Revolt of the Masses:IV

Gasset's book loses steam after about mid-point and the devotes the rest of this book to the subject of the state, the cultural leadership of Europe and his proposed solution to problem of mass-man

Gasset's warns about the danger of the all-powerful-state but devotes little time to the symbiosis between it and mass-man. He puts forth the idea that the modern state, with all it's complexity, is a product of bourgeois technism. It's a weak argument, in my opinion, for a variety of reasons. A simpler approach would be to see that an enlarging state, in a democracy, is a thing of the popular will.  The public want free health, education, good police forces, public transport and so on. The provision of each of these services requires a commensurate expansion of government. Hence,  with each iteration of the democratic cycle government is almost guaranteed to expand. Gasset also recognises that tendency of mass-man is to attribute to government things he really should be doing himself. Thus, government slowly intrudes into everyday spheres of life and spontaneous social organisation is stifled. Gasset also recognises that there has to be limits to state expansion, for it cannot always be guaranteed that the states influence will be benign.

However accustomed we may be to it, the terrible paradox should not escape our minds that the population of a great modern city, in order to move about peaceably and attend to its business, necessarily requires a police force to regulate the circulation. But it is foolishness for the party of "law and order" to imagine that these "forces of public authority" created to preserve order are always going to be content to preserve the order that that party desires. Inevitably they will end by themselves defining and deciding on the order they are going to impose-which, naturally, will be that which suits them best.

It might be well to take advantage of our touching on this matter to observe the different reaction to a public need manifested by different types of society. When, about 1800 the new industry began to create a type of man-the industrial worker-more criminally inclined than traditional types, France hastened to create a numerous police force. Towards 1810 there occurs in England, for the same reasons, an increase in criminality and the English suddenly realise that they have no police. The Conservatives are in power. What will they do?

Will they establish a police force? Nothing of the kind. They prefer to put up with crime, as well as they can. "People are content to let disorder alone, considering it the price they pay for liberty." "In Paris," writes John William Ward, "they have an admirable police force, but they pay dear for its advantages. 1 prefer to see, every three or four years, half a dozen people getting their throats cut in the Ratcliffe Road, than to have to submit to domiciliary visits, to spying, and to all the machinations of Fouche." 1 Here we have two opposite ideas of the State. The Englishman demands that the State should have limits set to it.

I don't think he would be a great advocate for gun control. In my opinion, his book's intellectual analysis rapidly decreases in quality from this point on. Gasset next deals with the topic of the cultural leadership of Europe.

What is the result? Europe had created a system of standards whose efficacy and productiveness the centuries have proved. Those standards are not the best possible; far from it. But they are, without a doubt, definite standards as long as no others exist or are visualised. Before supplanting them, it is essential to produce others. Now, the mass-peoples have decided to consider as bankrupt that system of standards which European civilisation implies, but as they are incapable of creating others, they do not know what to do, and to pass the time they kick up their heels and stand on their heads. Such is the first consequence which follows when there ceases to he in the world anyone who rules; the rest, when they break into rebellion, are left without a task to perform, without a programme of life.

For Gasset, European culture is the pre-eminent culture of the world. But he senses, like many others of the time, that Euopean culture is in crisis and has become decadent.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the decadence of Europe. I would ask people not to he so simple-minded as to think of Spengler immediately the decadence of Europe or of the Wen is mentioned. Before his book appeared, everyone was talking of this matter, and as is well known, the success of his book was due to the fact that the suspicion was already existing in people's minds, in ways and for reasons of the most heterogeneous.

This crisis of culture reflects itself in the psychology of the ordinary man.

But what is happening at present in Europe is something unhealthy and unusual. The European commandments have lost their force, though there is no sign of any others on the horizon. Europe-we are told-is ceasing to rule, and no one sees who is going to take her place. By Europe we understand primarily and properly the trinity of France, England, Germany. It is in the portion of the globe occupied by these that there has matured that mode of human existence in accordance with which the world has been organized. If, as is now announced, these three peoples are in decadence, and their programme of life has lost its validity, it is not strange that the world is becoming demoralised.

And such is the simple truth. The whole world-nations and individuals-is demoralised. For a time this demoralisation rather amuses people, and even causes a vague illusion. The lower ranks think that a weight has been lifted off them. Decalogues retain from the time they were written on stone or bronze their character of heaviness. The etymology of command conveys the notion of putting a load into someone's hands. He who commands cannot help being a bore. Lower ranks the world over are tired of being ordered and commanded, and with holiday air take advantage of a period freed from burdensome imperatives. But the holiday does not last long. Without commandments, obliging us to Eve after a certain fashion, our existence is that of the "unemployed" This is the terrible spiritual situation in which the best youth of the world finds itself to-day. By dint of feeling itself free, exempt from restrictions, it feels itself empty. An "unemployed" existence is a worse negation of life than death itself. Because to live means to have something definite to do-a mission to fulfil-and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty

It appears to me that the core principle of Gasset's philosophy is; that for a man to live a purposeful life, he must have some ideology or standard according to which he aspires to. Gasset seems to not care too much as to what these principles are, thus to my mind he is a moral relativist, but to be fair, he rejects the standards of Fascism and Bolshevism as primitive negations of his ideal of liberal democracy; ideologies which are the product of the hive-mind of mass-man. The shadow of Nietzsche lurks throughout his thinking.

For Gasset,  Europe's demoralisation has come about as a consequence of its technical and material superabundance. As European population, wealth and technological might have expanded,  its constituent cultures have failed to keep up with their potential. Gasset argues that this relative "provincialisation" of European cultures has led to the "demoralisation" of Europe!

The same thing is happening in the order of internal politics. We have not yet seen a keen
analysis of the strange problem of the political life of all the great nations being at such a low ebb. We are told that democratic institutions have lost prestige. But that is precisely what it should be necessary to explain. Because such loss of prestige is very strange. Everywhere Parliament is spoken ill of, but people do not see that in no one of the countries that count is there any attempt at substitution. Nor do even the Utopian outlines exist of other forms of the State which seem, at any rate ideally, preferable. Too much credit, then, is not to be given to the authenticity of this loss of prestige. It is not institutions, qua instruments of public life, that are going badly in Europe; it is the tasks on which to employ them. There are lacking programmes of a scope adequate to the effective capacities that life has come to acquire in each European individual. [ED]

For Europe to regain its sense of destiny and defeat its demoralisation  Gasset argues, it needs to embark on some kind of new project: a project which will inspire men. For  Gasset, that project must incorporate the ideals of liberal democracy and exceed them.  He proposes the creation of a "European man", in essence he argues for a removal of cultural provincialism by the creation of a European Union.

Hmmmm.

Revolt of the Masses. III

Whenever I propose to limit the franchise to a competent minority,  people immediately assume that I wish to restrict the vote to what are commonly considered the "educated" portion of our population: those commonly considered the "elites".  That isn't my intention because it's quite obvious that our ruling class are just as responsible for the decline in civilisation as are the mass-men hordes. In fact, what has been so striking over the last century is just how frequently our "best and brightest" have failed.  Take the GFC.  Out of all the world's published economists only a tiny fraction predicted it. Given its size and systemic origins, the profession's failure to predict it is akin to the science of astronomy failing notice the moon. (Some of the guys on the list made lucky guesses!)

The problem with Economics is that it is hard. Competency in the subject requires a knowledge not just of economics but human nature, culture, psychology,  law, geography and so on. A broad deep knowledge of the subject is a prerequisite and yet this requirement runs counter to the policies of our Universities which encourage specialisation.  Gasset sees the specialist as a typical, but more technically accomplished mass-man.

Specialisation commences precisely at a period which gives to civilised man the title "encyclopaedic." The XIXth Century starts on its course under the direction of beings who lived "encyclopaedically," though their production has already some tinge of specialism. In the following generation, the balance is upset and specialism begins to dislodge integral culture from the individual scientist. When by 1890 a third generation assumes intellectual command in Europe we meet with a type of scientist unparalleled in history. He is one who, out of all that has to be known in order to be a man of judgment, is only acquainted with one science, and even of that one only knows the small corner in which he is an active investigator. He even proclaims it as a virtue that he takes no cognisance of what lies outside the narrow territory specially cultivated by himself, and gives the name of "dilettantism" to any curiosity for the general scheme of knowledge.

I think when Gasset uses the term "man of science" he uses the term to cover all sorts of technical "specialists", not just those connected to the pure sciences.

For, previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he is "a scientist," and "knows" very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with all the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line. 

And such in fact is the behaviour of the specialist. In politics, in art, in social usages, in the other sciences, he will adopt the attitude of primitive, ignorant man; but he will adopt them forcefully and with self-sufficiency, and will not admit of-this is the paradox-specialists in those matters. By specialising him, civilisation has made him hermetic and self-satisfied within his limitations; but this very inner feeling of dominance and worth will induce him to wish to predominate outside his speciality. The result is that even in this case, representing a maximum of qualification in man--specialisation-and therefore the thing most opposed to the mass-man, the result is that he will behave in almost all spheres of fife as does the unqualified, the mass-man.

Here he pretty much describes Charlton's "clever sillies". Their high IQ seems channeled into one small area, otherwise they resemble the mob. Gasset recognises the subtle hubris that comes to most when they become experts in their fields.  Confident in making pronouncements in their own area of expertise they see no problem in making pronouncements in fields outside it.  In fact, in my own dealings with lots of professionals, it astounding just how ignorant they are of areas outside their own specialisation, and how their own opinions on certain issues echo's that of "Joe Average".  Arts graduates tend to be woeful when it comes to scientific issues and the STEM guys are arts averse.

The most immediate result of this unbalanced specialisation has been that to-day, when there are more "scientists" than ever, there are much less "cultured" men than, for example, about 1750. And the worst is that with these turnspits of science not even the real progress of science itself is assured. For science needs from time to time, as a necessary regulator of its own advance, a labour of reconstitution, and, as 1 have said, this demands an effort towards unification, which grows more and more difficult, involving, as it does, ever-vaster regions of the world of knowledge. Newton was able to found his system of physics without knowing much philosophy, but Einstein needed to saturate himself with Kant and Mach before he could reach his own keen synthesis. Kant and Mach-the names are mere symbols of the enormous mass of philosophic and psychological thought which has influenced Einstein-have served to liberate the mind of the latter and leave the way open for his innovation. 

Gasset recognises that most of our high status professionals are really nothing more than higher skilled technical artisans.  To him, there is a world of difference between being "educated" and being "cultured". For culture demands the big picture, not the narrow specialisation. The reason why  "the centre cannot to hold" is because no one in charge sees how they interrelate.  The men who built European culture--Renaissance Men--were "encyclopaedic"; their inheritors, specialists.

After reading his statement on Einstein, Kant and Mach I followed it up by seeing if Einstein had anything to say about  the matter. He pretty much backs up Gasset's assertion.

I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth. (Einstein to Thornton, 7 December 1944, EA 61-574)

The Revolt of the Massess:II

For Gasset, the decline in European Civilisation is attributed to the rise in the influence of a new type of man in history: mass-man.  According to Gasset, mass-man gains his influence in European History firstly, by sheer numerical supremacy. Secondly, by the enormous increase in wealth bought about by technical advances in European society. This wealth insulates him to a degree from the effects of his own stupidity (imagine what he would have thought of the modern social welfare state) and finally be a sense of self-satisfaction and mastery caused by his technical prowess.

Gasset is at pains to stress that his notion of mass-man does not reflect a social station or political orientation in life. Mass-man is not synonymous with the poor or the working class, rather, mass-man refers to cognitive-psychological state of being. For Gasset,  "noble men" can exist amongst the workers and  mass-men amongst the aristocracy. Mass-man lives without serious reflection, thought or notion that he has to conform to some sort of standard. Mass-man man is an intuitive thinker,  but what's worse, is that mass man does not recognise the limitations of his thought. Mass man feels himself complete, he takes the modern liberal society he lives in granted and lacks total insight into the paucity of his intellect. 

Contrariwise, it never occurs to the mediocre man of our days, to the New Adam, to doubt of his own plenitude. His self-confidence is, like Adam's, paradisiacal. The innate hermetism of his soul is an obstacle to the necessary condition for his discovery of his insufficiency, namely: a comparison of himself with other beings. To compare himself would mean to go out of himself for a moment and to transfer himself to his neighbour. But the mediocre soul is incapable of transmigrations the supreme form of sport. 

We find ourselves, then, met with the same difference that eternally exists between the fool and the man of sense. The latter is constantly catching himself within an inch of being a fool; hence he makes an effort to escape from the imminent folly, and in that effort lies his intelligence. The fool, on the other hand, does not suspect himself; he thinks himself the most prudent of men, hence the enviable tranquility with which the fool settles down, instals himself in his own folly. Like those insects  which it is impossible to extract from the orifice they inhabit, there is no way of dislodging the fool from his folly, to take him away for a while from his blind state and to force him to contrast his own dull vision with other keener forms of sight. The fool is a fool for life; he is devoid of pores. This is why Anatole France said that the fool is much worse than the knave, for the knave does take a rest sometimes, the fool never. 

It is not a question of the mass-man being a fool. On the contrary, to-day he is more clever, has more capacity of understanding than his fellow of any previous period. But that capacity is of no use to him; in reality, the vague feeling that he possesses it seems only to shut him up more within himself and keep him from using it. Once for all, he accepts the stock of commonplaces, prejudices, fag-ends of ideas or simply empty words which chance has piled up within his mind, and with a boldness only explicable by his ingenuousness, is prepared to impose them everywhere. This is what in my first chapter I laid down as the characteristic of our time; not that the vulgar believes itself super-excellent and not vulgar, but that the vulgar proclaims and imposes the rights of vulgarity or vulgarity as a right.

Think of the university literature professor who feels confident enough to pronounce stridently on economic issues or military affairs, or the feminist who "knows" that all men are rapists. Everyone, after all  has a right to an opinion, no matter how uneducated.

For Gasset this is not so. Gasset argues that the right to have an opinion comes only after some mastery or familiarity with the subject. The only opinion that has any rights is one that has been judged by some kind of standard. The idea that Racheal Jeantel's opinion on economics has just as much validity as, let's, say your standard economics professor would be ludicrous to Gasset, as it would for most normal people. Notice, that Gasset is not arguing against the poor or lower social classes, only the stupid; those who's opinions have no regard to reality.

The command over public life exercised to-day by the intellectually vulgar is perhaps the factor of the present situation which is most novel, least assimilable to anything in the past. At least in European history up to the present, the vulgar had never believed itself to have "ideas" on things. It had beliefs, traditions, experiences, proverbs, mental habits, but it never imagined itself in possession of  theoretical opinions on what things are or ought to be -for example, on politics or literature What the  politician planned or carried out seemed good or bad to it, it granted or withheld its support, but its action was limited to being an echo, positive or negative, of the creative activity of others. It never occurred to it to oppose to the "ideas" of the politician others of its own, nor even to judge the politician's "ideas" from the tribunal of other "ideas" which it believed itself to possess.

Similarly in art and in other aspects of public life. An innate consciousness of its limitation, of its not being qualified to "theorise '' effectively prevented it doing so. The necessary consequence of this was that the vulgar never thought, even remotely, of making a decision on any one of the public activities, which in their greater part are theoretical in character. To-day, on the other hand, the average man has the most mathematical "ideas" on all that happens or ought to happen in the universe. Hence he has lost the use of his hearing. Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life, in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his "opinions."

But, is this not an advantage? Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests. I am not concerned with the form they take. What  I affirm is that there is no culture where there are no standards to which our fellow-men can have recourse. 

There is no culture where there are no principles of legality to which to appeal. There is no culture where there is no acceptance of certain final intellectual positions to which a dispute may be referred. There is no culture where economic relations are not subject to a regulating principle to protect interests involved. There is no culture where aesthetic controversy does not recognise the necessity of justifying the work of art.

When all these things are lacking there is no culture; there is in the strictest sense of the word, barbarism. And let us not deceive ourselves, this is what is beginning to appear in Europe under the progressive rebellion of the masses. The traveller who arrives in a barbarous country knows that in that territory there are no ruling principles to which it is possible to appeal. Properly speaking, there are no barbarian standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

This is an important passage. The psychology of mass-man sets up the pre-conditions for philosophies of moral relativism and ontological postmodernism. Mass man doesn't need standards as he already has them. Gasset writing in the 1920's could see where this was going to end up.

Anyone can observe that in Europe, for some years past, "strange things" have begun to happen. To give a concrete example of these "strange things" 1 shall name certain  political movements, such as Syndicalism and Fascism. We must not think that they seem strange simply because they are new. The enthusiasm for novelty is so innate in the  European that it has resulted in his producing the most  unsettled history of all known to us. The element of strangeness in these new facts is not to be  attributed to the element of novelty, but to the extraordinary form taken by these new things. Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his  opinions. This is the new thing: the right not to be reasonable, the "reason of  unreason." Here I see the most palpable manifestation of the new mentality of the  masses, due to their having decided to rule society without the capacity for doing so. In their political conduct the structure of the new mentality is revealed in the rawest, most convincing manner; but the key to it lies in intellectual hermetism. The average man finds himself with "ideas" in his head, but he lacks the faculty of ideation. He has no conception even of the rare atmosphere in which ideas thive. He wishes to have opinions, but is unwilling to accept the conditions and presuppositions that underlie all opinion. Hence his ideas are in effect nothing more than appetites in words[Ed], something like musical romanzas.

Gasset here strikes at the core of Mass-man. He lives according to the ideology of his feelings (and hence influenced by his genetics*).  His "gut" rules his head. If an argument "feels" right it is right from his perspective. If he feels he has a right to something then he will impose upon the community to get that right.  Sandra Fluke is a feature, not a bug of the system.

This inability to "see outside himself" is an intrinsic feature of mass-man. Prejudice is cognition. Theories which appeal to his cognitive insularity are adopted with ease as they affirm his own "analysis" and appeal to his gut. Appeals to the truth don't matter because he already knows what is true. Communism, Fascism, Socialism and Utilitarianism find an easy home in the mass-man who is unable to detect their errors. The theory chosen is the one most in accordance with his biology. Gasset regards the assertion of this type of man onto the social/political/cultural stage as the threat to European Civilisation.

Gasset also mentions that mass-man is to be found in both the Left and the Right. For Gasset it's not so much about political orientation as it is about intellectual hermetism and its associated political and cultural force which shapes culture. A man of the Right who fails to put his ideas to the test is just as contemptible as the man of the Left.

Gasset also makes mention of the Americanisation of Europe.  Gasset recognises that most commentators on the phenomenon have the mechanism all wrong. First of all, Gasset thinks that America is the "paradise of the masses", home of lynch law.

Gallantry here makes an attempt to suborn me into telling our brothers beyond the sea that, in fact; Europe has become Americanised, and that this is due to an influence of America on Europe. But no; truth comes into conflict with gallantry, and it must prevail. Europe has not been Americanised; it has received no great influence from America. Possibly both these things are beginning to happen just now; but they did not occur in the recent part of which the present is the flowering. There is floating around a bewildering mass of false ideas which blind the vision of both parties, Americans and Europeans. The triumph of the masses and the consequent magnificent uprising of the vital level have come about in Europe for internal reasons, after two centuries of education of the multitude towards progress and a parallel economic improvement in society. But it so happens that the result coincides with the most marked aspect of American life; and on account of this coincidence of the moral situation of the ordinary man in Europe and in America, it has come about that for the first time the European understands American life which was to him before an enigma and a mystery. There is no question, then, of an influence, which indeed would be a little strange, would be, in fact, a "refluence," but of something which is still less suspected, namely, of a levelling.

Gasset argues that Europe has become Americanised as a result of Europe's self destruction through the influence of mass-man.  The ideas of the French Revolution mature later but in doing so make Europe resemble America more closely. As the standards are whittled so does culture decay. Modern European political culture sets no standards; everyone's opinions are considered equally valid, no matter how informed or not. As Gasset argues the absence of standards is the hallmark of barbarism. If you disagree with him, look about you. Detroit is the Future.

*Modern Neurobiology and Psychology are begining to provide extraordinary insights into the cognitions of Joe Average. I plan to put up a post on this later.

*When I say European Civilisation I mean Europe as geographically understood and its cultural satellites. North and South America, Australia and New Zealand.

The Revolt of the Masses: I

A book I've been meaning to write about for a while now is Ortega y Gasset's*, Revolt of the Masses. It caused quite a stir when it first came out and appeared to be quite influential in intellectual circles for a while, but it's influence seems to have waned, partly, I believe due to the fact that European conservatism is dead and, thus, there is no one there to champion it. Secondly, it's also implicitly quite hostile to American notions of democracy and thus garners little support in the country which hosts last significant bastion of Left wing thought. Amongst learned Americans, the book is given polite acknowledgement and that's about it. The ideas presented are not engaged.

Which is a shame because the book is a powerful diagnostic tool in understanding the social maladies that beset us today. Not the the book is faultless. His writing style sometimes makes the concepts difficult to understand and he does come across as a snob, which means he will reflexively alienate many readers. His solutions to the problems, I think, history will show to be wrong. In many ways the book reminds me of those medical textbooks produced before the age of antibiotics and modern surgery: Highfaluting, great on diagnosis, terrible on therapy.

Gasset can best be described is a lover of classical liberal democracy. Liberal, in this context, is used as in the European sense. An easy way to think of what he means is by thinking of it as the types of governments and civilisation that existed in Europe during the time of the Belle Epoque.  Like myself, he too believes that this was the highpoint of European Civilisation. 

Restrictions, standards, courtesy, indirect methods, justice, reason!  Why were all these invented, why all these complications created? They are all summed up in the word civilisation, which, through the underlying notion of civis, the citizen, reveals its real origin. By means of all these there is an attempt to make possible the city, the community, common life. Hence, if we look into all these constituents of civilisation just enumerated, we shall find the same common basis. All, in fact, presuppose the radical progressive desire on the part of each individual to take others into consideration. Civilisation is before all, the will to live in common. A man is uncivilised barbarian in the degree in which he does not take others into account. Barbarism is the tendency to disassociation. Accordingly, all barbarous epochs have been times of human scattering, of the pullulation of tiny groups, separate from and hostile to one another.

The political doctrine which has represented the loftiest endeavour towards common life is liberal democracy. It carries to the extreme the determination to have consideration for one's neighbour and is the prototype of "indirect action." Liberalism is that principle of political rights, according to which the public authority, in spite of being all-powerful limits itself and attempts, even at its own expense, to leave room in the State over which it rules for those to live who neither think nor feel as it does, that is to say as do the stronger, the majority.  Liberalism is well to recall this today-is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak. It was incredible that the human species should have arrived at so noble an attitude, so paradoxical, so refined, so acrobatic, so anti-natural. Hence, it is not to be wondered at that this same humanity should  soon appear anxious to get rid of it. It is a discipline too difficult and complex to take firm root on earth.

Writing from the vantage point of the late 1920's, he is alarmed at the decline that has taken place in European Society, a decline he places squarely on the emergence of a new type of man onto the cultural stage. He calls this man, mass-man.

But before we get to mass-man we've got to understand Gasset's concept of civilisation. Civilisation for Gasset was the end product of the thinking of the finest minds over the past three millenia of European history.  The rules, regulations, customs, habits, inter-relationships and social structures that had been thought out were passed on from one generation to another. The more advanced the civilisation the greater the intellectual capital invested it. Furthermore, Gasset recognised that the parts of the system were interrelated and the system could only function effectively if minds equal to the task at hand were given custody of it. 

For many reasons, but for the moment 1 am only going to stress one. Civilisation becomes more complex and difficult in proportion as it advances. The problems which it sets before us to-day are of the most intricate. The number of people whose minds are equal to these problems becomes increasingly smaller. The post-war period offers us a striking example of this. The reconstruction of Europe-as we are seeing-is an affair altogether too algebraical, and the ordinary European is showing himself below this high enterprise. It is not that means are lacking for the solution. What are lacking are heads. Or, rather, there are some heads, very few, but the average mass of Central Europe is unwilling to place them on its shoulders. [ED]

What concerned him particularly, was the cultural preconditions which gave birth to science:

But I repeat that I am astonished at the ease with which when speaking of technicisism it is forgotten that its vital centre is pure science, and that the conditions for its continuance involve the same conditions that render possible pure scientific activity. Has any thought been given to the number of things that must remain active in men's souls in order that there may still continue to be "men of science" in real truth? Is it seriously thought that as long as there are dollars there will be science? This notion in which so many find rest is only a further proof of primitivism. As if there were not numberless ingredients, of most disparate nature, to be brought together and shaken up in order to obtain the cocktail of physico-chemical science! Under even the most perfunctory examination of this subject, the evident fact bursts into view that over the whole extent of space and time physico-chemistry has succeeded in establishing itself completely only in the small quadrilateral enclosed by London, Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, and that only in the XIXth Century. This proves that experimental science is one of the most unlikely products of history. Seers, priests, warriors and shepherds have abounded in all times and places. But this fauna of experimental man apparently requires for its production a combination of circumstances more exceptional than those that engender the unicorn.

And he has a point. Inventions have come and gone throughout history, but its only Europe that gets the whole business of science going. But we need to remember that culture which keeps it going is not a given. Hitler got rid of his finest Jewish minds because the conflicted with the political necessities of Nazism. Stalin decreed Lysenkoism the official party line and our own Gaystapo have declared Global Warming an article of infallible dogma. The cultural climate which allows pure research is progressively limited by the politicisation of everyday life.

  (Lysenko with Stalin)

For Gasset, civilisation is a bit like the computer in front of you.  It in itself is the end  product of countless discoveries in physics, chemistry, metallurgy, mathematics, philosophy, electronics and so on. The fact that it is simple to operate belies the tremendous complexity in its generation. Gasset argues that, given its complexity, its upkeep and maintenance must be given to men who are trained and who understand thoroughly its operation. Note, that this is not an issue about power as much as it is about competence. Morever, Gasset recognises that a civilisation needs to be maintained by men committed to its ideals. Failing that, the jungle begins to gain ground.

Civilisation is not "just there," it is not self-supporting. It is artificial and requires the artist or the artisan. If you want to make use of the advantages of civilisation, but are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilisation-you are done. In a trice you find yourself left without civilisation. just a slip, and when you look around everything has vanished into air. The primitive forest appears in its native state, just as if curtains covering pure Nature had been drawn back. The jungle is always primitive and, vice versa, everything primitive is mere jungle.

When civilisation crumbles natural savagery reasserts itself. Gasset's thesis is thus: European civilisation is a product of over three millenia of thinking by the best minds. Each generation is handed this inheritance and builds upon it. Finally, in the late XIXth Century, this cultural heritage is passed onto the taxonomic equivalent of Rachael Jeantel: Mass-man. It is from here that the problems stem.

* Proper form would dictate that I use his surname in entirety but I felt the abbreviation necessary for stylistic concerns.

The Zimmerman Verdict: Evidence of the Croatia effect.

In order to understand the black and liberal community outrage to the Zimmerman verdict it's best to take ourselves back to that bastion of left wing multiculturalism, the former Yugoslavia. I think it is important to go that troubled country since the student of it will learn much which can be applied to the modern political situation, especially in the U.S.

The former Yugoslavia was comprised of six different ethnic groups but for the purposes of our discussion we will limit our discussion selves to the two biggest groups; the Croats and the Serbs.

Due to a combination of demography and shrewd politics Serbia was the most militarily successful of the two and as a consequence ensured that its citizens secured the privileged positions in the Yugoslav republic. An objective analysis of the ethnic occupation of the government senior positions showed clear discrimination against Croats. Even so, Croats were still able to assume some of the positions of power, particularly in the non-security positions of government. Still, the net result of this state of affairs was that the Croats en masse felt that they were discriminated against and oppressed by a stronger ethnic group who had all the military power. Futhermore, because Croats were more westernised and economically productive, the Croats felt that their substandard economic position was due to Serbian mismanagement and Serbian corruption. The idea was that Croatia, once freed of Serbian domination would flower into a new Switzerland.

The war came and went, and Croatia is now independent, however, it still remains an economic mess much to the disgust of the average Croat. However, the current situation poses a dilemma for the community there. In the past the Croats could, without much thinking, blame all their problems on the Serbs, however, now that the Serb bogeyman is gone. People are beginning to search for other explanations of their economic failure. Some are blaming the politicians, others the financial markets but to some of the more perceptive individuals they are beginning to see that the problems are with themselves. This, in my mind, is one of the first steps toward genuine reform of the country. The riddance of the Serbian bogeyman was more than a riddance of physical oppression it was a riddance of a convenient excuse for all their failures. Their desire to join the EU was not based on any love of Europeanism, but rather the realisation economically and socially advancement can only come about through the forced adoption of a Western European model.

Now, the point of this little bit of Yugoslavian social history is that it directly applicable to race relations in the U.S. and to the underperformance of black community there. 

From this side of the big pond, it would appear to me that metrics of Black social well-being were higher in bad old days of segregation rather than in the modern days of multiculturalism. Segregation may have, in fact, paradoxically enhanced black social, if not economic, well being.

Take the following graph.

If we take illegitimacy rates as inverse proxy for social well-being we see that Black illegitimacy rates follow White ones till the 1960's when they literally explode. Why so?

Though there are many reasons, we see a disparate effect of the social changes of the Sixties on the Black community. Part of the reason, I think, is because of the "Croatia effect" on Black people's thinking.  In the 1960's everything became the White man's fault.

In the age of segregation, the Black man was treated as a second class citizen. He was limited in his privileges and limited in his opportunities by a system which segregated him from white people. He realised that the Whites did not give a shit about him nor were not going to give him a break. To be fair, they didn't take what little he had. In effect, he was psychologically on his own. Any improvement was going to be self-improvement since the white man was not going to give him anything.  Responsibility was forced onto him. He had to make the best out of the shitty circumstances life handed him.

However, with desegregation, the Black man became integrated--at least in theory-- in the wider community. The preponderant success of white people, when compared to his own failure, combined with the self flagellation of the liberals made it easier to blame all of his problems on whites. They provided a convenient scapegoat for his own abdications of responsibility. If he failed, it was because the the white man plotted against him, if the white man helped him and he failed still, it was because the white man did not help enough. He never had to take responsibility. There was always someone else to blame.

It needs to be understood that this is not a particularly Black way of thinking. All human groups think the same way. White workers, in attempting to explain their own shitty lives will blame white bosses; Indonesians will blame industrious Chinese; Zulu will blame Xhosa; German workers, German Jews. In human societies wherever there is an under-performing group, they will always blame the superior performing (either by hook or crook) group for their troubles.  In any society where one distinct group gains advantages over the other it becomes easier for the disadvantaged group to blame the other for all of its problems.

Whats most depressing about the Trayvon Martin controversy is just how polarised opinion is on racial lines. It's as if the facts don't matter. Likewise, in the U.S. federal elections 93% of Black people voted for Obama. Identity politics trumps all.

This "Croatia effect" thinking amongst black people has profound implications for any long term improvement in the social situation amongst blacks in the U.S. It may just be that some form of soft segregation and parallel social structures may need to be set up, where blacks are self governing and realise that they are on thier own. No white man to blame and no white man to help.  Whether high quality blacks--16% of blacks have IQ's over 100--would want to invest in such a project is a different issue. It appears to me that this group of people, especially the few conservative ones have more in common with successful whites than self-identifying with the "brotha's in the hood".

On a similar note, if you can countenance the notion  that the mean Black I.Q is 85, is the the promotion of universal suffrage in Africa a recipe for the election of demagogues and rouges? Giving the vote to the top 10% of Native Africans would appear to be far better for political stability and general welfare than promoting American style democracy in the region.

Some Thoughts on Aesthetics.

Recently, Roosh V put up a post on beauty which got me thinking of an article I read recently. But before I get to that, I want to put down a few thoughts on the subject of beauty.

I think one of the problems of the traditional philosophical treatments of beauty is that they tend to see the appreciation of beauty as a rational act.  While I think that this approach may have some validity, I don't think enough consideration is given to unconscious processes that are active in the appreciation of it.  Recent insights in cognitive neuroscience show a continuous interplay between conscious and unconscious processes. For example, with regard to the processing of erotic imagery, there is evidence that the brain is processing stimulus information well before conscious cognition is apparent. My view of the matter is that our minds are pre-wired to respond pleasurably to certain visual stimuli. And I don't just mean in the sexual sense, rather, a wide of pleasures (and noxious sensations) can be stimulated by a glance of the eyes. The point is, that when it comes to aesthetics, pleasures are generated subconsciously but appreciated consciously. 

Now, what I'm interested is in the process of subconscious pleasure generation.

It appears to me that human beings are genetically pre-programmed to respond positivity to certain visual stimuli. Symmetry, for example, is not just appreciated in facial forms but also in buildings and compositions of a variety of kinds. Purity, in terms of colour or form is also appreciated.  Certain types of massing, and ratios of a part to a whole also appear to be universally pleasing. It seems that our visual processing hardware is designed with certain rules in mind. If these rules are violated then a progressive sense of disgust is elicited.

Let's say then that there is some kind of hard wired response that generates pleasure only in certain circumstances. How would we judge an art that positively stimulates that response? Or an art that negatively stimulates it.  I suppose that what I'm trying to suggest is that is an art which synch's with this pre-determined hard wiring "natural" to the human species.

The reason why I bring this up is because I feel that classical art was a type of art that instinctively appealed to humans and modern art is a type of art that doesn't. Which brings me to that article I read about. In 1995 two Russian emigre artists, Kumar and Melamid decided to undertake an interesting art project. What they did was use extensive market research to determine what people in eleven different countries liked when it came to art and what they didn't. Based upon this research they decided to paint pictures which represented this market research data. The project and its details can be found here. There is even a book.

Kumar and Melamid's work needs to be understood as visual representation of market research more than an artistic vision. But what's fascinating about their work is the remarkable consistency of what people like in art. Much like the remarkable consistency in what men like in women and women in men.  From an interview with Melamid by The Nation:

N: But there were some surprising results from this poll, yes?

AM: Actually, what shocked me was that it was not surprising. I thought there would be much more interesting--I mean, much different results. Because my small experience talking about art with the people of Bayonne gave me quite a different impression of what the people want. They couldn't exactly say what they want, but seeing artists working gave them ideas of what was possible. The problem is they don't have examples. Maybe they can't be asked, maybe language doesn't work. I was expecting great discoveries, a real vox populi, a high opening. But I think it was the fault of the poll, not the people. It's the fault of all polls. Maybe people have to be shown. Maybe we have to buy a van and go around the country working on art among people--van art. From Vanguard to Van Art.

N: But weren't you kind of surprised that people, regardless of class or race, an wanted pretty much the same thing?

AM: Yeah, that was another shock, because you remember that initially, the idea was to paint different pictures for people of different incomes, but we realized that there's no difference! The blue color diminishes with income and with education, but still the blue color is the majority in every group. And every group wants these landscapes, with soft curves, people fully clothed. That's what gives a good idea about this society, because it's really a united society. That's why this society is still alive. It's not breaking up like Russia, because in Russia they have several different consensuses. You lose that, so you lose everything.

N: What's interesting about the "most wanted" picture that came out of all of this is that it's very close to the classic nineteenth-century American painting, which is a landscape with people, showing harmony with nature, or the conquest of nature. What do you think that suggests?

AM: I think people want stability, culturally and traditionally. The modern art was a breakup with tradition, which became a new tradition, of course. And it's interesting, on one hand I can say that this society's demandtosupply economics works really well, because you can buy landscapes. Maybe not good landscapes; that's the problem. There's nothing bad in landscapes per se. I don't know if we can imitate it now, but why landscape is lower than Abstract Expressionism? Mostly because landscape painting has been given up on by the elite, and people who want to make fame and money don't make landscapes, they make abstract pictures.

N: Robert Hughes wrote that landscape "is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel," that the quintessential American paintings are landscapes.

AM: So, now we know he was right.

I think it is remarkable that people in China, Kenya and U.S all have a very similar aesthetic preferences despite significant geographic, cultural and genetic differences. What it seems to point to is that our sense of beauty has been implanted into us and it is not as malleable as the blank-slaters and fat acceptors seem to think. It isn't because of cultural conditioning as much as it is biomechanics.


There is no doubt that modern art was one of cultural prongs used to overturn the traditional order of the West. Any conservative pushback is going to have to tackle it and perhaps the line of attack should be less philosophical and more biological. Arguments about beauty are probably best not argued on philosophical lines but along "visual ergonomic" ones. A well designed chair is for the body is what beauty is to the eye. And perhaps our argument against modern art shouldn't be an argument about what is morally right or wrong but about what pleases human nature and what doesn't.

Rachael Jeantel: Voter.

As I've argued in my previous posts, one of the great problems with modern democracy is that political power is placed into the hands of men and women who lack the capacity to make judgements. Furthermore, even amongst those who can make judgements, there appears to be a natural cognitive-emotive defense which prevents facts, which are inconvenient to one's political orientation from becoming recognised.

The problem with this state of affairs should be obvious to anyone who has the ability to syanpse at least two pairs of neurons.  Wrong decisions are going to be made....repeatedly.....even with the best of intentions.

The reason why I bring this up again is because I was familiarising myself with the Trayvon Martin case and became aware of  Rachael Jeantel.

I think its important to put a face to the subject matter, since the topic on hand is not an abstraction but a real life problem.  Rachael is a senior high school student who is illiterate. I mean how are you in senior high school and not able to read or write?  But more importantly, Rachael Jeantel is 19, and therefore, as I understand it, has the God given right to Vote in the state of Florida. She gets the right to actively participate in the electoral process. She gets a say in the running of government.

How much consideration do you think she gives to national defense? Or how to finance health care? Social Security?  How about to environmental care or nuclear power?

Dwell on those thoughts and remember that there are millions or Rachaels out there. Contrast her with Keith Tillage, 

someone I've randomly pulled from the internet for no particularly reason apart from the fact that he came up when I Google successful black small business man. Do you think he is concerned about taxes, national defense and education? Law and order? Do you think he can read?

More importantly which one of these two is more likely, if given power, to turn tyrannical?

And yet, the democratic system of the Western World gives each one of these individuals an equal vote.

This is not a  issue about Left or Right, it's a question about stupid and competent. Mencken was right. In any group of people there exists superior and inferior men.  The notion of superiority chafes the democratic, but not conservative mind. Who can seriously argue, that on matters political Keith Tillage's opinion is worth more than Rachael Jeantel's ? From a conservative perspective, is it right to give a say in the political affairs of the nation to those who have no comprehension of them?  The answer for any rational man is in the negative and therefore how should a rational man view unlimited democracy?

People need to remember that, numerically, the elites form only a small percentage of society. The reason why they are able to exert the influence that they do is by co-opting the unthinking orks of the underclass.  The ideologues know how to play the system to their advantage.  The leftward lurch of western society strongly correlates with the expansion of the right to vote. The French revolution would never have happened if the proles had stayed at home.

The Ancient Greeks felt that democracies eventually evolved into tyrannies. Looking at it from a systems perspective, it's easy to see why. Poor democratic governance keeps piling error upon error until it as a society fails. In the ensuing chaos, it's only the strong and ruthless that survive and such men are not likely to tolerate anyone's idiotic bullshit. Viewed from the vantage point chattering classes who squandered their inheritance he, the leader  is a tyrant, but to the mob, they applaud him as a saviour.  Whether or not he is good or evil is all up to pot luck.

The founding fathers of the U.S were as fearful of tyrants as of the mob. As Erik von Kuenhelt Leddihn shows in his book Liberty or Equality, they established a republic and not a democracy.  It was Jackson who started diluting the quality pool by enlarging the franchise and establishing the spoils system. It may be too late, but conservatives, especially in the U.S need to make a pushback against the universal franchise. If there is any hope, it's not with the people.

Rod Dreher Gets It.

Yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court Ruling should send shivers down the spine of anyone who is traditionally religious. Rod Dreher quite eloquently describes the situation;

Scalia: Open Season on Marriage Traditionalists.

I'm not a American constitutional scholar, but it was my understanding that Supreme court jurisdiction extended only to the judging whether or not a law was in conflict with the constitution.

This DOMA law appears to have been struck off because the court determined that the intention behind the law was malicious. The court made a moral judgement and not a constitutional one and was therefore peddling its opinion of what it considered right and wrong.  The court did not say that congress does not have the power to make laws concerning state marriages, rather, it stated that congress does not have the power to make laws on state marriages that it determines are hateful. God is not the measure of right and wrong anymore. The Supreme Court of the United States is. It's an usurpation of congressional power.

Dreher accurately foresees the implications.


Update.

Apologies to all about the typos and spelling today. Dyslexia in full force.


Update II.

Over a Rod's,  a commentator illustrated just why this decision is so bad:

Apparently, Cardinal George said if gay marriage becomes a reality that in five years, Catholic schools, colleges, charities, hospitals, and organizations will cease to exist. Since it would be contrary to Catholic Christian teaching to hire same-sex couples, those people will not be hired. Since not hiring would now be seen as discrimination, those schools and charities will be sued. So, the only choice is either wait for them to be closed or close them down ourselves. I learned of this from a couple of family members who heard it in a priest’s homily on Sunday.

It won't just affect Catholic institutions, but other traditionalist ones that disapprove of homosexuality, polygamy etc.  What the Supreme Court did today was put itself in opposition to mainstream Christianity.  The salami tactics are about the begin. First it starts with the little laws, then they become more stringent and finally it's full on warfare.

Component Failure.

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

H.L. Mencken.

As I've agrued before in some of my previous posts, H. L. Mencken is a political commentator that is easily enjoyed but rarely taken seriously. Part of Mencken's problems is that he writes so well that his writing becomes more of interest than the message he is trying to get across. Mencken was contemptuous of democracy famously describing it as a system of jackals leading jackassess.  At the heart of Mencken's contention was the notion that the average man simply does not have the intellectual capacity to participate fully in democracy. Mencken was also perceptive to note that the reason why this is so stems mainly from the fact that men tend to make emotional decisions rather than rational ones.

This isn't an idle charge. One of the prerequisites for successful action is the both an an accurate degree of situational awareness and the ability to generate an appropriate response. In order for democratic systems to work democratic theory, likewise requires that the voting public be fully informed and able to act appropriately in order for democracy to function appropriately and adapt to the challenges that threaten its survival. Voters, who act out of ignorance, will support policy responses which don't correspond to the necessities of reality. The net result, then, is that democratic systems gradually become divorced from situational realities and collapse eventually ensures. If Mencken is right,  the democracy is doomed.

Modern America--and the rest of the West--are based on the idea that broadly representational democracy is the best system of government. The one that most ensures an individual's rights and opinions and protects its citizens from abuse.  Indeed, much American foreign intervention is directed towards spreading this ideal; an ideal which I once believed in but do not now.

The position that I have taken isn't based upon some prior belief of a "natural order" or some sense of elitism, rather, it's based upon a notion akin to John Boyd's OODA loop: It's a control theory problem.
If democratic man is unable to weigh evidence rationally and deliberate dispassionately his situational awareness will become lessened and his actions thus become increasingly ineffective.

Unfortunately, the bulk of cognitive neuroscience points in this direction. In this rather depressing survey paper, Motivated Reasoning in Political Information Processing: The Death Knell ofDeliberative Democracy? by Mason Richie, convincing evidence is laid out that the average voter is unable to engage in dispassionate deliberation. Motivated Cognition, a.k.a the rationalisation hamster, ensures that information which is emotionally unpleasant is kept at bay.  Both sides of politics do this, but there appears to be some evidence that the Lefties have a stronger hamster.

Note, that this critique of democracy is not based upon a superior alternative, rather, the fundamental unit of the democratic system, the individual, has been shown to be unable to perform as expected scientifically.  Most people prefer their own version of reality to the truth, and in fact have highly developed defensive mechanisms to prevent their fantasy world from being disrupted.

The reason why all governments in the West are progressively becoming dysfunctional is because of the mental capacities of the average voter. Corrective action which is necessary to stabilise society is politically unpalatable and thus the system errors accumulate till it all comes tumbling down.

Some Conservative Political Art.

One the areas that Conservatives need to do a lot of work on is the incorporation of their political ideals through the medium of art. It's a sad fact that the liberal end of the political spectrum has effectively harnessed this medium to further its political gains.

Whats inspired this post is Ian Ironwood's Pintrest pinboard where he has posted up some manosphere artwork. Now I applaud Ian for the artwork, which is more manosphere orientated than strictly conservative, but in the spirit of constructive criticism I'd like to make a few comments.

Great political artwork lets the image do the talking with a minimum of verbiage. I thought this poster below the most powerful of his images.

Simple and to the point. The stripper sexual reference provides a great psychological contrast the sexually absent daddy daughter imagery. (? Original art by Bernie Fuchs)

I thought that these images were also quite good.

 

 

I think some of his other MGTOW posters on the other hand are much weaker. Not because because of my anti MGTOW position but the posters don't really get their massage across with enough punch. Still, Ian gets high marks for the effort.

A lot of conservative political art is clumsy and lacks punch but I thought I'd post up a few examples of what I think is exceptional good stuff.

Pure gold, this one is going to be a political classic. It's just so good. Virtually no verbiage and its lets the image do the talking. In a similar vein,  this British Conservative party poster really annoyed the Lefty's.

Saatchi and Saatchi did this one. It's modern its simple and conveys left wing menace effectively without moralising.

The next one is also great since it flips the script when it comes to the Left's championing of minorities.

Now, I've always been a fan of humor and the art of making your opponent look like an idiot. I think one of the things that conservative artists have a habit of is overtly moralising when trying to get the message across, this is off putting to the all but the most crude and therefore counterproductive.

Now, the point is that conservatives need to embrace art as medium to get the message across since most people don't respond to reasoned logic but rather emotional argument.  Part of the Left's success lays in the fact that it is percieved party of the "cool people", the group that most of the proletariat seek to aspire to.  This places the conservatives in a difficult position if they want to capture the arty high ground. If they try to imitate the Lefty's they play within the Left's frame, making it difficult to get their message across. Conservatives should not try and cultivate a hipster image.  It's a difficult problem but perhaps some of the Eastern European dissident art may serve as a useful springboard from which a conservative art may emerge.

This one is also good.

Finally, I've always thought this beer commercial by Steinlarger has lot going for it.

Papal Developments.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types--the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob.

 G.K.Chesterton.

Note: This is a religious post so those of an atheist disposition might want to leave now.

It appears that Pope Francis may have been surreptitiously hanging about on this blog. In this speech to some assembled priests, Francis outlines two approaches which stifle the development of the faith. Now, these comments that Francis makes are not ex cathedra, and therefore not binding on anyone, but they represent a certain strain of thought that I've noticed amongst some members of the more intelligent upper echelons of the Catholic hierarchy.

Prior to his election as Pope, Ratzinger/Benedict was colloquially known as God's Rottweiler, a sobriquet earned as result of being the inflexible orthodox enforcer of the Catholic faith.  Now it's on the record that Ratzinger, privately, deplored the modern liturgy, the liberalisation of morals and the general decline of the faith which followed Vatican 2, yet, he never either privately criticised it, and in fact many times reaffirmed it's goodness  privately ,publicly and on theological grounds. I imagine that his failure to "turn back the changes" must have infuriated the traditionalists who initially thought his election was going to put things back on track.

It's also interesting to see the current pope, Francis, in some ways echo his sentiments. Firstly, in the audience where his confirmation of the the "gay lobby" was noted, Francis, also made some disparaging remarks with regard to the traditionalist practices of some members of the Church. Francis, it seems, is operationg with a similar mindset to Ratzinger in that he  recognises that the further development of doctrine involves steering a middle course between errors of traditionalism and "adolescent progressivism";

This freedom of the Spirit requires embarking on “a path of continuous discernment to do the will of God” and this can frighten us, the Holy Father observed.

He warned that the fear that comes with this way “brings two temptations with it.”

The first, is to “go backwards” to say that, “it’s possible up to this point, but impossible beyond this point” which ends up becoming “let’s stay here.”

It’s a fear that “it is better to play it safe.”........

........ The second temptation that comes with relying on the Holy Spirit’s guidance is to engage in “adolescent progressivism,” which ends up sending things off-track.

The temptation, Pope Francis said, lies in seeing a culture and “not detaching ourselves from it.”

“We take the values of this culture a little bit from here, a little bit from there ... They want to make this law? Alright, let’s go ahead and make this law. Let’s broaden the boundaries here a little.”

“In the end, let me tell you, this is not true progress,” he stated.

I think its safe to say that here he is criticising both traditionalists and progressive factions within the Church. Now, this may surprise many orthodox Catholics who tend to blame all the ills of the Church on the progressives, little realising that the traditionalist element is the Trojan horse in Church affairs. It's quite true that the liberal factions of Catholicsm have effectively abandandoned the Church but it is my feeling that should the Church liberalise some of its teachings, not in response to societal pressure but doctrinal development, it will be the Trads who will abandon it in droves.

G.K. Chesterton once said that Catholicism will end up keeping the "best bits" of Protestantism, and I suspect any new doctrinal developments will be "Protestant" in nature I think that the Church will move towards a more "Church assisted" rather then "Church mediated" relationship between man and God. I also think that there will be more room for "rigorous* conscience", and I feel that there may be further developments in sexual ethics and economics. On the other hand, things like the prohibitions against adultery, fornication, abortion  and homosexuality will be reaffirmed again.  I think we're in for interesting times.

*Rigorous conscience means a conscience that is properly formed, not merely opinionated. Note, to both trads and liberals. A properly formed conscience is open to the truth, no matter how inconvenient it is.

Democratic Man Has No Balls.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin.

In my mind there is no doubt that Islamic terrorists are currently making attempts to cause harm to the U.S. and other countries in the West. I have no doubt, either, that should they obtain access to nuclear or biological weapons they would use them in an indiscriminate fashion for the maximum psychological effect.  The threat against the West is real and it is only a matter of time till the Radical Islamicists pull off another spectacular stunt. Many will die.

It is also true that the majority of mass shootings in the United States are committed by individuals with high powered semi-automatic weapons. The current attempts to ban them will, in my mind, significantly reduce the risk of mass shootings such as were seen in Colombine and Sandy Hook. The removal of these weapons in Australia has now meant that there have been none since the Port Arthur massacre.

Now the reason I bring these points up is with regard to the interplay, in democracy, between personal safety and individual liberty. I have no doubt that the recent PRISM revelations (and Echelon, Trailblazer, etc.) are all programs which have been implemented to protect American (and allied citizens). I have no doubt that they probably have saved peoples lives but the question I ask myself is, "at what expense?" The price, I think, is now too high.

Take the proposed semi-automatic firearm restrictions. This is very complex topic (Why is it that Americans are more trigger happy than other nationalities when it comes to mass shootings? But that's for a different time.) but any elemental reading of the U.S. constitution would lead to the conclusion that U.S. citizens have the right to bare arms. I'm no constitutional scholar, but it appears to me that the founding fathers intended for the citizens of the U.S. to fight back against their government if it became too uppity.  The U.S. constitution is front loaded with an ever present potential for war of the U.S. citizenry against the U.S. government.

The U.S. constitution was founded in a time where modern antibiotics, anaesthetics and surgical techniques were non-existent. War was horrible, yet, the fathers of the U.S. felt that the mass slaughter that wound entail should Americans choose to defend their liberty against the government was worthwhile price to pay. The founding fathers valued their liberty more than their security.

I can't imagine Ben Franklin, surveying the tragedy of Sandy Hook, suddenly proposing a semi-automatic ban. He too would have been moved by the horror, but accepted it as a consequence of having an armed citizenry.  The fact that some citizens misused their right to bear arms was no reason to take away the rights from those who didn't-- especially in the name of public safety. It would of been a trade-off he would have been unprepared to take.

Which brings me to the PRISM program. I have no doubts that it has bought benefits to the U.S. state and the West, but at the expense of having every electromagnetic enabled communication monitored. Nothing is private any more. The U.S. government's argument, that there is clear oversight of the program is of no comfort, especially to anyone who has any first hand knowledge of public servants or government officials. I mean, after all, wasn't the IRS mean to be impartial?* Most congressmen, not exactly examples of moral rectitude, have the vaguest idea of what is going on. How do they police the system? More importantly, what happens when these morally ambiguous beings take control of it.

PRISM, Echelon, the Gun control debate and nanny state rules are all enabled by a democracy which values safety over liberty. History has repeatedly shown that those who own the guns make the rules and those without the guns have to take it. Having everyone disarmed and having the government spy on everyone else is a great thing until the government becomes tyrannical, then it's too late.

The terrible tragedy here is that of Edward Snowden. He has given up friends, family, liberty and a hot girlfriend (who seems to be exploiting her situation with a lot of raunchy pics) in order to "inform the people." The problem is that the people are the problem and  seem quite happy with the situation as it is. His efforts were in vain; the people prefer safety to liberty. Democratic man has no balls.

*Just to show that this isn't a Left vs Right thing. Political opponents in the U.S have traditionally used the IRS to their persecute their opponents. Richard Nixon sent in the IRS to hound Curtis Le May after his failed attempt with Wallace in the 1968 elections.

Herman is Hottie whilst Dagfin is a Dud.

Appropriate to my recent posts on the relationship of fascism to masculinity is the relationship of the women in the countries occupied by the Nazi's and the invading soldiers. The other day I purchased a copy of Keith Lowe's excellent (if thoroughly depressing) book, Savage Continent, a book about the violence and killing that occurred in Europe following the end of the Second World War.  Lowe has an interesting passage in the book where he presents some data on the degree of collaboration between some of the local women and the Nazi's.

Many women across Europe embarked on such relationships with Germans during the war. They justified their actions by saying that "relationships" based on love' were 'not a crime', that 'matters of the heart' have nothing to do with 'politics', or that "love is blind'.  But in the eyes of their communities, this was no excuse. Sex, if it was with a German, was political. It came to represent the subjugation of the continent as a whole: a female France, Denmark or Holland being ravished by a male Germany. just as importantly, as I have already mentioned in Chapter 4, it also came to represent the emasculation of European men. These men, who had already shown themselves impotent against the military might of Germany, now found themselves communally cuckolded by their own womenfolk.

The number of sexual relationships that took place between European women and Germans during the war is quite staggering. In Norway as many as 10  per cent of women aged between fifteen and thirty had German boyfriends during the war. If the statistics on the number of children born to German soldiers are anything to go by, this was by no means unusual: the numbers of women who slept with German men across western Europe can easily be numbered in the hundreds of thousands sands.

Resistance movements in occupied countries came up with all kinds of excuses for the behaviour of their women and girls. They characterised women who slept with Germans as ignorant, poor, even mentally defective. They claimed that women were raped, or that they only slept with Germans out of economic necessity. While this was undoubtedly the case for some, recent surveys show that women who slept with German soldiers came from all classes and all walks of life.

On the whole European women slept with Germans not because they were forced to, or because their own men were absent  or because they needed money or food - but simply because they found the strong, 'knightly' image of the German soldiers intensely attractive, especially compared to the weakened impression they had of their own menfolk. In Denmark, for example, wartime pollsters were shocked to discover that 51 per cent of Danish women openly admitted to finding German men more attractive than their own compatriots.

Nowhere was this need more keenly felt than in France. In a nation where the huge, almost entirely male German presence was matched by a corresponding absence of French men - 2 million of whom were prisoners or workers in Germany - it is unsurprising that the occupation itself was often seen in sexual terms. France had become a 'slut', giving herself up to Germany with the Vichy government acting as her pimp. As jean-Paul Sartre noted after the war, even the collaborationist press tended to represent the relationship between France and Germany as a union 'in which France was always playing the part of the 'woman'.

There are several interesting facets to this passage. Firstly, fraternisation will occur wherever young people meet, however this was not normal fraterniation.  The women were fraternising with men who had just subjugated their country and shipped off their men to prisoner of war camps. Secondly, it's interesting to see how the traditional explanations were, even then, being used to justify the behaviour of women. No one, it seems, could bear the thought that the reason why so many women slept with the men was because the Germans were hot whilst their menfolk were not.

Just to put this into perspective, the wiki site on war children estimates the number of babies born to German fathers  (i.e occupiers) in France at between 75,000-200,000. Between 10,000-50,000 in Holland.  Whereas a full ten years of occupation in Germany by the allied forces produced 66000 war babies. I know the figures are very rough but it would appear that the Germans had the overwhelming advantage in more than just armor when they invaded France.

One of the factors which may be correlated to the preference of Danish women for Germans may reside in the fact that the Germans had far more martial spirit. The Danish Army lost 16 killed trying to defend Denmark. Guess their women didn't really find them that sexy after that performance.