its debts in New York and London catapulted to
more than 100% of GDP.
Among the defeated powers, currencies emerged nearly worthless with the German mark at five cents
on the pre-war dollar, while wartime debts — especially after the harsh peace of Versailles — soared to
crushing, unrepayable heights.
And the Great Depression’s tardy, thoroughly misunderstood and deeply traumatic arrival happened
compliments of the United States.
In the first place, America’s wholly unwarranted intervention in April 1917 prolonged the slaughter,
doubled the financial due bill and generated a cockamamie peace, giving rise to totalitarianism among
the defeated powers and Keynesianism among the victors.
Even conventional historians admit as much. Had Woodrow Wilson not misled America on a messianic
crusade, the Great War would have ended in mutual exhaustion in 1917 and both sides would have gone
home battered and bankrupt but no danger to the rest of mankind.
Indeed, absent Wilson’s crusade there would have been no allied victory, no punitive peace, and no war
reparations; nor would there have been a Leninist coup in Petrograd or Stalin’s barbaric regime.
Likewise, there would have been no Hitler, no Nazis, no holocaust, no global war against Germany and
Japan and no incineration of 200,000 civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nor would there have followed a Cold War with the Soviets or CIA sponsored coups and assassinations
in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Brazil and Chile to name a few. Surely there would have been no CIA
plot to assassinate Castro, or Russian missiles in Cuba or a crisis that took the world to the brink of
annihilation.
There would have been no domino theory and no Vietnam slaughter, either.
Nor would we have had to come to the aid of the mujahedeen and train the future al Qaeda in
Afghanistan. Likewise, there would have been no Khomeini-led Islamic counter-revolution, and no U.S.
aid to enable Saddam’s gas attacks on Iranian boy soldiers in the 1980s.
Nor would there have been an American invasion of Arabia in 1991 to stop our former ally Saddam
Hussein from looting the equally contemptible Emir of Kuwait’s ill-gotten oil plunder — or, alas, the
horrific 9/11 blowback a decade later.
Nor would we have been stuck with a $1 trillion Warfare State budget today. But I digress.
Economically, the Great War enabled the already rising American economy to boom and bloat in an
entirely artificial and unsustainable manner for the better part of 15 years.
The realities of war finance also transformed the new Federal Reserve into an incipient central banking
monster in a manner wholly opposite to the intentions of its great legislative architect — the
incomparable Carter Glass of Virginia.
During the Great War America became the granary and arsenal to the European Allies — triggering an
eruption of domestic investment and production that transformed the nation into a massive global
creditor and powerhouse exporter virtually overnight.
Altogether, in six short years $40 billion of money GDP became $92 billion in 1920 — a sizzling 15%
annual rate of gain.
World War I simply gave birth to the modern Fed as we know it.
When Congress created the Federal Reserve on Christmas Eve 1913, just six months before Archduke
Ferdinand’s assassination, it had provided no legal authority whatsoever for the Fed to buy government
bonds or undertake so-called “open market operations” to finance the public debt.
In part this was due to the fact that there were precious few Federal bonds to buy. The public debt then
stood at just $1.5 billion, which is the same figure that had pertained 51 years earlier at the battle of
Gettysburg, and amounted to just 4% of GDP.
Thus, in an age of balanced budgets and bipartisan fiscal rectitude, the Fed’s legislative architects had
not even considered the possibility of central bank monetization of the public debt, and, in any event,
had a totally different mission in mind.
The big point here is that Carter Glass’ “banker’s bank” was an instrument of the market, not an agency
of state policy. The so-called economic aggregates of the later Keynesian models — GDP, employment,
consumption and investment — were to remain an unmanaged outcome on the free market, reflecting
the interaction of millions of producers, consumers, savers, investors, entrepreneurs and even
speculators.
But WWI crossed the Rubicon of modern Warfare State finance. During World War I the U.S. public
debt rose from $1.5 billion to $27 billion — an eruption that would have been virtually impossible
without wartime amendments which allowed the Fed to own or finance U.S. Treasury debt.
These “emergency” amendments — it’s always an emergency in wartime — enabled a fiscal scheme
that was ingenious, but turned the Fed’s modus operandi upside down and paved the way for today’s
monetary central planning.
Washington learned that it could unplug the free market interest rate in favor of state administered
prices for money, and that credit could be massively expanded without the inconvenience of higher
savings out of deferred consumption.
Effectively, Washington financed Woodrow Wilson’s crusade with its newly discovered printing press
— turning the innocent “banker’s bank” legislated in 1913 into a dangerously potent new arm of the
state.
It was this wartime transformation of the Fed into an activist central bank that postponed the normal
post-war liquidation — moving the world’s scheduled depression down the road to the 1930s.
The Fed’s role in this startling feat is in plain sight in the history books, but its significance has been
obfuscated by Keynesians presuming that the state must continuously manage the business cycle and
macro-economy.
The Great Depression thus did not represent the failure of capitalism or some inherent suicidal tendency
of the free market to plunge into cyclical depression — absent the constant ministrations of the state
through monetary, fiscal, tax and regulatory interventions.
Instead, the Great Depression was a unique historical occurrence — the delayed consequence of the
monumental folly of the Great War, abetted by the financial deformations spawned by modern central
banking.
The “failure of capitalism” explanation of the Great Depression is exactly what enabled the Warfare
State to thrive and dominate the rest of the 20th century because it gave birth to what have become its
twin handmaidens — Keynesian economics and monetary central planning.
Together, these two doctrines eroded and eventually destroyed the great policy barrier — that is, the
old-time religion of balanced budgets — that had kept America a relatively peaceful Republic until
1914.
If only we could rewind the clock to 1917 and keep Wilson out of WWI, history — and economics —
likely would have been a lot different.”
“What the laws of the circle are to all circles. GOD IS TO THE WORLD. Like substance, God is the
causal chain or process, the underlying condition of all things, the law and structure of the world. This
concrete universe of modes and things is to God as is a bridge to its design, its structure, and laws of
mathematics according to which it is built……. And like the bridge, the world itself is sustained by its
structure and its laws; it is upheld by the hand of God.
Only knowledge, then, is power and freedom; and the only permanent happiness is the pursuit of
knowledge and the joy of understanding”.
“The Jews have survived chiefly because of Christian hatred of them; persecutions gave them the unity
and solidarity for continued racial existence; without persecution they might have mingled and married
with the peoples of Europe, and have been engulfed in the majorities with which they were surrounded.
But there is no reason why the philosophic Jew and the philosophic Christian, when all the nonsense is
discarded, should not agree sufficiently in creed to live in peace”.
“To be great is not to be placed above humanity, ruling others; but to stand above the partialities and
futilities of uninformed desire; and to rule one’s self”.
“When you say that if I allow not in God the operations of seeing, hearing, observing, willing, and the
like …. you know not what sort of God mine is. I thence conjecture that you believe there is no greater
perfection than such as can be explained …..I do not wonder at it; for I believe that a triangle, if it could
speak, would in like manner say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is
eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own nature to God”.
“I take a totally different view of God and Nature from that which the later Christians usually entertain,
for I hold THAT GOD IS IMMANENT, and not the extraneous, cause of all things. I say, ALL IS In
GOD; all lives and moves in God. And this I maintain with the Apostle Paul, and perhaps with every
one of the philosophers of antiquity, although in a way other than theirs. I might even venture to say that
my view is the same as that entertained by the Hebrews of old, if so much may be inferred from certain
traditions, greatly altered or falsified though they be.
81. R. F. Pettigrew
“Triumphant Plutocracy”
“In the main I have found human beings motivated by short term monetary gain. Despite a life-time of
moral public service, in 1900 by senatorial career was bought for a few hundred dollars paid to my
individual farmer constituents and there was nothing I could do about it. Money talked and bought the
system, how tragic”.
82. Epicurus
“The absence of pain and mental anxiety is pleasure”.
83. Picasso
“Civilizations are deadly things, be under no illusion. In fact they are fundamentally illusion”.
“If one does not manifest an ideal then what is the point in life.”
“Many historians, many sociologists and psychologists have written at length, and with a deep concern,
about the price Western man has had to pay and will go on paying for technological progress. They
point out, for example, that democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where poetical
and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of
technology has led and is still leading to just such concentration and centralization of power. As the
machinery of mass production is made more efficient it tends to become more complex and expensive –
and so less available to the enterpriser of limited means. Moreover, mass production cannot work
without mass distribution; but mass distribution raises problems which only the largest producers can
satisfactorily solve. Ina world of mass production and mass distribution the Little Man, with his
inadequate stock of working capital, is at a grave disadvantage. In competition with the Big Man, he
loses his money and finally his existence as an independent producer; the Big man has gobbled him up.
As the Little Men disappear, more and more economic power comes to be wielded by fewer and fewer
people…….
“How have individuals been affected by the technological advances of recent years? Here is the answer
to this question given by a philosopher-psychiatrist, Dr. Erich Fromm:
“Our contemporary Western society, in spite of its material, intellectual and political progress, is
increasingly less conducive to mental health, and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness,
reason and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for
his human failure with increasing mental sickness, and with despair hidden under as frantic drive for
work and so-called pleasure.”
The current Social Ethic, it is obvious, is merely a justification after the fact of the less desirable
consequence of over-organization. It represents the pathetic attempt to make a virtue of necessity, to
extract a positive value from an unpleasant datum. It is a very unrealistic, and therefore very dangerous,
system of morality. The social whole, whose value is assumed to be greater than that of its component
parts, is not an organism in the sense that a hive or a termitary may be thought to be an organism. It is
merely an organization, a piece of social machinery. There can be no value except in relation to life
and awareness. … It is not good in itself; it is good only to the extent that it promotes the good of the
individuals who are part of the collective whole. To give organizations precedence over persons is to
subordinate ends to means…..
It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison, and yet not free – to be under no physical constraint
and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the
national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act….. the
nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act are under the constraint remain under the
impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know
that he is victim.”
If:
“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs . . .
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting . . .
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim . . .
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you . . .
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.”
87. T. S. Eliot
Ash Wednesday:
“Life; that dream crossed twilight between birth and death”.
Prufrock:
“I am no prophet and that is no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker
And have seen the eternal footman hold my coat and snicker
And in truth, I was afraid.”
88. FDR
“The Great Depression reduced the heroes of the “great” war to beggardom.”
“Non are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
90. Socrates
“The IQ formula for the new “flat earth” web connected 21st century world: IQ = PQ + CQ. Intelligence
quotient equals passion quotient plus curiosity quotient. Computers don’t do passion. Passion makes
you an untouchable”
“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies
opportunity.”
“History has shown us imagination is more useful, indeed more powerful, than knowledge.”
“To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of
a single day.”
“The problem of modernity is that the human being is forced to submit to the machine, in effect become
a machine through the systematic conditioning of monetary material consciousness.”
For over 180 years students have complained that Hegel's best-known book of philosophy, the
PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND (alias PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT), is too difficult to read.
A few have tried to summarize Hegel's book, and often their summaries were longer than the original, and just as
difficult to read. Today, right here on the INTERNET, I give to you a twelve page summary of this famous book, a
book that inspired generations of European philosophers since it first appeared in 1807.
This summary is meant for the beginner in phenomenological philosophy, to encourage more students to struggle
with the book for themselves. This book has a colorful history, and is well praised by thinkers as David Strauss,
Bruno Bauer, Marx, Engels, Ortega y Gasset, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Lacan, Camus, and many
more.
I hope some will try again to read this masterpiece. If you do, please find the translation by Miller (1971) and
avoid the translation by Baillie (1907).
And watch this space for more exciting Hegelian philosophy, right here on the INTERNET.
Best regards,
--PET
DEFINITION
1. 'Phenomenon' is a word which refers to appearances. It's a Greek word used by Plato to
distinguish mere temporal appearances from the eternal Noumena of the Ideal Realm. The
student of philosophy should recall Plato's parable of the shadows in the cave, where
appearances were taken for realities. Phenomena are appearances. Where is the reality? In
Hegel's view, probably unique in Western Philosophy, we can only know Reality when we
have completely mastered the appearances, since the appearances (phenomena) partially hide
and partially reveal Reality (noumena, Geist) in a peculiar manner.
2. There are degrees of reality within various phenomena. This is the origin of Hegel's idea that
there can be degrees of truth in propositions. There are material phenomena and there are
mental phenomena. Phenomena of mind also partially hide and partially reveal the truth. The
study of phenomena is called, phenomenology, and Hegel focuses on mental phenomena,
hence the title, PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND.
OVERVIEW
1. The PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND is a study of appearances, images and illusions
throughout the history of human consciousness. More specifically, Hegel presents the evolution
of consciousness.
2. This is not a chronological history. This is not an account of the evolution of life. The
phenomena of mind begins when homo sapiens begins to think.
3. Consciousness goes through many stages. This is a little like the Buddhist theory of the
levels of spiritual attainment, from lower forms of consciousness to higher forms of
consciousness, but in Classic European format. We don't expect many European philosophers
to map a spiritual path, but the detail and rational attitude of Hegel makes his work vastly
different from Buddha's. Decide for yourself if Hegel has something important to say.
I. THE INDIVIDUAL
1. Hegel traces the evolution of consciousness from savage and barbaric forms. The first form
of consciousness is SENSORY (infantile) CONSCIOUSNESS, a simple 'you seen one thing
you seen 'em all' consciousness. Reality impacts the infant, teaching it that different things have
different values, and a knowledge of these differences becomes the most valuable possession of
all.
2. Experience forces Sensory Consciousness to evolve into PERCEPTUAL
CONSCIOUSNESS. Here Aristotle is the guiding light. All things, all animals, all minerals, all
places, are carefully recorded and observed and classified in an orderly system of Natural
Science. When we look, we now Perceive the natural relationships between objects. We come
to grasp cause and effect relations. But there is a gnawing feeling that Natural Science isn't
enough. One dimension of Reality continually escapes us, our own minds. How do we classify
a mind? How is it constructed, in and for itself?
3. Increased Science transcends Perception and evolves into UNDERSTANDING
CONSCIOUSNESS. Here Kant is the guiding light. Kant's theory of the Pure Understanding is
the key to this moment. Kant outlined the basic parameters of the human mind, and showed to
consciousness its own image of itself. Hegel commemorated Kant's achievement by making it
into its own moment in his system. The Understanding Consciousness sees itself as a great
unifying principle, where the multiplicity of the world's myriad things are unified under the
singleness of the Greater Self (transcendental apperception). The key to logic was uncovered,
and it is entirely a mystery why more AI theoreticians don't realize that much of their work was
already completed 200 years ago.
In traditional Christianity it was accepted that contemplation is the end purpose of action
……… The secret to happiness and the way to salvation were to be sought not in external
environment but in the individuals state of mind to the environment.”
E & M.
“Existing means of government and industrial organization are not likely to be changed except
by people who have been educated to wish to change them ….through the acts of free will on
the part of morally, well informed and determined individuals, acting in concert”.
103. Yuval Noah Harari
“Scholars once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap forward for
humanity. They told a tale of progress fuelled by human brain power. Evolution gradually
produced ever more intelligent people. Eventually, people were so smart that they were able to
decipher nature’s secrets, enabling them to tame sheep and cultivate wheat. As soon as this
happened, they cheerfully abandoned the grueling, dangerous, and often Spartan life of hunter-
gatherers, settling down to enjoy the pleasant life of farmers. This tale is a fantasy…………..
The agricultural revolution was history’s biggest fraud.”
“We cannot explain the choices that history makes, but we can say something very important
about them: history’s choices are not made for the benefit of humans. There is absolutely no
proof that human well-being inevitably improves as history rolls along.”
“The teachings and writings of Christian medieval society had exoteric and esoteric elements.
Those for the Hoi Poli (the many)and those for the Hoi Aristoi” (the few).
“For Bloom (Alan Bloom “The Closing of the American Mind”) standard university education created a
void in the souls of Americans, into which demagogic radicals as exemplified by 1960s student leaders
could leap. (In the same fashion, Bloom suggests, that the Nazi brown shirts once filled the gap created
in German society by the Weimar Republic.) In the second instance, he argued, the higher calling of
philosophy and reason understood as freedom of thought, had been eclipsed by a pseudo-philosophy, or
an ideology of thought: relativism (“Relativism: the belief that each point of view has its own truth thus
there is no UNIVERSAL TRUTH”), was one feature of modern liberal philosophy that had subverted
the Platonic–Socratic teaching”.
Self-Knowledge
“To this question there is a positive answer only when the individual is willing to fulfill the demands of
rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge. If he follows through his intention, he will not only
discover some important truths about himself, but will also have gained a psychological advantage: he
will have succeeded in deeming himself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interest. He will
have set his hand, as it were, to a declaration of his own dignity and taken the first steps towards the
foundations of his consciousness – that is, towards the unconscious, the only accessible source of
religious experience. This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God
or set up in his place. It is the MEDIUM from which the religious experience seems to flow.
….Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem.
The religious person enjoys a great advantage when it comes to answering the crucial question that
hangs over our time like a threat: he has a clear idea of the way his subjective existence is grounded in
his relation to “God”. I put the word “God” in quotes in order to indicate that we are dealing with an
anthropomorphic idea whose dynamism and symbolism are filtered through the medium of the
unconscious psyche. Anyone who wants can at least draw near to the source of such experiences, no
matter whether he believes in God or not. Without this approach it is only in rare cases that we witness
those miraculous conversions of which Paul’s of Damascus experience is the prototype.”
As at the beginning of the Christian Era, so again today we are faced with the problem of the moral
backwardness which has failed to keep pace with our scientific, technical and social developments. So
much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of modern man. …. Does he
know that he is on the point of losing the life-preserving myth of the inner an which Christianity has
treasured up for him. Does he realize what lies in store should this catastrophe ever befall him? I she
even capable at all of realizing that this would be a catastrophe? And finally, does the individual know
that he is the makeweight that tips the scales?
Happiness, and contentment, equability of soul and meaningfulness of life – these can be experienced
only by the individual and not by a State, which, on the one hand, is nothing but a convention of
independent individuals and, on the other, continually threatens to paralyze and suppress the
individual.”
“The danger that a mythology understood too literally, as taught by the Church, will suddenly be
repudriated, lock stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian
mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once?”
Civil disobedience is the refusal to abide by an order of the government or of the state or even of the
court that your conscience tells you is unjust. Civil disobedience is based on a commitment to
conscience. In other words, one who practices civil disobedience is obedient to what he considers a
higher law.
And there comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust.
And I tell you this morning, my friends, that history has moved on, and great moments have often come
forth because there were those individuals, in every age and in every generation, who were willing to
say "I will be obedient to a higher law." These men were saying "I must be disobedient to a king in
order to be obedient to the king."
And those people who so often criticize those of us who come to those moments when we must practice
civil disobedience never remember that even right here in America, in order to get free from the
oppression and the colonialism of the British Empire, our nation practiced civil disobedience. For what
represented civil disobedience more than the Boston Tea Party.
And never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was legal. It was legal to do everything that
Hitler did to the Jews. It was a law in Germany that Hitler issued himself that it was wrong and illegal
to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I tell you if I had lived in Hitler's Germany with my
attitude, I would have openly broken that law. I would have practiced civil disobedience.
And so it is important to see that there are times when a man-made law is out of harmony with the
moral law of the universe, there are times when human law is out of harmony with eternal and divine
laws. And when that happens, you have an obligation to break it.
And I'm happy that in breaking it, I have some good company. I have Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego. I have Jesus and Socrates. And I have all of the early Christians who refused to bow...
And this is what I want to say finally, that there is a reward if you do right for righteousness'
sake...Don't ever think you're by yourself. Go on to jail if necessary but you'll never go alone.
Take a stand for that which is right, and the world may misunderstand you and criticize you, but you
never go alone, for somewhere I read that "One with God is a majority," and God has a way of
transforming a minority into a majority.
Walk with him this morning and believe in him and do what is right and he'll be with you even until the
consummation of the ages. Yes, I've seen the lightning flash, I've heard the thunder roll, I've felt sin
breakers dashing trying to conquer my soul but I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on, he
promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone; no, never alone, no, never alone. He promised
never to leave me, never to leave me alone.
Where you going this morning, my friends, tell the world that you're going with truth. You're going with
justice, you're going with goodness, and you will have an eternal companionship. And the world will
look at you and they won't understand you, for your fiery furnace will be around you, but you'll go on
anyhow.
But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow before the gods of evil."
I see his distinctive contribution to European thought to lie in his perception that the Western man was
facing a radical change in his relationship with “truth”: a change that would come about when he
recognized that the metaphysical, religious, moral and rational truths which were formerly both
backbone and substance of the Western tradition were in fact errors. This conclusion is, or will be, a
consequence of the pretension of such truths absoluteness, a pretension which is being undercut by the
evolutionism of Hegel and Darwin. Modern man is acquiring the idea of “becoming” as his ruling idea:
and if everything evolves, then “truth”, too, evolves – so that, if “truth” is synonymous with absolute
truth true for all time and for everybody, a loss of belief in the truth of truth is on the way……. The
consciousness that “life” is a phenomenon that cannot be explained, and the world and mankind facts
without meaning, is coming: and Nietzsche undertakes the experiment of an anticipatory account of this
nihilistic state of mind.
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“God is dead.”
“Actual philosophers … are commanders and paw-givers: they say “thus it shall be”, it is they who
determine the Wherefore and Wither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of
all the philosophical labourers, of all those who have subdued the past – they reach for the future with
creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer.
Their “knowing” is a creating, their creating is a lawgiving, their will to truth is – will to power. – Are
there such philosophers today? Have there been such philosophers? Must there not be such
philosophers?”
“In all ages one has wanted to “improve” me: this above all is what morality has meant. But one word
can conceal the most divergent tendencies. Both the taming of the beast and the breeding of a certain
species of man has been called “improvement”….. To call the taming of an animal its “improvement” is
in our ears almost a joke. Whoever knows what goes on in menageries is doubtful whether the beasts in
them are “improved”. They are weakened, they are made less harmful, they become sickly through the
depressive emotion of fear, through pain, through injuries hunger. – It sis no different with tamed
human being whom the priest has “improved”…. In short, a “Christian” .. in psychological terms was a
means of making the “beast” weak. This the Church understood: it corrupted the human being, it
weakened him …. But it claimed to have improved him.”
“…Put your will and your values upon the river of becoming.”
“The word “Christianity” is already a misunderstanding – in reality there has been only one Christian,
and he died on the Cross. The “Evengel” died on the cross…… Christianity makes a thousand promises
but keep none of them.”
“That which we now call the “world” is the result of a host of errors and fantasies which have gradually
arisen in the course of the total evolution of organic nature, have become entwined with one another and
are now inherited by us as the accumulated treasure of the entire past – as a treasure: for the value of our
humanity depends on it.”
Shrinkflation:
This information is indicative and descriptive but entirely useless unless we are willing to
search for the root cause of the relentless increase in the general price level over time. It is
consequent to an intrinsic defect in the price-system which causes overheads or capital costs to
rise relative to consumer incomes because of the increasing efficiency of the production
system, achieved by replacing labour with technology as a factor of production. Only wages,
salaries and dividends are income while overheads and capital charges are allocated costs but
not incomes within the same production and costing cycle. The incomes previously distributed
in respect of these allocated costs will not be saved as available income to meet the costs of
goods currently being produced because they will have been spent and cancelled prior to the
emergence of these current goods on the market. People need to meet the current cost of living
and cannot save their incomes to meet the costs of future goods which currently they
are producing. Increasingly, these can be obtained only by incurring debt as an increasing
inflationary charge against future production. Because labour costs are shrinking relative to
overheads and capital costs imported from previous costing cycles, the excess of costs over
incomes increases—as does the need to “carry" the economy with additional financial debt as a
charge against future production. In summary, we are double-charged for our real capital (i.e.,
“tools”) because of the inflationary release of additional incomes during its production and its
subsequent inclusion in the costs of goods and services. Fundamentally, this all a matter of
cost accountancy as it interacts with the conventions and demands of the credit (i.e., banking)
system in issuing and recovering credit. The degree of inflation is greatly understated. The
real cost of production is the national ratio of aggregate consumption relative to production,
which ratio normally always is falling when we include all real capital as part of the
ratio. Effective consumer prices should therefore always be falling as the norm. We are faced
with the absurd situation where the financial system continuously sabotages the efficiency of
the production system. We are forced increasingly to incur a growing mortgage on our futures
and to work ever harder as a futile attempt to meet this growing fraudulent charge.
The problem is not with producers or labour, and to imagine that they are the economic culprits
is to fall into the revolutionary Marxist narrative that business and labour are in an “exploiter-
exploited” rather than a mutually and socially advantageous relationship. Inflation is the result
and the policy of the financial system—and it is a Revolutionary policy designed to produce
social conflict from which centralized State power can emerge as a “synthesis” as the alleged
“resolution”, to incited and fabricated social conflicts. This is the Marxist dialectic in
action. Nothing, perhaps, can be as absurd and amazing as to observe so-called
“conservatives” excoriating communism while at the same time praising a financial system that
works in symbiotic collusion with communism to cause relentless centralization of wealth and
power, increasingly in the hands of the State. They would recoil in horror at the expropriation
of the assets of the producer at gunpoint by the communist commissar—but seem unmoved by
the relentless appropriation of the communal capital by the banking system. This policy is that
of Keynesian Fabian Socialist (“gradualist”) economics. The brilliant British engineer and
economic analyst, Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, a contemporary of Keynes, analyzed and
exposed the defect in the existing price-system near the close of World War One and predicted
with incisive prescience its inevitable and destructive future consequences . His disciplined
analysis and remedial recommendations involve a decisive challenge to the fraudulent claim of
the banking system to ownership of the credit which it creates and extends to monetize the real
wealth of the community and to facilitate and control both production and consumption.
Wally Klinck
The first of these two systems has been responsible for the spectacular rise,
principally during the last two centuries, of the present industrial system and is
essential for its continuance. The second (monetary culture), an inheritance from the pre-
scientific past, operates by rules of its own having little in common with those of
the matter-energy system. Nevertheless, the monetary system, by means of a loose
coupling, exercises a general control over the matter-energy system upon which it is super-imposed.
Despite their inherent incompatibilities, these two systems during the last two
centuries have had one fundamental characteristic in common, namely
exponential growth, which has made a reasonable stable co-existence possible. But,
for various reasons, it is impossible for the matter-energy system to sustain
exponential growth for more than a few tens of doublings, and this phase is
almost now over. The monetary system has no such constraints, and, according to one of its fundamental
rules, it must continue to grow by compound interest. This disparity between a monetary system which
continues to grow exponentially and a
physical system which is unable to do so leads to an increase, with time, in the ratio of
money to the out-put of the physical system. THIS MANIFESTS ITSELF AS
PRICE INFLATION. It appears that the stage is now set for a critical
examination of this problem, and that out of such enquiries, if a catastrophic solution can be avoided, there
can hardly fail to emerge what the historian of
science, Thomas S. Kuhn, has called a major scientific and intellectual revolution.
I was in New York in the 30's. I had a box seat at the depression. I can assure you it was
a very educational experience. We shut down the country because of monetary
reasons. We had manpower and abundant raw materials. Yet we shut the country
down. We are doing the same kind of thing now but with a different material outlook.
We are not in the position we were in 1929-30 with regard to the future. Then the
physical system was ready to roll. This time it is not. We are in a crisis in the
evolution of human society. It's unique to both human and geological history. It has never happened before
and it can't possibly happen again. You can only use oil once.
You can only use metals once. Soon all the oil is going to be burned and all the
metals mined and scattered. That is obviously a scenario of catastrophe but we
have the technology. All we have to do is completely overhaul our culture and
find an alternative to money.”
“Systems were made for men and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self development is
above all systems.”
We now have a society in America, Europe and much of the world which is totally dominated by the
two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state structure: control of credit and banking,
and the corporation... The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they can
control: capital."
The light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not at all.
"Do you desire to be great? make yourselves little. There is a mysterious connexion between real
advancement and self-abasement. If you minister to the humble and despised, if you feed the hungry,
tend the sick, succour the distressed; if you bear with the froward, submit to insult, endure ingratitude,
render good for evil, you are, as by a divine charm, getting power over the world and rising among the
creatures. God has established this law. Thus He does His wonderful works.
His instruments are poor and despised; the world hardly knows their names, or not at all. They are
busied about what the world thinks petty actions, and no one minds them. They are apparently set on no
great works; nothing is seen to come of what they do: they seem to fail...
Our warfare is not with carnal weapons, but with heavenly. The world does not understand what our
real power is, and where it lies. And until we put ourselves into its hands of our own act, it can do
nothing against us. Till we leave off patience, meekness, purity, resignation, and peace, it can do
nothing against that Truth which is our birthright, that Cause which is ours, as it has been the cause of
all saints before us.
But let all who would labour for God in a dark time beware of any thing which ruffles, excites, and in
any way withdraws them from the love of God and Christ, and simple obedience to Him...
Such is the rule of our warfare We advance by yielding; we rise by falling; we conquer by suffering; we
persuade by silence; we become rich by bountifulness ; we inherit the earth through meekness; we gain
comfort through mourning; we earn glory by penitence and prayer. Heaven and earth shall sooner fall
than this rule be reversed; it is the law of Christ's kingdom, and nothing can reverse it but sin."
“That with regard to both stability of employment and the distribution of income capitalism is flawed.”
“No economy, controlled or uncontrolled, can long survive as a free society unless it is deemed equitable,
unless it is seen to promote justice.”
“The objective of the (Keynesian) revolution in (economic) policy was to achieve the goal of socialism
without statisim …………”
“I am indebted to my father for living but to my teacher (Aristotle) for living well.”
One of the generals who was surprised by these unusual requests asked Alexander to explain.
1. I want the best doctors to carry my coffin to demonstrate that, in the face of death, even the
best doctors in the world have no power to heal,
2. I want the road to be covered with my treasure so that everybody sees that material wealth
acquired on earth, stays on earth....
3. I want my hands to swing in the wind, so that people understand that we come to this world
empty handed after the most precious treasure of all is exhausted, and that is TIME.
4. We do not take to our grave any material wealth, although our good deeds can be our travelers'
checks. TIME is our most precious treasure because it is LIMITED. We can produce more
wealth, but we cannot produce more time.
5. When we give someone our time, we actually give a portion of our life that we will never take
back. Our time is our life!
6. The best present that you can give to your family and friends is your TIME.
7. May God grant you plenty of TIME and may you have the wisdom to give it away greatly so
that you can LIVE in peace and DIE in dignity.
“You do not find your life, life does not find you, you create it.”
“Genuine humility means appreciating the role that luck and privilege have had in whatever success
you’ve achieved. Acknowledging that while the world may deem what you do to be terribly impressive
or pay you handsomely, there’s almost certainly an undervalued nurse or social worker doing much
better work.”
“Life is just the temporary HOME of the IMMORTAL elements of the UNIVERSE”.
“Without lifelong learning, you’re not going to do very well. You’re not going to get very far in life based on what
you already know,” says Munger.
“If you take Berkshire Hathaway, which is certainly one of the best-regarded corporations in the world and may
have the best long-term investment record in the entire history of civilization, the skill that got Berkshire through
one decade would not have sufficed to get it through the next decade with the achievements made,” he says.
“Without Warren Buffett being a learning machine — a continuous learning machine, the record would have been
absolutely impossible.”
“The inability of our leaders to make sense of the Network Age is the reason their legitimacy….. is failing”.
“Phaedo, also known to the ancient readers as “On The Soul” is one of the best known Dialogues of Plato. The
philosophical subject is the immortality of the soul. ….. We possess non-empirical knowledge at birth, implying
the soul existed before birth to carry that knowledge”,
“The theory of forms, or theory of Ideas, is a philosophical concept, or world –view, that the world is not as real as
the world of absolute unchangeable ideas. Ideas are the essence of reality. The physical world is merely an
imitation of this essence. Only the study of these true “Ideas” can knowledge be attained”.
“Form of the Good, or more literally “The Idea Of The Good” is a concept in the philosophy of Plato. ….He
introduces several “forms” but identifies the form of the Good as the superlative, through it we can attain attain all
the others”.
“A culture without memory will necessarily be barbarous and easily tyrannized, even if its technology is
advanced.
“Money is not wealth, it is a medium of exchange. Real wealth is the stuff that makes life and culture possible”.
“Only those who make money out of money or have lots of it keep money scarce”.
“Earth is inhabited by 4 billion billionaires (in 1981, 7.7 billion today) but due to the powers that be they are not
allowed to enjoy the benefit of this reality”.
“God is truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”.
“The political and economic systems and the political and economic leaders of humanity are not the final
examination; it is the integrity of each individual human that is the final examination”.
“It is the single individual’s effort that might be the final straw that makes the difference”.
“
Everything that happens to us, then, is only the answer and echo of what and how we ourselves are. — Jean
Gebser”.
“Rationality is not necessarily a progression. We must move from the rational to the ARATIONAL”.
“consciousness has evolved through 5 stages: the archaic, the magical, the mythical, the mental and now the
integral”.
“Real living at home is true living, it is only possible in the hearts of those who love”. (As mentioned by Oscar
Wilde: very few people live, most exist. To truly live takes uncommon courage”.
“The crisis we are experiencing today is not just a European crisis, nor a crisis of morals, economics,
ideologies, politics or religion. It is not only prevalent in Europe and America but in Russia and the Far
East as well. It is a crisis of the world and mankind such as has occurred previously only during pivotal
junctures — junctures of decisive finality for life on earth and for the humanity subjected to them. The
crisis of our times and our world is in a process — at the moment autonomously — of complete
transformation”.
130. Peter Pogany: “Fifth Structure” (On Jean Gebser’s “The Ever-Present Origin”).
“The new consciousness which was anticipated and first took shape in the creations of
artists, thinkers, and scientists, will not be fully valid so long as it is not lived in daily
life”
“Not always is it possible to change a given mentality [or psychic disposition], but it is
possible to oppose it with a stronger one, against which it [the entrenched one] will
become increasingly helpless since the opposing mentality is more powerful and freer”
132. Lindberg
“Man must feel the Earth to know himself and recognize his values. God made life simple, it’s man
who makes it complicated”.
"The anti-traditional action necessarily had to aim both at a change in the general mentality and at the
destruction of all traditional institutions in the West, since the West is where it began to work first and most
directly, while awaiting the proper time for an attempt to extend its operations over the whole world, using
the Westerners duly prepared to become its instruments. Moreover, once the mentality had been changed,
the institutions could be the more easily destroyed because they would then no longer conform to it; the
work that aims at a deviation of mentality therefore appears to be really fundamental, and on that work all
else must depend in one way or another; attention will therefore be chiefly directed toward it."
"It is a work that obviously could not be made effective all at once, although perhaps the most astonishing
thing of all is the speed with which it has been possible to induce Westerners to forget everything connected
with the existence of a traditional civilization in their countries; if one thinks of the total incomprehension
of the Middle Ages and everything connected with them which became apparent in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, it becomes easy to understand that so complete and abrupt a change cannot have come
about in a natural and spontaneous way. However that may be, the first task was as it were to confine men
within the limits of their own individuality, and this was the task of rationalism, as previously explained, for
rationalism denies to the being the possession or use of any faculty of a transcendent order; it goes without
saying moreover that rationalism began its work before ever it was known by that name, and before it took
on its more especially philosophical form, as has been shown in connection with Protestantism; and besides,
the 'humanism' of the Renaissance was no more than the direct precursor of rationalism properly so called,
for the very word 'humanism' implies a pretension to bring everything down to purely human elements and
thus (at least in practice if not yet by virtue of an expressly formulated theory) to exclude everything of a
supra-individual order. The next thing to do was to turn the attention of the individual toward external and
sensible objects, in order as it were to enclose him, not only within the human domain, but within the much
narrower limits of the corporealreal world alone; that is the starting-point of the whole of modern science,
which was destined to continue to work in the same direction, thus making the lin1itation more and more
effective."