An Autumn Day Just for You

Children love hearing the same story told in exactly the same words time after time. I often get chided for not proofreading my own copy, and I don't do so because I'm not so enthralled by it that I can stand reading it twice, let alone in one and the same day. But, for no good reason I can think of I love reading the same poems over and over. Here's one of them, translated into English from German.

Rainer Maria Rilke - Autumn Day

Lord, it is time. The summer was so great.
Impose upon the sundials now your shadows
and round the meadows let the winds rotate.

Command the last fruits to incarnadine;
vouchsafe, to urge them on into completeness,
yet two more south-like days; and that last sweetness,
inveigle it into the heavy vine.

He'll not build now, who has no house awaiting.
Who's now alone, for long will so remain:
sit late, read, write long letters, and again
return to restlessly perambulating
the avenues of parks when leaves downrain.

Lovely. And all the moreso if you ever spent time reading
Soviet prose or worse, so-called Workers'poetry.

Death

In these Modern Times in the West I can go for months, sometimes even years without encountering a dead person. Often it seems that death is something alien to our kind, something that does happen, but something so rare that it bears no thinking on. Yes, death happens, and no, we usually don't like it much. It's there but we don't give it any real thought. Why would we? Aristotle sums it up nicely: he writes that hedonists want the good in life, and they want lots of it. One thing they don't want any of is death; therefore, if those who want the good don't want death, then death is a bad thing. Good point, huh. Death? Shhh.



We in the Modern West avoid death as much as we can; or if we do attend to it we transform it into entertainment of a sort-- if we feel the need to examine death at all. It's not even funny the things we do to disguise death as other than it is; but it is, and we need it. Sometimes we need a lot of it, and sometimes we need a lot of it urgently. Sometimes death just can't wait.

Death? Look, let's face it: Death is not the end of the world. Some will argue that it's the end of ones personal existence; others will argue that it's a portal to another kind of beingness; and some will be completely oblivious to the question, not caring at all, what is death.It is those latter we might care to question if we are to find some sense of our worldly experience and the further telos of Humanity. Ask those who just don't care.



What if they are us? What if we have an attitude toward death that we assign it a neutral value? "Is/Is not." It's like this, see: "Was not, was, was not." I forget who is the Roman who coined that phrase. suffice it to say he is no longer with us. He cares not, and we care less. Care or not, we do what we do, we die when we die, and life goes on regardless. But the hue and cry one hears when a body dies! One would think the good of the world had passed. That attitude, and it is nothing more than attitude, is a serious sickness of the mind of our Modern Times.

Death is sometimes a good thing, and a very good thing when it happens to ones enemies. When it happens to ones own, not such a good thing. But even then, lie goes on. (Sometimes we should-- death-- grasp it.)

The writer following is a favorite of mine, though he's a bit strange in the spelling and punctuation department; aside from that he's not a bad writer.

"Death Be Not Proud"

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

John Donne, (1572-1631)

We in the Modern West, especially in the past 50 years or so, we seem cut off from the everyday ordinariness of death. We seem often to react to death with a maudlin hysteria, an unrestrained grief so far beyond proportion that one might be surprised to find the witness to death didn't himself expire from the shock and distress of the witnessing. Of course only the slightest few actually die form witnessing the death of others, most getting over it pretty damned quick and no mistake. Theory aside, in practice most people just keep on living like they've always done, though the expressions of horror get bandied about like shuttle-cocks till one or the other tires or attention wanders and life intrudes, like lunch-time or a toilet break.



Death. Most people make too much of it.

Death. It's something we should make more of.

Personally speaking, of course, I'm not ready just yet for death, (thanks for asking) and were anyone determined to make me so it's an occasion I'd rise to resist. And then I'd live with the outcome, all else being equal and mutatis mutandis.

Death. It's not an encounter many of us are in a hurry to experience, but hey, shifts happen.

Not being enthused about having death for ourselves, perhaps we wouldn't wish a lot of it on others. But wait. But wait a minute. But what? What do we think we think if we think we shouldn't wish death on those who would rather we die? Ah, some folk want to kill us. Yes they do. There are those who want us dead. They are those we cannot be satisfied with if they merely leave us alone. There are those who do us no particular harm at all, and still would we, if only could we, hunt them down and kill them dead. Who? Our gratuitous enemies. Folk like us but different: they ain't ours, they be the enemy. It would be the right thing to kill 'em. It's nothing personal, and we'll all get over it. And it's the right thing too that in the process of killing our enemies we might-- God preserve us-- we might die too. such is life. Life makes me smile.



Life is good, but it has an end, which might be known as purpose. Death? It's easy, though the dying can be a bit hard on some. Death is not the end of the world as we know it. Death is a good thing, a needed thing, a thing we must give aplenty to our enemies.

What? Is this all? But this is so abrupt. It's not done yet. There should be more....

"Can't we talk this over?" We can talk about this.

"De Schreeuw" by Jeroen Henneman, Oosterpark (Amsterdam, Netherlands). Memorial for murdered Dutch film director Theo van Gogh.

De Schreeuw ( The Scream) Memorial commemorating Theo van Gogh and a symbol of the freedom of speech

De Schreeuw

On March 18, 2007, a sculpture in memory of Theo van Gogh was unveiled in Amsterdam, De Schreeuw (The Scream). It is located in the Oosterpark, just a short distance from where van Gogh was murdered.


In August 2005 Amsterdam's East and Watergraafsmeer district council appealed along with friends and relatives of Theo van Gogh for artists to design an artwork to commemorate the murdered filmmaker. Early in 2006 The Scream by Jeroen Henneman (b. 1942, Haarlem) was selected. It features the profile of a face, leaning back and screaming. Receding layers culminate in a profile with a closed mouth. This is in the shape of Van Gogh's own profile.

Voting in the Darkness

"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.You unlock this door with the key of imagination. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone."

Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone, Compilation of opening monologues, s. 1-4.

Rod Serling would stand facing the camera, dressed in a suit, cigarette between his fingers, smoke curling upward beside him like a genie, and he'd deliver his monologue, pausing for the final words, "You've just crossed over into ... the Twilight Zone."

When I began writing this blog a few years ago one of the first posts I entered here was of speculations of a civil war in America. I trembled at the thought, dismissing it soon afterward, discouraged that I would think such a thing, nervous that I had. These few years later the twilight deepens. I hear and read of those who mumble that the government doesn't represent the people, that the nation is flooded with those who are non-American, those born here, raised as American, those who hate our nation and wish to destroy it. Ten years ago I would not have imagined it. Today I argue with others that we still have a democracy in our land and not a reason at all to resist the government by force, being bound by our own laws to obey and accept our laws as good citizens. I feel like an alien in my own homeland.

We can look at our situation and see that so long as we can effectively vote and win or lose legitimately in public elections open to all majoritarian citizens that ours is a legitimate nation. If we don't like it, we can vote the bastards out. But we must accept that there aare 50 states in our nation, and that there are regions in our homeland, that not all of us are the same in culture and values, that those of us from one part of America might feel differently and strongly about the state of things from those living elsewhere in the nation. We might elect people of totally different natures and beliefs, a Muslim in Minnesota, a Republican in Colorado. We have a right to vote for whomever we choose, Muslims or Republicans. We can't claim that others elsewhere violate our nation and our rights by voting for those we wouldn't vote for. So long as neither breaks the law, either is as legitimate as the other.

And if there is a majority of voters in a state who change our laws into something unrecognizable? If the courts rule in favor of laws we cannot accept as American? If there is sharia law in Michigan? If there is sharia only in Detroit? If only in one neighborhood in the city? If the majority in a state vote for sharia, what do we do? It happens in cities and areas in Europe, in Sweden, The Netherlands, Britain. Ancient laws are overturned and replaced by edicts of social engineering brought in by legitimately elected leaders.

What happens to us when our nations are transformed before our living eyes into something we cannot recognize? What do we do when our lives are transformed into scenarios from the Twilight Zone?


Below is a bit from a London paper, the Daily Mail, on a report from government favored think-tank, so-called:

The report by the Institute for Public Policy Research was commissioned when Nick Pearce, now head of public policy at Downing Street, was its director.

IPPR has shaped many Labour policies, including ID cards, bin taxes and road pricing.

The report robustly defends multiculturalism - the idea that different communities should not be forced to integrate but should be allowed to maintain their own culture and identities.

And it says immigrants should be required to acquire some proficiency in English and other aspects of British culture "if - but only if - the settled population is willing to open up national institutions and practices to newcomers and give a more inclusive cast to national narratives and symbols".

It adds: "Even-handedness dictates that we provide public recognition to minority cultures and traditions.

"If we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas - and it would be very hard to expunge it from our national life even if we wanted to - then public organisations should mark other religious festivals too.

"We can no longer define ourselves as a Christian nation, nor an especially religious one in any sense.

"The empire is gone, church attendance is at historically low levels, and the Second World War is inexorably slipping from memory."

The report, written by IPPR advisers Ben Rogers and Rick Muir, calls on Ministers to launch an "urgent and upfront campaign" promoting a "multicultural understanding of Britishness".

"Multiculturalism can be shown to provide for a fairer and more liberal society and does not necessarily lead to social division and community conflict, as its critics have claimed," it says.

Councils must act to "ensure children mix and are able to form friendships with pupils from different backgrounds".

The report adds: "Any liberal state should recast the civic oaths and national ceremonies, or institutions like Parliament and the monarchy, in a more multi-religious or secular form and make religious education less sectarian."

****

I spend my life traveling around the world, and I have been to a number of desperately dangerous places, England not being one of those. But what is it? It's no more the nation of my youth than is anti-American America. Things change over the course of a long life-time, and to rue is to waste. I don't live in the late 50s or the early 60s, and none of us can. We live with what we have and make it our own as we are able. We adjust, we adapt, we accommodate. If the majority around us agree with things unfamiliar to us, alien to us, strange and unsettling, who are we to complain? We can always move elsewhere, somewhere between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. But I have a feeling the twilight will follow. I might even guess, were I to allow my imagination freedom, the coming of darkness.

Route 66 to Damascus

There comes a time when "looking for a better life" is what life is. There comes that time when it pays to admit that what one does is what ones life is all about, and there is no different life in the wings after all. The theater's stage is set and the play is already scripted. The actor simply goes through his lines and hits his marks as they come. The acts progress through the genre set out, and the finale is the final curtain of death.

"Tod, I hope you live a long life and never know the blistering forces which sear and destroy, turn men into enemies and sweep past the last frontiers of compassion."

And then, one fine day, everything changes.

The life you thought you were living is suddenly not the same at all. It's like someone changed the channel on the television and you are in a whole different story.

It's the nature of things that life is difficult and that everything and everyone dies. Often in our time and in our Modern West people lose sight of such obvious realities. Often people weren't looking for a better life, not having been blown off the land in the dust bowl years, not traveling Okies on the road to California, no unsettled life to flee from. Just folk. Life is easy and life is good. Till one day it isn't anymore.

But then the dust settles, and life returns to its regular routines and no one's really the worse for wear. The dust settles, the ash is swept away, and the rears dry. Life goes on. And on and on and on, and you never know the blistering forces which sear and destroy, turn men into enemies and sweep past the last frontiers of compassion.

Mmmm, I like to travel the world, going here and there at will, doing as I like and living without anything more than the next adventure tomorrow to excite me and today to thrill me, maybe kill me. So there is no end till the end and the time is now. Others, I don't know them well, just see them in passing, blurry and past.

"Once you've seen that dark, unceasing tide of faces... of the victims... the last spark of dignity so obliterated that not one face is lifted to heaven, not one voice is raised in protest even as they died..."

Most folk in the Modern West have no idea how different they are from everyone else around them and those of our Human past. We are revolutionaries, unique in the world's Human experience. We live lives of quite satisfaction, smiling and occasionally stupid. But you might someday on the road by chance come across a man who'll wish you a long and pleasant life while he goes about some other thing different from what you do. He'll be ordinary, unlike you. You, friend, are genuinely different from all others in Human history. You stay, you live a long and happy life, and that's the whole of the story. All your going is a staying, and all you worries are a calm, and nothing is different from anything in your whole life, just a more of you. And if by horrible chance there's change, then wait till it settles and you go back to you as you were and will always be. You are blessed. You are very different from all the others. No need to look further, you have it all right now.

Except for that one day when everything changed....

The lines quoted above from Stirling Silliphant, Route 66, "The Man on the Monkey Board," episode #4.

Marx: Pain in the Arse.

Poor Marx. No, this is not about my academic career. This story is about Karl Marx and his rear end. He is not the butt of jokes here. This is the skinny on Marx's backside. Had I known this in time I might well have gotten my doctorate from the homosexual Marxist thesis advisor I told: "If you have the Marx, I have the Engels." Enough of that. This story is boiling over. Let's open it up and see what Marx is all about:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article2773914.ece


Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor, "Disease made Karl Marx boil with anger." The Times. October 31, 2007

Karl Marx suffered from a skin disease that can cause severe psychological effects such as self-loathing and alienation, according to a British dermatologist.

The father of communism’s life and attitudes were shaped by hidradenitis suppurativa, said Sam Shuster in the British Journal of Dermatology. One of its symptoms is alienation – a concept that Marx, a martyr to boils and carbuncles, put into words as he wrote Das Kapital.

The condition was described as early as 1839 by a French physician, Alfred Velpeau. But, Professor Shuster says, ideas crossed the Channel less readily than wine and Marx’s true condition was never diagnosed.

Hidradenitis suppurativa is a disease of the apocrine sweat glands, found in the armpits and the groins. The skin in the affected areas shows a mixture of blackheads, lumps that look like boils, spots and areas that leak pus. Doctors and Marx, who was born in Germany but lived most of his life in London, called them “furuncles, boils and carbuncles”, but Professor Shuster says that they were too persistent and recurrent for that. He searched Marx’s letters and found that he had started complaining of carbuncles in 1864, when he was 46, though it is possible that he had them earlier.

In 1867 he wrote to Friedrich Engels of the boils “on my posterior and near the penis” – areas characteristic of the condition. Marx was often unable to work because of the pain. He wrote to Ludwig Kugelmann in 1867: “I still have a carbuncle on the left loin not far from the centre of propagation, as well as numerous furuncles.”

The evidence that he suffered hidradenitis suppurativa is strong, says Professor Shuster. Marx was treated with arsenic, poultices and lancing, but with little effect. His only consolation, he told Engels, was that carbuncles were “a truly proletarian disease”.

The illness also contributed to Marx’s poverty, Professor Shuster says. “This new diagnosis is not just important in terms of historical accuracy,” he said. “The skin is an organ of communication, which is why its disorders produce so much psychological distress, with depression of self-image, mood and wellbeing, and with self-loathing and disgust.

“In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem. This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article2773914.ece

Gotta love it.

Kill Your Parents (2)

Part One of this review of Diana West's The Death of the Grown-up is coming at a later hour, (now below.) This installment is in progress.

When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothing ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up
How do you move in a world of fog that's
always changing things
Makes wish that I could be a dog
When I see the price that you pay
I don't wanna grow up

I don't ever want to be that way
I don't wanna grow up
Seems that folks turn into things
that they never want
The only thing to live for is today…
I'm gonna put a hole in my T.V. set
I don't wanna grow up
Open up the medicine chest
I don't wanna grow up
I don't wanna have to shout it out
I don't want my hair to fall out
I don't wanna be filled with doubt
I don't wanna be a good boy scout
I don't wanna have to learn to count
I don't wanna have the biggest amount
I don't wanna grow up
Well when I see my parents fight
I don't wanna grow up
They all go out and drinkin all night
I don't wanna grow up
I'd rather stay here in my room
Nothin' out there but sad and gloom
I don't wanna live in a big old tomb on grand street
When I see the 5 oclock news
I don't wanna grow up
Comb their hair and shine their shoes
I don't wanna grow up
Stay around in my old hometown
I don't wanna put no money down
I don't wanna get a big old loan
Work them fingers to the bone
I don't wanna float on a broom
Fall in love, get married then boom
How the hell did it get here so soon
I don't wanna grow up.
Tom Waits/K. Brennan

I think it's possible that it took two people to write the lyrics above. It tells ya somethin'.

A bit of searching the Internet turns this up, for which you can thank me later:

C. Roark "tri-zeta"

(from under the floorboards and through the woods...)

Those vocals. Those lyrics. That mood. This was My first foray into Tom's world: a gift when I was 14. I haven't looked back. From the alpha (the thumping primitive drums of "Earth Died Screaming") to the omega (the howling chorus of guys and guitars finishing off "That Feel"), this CD is like nothing else on the planet. This is a macabre, twisted world: a vision entirely of Mr. and Mrs. Waits devising (Kathleen Brennan is his wife and they write together- what a team!)
http://www.amazon.com/Bone-Machine-Tom-Waits/dp/B000001DVZ

[O]riginally recorded by Tom Waits on his 1992 release "Bone Machine" later to be covered and made famous by the Ramones on their 1995 release "Adios Amigos".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Don't_Want_to_Grow_Up

"I Don't Wanna Grow Up" was the "hit" off this album, strangely enough & it's no surprise. Not only is it probably the most accessible song on BONE MACHINE, but it's truly one of Tom's best songs ever. MTV even gave the video a fair amount of airplay & the Ramones later covered it, creating one of their last great recordings.
[See amazon above.]

Meanwhile, back at the Anglican Church in Ottawa, the capitol city of Canada:

"Ven. Christine Piper spoke about a blessing her family received after her ex-husband had a sex change operation. The ceremony provided all the members with a healthy way of accepting this new version of a father and former husband."

Enough preamble, this is part two of my review of Diana West, The Death of the Grown-Up.

There will be those who don't care for this kind of book, and they might rather turn to Gay Family Values. I'll stick with West, a book that should be 'easy reading', meaning it's low on the Fogg Index, short, pithy sentences, clear and vivid examples, conversational tone, explicit and concrete argument laid out plainly. I'm finding it one of the most difficult books to read that I've encountered in years. I have to put the book down every page or so and try to catch my breath, to look around me to reorient myself in the present, in what I naively take to be the real world of normal and decent people. A few pages of West's book make me feel like I'm swimming in a sewer. This is very difficult reading. "Party with your children" leaves me feeling ill. Page after page.

I'll return with something more concrete as the day goes on. Please feel free to preempt anything good I might write later.

Kill Your Parents (1)

The following "paragraph" seems to be denouncing the formation of a new and improved version of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). If not, then please excuse me for not getting it.

I got news for you asshole, this is a new SDS that means that it might not be exactly the same as the old SDS. Not only that but my parents wouldn't buy me an x-box nor would I want one, wasting all your time on those stupid video games is not something I want to do. I am actually commited to changing things in this country and am working towards that instead of living in some happy little fantasy world where everything is just peachy. Soldiers and families in Iraq are dying right now, womens and queer rights are being flushed slowly down the toliet, corruption is running rampant as well as poverty, workers are getting screwed, and you know what rather than be a complacent whino like you, I am trying to work against all that stuff and I think maybe you should try it too or just stay the heck away from politics. It seems like you can't take the heat, but for some reason you won't leave the kitchen so your just standing in the kitchen whining!
http://dc.indymedia.org/mod/comments/display/150639/index.php

Some might recall Tom Hayden as more than Jane Fonda's ex-husband. He was in his prime, a co-founder of the SDS. I was thinking Hayden and his lot earlier this evening as I considered writing a review of Diana West, The Death of the Grown-Up . I thought of titling the post "Go West, Young Man." Then, thinking of Hayden, I recalled the slogan from the 60s that I'm using here as headline. I might not have been the smartest kid when I was growing up in Slackjaw, Alabama, so that probably explains why I assumed the slogan was meant metaphorically, as some fancy-pants Yankee hyperbole. Now, having read some large portion of West's book, I'm not so sure it was not meant literally by the Haydenesque totalitarians of the time. Nor am I so sure this evening that if it was meant literally that it would have been such a bad thing. Yes, dear reader, that is an instance of Walkerian humor. "Ha." (Wait for it because another approaches.) "Ha."

Enough preamble.

Diana West, a writer I was not until a few days ago familiar with, or rather, with whose writing I was not familiar, has won me over in a matter a few short hours. How could it be otherwise? The kiddie Lefties like the one quoted above above hate her. She's a -- gasp-- conservative!

This brief analysis from amazon.com sort of sums it all up.

By Preston C. Enright (Denver, CO United States)
Another hate-mongering, arrogant conservative, imagine that?
Actually, these so-called "conservatives" are simply corporate lobbyists throwing out these bigoted arguments to delude/divert their audience about the realities of US foreign policy, global corporatism, ecocide and other pressing issues that the ruling elite doesn't want us to think about. West is fortunate that there is a segment of the US population that is profiting off of our society of mass destruction, so they welcome these ridiculous books with open arms.
If people are worried about how people are being encouraged to be irresponsible, it may be worth their while to study the most powerful entity in the world today, private transnational corporations.
The Corporation
West and the corporatist cabal she works for must just laugh at how easy it is to get some people to believe this nonsense, and also the way some will consciously avoid any ideas that challenge their world view.
Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Grad. School ain't what it use to be.

According to Diana West, things aren't what they used to be since the end of World War Two when American parents decided that their children knew better than adults. News to me. News that such a thing could be seen so early on as the late 1940s and the 50s. Parents, West writes, gave up their responsibilities as adults and as parents, seemingly en masse, and decided that Buddy and Sissy were so special that they should run the family and then the world. Cool, daddy-O.

Except that it came true and it's totally fucked up.

West doesn't make the argument that we should kill our parents. (I don't either.) West's book makes the argument that leads me as a reader to wish the parents of the hippie generation had killed themselves and saved us all a world of hurt. I feel that way. So it must be valid.

West has written an easily accessible work, a few hundred pages long, word-witty, and insightful. Reader reviews at amazon make it clear that this is a book one either loves or hates, the five star system there being mostly fives or ones. I'm a four and a half guy here. I don't quite grasp, if its still to come, why the Greatest Generation abdicated their responsibilities as adult parents in favor of grotesque indulgence of children. I don't understand, from reading this book, why adults want to be perpetual children in the Western World.

This post has caused some dissension in the world. I leave it here as is for others to decide.

A Lifetime of Cruel Nightmares

Tunisian imam Said Jaziri is gone from Canada. Deported. Put on a plane and shipped back home. It's a terrible thing. In America it's known as a terrible thang. No matter how you put it, this is horrible, terrible, unconscionable treatment of a poor honest jihadi. Dear reader, it might take you a lifetime to get over this if you continue reading the CBC report below:

The Muslim cleric said the way he was treated qualified as psychological and physical torture, a nightmare that would take a lifetime to get over.

The Tunisian-born imam, deported from Canada for falsifying his refugee application, complained about how he was treated by Canadian authorities during his 13-hour trip, calling it torture.

In an interview with CBC's French-language service Tuesday morning, Jaziri said he was deprived of any outside contact in the hours leading to his departure, including with his pregnant wife, and said the handcuffs he was forced to wear hurt him.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/10/23/qc-jaziri1023.html

Whoa. That was mighty harsh.

A Modernist Revolutionary Army of the Just

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (1 Corinthians 13:12

Cultural relativism has a specific origin, as we have written of often in detail here. Boaz, Benedict, Meade, et al counter-posed relativism in reaction to Social Darwinism, as a perhaps well-meant or good-intentioned foil against the rip and tear of Modernity's plunging into the defenseless world of primitives. No, Trobriand Islanders could not thwart the designs of Modernity's giants on their hut-steps. Yes, the giants of Industrialisation of the world were brutal and rapacious. In defense of the weak and helpless, the childless anthropologists of the age determined to save the Children of Nature from the evils of the modern world and its cold machines. No, the primitives were not capable of withstanding anything of the modern world, and thus it was wrong to impose upon them any of our Modernity. Yes, they were defenseless, and because of that very reality they had an inner authenticity that had to be respected even by those who were incomparably superior in other aspects. Relativism: that all cultures are of worth even if different; must be respected and left alone to develop organically. The multi-culti Romance of von Herder led quickly to the philobarbarism we see now as the obverse of the reactionary hatred of Modernity: That Nature is good, cities bad; that collective living is good, individualism bad; that organic is good, mechanical bad.Thus, the sentimentalization of the feudal times and the reactionary longing for a return to the Golden Age of the Middle Ages, the Romance vision of happy peasants living in harmony with nature, everything in its place, a harmonious balance struck and maintained. The reactionaries of Romance who fight against our beautiful Modernity have never ceased from 1789 to try in all ways to destroy the world of our Modernity. They engage ever in turning back the times to a time when men were owned as farm animals, kept penned and servile, crushed and churlish, brutal and stupid but colorful and simple. The sentimentalization of the Middle Ages and the reactionary longing for the past is a hatred of freedom of Mankind. The Death Hippie cliches of our time win too many conversants; too many to stand in the middle posing and emoting for they know not what; too many who attach themselves to phantasies of paid povertarianism and the professionalist careerism of the infantalization of the masses. It's all very pretty from a distance, the fairness, the sharing and the caring; but dare not look too closely at the devilish details of life in the pre-Modern world so highly lauded by the Death Hippies who do not live in it. It is a hatred to promote philobarbarism, infantalization, the sentimentalist cult of Romance authenticity. Leave it to the anthropologists who dare strike out into the wilderness and "experience" life as a primitive. Let them emote and theorize thereupon. But do not let the world's people be crushed to death and worse by the evils of life for no other reason that to appeal to the phantasies of well-to-do adventurers who return to their tenure in Modernity"s safe shelters. No, do not let the hippies of Romance indulge their phantasies at the living expense of the world's primitives. Do not fall into the relative comforts of sanctimonious moralisms half-grasped and slippery. No pose. Drop the rose-colored lenses of Romance phantasies and see the life of people as they are. Have some respect for Human life rather than indulging in the creepy exercise of flattery and self-abasement for the sake of late-night cock-tail chatter.

There are those who hate our beautiful Modernity. They point to this or that outrageous insult to Humanness, point at pornography, drug abuse, unrestrained criminality, the moral vacuity of the masses-- as if it matters. The moralistic minders do not care about the details of the Modernist reality; they care only for the phantasies of the imagined perfect past. They will never be satisfied with life as it is, never be pleased with the life of others as others live it. They will forever herd the masses, corralling then, roping them and branding them. The life of the free man will forever be under attack from the Romance fascist. Forever. And it is time we begin to fight back.

There are those who are in their own minds Gnostic seers, those who have a deeper and grander vision of the life of Man than does the man himself. There are those who feel they know better than you how your life should be. And they take power whenever they are able, using it against the man and against Man. These "experts" and moralistic minders, these Manichean haters of the world of the man-made, these are people who are the legitimate enemies of free people and the world of the primitives. Those whose grand visions of the realities of the universe exist only in the confines of their own minds have gathered by stealth and guile too much power in our time and in our lives. These controllers attempt at every turn to return Man to the prior condition of farm animal that he has escaped in the years of our revolutions. Man, who has crossed the threshold of Modernity, is grabbed by the mane and pulled back to the corral of feudalism. The filthy slaughter-house of feudalism is the place in the mind of the Gnostic minder wherein Man shall dwell again. All men turned again to docility and the obeisance due the minders in their infinite wisdom. Dhimmitude.

We who live in the West are Modernists, free of the feudal ties of our forebearers. Our triune revolutions, Industrial, American, and French, have set us free from the bonds of slavery of the mind Mankind has lived from earliest times. Right or wrong, Man is free to think as he will. Modern man does not suffer the heretic's martyrdom. The blessing of our Revolutions is the freedom to be individual in the mind. The collectivists of neo-feudalism will stop that freedom in its tracks, if they are able. Obscurantist Romance will return man to the farm to be moved and slaughtered at whim, unreasoned, unconcerned, and righteous. Man, thinking, says "No." Man thinking says "Fight."

We are Modernists, and our Modernity is a revolution in the existence of Man. Never before our triune revolutions has Man been free to think and act. In our small and shrinking parts of the world, Man is free to live as he will by his own lights. It is a revolution in Human existence. It is a revolution the reactionaries hate and have hated from the beginning. The Romance reactionaries fight to this very day to reinstall privilege and entitlement. Our revolutions are again under threat from the reactionaries, and it is our duty as revolutionaries, those of us who have not abandoned our Revolutionary Ethos, to struggle again to maintain and further our Revolutions. The alternative is slavery.

It is enough today to charge our enemies with the crime of counter-revolution. It is enough-- today-- that we turn them out of their positions of power, perhaps ever so gently. Today.

Tomorrow, if we have not done the right enough today, The Terror.

It is enough today to smash the institutions of terror waging violence against our Revolutions. It is enough today to sit quietly in public as witnesses to the damage done to our Revolutions. It is enough today to write and discuss the threat the enemies of our revolutions pose. If we remain silent and allow today the progress of the reaction to gain, tomorrow we must fight.

The Gnostic minders of Romance fascism flaunt their powers and their estate. They trample the rights of Man. They must be thrown down. They must be toppled. Today it requires only The Word. Tomorrow it will require The Terror.

There are those who will not fight. There are those who will struggle against the freedom of Mankind. There are those who will engage in the war to spread our beautiful Modernity to every corner of our Earth and to every man. But there is no man who will not be affected by the struggles we now find ourselves within. A side not chosen makes everyone an enemy of those who decided the Good. There is no standing room for the relativist. He must lie down and be trod over. Words today will wash over the man who makes no stand. Tomorrow, blood. Phantasies crumble and in their place is seen clearly the all-abiding reality. The sentimentalities of Romance fascists fall to the ground as dust. Bare reality shows that there are those who will froth in a herd, and there are those who will wage Modernist Revolution among the just. There will be two armies. There will be the victorious Modernist Revolutionary Army of the Just. There will be the defeated. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now we know in part; but then shall we know even as also we are known that there cannot be two world together; that one world must come from the struggle to survive; that we cannot see the final outcome but that ours is the duty to prevail, ours the blessing of the war. This I see.

Up-date: This is a roughly daily occurrence: http://sioe.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/update-on-the-copenhagen-demonstration-murder-attempt-on-sioesiad-denmark-leader-and-members/
So you'll have to make of it what you will of your own accord.