The West has broken down into a gangster-land of sorts, with the realms of centralized governments and money-center banking collapsing into moral chaos. I’ve written often about this. But… If the West is so disordered, morally and politically and so on—`morally’ actually covers all human social possibilities, why don’t the gangsters just take over in … [Read more…]
Jose Ortega y Gasset “was a Spanish philosopher, and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century, while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and republicanism infiltrated by communist agents, and dictatorship of a stabilizing and fascist-tinged sort. His philosophy has been characterized as a “philosophy of life” that “comprised a long-hidden beginning … [Read more…]
The problems of the United States, and of some other countries in the West—maybe most, are deeper than are usually acknowledged. I’ll start with this claim: Crimea is more truly part of the Russian realm than California is part of the Anglo-American realm. American leaders are ignorant, functionally stupid, and maybe innately stupid; they are … [Read more…]
I’ll not write too much about this issue I’ve addressed before, but I’ll go further than before on one detail: the United States government is barely such a thing and perhaps it’s leading us into a fragmentation which might lead to multiple governments of some sort or a civil war or some periods of each. … [Read more…]
The Orthodox and Catholic Christian patriarchs of Syria have made a plea to Western countries and their citizens, especially to their fellow Christians in the West. This statement, follows on similar pleas over the years by Christians, including Orthodox and Catholic bishops, from various countries in Southwest Asia, a region which we Westerners, especially Americans, … [Read more…]
Pope Francis has recently caused a stir by allegedly claiming there to be no Hell and even possibly once claiming there to be no Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven. See Francis, Spin Doctor To Himself. His Latest Exploits. I also have speculated there be no Hell and tend strongly to that view, but I’m a firm … [Read more…]
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote stories depicting a moral sickness found deep inside the souls of New England Puritans, fearing he himself was infected by this strange malady which turned warm blood into ice-water. Great historians, such as John K. Fairbank (who mentioned in The Great Chinese Revolution, 1800-1985 that American opium-smugglers in China, all from the … [Read more…]
Short answer: conspiratorial worldviews and attitudes are necessary to preserve the fiction that the United States has no ruling class. Who were and are the members of this ruling class? They are the ones who went to the well-funded secondary academies of the Northeast, such as Phillips Exeter Academy and all the many with less … [Read more…]
This essay will seem more of a stretch as a case study in the problems of dualism, but there is a method to my stretchy madness. The general point will be: what we see as evil acts by human beings, individual or communal, are the results of behaviors often quite consistent with the bad part … [Read more…]
The doctrine of “free-will” and the similar doctrine positing an immaterial “mind” or “soul” seem to be an attempt to avoid the limitations and constraints of biology, of an organism in this world which is a highly particularized realm within Creation. We wish to rise above such mere physical processes as hormonal flows and—at a … [Read more…]