The Meaning of Modernity

Most simply assume a "meaning of life." Few actually consider the question as something worthy of adults to worry over. What's the moral of the story? Who cares. Act, and that is ones life.

For some, the question is settled, settled for those who attend church, who believe in some outside programme, who have access to institutional forms of set-meaning. For those who find a positive, life-affirming, and possible pattern to live within, institutional belief is meaningful and good. Those are the smart ones. For the rest, there is an empty pit, dark and deep and bottomless. Often that pit where meaning could be is covered over with tattoos, filled with alcohol, dismissed uncritically with drugged euphoria and despair. Most don't even think to ask the question: "What is the meaning of life?" Some few who do flee from the freedom of lack of understanding and the problem of not ever knowing. They might join group madnesses of political parties that give identity where the person is hollow. Anything other than the pitiful emptiness of nothingness.

Sophie Taylor, "Lifelike dolls repel and attract"

Thu Jul 17, 2008

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EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Their chests rise and fall and you can hear a tiny heartbeat, but these babies for sale over the Internet are not alive.

"Reborn babies" are disconcertingly life-like baby dolls carefully crafted in vinyl, which have become swiftly popular mainly with collectors, but also with nostalgic grandparents and grieving parents.

Made and collected by an online community of enthusiasts, they are painted several times to create the mottled colour of newborn skin, have mohair hair and eyelashes, and are weighted to make them feel as heavy as human babies.

Fans of the hobby, who call it "reborning", are mostly women and increasingly guarded about discussing it since media reports highlighted their purchase by bereaved parents, prompting some to portray the hobby as macabre.

"Cuddle therapy" is what one reborning Website calls the hobby -- the dolls' bodies can be fitted with electronic devices that mimic a heartbeat and breathing.

Department store Harrods -- whose motto is "Everything for Everybody Everywhere" -- describes them as "a bit too life-like" to stock, and collectors themselves say the dolls can cause feelings of intense unease, even disgust.

"I pick them up and I change them and I do hold them like a baby now and again -- it's relaxing," said doll-owner Gill, a 50-year-old grandmother who asked to remain anonymous because of the way reborning has been portrayed in the media.

Reborners say their hobby began in the United States in the early 1990s, with dolls becoming more and more realistic over time. Media coverage helped spread the idea to other countries, mainly Britain and Australia. Continued...

http://uk.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUKL0373440320080717

Daniel Flynn, "Britons arrested in Greek sex competition."

ATHENS (Reuters) - Nine British women were facing prostitution charges after being arrested at the weekend for taking part in an oral sex competition in the Greek holiday island of Zakynthos, police said on Monday.

Six British and six Greek men, including two bar owners, were also charged in the incident, which took place at Laganas beach in the south of the Ionian island, which lies off the west coast of mainland Greece, police said.

The women, who came to the popular resort on holiday, had been paid to take part in the competition, which was video recorded and was to be posted on the Internet, police said.

The men were charged with encouraging obscene behaviour.

In recent years, Laganas has established itself as one of Greece's most popular destinations for twenty-something holidaymakers and is known for its wild party scene.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUKL1453253120080714?sp=true

Islam has its attractions. It is a "total way of life."

Modernity has its problems. It can be a total nihilism.

Utopian poligions such as Islam or fascism, or other forms of fascism we don't think of as fascism, such as utopian socialisms, are dead-ends that close off and destroy the search for a genuine "meaning of life." Modernity, left to itself, can result in a dirtiness one is simply ashamed of. It is to the credit of Modernity that such things are possible for the person to decide.

On Ernst Haeckel and the Roots of Left Dhimmi Fascism

Recently my friend and colleague at Covenant Zone, Truepeers used the brilliant phrase: "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." I laughed when I read it. It's sort of true, and it's essential insight if one cares to solve the puzzle of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Peers is an ardent student of Canadian history, a passionate defender of the good aspects of the nation, and perhaps recalled the phrase from Stephen Jay Gould. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Peers came up with it off the top of his head. Then again, the Internet reveals: " Every biology student knows Ernst Haeckel as the originator of the "Biogenetic Law": ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." Yeah, I knew that. Regardless, it does originate from our old nemesis here, the founder of the 'science' of ecology, Ernst Haeckel. That doesn't detract from the beauty of the phrase, and it does present a chance to reprise Haeckel here.

Not to go on at length about ecology this time round. Not to delve into ecology as the ground of "Blood and Soil" mysticism. No, the point is to leave yet another reference to Haeckel for further points later. I blame Peers for this, he having asked me persistently for a couple of years to define "fascism." Now that I'm around page 200 into it, I have soon to turn my attention to Haeckel again; and I use this opportunity to beg further insights and information from my readers. For those who know little or nothing about the man in question, this short run-down from an amazon book review and a bit of bio. from wikipedia will perhaps start a long and careful look into why we think we think the things we think:

Short review -- get this book. It's only 180 pages or so, but it's an excellent reference book on your shelf the next time some numbskull lazily hurls around the "Nazi" label against any political ideology he or she opposes. Very well documented and researched.

This book describes the origins of National Socialist thought (the "Volk" movement), and its connections to Darwinism, evolution, and nature worship. The author does an excellent job at the connecting the dots between Ernst Haeckel's evolutionary Monism and Hitler's philosophy. This should be read by all, because the evil ideology of National Socialism is irresponsibly misrepresented in pop culture as a capitalistic, Christian enterprise, when nothing could be further from the truth. An excellent companion to "Nazi Economics" by Barkai, another good myth-buster.

It's kind of scary how little people know about the intellectual origins of Nazism, how it's glossed over by professors and "intellectuals" who find that the skeletal backbone of National Socialism hits a little too close to home.

And here, a little less heated, is wikipedia:

Haeckel promoted Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the controversial recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species' entire evolutionary development, or phylogeny.

Haeckel's political beliefs were influenced by his affinity for the German Romantic movement coupled with his acceptance of a form of Lamarckism. Rather than being a strict Darwinian Haeckel believed that racial characteristics were acquired through interactions with the environment and that phylogeny directly followed ontogeny. He believed the social sciences to be instances of "applied biology". Most of these arguments have been shown to be over-generalizations at best and flatly incorrect at worst in modern biology and social studies.

Haeckel was the first person known to use the term "First World War". Shortly after the start of the war Haeckel wrote:

" There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared "European War"...will become the first world war in the full sense of the word. " Indianapolis Star, September 20, 1914
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel

What, you might ask, has this to do with jihad, with our people murdered by crazed Muslim fanatics who continue to this day to plot to kill and/or enslave the world under the rule of the caliphate? It has much to do with Left dhimmi fascism, with our own people who are our own worst enemies, those who, hating America and our beautiful Modernity, seek to destroy America, hence Modernity itself, and return the world to pristine Nature and man to his prior feudal state as farm animal. We live with assumptions we seldom think of questioning, and here I hope to open up some of those assumptions of things as they are to explore just why they are as we think they are. What is fascism? How can I go on for years here about fascism without defining it properly? I find I cannot go on further without a real and definitive definition after all. Part of the answer is in the works of Haeckel.

I'll continue with this, and other themes related, as time allows.

Meanwhile, if you're in the mood for some fun, click the link to see some pomo musings about fascism. It's by Mark Mcintire, SBCC. Not me. I just liked it enough to post it for passers-by. Not me! I'm not that clever.