tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post114085138554920879..comments2023-10-21T08:02:56.571-07:00Comments on No Dhimmitude: Intellectuals and the MassesDaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post-1140902116342662002006-02-25T13:15:00.000-08:002006-02-25T13:15:00.000-08:00That was indeed farcical, and thank you for sharin...That was indeed farcical, and thank you for sharing.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post-1140900075563713032006-02-25T12:41:00.000-08:002006-02-25T12:41:00.000-08:00Nice blog dag. Thanks for sharing.Pardon my intel...Nice blog dag. Thanks for sharing.<BR/><BR/>Pardon my intellectual elitism and gnostic magic making, but I simply must defend the charges against Plato. As a student of Plato and other ancient intellectuals, I've come to the exact opposite conclusion to the one presented here.<BR/><BR/>Plato once wrote that he would never publish his true beliefs. Much of his work is a satire on the spirit of his times. In reading works of his contemporaries, as well as the more esoteric aspects of the "platonic" tradition, there is a strong undercurrent of dissatasfaction with the materialist elitism and despotism of the times.<BR/><BR/>The dialogs of Plato contain a variety of subversive concepts: There is imagery of Socrates teaching mathematics to a slave. There is support for women's rights in a form that shocks people to this day.<BR/><BR/>At the time that the Greeks were stuck in the Cave of Ignorance, barbarians were freely intermarrying between classes. Such lawlessness and beastly conduct was frowned down upon by the military elite of Greece and Rome.<BR/><BR/>May the farse be with you!Sophia Sadekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06303748450821405889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post-1140897968340682272006-02-25T12:06:00.000-08:002006-02-25T12:06:00.000-08:00A short note on the accompanying images above: the...A short note on the accompanying images above: the b/w ones come from Fritz Lang's German Expressionist film Metropolis. I might have used a confusing visual metaphor that I hope here to clarify: The first figure, a small being in the bottom centre of a mass of indistinct buildings, and those of the carnivorous cityscapes following, should bring to the reader's mind the relational state of "masses" to our position in terms of our relations with with our intelligentsia. I take that relationship for granted, portraying the masses as a lone figure dominated by the soul-crushing sterility of and Moloch-like appetite for life of the masses of the modern intelligentsia. I think there might be some confusion, though, because our common understanding of metaphors seems to be that the intelligentsia are the "defender of the oppressed." I see them as exactly not so, as the soul eaters and the wreckers of the lives of the people. I am at odds with the prevailing meme. Hence, the confusion some might have in matching the images to the texts. The images above represent the intelligentsia as City of Moloch, our left dhimmi fascists having supplanted Lang's ruling class of capitalist intellectuals. And what better image, now that we can, than to see Ward Churchill as False Maria?<BR/><BR/>Also by way of metaphor, let's look at the robot, False Maria, the final image in the text, and see that Spielberg used her as inspiration for R2D2 in Star Wars. I find that the most telling example of the decay of the intellectual as artist that I can find today. Lang's stark and horrifying image of Mary as robot-demon is reduced to a comic and irritating travesty of Todorov's insipid "friendly helper" motif. Such is the intellectual bankruptcy of our intelligentsia today. And they have the nerve to complain about such as Sir William Jones, (1746-94) one of those who revived Indian history and culture from the destructions made by the Islamic conquest. This same William Jones is one of the major figures in Indian history whom our current lot of cultural relativist pseudo-intellectual poseurs would condemn out of hand as a brutal and genocidal racist. Jones/ Todorov; Lang/ Spielberg. Dag bangs his head.<BR/><BR/>Truepeers writes of gnosticism and the corruption of language as reifier's building tool-kit. That's a bit weighty for this section and my small additions. If you will, then, let's wait and see if we can develop a feature for the coming days.<BR/><BR/>Not surprisingly, somewhere in the archives here one may find more by Windschuttle.<BR/><BR/>And finally, following is a link to a biography of Sir William Jones.<BR/>http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/people/pioneers/w-jones.htmDaghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post-1140864685436407192006-02-25T02:51:00.000-08:002006-02-25T02:51:00.000-08:00Should read: There are many good reasons to read D...Should read: There are many good reasons to read Dag's essays (plural)truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post-1140864485421823812006-02-25T02:48:00.000-08:002006-02-25T02:48:00.000-08:00There are many good reasons to read Dag's essay. F...There are many good reasons to read Dag's essay. For example, take a look at <A HREF="http://www.sydneyline.com/Adversary%20Culture.htm" REL="nofollow">this very able survey</A> by Keith Windschttle of the madness of the contemporary western intellectual class. It shows us the problem but cannot really explain it.<BR/><BR/>Instead, it concludes, ambivalently: "The consequences of this adversary culture are all around us. The way to oppose it, however, is less clear. The survival of the Western principles of free inquiry and free expression now depend entirely on whether we have the intelligence to understand their true value and the will to face down their enemies."<BR/><BR/>Only with the kind of historical essaying into subjects like Gnosticism that Dag is doing can we come to understand the emergence of hte current madness and thus more efficiently reject madness as madness without having to first take it on seriously in order to debunk it on its own terms. The way to efficiently oppose what Windschuttle calls the adversary culutre is to reveal the basis of its resentment as not simply delusionary in the sense of it being a gross misinterpretation of history, but delusionary in the sense that the pseudointellecuals are fueled by their indulgence in resentful phenomena like Gnosticism which is a belief that mastery of reality is possible because such mastery is essentially reducible to a mastery of language and the empire of reason. <BR/><BR/>The Gnostic is a believer in magic: if everyone falls under the spell of his stage show, then reality itself will be transformed. But, in fact, our language is but a tool, a means of deferring and framing action, that makes possible - with no guarantees - that we can achieve a faithful grip on reality if we are humble enough to see that our academic or linguistic knowledge is not a direct knowledge of human reality and the paradoxes that underpin it; rather, our knowledge allows us to understand our experience of the world but not to control it. <BR/><BR/>The Gnostic is like the barbarian who seeks certainty and control in violence. But control of death is eventually a road to one's own death. If we are to build a future worth inhabiting we can only act in good faith, not in Gnostic certainties about, e.g., who is the victim and who the victimizer. <BR/><BR/>The reason the contemporary intellectuals are so obsessed to reduce all forms of human interaction to the model of the Nazis and the Jews is because this is the model that comes closest to putting the question of violence, the question of who is the victim and who the victimizer, beyond debate. And our intellectuals don't want honest debate but rather a guarantee of the righteousness of their own linguistic magic: e.g., "Thou art Nazi (white man) and thou art the Holocaust victim (poor Pali). Israel, today thou art the Nazi (in other words, you are today the kind of arrogant bastard the Nazis once called Jew); in saying this i make it clear that my anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. And because i am a great intellectual who can quote Edward Said until all before me are racked with guilt, it is so, what i say."<BR/><BR/>Such is the mind of our "intellectuals" today. So why pretend to give them honest debate? Just declare them mad and know how to back this up.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.com