Torah and Jewish Idea > Torah and Jewish Idea
Ticket to Heaven Daily Dose
Hrvatski Noahid:
Thus, as Rand laid out in Atlas Shrugged in great detail, the honest producers of society are manipulated by shame and Nietzschean slave morality values into complying with people whose only way of providing for themselves is through this manipulation. Her proposed solution, a strike, would force everyone to face reality without the benefit of their privileged delusions. Elements of this can already be seen in Western society, as evidenced by noticeable drops in North American military recruitment, a lack of people willing to work minimum-wage jobs, and the growing popularity of alternative working arrangements, entrepreneurial activity, and homesteading lifestyles.
Although the Hunger Games story has reached hundreds of millions globally, many of whom certainly enjoyed it, the buzz over a female action protagonist seems to have eclipsed the fact that the Capitol, a decadent utopia that exists on the backs of the other districts, and which engages in televised child sacrifice on a regular basis to satisfy their cultural idols, is much more representative of the modern Westerner than it would be of the right-wing fascists many nations fret over.
Indeed, the utopian visions characteristic of the West before the World Wars has been subverted by neo-Marxist intellectuals, maniac psychologists, and power-hungry elites who have corrupted human nature, stunted intellectual development, encouraged the development of decadent value structures, abandoned history, and have proven themselves willing to even mutilate children and force-medicate adults.
Even as the West takes its final steps to emulate China’s dedication to electronic surveillance and population control, a measure of solace can be found in the fact that these ideologies, isms, idols, and other false narratives are inherently unsustainable. For example, a small cadre of scientists and activists have kept track of all relevant publications on homosexuality and kept them compiled on hidden corners of the internet – a single look at this mountain of evidence, or even a chance viewing of a video on YouTube, is enough to collapse the fifty years of false homosexual narratives in minutes.
Even the vaccine narratives that have been relentlessly pushed by all levels of government as well as their willing idiots in the media are proving to be unsustainable, as the majority of people in North America are declining further boosters. This happened within years.
Aside from his attacks on traditional European values, Nietzsche lamented the rational structures of Western society and longed for a return to Dionysian, or intuitive, ways of living. Although this must be weighted against the obvious need to be connected to reality and the value of rational inquiry, the loss of the West’s intuitive capacities is of significant interest. All too often, people are encouraged to “be rational” and to mistrust their intuition, which, as history demonstrates, is often the very capacity they need to be able to escape the high modernist dream. Indeed, the artists and visionaries of Western society have long been the ones to criticize it most thoroughly. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 91-92)
Hrvatski Noahid:
George Carlin’s social commentary is an example, as is The Matrix, dystopian novels like Brave New World and 1984, and even more contemporary pieces such as Ben Stiller’s surprisingly thoughtful The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
If society were to listen to George Carlin, rather than laugh at him, the end result would likely be a strike or an uprising of some kind. Yet, although his messages and comedy are wildly popular in North America, or at least were at one time, nothing has changed. Why is this the case?
The problem, again, is with metaphysics, which determine values, which in turn determine behavior. If the behavior has not changed, it is because the values have not changed – and if the values have not changed, it means that the person’s understanding of reality has not been sufficiently altered. Given that a great deal of time and energy has been spent by established interests to corrupt the West’s understanding of human nature, it seems most helpful to begin there.
As Abraham Maslow lamented in his 1968 memorandum, too much time has been spent focusing on the negative aspects of the human experience – the Christian original sin, the psychoanalytic trauma – rather than on the positive aspects and the potentialities. Thus, in order to begin to address the damage that has been done by the Western project, it becomes necessary to reconstruct a new psychology from first principles in the hard sciences, expand that understanding to group and social dynamics, and finally investigate some of the fundamental claims made by evolutionary scientists to determine what is true about the species and the universe.
By developing a more correct understanding of human nature and its implications in this way, the West can begin to heal its metaphysical corruption, develop a value system that is not decadent and is finally in line with reality, and begin to develop the behaviors and systems needed to establish a sustainable utopia. As has been suggested throughout popular culture, perhaps most famously Disney’s The Lion King, once we remember who we are, we will be able to step into our full potential and become everything that we could be. Indeed, everything that the sun touches is ours. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 92-93)
Hrvatski Noahid:
“We are called to become more and more human; we must discover the freedom to go beyond limits imposed on us by our world and seek fulfillment.
In the beginning we are what we are given. By midlife, when we have finally learned to stand on our own two feet, we learn that to complete our lives, we are called to give to others so that when we leave this world, we can be what we have given.
Death, from this perspective, can be made our final gift. We believe it daily, but is it not possible, that by living our lives, we create something fit to add to the store from which we came?
… our whole duty may to clarify and increase what we are, to make our consciousness a finer quality. The effort of one’s entire life would be needed to return laden to our source.”
(Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 96)
Hrvatski Noahid:
In much the same way that a headstrong teenager might learn tough lessons in a schoolyard brawl, so too will Western civilization’s utopian attempts continue to be frustrated by reality if it does not first develop a robust understanding of human nature. Indeed, hidden beneath the metaphysics of Western societies lies an incomplete and shallow understanding of human psychology, which not only led to the many catastrophic failures of communism in the twentieth century, but have proven to be a demon seed planted just underneath the Declaration of Independence’s pursuit of happiness.
Thankfully, as the result of tremendous advances in physics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and some fields of psychology, it is possible to ground the complexities of human mental activity in the hard sciences, extrapolate those insights to social activity, and therefore develop a comprehensive and robust framework of boundaries to guide the rebirth of Western civilization. Indeed, by understanding human nature through the laws of physics and information flow, it becomes possible to develop insights about how to sustainably optimize an individual human’s life.
From a scientific perspective, beginning with the laws of physics is considered the strongest approach for theoretical work, as these laws are widely accepted to constrain all other branches of science such as chemistry, geology, and biology. This means such an approach is ideal for handling fields like psychology and sociology, which blend subjective and objective methods in a warped social context and become far removed from reality as a result.
“[We must] become who we are - human beings who are new, unique ... who give themselves laws, who create themselves! To that end we must become the best students and discoverers of everything lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order become creators in this sense ... So, long live physics!”
Although a physics-based approach is the strongest, it is also the most unforgiving – for example, a review of the universe’s laws may reveal that some much-loved aspects of Western civilization, such as various freedoms considered sacrosanct by post-Renaissance liberalism, may not be tenable for individuals or sustainable in groups. Indeed, the notion that there might be existential constraints on human power and freedom, despite our incredible technological advances, could be a bitter pill to swallow for many but a necessary medicine if the West is to survive.
It is common in Western thought to proceed directly from metaphysics, or what is, to ethics, or what ought to be done. However, an underappreciated-but-necessary waypoint along this path is the domain of aesthetics, which concerns not just the appreciation of artistic activity, but the subjective choice of values that underlies whether something is good or bad; beautiful or not beautiful. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 97)
Nachus:
:usa+israel: :fist:
Kol hakavod on these interesting, well
thought out posts reflecting a conside-
arable level of gravitas and “intelligentsia!”
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