Indigenous Ways of Knowing?

September 1, 2018 The Free Aristarch

Once again, the brilliant minds at University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, better known as OISE, has graced the world with another one of their hair-brained theories. It’s called Indigenous Ways of Knowing and it’s coming to schools near you.

OISE is rallying teachers to poison our children with these ludicrously ~~pre~~– non-historical ways of thought.

CLICK HERE to be forwarded to the module on OISE’s website designed to educate teachers on what is and how to teach Indigenous Ways of Knowing.

What exactly is Indigenous Ways of Knowing? Well, buckle up because for anybody with half a brain it’s going to be a bumpy ride as we dive into the seven topics of this half-witted module.

TOPIC ONE “What is Indigenous Knowledge?”

So, what exactly is Indigenous Knowledge? Your guess seems to be as good as anybody else’s. Our mis-informed friends at OISE don’t even define what they’re talking about. Like many of the buzzwords taught at our universities, they’re about triggering certain emotions as opposed to thoughts.

To quote the module, “In this module, Indigenous knowledge is described rather than defined. There are sources and characteristics that are shared among diverse Indigenous peoples but a hesitance to define it in one limiting way.”

No worries, let’s just cut them some slack and carry on with the module. But wait! What is the reason they give for not being able to describe what they are talking about? Oh right…. it’s because of those rotten Westerners….

According to the module, “Indigenous knowledge definitions can be problematic because they often use the dominant knowledge system (Western knowledge) as a frame of reference.”

See what I mean about triggering emotions instead of thoughts? They even blame the West for not being able to articulate their own thoughts. Is Western guilt hitting rock bottom? Or is it as the Irish say, “if you think you’ve hit rock bottom, wait a while and you’ll hear a knock from bellow.”

Then, they quote Dr. Marie Battiste‘s description of Indigenous knowledge. She claims that “Indigenous knowledge compromises the complex set of technologies developed and sustained by Indigenous civilizations. Often oral and symbolic, it is transmitted through the structure of Indigenous languages and passes on to the next generation through modeling, practice, and animation, rather than through written word.”

The module then states “Indigenous knowledge is embedded in community practices, rituals, and relationships. As a living knowledge, it is holistic, contextual, and relational.”

In other words, Indigenous knowledge is comprised of stone aged tools, pre-historic oral traditions, and rituals.

TOPIC TWO “Characteristics of Indigenous Knowing”

Finally, it’s time to dive into the descriptions given about the characteristics of Indigenous knowing. The characteristics of indigenous knowing are that it is “personal, orally transmitted, experiential, holistic, and narrative.”

What do these folks mean when they say that Indigenous knowledge is personal?

They mean “no one person has the truth… With multiple perceptions at the core, indigenous knowledge actualizes itself in context….thus indigenous knowledge is highly dynamic.”

Translation: more of that Post-modern garbage juice which claims that there is no real truth and that “everything’s, like, your, like, opinion man.”

If there’s no “real” truth, and everybody knows just as much as everybody else, then why are we paying you to teach us this garbage? If the students know as much as the teacher, why should they show up to class (or take the time to study this absurd module)?

What do these folks mean when they say that Indigenous Ways of Knowing is orally transmitted?

To quote the module, “Oral tradition is not a precursor to literate traditions. They are simply different ways of knowledge keeping.”

I think that they might have put the wrong herb in the peace pipe on this one. Oral tradition is not a precursor to literate tradition? What are they talking about?!

Do they even know what history, the study of written records, means? Or what pre-historic societies are? Do they not understand that people spoke to each other before they invented script and started to write things down?

I feel obliged to remind you that these people are the teachers of your children’s teachers!

What do these folks mean when they say that “Indigenous Ways of Knowing” are experiential?

Well, the module claims, “The land is alive, the only way to know that is to be on the land. The senses can know more deeply and concretely than knowledge gained though reading or being told.”

I’m not going to lie, there is some truth in that claim. One only has to read a bit of Walt Whitman to sympathize with this position. But that being said, I severely question how deeply one can understand a blade of grass just by holding it, as opposed to learning about it in a botany text book. Furthermore, it is very questionable that holding it, seeing, and tasting it provides a “deeper” understanding.

What do these folks mean when they say that “Indigenous Ways of Knowing” are holistic?

The module defines Indigenous knowledge as holistic because it “brings together internal and external worlds, the physical and the spiritual.”

Hold up….

Last time I checked, The Canadian Public School Board was a secular board. Then why are we telling teachers to introduce Native Spirituality into the classroom? Isn’t the entire idea of secularism the right to be free of religious rule and religious teaching?

Is telling teachers to teach Native Spirituality fair to other spiritual denominations?

For example, The Orthodox Church of America claims to be holistic. Orthodox also believe their teachings are universal and unite the external and internal parts of ourselves. As strict monists, they believe in the existence of only one world (that the natural and supernatural are united as one in the same world).

Ironically, the OCA also has a disproportionately high number of aboriginals, particularly the Alaskan Kodiak naitives, in the hierarchy of their church.

Should teachers be allowed, or rather encouraged, to bring in American Orthodox priests to teach their children about the “wonders of creation” and the “Orthodox Ways of Knowing?”

If Indigenous Ways of Knowing are spiritual, then like other spiritual teachings it doesn’t belong in a secular classroom.

If Buddhists and Orthodox Christians have to leave lessons about their incense usage at home, Indigenous Ways of knowing should leave stories about the “sacred prayers” of the peace pipe at home as well.

What do these folks mean when they say Indigenous Ways of Knowing is narrative?

They claim that “Indigenous knowledge is conveyed using a narrative. Stories contain the knowledge that is needed to live in a good way. Transmitting vital teachings without preaching.”

That sounds like it’s OK, until you start to actually think about it. Hate to break to these guys, but telling moral stories is one of the oldest forms of preaching. It’s what that Jesus guy was doing when he spoke in parables.

All this shows is that they want to preach to children in everything but name.

TOPIC THREE “Sources of Indigenous Knowledge”

The module lists “1. Traditional knowledge, 2. Empirical Knowledge, 3. Revealed knowledge” as the sources of Indigenous knowledge.

First off, how do we know that what the Indigenous think is “traditional knowledge” actually is what the Indigenous pre-European contact actually believed?

If everything is passed down from word of mouth, then how do we know that pre-European-contact-indigenous groups actually believed the stories that we currently claim are “traditional” native stories? Isn’t it possible that some of these stories are post-contact historical retro-projections?

Second, they’re misusing the word “Empirical.” Empiricism is an epistemological philosophy invented by Europeans invented in the 17th and 18th century.

If all they mean by “Empirical Knowledge” is that the Indigenous saw, felt, smelt, heard, and tasted things then whop-tie-do. There’s nothing special about that.

Welcome to the human condition. It certainly doesn’t make the indigenous way of knowing anymore distinct from anybody else’s way of knowing.

Third, how are we going to teach our children the Indigenous Way of Knowing if it comes to us in dreams and revelations?

The module defines “Revealed Knowledge” as “dreams, visions, and intuitions.” all of which are un-teachable.

What happened to citations? Verifiable and falsifiable hypotheses? The scientific method? Can teachers consider knowledge credible simply because it came to them in a dream?

TOPIC FOUR “Indigenous Axiology, Values, and Ethics “

In this part of the module, the focus is on the values and ethics within Indigenous Ways of Knowing.

There is nothing here that Ancient Greek Virtue philosophers didn’t already propose. Above all else, at least when the ancient Greeks spoke about ethics, they could write their thoughts down and have future generations check their notes.

This way each generation wasn’t working from scratch and from the time torn tatters of broken miscommunications found in all oral traditions.

After all, to quote the module, “the way one one comes to know is as important as what one comes to know.”

TOPIC FIVE “Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science Side by Side”

Here comes the fun part.

The module is actually putting this Indigenous Ways of Knowing nonsense on par with Western Science.

The module starts by denouncing science as nothing more than a Eurocentric and Imperialist tool to push aside the ideas of other cultures.

“The modern Western World developed in tandem with the expansion of European colonial empires. With colonial imperialism came an emphasis on the centrality and superiority of European theories and ideas also known as Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism has used Western science to discredit and delegitimize and marginalize Indigenous knowledges … This process has also been described as Cognitive imperialism (Battiste, 1986)”

Let us concede that Europeans turned to tribal peoples and spoke out against superstition, regional folk lore, and mislead mysticism. Is that really so bad?

Let us further concede that Europeans were even quick to push aside useful knowledge possessed by the natives because of pompous and ignorant racism. Does that mean that suddenly the epistemology of Western Science is on par with Indigenous Ways of Knowing?

Is all epistemology, all ways of knowing things, equal? Of course not.

If not, how does Indigenous Ways of Knowing compare with Western Science. Luckily for us, the module measures them both against one another in a Venn diagram.

^Cited from the geniuses at OISE^

The module explains how the Venn diagram presents “characteristics of both systems side by side to illustrate the different emphases, assumptions and outcomes of knowing within each system.”

Notice how they didn’t put “holistic” in the middle. Are they claiming that Western science, which studies the universal laws that permeate everything from to quarks and galaxies, is not holistic? Do they even know what Western Science is?

Apparently not, considering how they put “practical experimentation” as exclusively indigenous. It’s not like Western Science conducts any practical experimentation … Oh wait! It does! That’s what laboratories are for!

Who do they think comes up with the vaccines, generates new space aged materials, and increases agricultural yields?!

I’m just glad that they recognized that Western Science, and not Traditional Naive Knowledge, possess “global verification; hypothesis falsification; quantitative written records; communication of procedures, evidence, and theory; mathematical models;” and most importantly “skepticism” because God knows belief in Indigenous Knowledge requires blind faith.

The fact that they didn’t put “limited to evidence and explanation within the physical world” in middle just goes to show that “Traditional Native Knowledge” is just more religious neo-paganism.

Does this belong in a secular school system?

TOPIC 6 & 7 “Indigenous Knowledge and Learning, Re-imagining Education” & “Suggested Activities”

In these parts of the module, they argue that educators should “Re-imagine Education” and conduct activities with their students on “Indigenous Ways of Knowing.”

This includes sharing “with your fellow learners this living representation of First Nations Holistic Life Long Learning model Created by the Canada Council on Learning and the Aboriginal Learning Centre.”

Remember that this module is designed for the teachers of your children.

Is anybody considering home school?

DISCLAIMER

The module, like any faulty product, comes with a disclaimer.

It states, “Remember that the boundaries between the two are not so hard and fast and that both kinds of knowledge can exhibit different aspects. Most importantly, there are instances where indigenous knowledge and Western Science overlap.”

Personally, I completely agree. But insomuch as they define describe what Indigenous Ways of Knowledge is in contrast to Western Science, the more I feel like I need chemotherapy to get rid of this mental cancer.

The photo shows, “Le guerrier Iroquois,” by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, hand-tinted etching, done in 1797.

Self-Annihilation?

April 1, 2018 The Free Aristarch

Knowledge has been successfully hijacked – because its purpose is no longer truth. We live in a world governed by a particular worldview that no longer sees truth as the foremost necessity to the good life.

This leaves only feelings which alone are truly authentic. In other words, opinions are far better than thought, and reason is merely another system of oppression. All previous pursuits of learning were therefore merely constructs contrived by dominant groups to sustain and extend their power over the oppressed.

Such is the post-truth world that we now inhabit, where reality can only be governed by human emotion, which apparently demands socio-political justice for the “historically” downtrodden and ignored.

This is often labeled as, “postmodernism,” but this is inaccurate. The hydra indeed has many heads.

In fact, it’s best to call it, The Grand-Conglomerate Ideology (GCI), whose texture is woven from divergent threads, namely, Marxism, relativism, feminism, eugenics, corporatism, Stalinism, Hiterlism, Protestantism, secularism, scientism, multiculturalism, atheism, postfoundationalism, naturalism, technologism, transhumanism, transgenderism, environmentalism, progressivism, and nihilism.

The tentacles of this beast reach into all facets of life. The very purpose of western society is now simply an extension of GCI. Nothing lies outside of it. Even our habit of mind no longer makes sense without GCI. Our society exists to justify it, and our politics and laws sustain it. All validations of human existence can now only exist in the purview of GCI.

People may content themselves with one or more threads of its latticework, but that it is merely the play of labels, for each thread leads to the same telos.

And what is that telos – what is the purpose, or chief end of GCI?

Very simply – annihilation, or what the Buddhists call nirvana. We have only to look at the “virtues” which are held up as laudatory – abortion, anti-genderism, anti-nationalism, antinatalism. Why are each of these an inherent good, when each of them also denies humanity its dignity?

But why annihilation? Why the deep loathing of humanity itself? Again, very simply because we have managed to relegate the transcendent into the realm of the ridiculous. In other words, when humanity denies God, it stops being human, and can no longer justify its own existence. Its ideal no longer becomes life (both physical and ghostly), but its very opposite – that is, death.

When we can no longer believe in a panoramic purpose for all of humanity, we veer into a purpose closer to hand – murder in all its manifestations. Why do all tyrants want to kill as many people as possible? Why the carnage of totalitarian states in the twentieth-century?

The spilling of blood is a very necessary element in humanity’s worship of itself. This is why human sacrifice was an essential component of paganism, for the pagan gods were simply extensions of humanity. It’s violence alone that makes us feel human when we no longer know how to look beyond ourselves. All this was once known as, “evil.”

Is this what Simone Weil meant when she called Aristotle “the bad tree that bore bad fruit?” Aristotle turned the human gaze inwards, and by doing so, he mechanized thought, made it a system. All of creation thus became an enclosed system, a self-contained micro-world functioning in an endless plethora of other systems.

But so what? And more importantly, what is to be done (to borrow a phrase form Nikolai Chernyshevsky)?

First question first – so what? In the words of Rémi Brague, “If God doesn’t exist, then why should humanity exist?” We may content ourselves with diversions like saving the planet, or seeking social justice and the like. But this is only delaying the more obvious question – what’s the point of being alive? Should the planet be saved and humanity destroyed?

These may appear to be stark queries, but they do point us to the very heart of our darkness – we no longer really believe that we should continue to exist, because we no longer believe that life has any true purpose. Everything else is a diversion until nirvana.

Second, what is to be done? But to really answer this question we have to accept that humanity actually has a purpose on this planet – and a life beyond it. Fighting the hydra requires far more than clever slogans; it requires that we return value to that which is moral.

Given our deep addiction to “-isms,” we have made ourselves morally bankrupt – in other words, we have made ourselves receptive to all kinds of foolishness, for though we might have displaced God as the giver of meaning, we have been unable to replace him with anything meaningful. None of the “’-isms” can assume the role of god, no matter how hard their valiant followers may try. Therein lies the various conflicts of our time.

As the thought of John Hare shows, humanity cannot be moral without God – it can certainly try (by seeking rights and justice), but it will fail because there is an unbridgeable gap between the human ability for goodness and the human duty to do the good.

Why be good? Ability and duty can only come together via God, in that morality must a purpose – not a reward, but a purpose. Here people often misunderstand God as some dispenser of rewards and punishment. That is a very childish view, though it does serve to advance one strand of GCI (atheism).

Given the omnipresent hydra, humanity must return to its root, which is God. But not any god – only the God of the Judeo-Christian faith. God has made us to live life through morality, and we should live this way because He has made us so. A life outside morality is not human at all – it’s not even bestial. It’s meaningless, for even beasts have meaning. Only man can give himself meaninglessness.

To continue with Hare, we must answer two important questions – Can we be good? And, why should we be good? Neither question can be answered without God.

To return to GCI, it’s now easy to see that it is an attempt to find a substitute for God, an all-inclusive transcendence which might provide some sort of God-less meaning to life.

However, humanity is incapable of providing justification for itself, let alone why it must be good. GCI quickly erodes into tyrannical tribalism, where baser desires of winning and subduing become foremost, because humanity cannot free itself from its condition to create truth. Humanity can only discover truth, not create it.

Likewise, humanity cannot create morality; it can only live within it, or outside it, because it’s one of the necessities of human existence like air and water.

The first step in breaking free from the grip of the hydra is to destroy the ground in which it’s rooted. Since the GCI is rooted in the education system, citizens needs to dismantle the entire education system which has now become nothing mora than an intricate mind-abuse system that destroys the minds of the young.

Parents need to stop sending their children into the maws of this Moloch. They need to stop sacrificing their children upon the high altar of GCI.

Instead, parents need to build independent schools, colleges, universities where their children may once again learn the richer form of human life – one rooted firmly in the morality guaranteed by the Judeo-Christian God.

In other words, parents alone have the ability to starve the monster of CGI to death. Otherwise, the beast will only grow more and more powerful, with each child that it devours. All of society needs to say – enough!

The photo shows, “The Death of Chatterton,” by Henry Wallis, painted in 1856.

The Abuse Of History Is The Abuse Of Humanity

March 1, 2018 The Free Aristarch

What is history good for? Should it serve truth, or should it promote ideology? Some may argue that everything is ideology – but that is simply lazy thinking, which is typical of postmodernism. How can notions of socio-political action determine all of reality?

Everything cannot be ideology because there is such a thing as truth which remains unsullied by ideology. What does this mean?

The twin pillars of truth are morality and beauty, neither of which are the consequence of ideology. In other words, truth cannot be ideology because it has nothing to do with human action and does not derive from it (humans can only absorb truth and beauty, like lungs need air).

Truth, thus, is not a derivation – but a manifestation of eternity, which is truth.

This may sound nonsensical, but it really isn’t. Here’s how…

Truth is Logos – the eternal structure of reality, both physical and spiritual. This structure permeates all of life, guiding it to its true and final purpose, or end.

The process of getting to the final end is physical reality. The arrival into the final end, the true purpose, is spiritual reality. Existence cannot be otherwise. It has nothing to do with degraded notions, such as, “ideology.”

The great heresy of modern-day thinking is to ignore, or deride, spiritual reality by claiming that it simply does not exist, or is akin to childish fairy stories.

But whether one acknowledges truth or not makes no difference whatsoever, since truth has nothing to do with ideology…the sun continues to shine, and dark energy behaves as it must.

This means that the concern of history, therefore, is not only human actions and their consequences, in order to explain man to men – but also the interaction of humanity with truth – to explain man to eternity.

In other words, when history considers human actions and their consequences, it is engaged in both physical and spiritual reality. This is why Herodotus is correct when he explains history as cyclical, for the truth, or eternal pattern of history, is occurrence and therefore recurrence.

This means that human handiwork may also be construed into patterns, which are truths, in that these patterns are linked to the moral, or eternal, life of mankind. In other words, in considering human actions and their consequences, history either shows the workings of morality, or its absence.

Such is the use of history.

But there is also another, myopic method of analyzing human actions, which holds truth to be nothing more than political expedience. This method sees the past as a vast storehouse of examples to be trundled out whenever needed to justify ideology.

In other words, there is no intrinsic truth in history – it is just a vast array of information which may be manipulated for rhetorical advantage.

Such is the abuse of history.

Given that the preferred default position in the West is historical amnesia, the abuse of history is now so prevalent that it passes for orthodoxy – and those that might point out this abuse are quickly labeled as, “revisionists.”

Thus, all history is viewed through the lens of Presentism.

Very briefly, Presentism holds that how and what we think today is right – and permanent. After us, people will, forever into eternity, think as we do. We have reached all rightness and there can be no deviation from it. Change in thinking is now impossible, because we have now achieved whatever the human mind is capable of.

Therefore, the past, because it could not think as we do, is forever wrong and must be continually judged by our superior standards so that it might be condemned. (This is one of Michel Foucault’s vilest contributions to modern thought).

In other words, history can only belong in the dustbin – because its sole purpose is to show how very wrong everything was, and how very right we now are.

A refinement of Presentism is Intersectionality (the hallmark of feminism), which seeks to uncover systems of oppression which linger in the present, like some foul odor, and which need to be eliminated by the rightness of the present.

Thus, the past has not given us anything good – only the evils of oppression.

The purpose, then, of education becomes the training of young minds to ferret out “ingrained” systems of oppression, lay them bare in the open air of social condemnation, where they may be destroyed by legal and political decrees. This is the true purpose of human life. All hail, The New Man!

This is why western education has degraded into mental abuse of children – and it remains a point of constant astonishment that parents agree to send their children to undergo such abuse (which can pass under the euphemism of “indoctrination”).

In such a world, it is the highest heresy to ask two questions – “Why?” and “What next?” Condemnation of these questions passes for “morality,” which can then justify censorship, for the best and highest form of Presentist thought is that which conforms and then affirms how and what we think today – by condemning the past.

And what is the telos of Presentism, its endgame? To make humanity as machine-like as possible. In other words, transhumanism.

This is why the sexes must be confused, and then young children taught this confusion as biological fact. This is why sexuality has been unhinged from procreation and transformed into a mechanism to achieve self-gratification.

Indeed, normal procreation is the direst sin in Presentism, which is why abortion is widely and wildly defended as an intrinsic good, and euthanasia is simply declared a human right.

Transhumanism is the true purpose of Presentism. And thus far it is succeeding very well, for it has western society in its thrall – because the acceptance of slavery is far easier than to die resisting it.

Perhaps this explains why western society continues to dive so eagerly into the dark waters of Lethe.

“An educational course in which no reference is made to religion is an absurdity” (Simone Weil).

In the same way, history without morality degrades into propaganda, and becomes an absurdity, leaving men fit only for “treasons, stratagems and spoils.”

In this way, we abuse ourselves and each other, for we practice cruelty as the highest good.

This photo shows, “The Waters of Lethe by the Plains of Elysium,” painted in 1880 by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope.

The Wealth Of The One-Percent?

November 1, 2017 The Free Aristarch

We’ve all heard the claims…

The evil “one-percent” holds most of the world’s wealth. Therefore tax the rich harder. Inequality is on the rise.

But is any of this true?

Who are the “one-percent?” How much money do “they” really have? And should their money be taken from them?

And are agencies justified in putting out media headlines like, “The richest 1% now has as much wealth as the rest of the world combined, according to Oxfam.”

Or, “Half of world’s wealth now in hands of 1% of population.”

Such claims are intentionally deceptive, since they are designed to get you to think a certain way, so that you will support a particular agenda.

This is all designed to tame and make compliant the will of the people, a process in which the media plays a high-hand by no longer reporting facts but constructing narratives which will tell you how to think.

This brings up another problem entirely – whether the job of the media is to report events, or use them to mold your will.

The deception is in the details, in the way the figures are presented, with the assumption that most people will just read the headline, pick it up as a sound-bite, and keep repeating it, as if it’s true. This is known as “the power of the media.”

This “power” is only possible as long as the people allow it to influence them. But that’s another topic entirely.

So, let’s take an honest look at the actual numbers, without an agenda.

We shall use two major sources considered the most accurate, namely, BCG (The Boston Consulting Group) and the Hurun Report.

This what the latest numbers tell us…

There are 2,257 billionaires in the world. Their ranks have increased 3 percent over the past year – and 55 percent over the last 5 years. This is the total number of the “one-percent.”

All of these billionaires are newly minted, meaning that none of them inherited wealth; they created it by their efforts. In fact, two-thirds of all the billionaires come from humble backgrounds who carved out their own financial destinies.

The total worth of these billionaires is $8 Trillion. This is an increase of 16 percent from 2016, and is greater than the entire GDP of Germany and France combined.

This combined wealth is also greater than the GDP of any other country in the world, with the exception of the USA and China.

In the USA, there are 552 billionaires, which is fewer than China, which has 609 (it added 41 new ones to its ranks, in 2016, while the USA only added 17). Both countries have half the total number of billionaires on this planet.

The source of their wealth is not only stocks but also entrepreneurship. In other words, they create more wealth each year by putting their money to work in the various regions of the world, by way of industry and trade.

Now, let’s compare this $8 Trillion of the “one-percent,” with the wealth of nations – how much each region has. This is what find (these figures are for 2016):

North America’s wealth (mostly the USA, but also Canada) totalled, $55.7 Trillion.

Western Europe’s wealth totalled, $40.5 Trillion.

Eastern Europe’s wealth came in at $3.6 Trillion.

Japan’s wealth came in at $14.9 Trillion.

Latin America’s wealth was little better than Eastern Europe, totalling, $5.4 Trillion.

The wealth of the Middle East and Africa combined totalled, $8.1 Trillion.

Asia-Pacific (mostly China) came in at $38.4 Trillion.

Thus all told, the wealth of nations totalled, $166.5 Trillion. By 2021, this figure will increase to an estimated $223.1 Trillion.

How does this compare with the combined wealth of the “one-percent?”

Taking just the annual budget of the US, for 2017, the amount that will be spent to run the nation will be $3.65 Trillion, which exceeds the total revenue ($3.21 Trillion) by 2.5 percent.

So, theoretically, if the one-percent was stripped of its entire $8 Trillion, that amount would only be enough to run the US for little more than 2 years (2.19 years to be exact).

This quick comparison points to two things.

First, the railing against the “one-percent” is pure ideology rather than practical economics.

Second, the “one-percent” acquires (and acquired) its wealth by way of the wealth of nations – that is, by the entire economic engine fueled by the labor of people. The wealth of the one-percent and the wealth of nations is inseparably linked.

In other words, the one-percent do not earn their wealth separately from the way the remainder of the people earn their incomes. Their wealth feeds into that engine, which then produces more wealth (hence growth).

These billionaires are privileged only in the fact that they have gained wealth through industry. Two-thirds of them did not inherit it.

This is not to say that there isn’t disparity and exploitation, but these are separate issues from how we are to perceive the wealthy. For a bit of perspective, here is how the wealth of nations itself divides up.

In North America, 39 percent of the population has less than a million dollars. 37 percent has $1 to $20 million. 14 percent has $20 to $100 million. And 9 percent has more than $100 million.

In Asia-Pacific, 57 percent of the people have less than a million dollars. 28 percent have $1 to $20 million. 10 percent have $20 to $100 million. And 6 percent have more than a $100 million.

In Western Europe, 70 percent of the population has less than a million dollars. 19 percent has $1 to $20 million. 3 percent has $20 to $100 million. And 8 percent has more than $100 million.

In Japan, 77 percent of the population has less than a million dollars. 20 percent has $1 to $20 million. 2 percent has $20 to $100 million. And 1 percent has more than $100 million.

In the Middle East and Africa, 44 percent of the population has less than a million dollars. 30 percent has $1 to $20 million. 18 percent has $20 to $100 million. And 8 percent has more than $100 million.

In Latin America, 54 percent of the population has less than a million dollars. 26 percent has $1 to $20 million. 10 percent has $20 to $100 million. And 9 percent has more than $100 million.

In Eastern Europe, 48 percent of the population has less than a million dollars. 19 percent has $1 to $20 million. 14 percent has $20 to $100 million. And 19 percent has more than $100 million.

When these figures are calculated on a worldwide basis, this picture emerges:

55 percent of the world’s population has less than a million dollars. 28 percent has $1 to $20 million. 9 percent has $20 to $100 million. And 8 percent has more than $100 million.

In effect, 45 percent of the world’s population is very wealthy, while a little more than half (55 percent) ranges from impoverished to very comfortable.

This means that the one-percent is really the eight-percent – and their ranks are continually growing, as new wealth is created, which propels individuals into the higher echelons of financial well-being.

In other words, prosperity is increasing rather than decreasing throughout the world.

How is this possible? Very simply by the fact that the wealth of nations is always working to earn more, and this earning increases the overall prosperity of nations and the people in them.

So, for example, in North America, the bulk of the wealth ($55.7 Trillion) resides in equities and bonds (70 percent and 16 percent respectively). Only 14 percent is in cash and deposits.

This raises a very interesting point – that the monetary policies in place today actually do create wealth – and this wealth is spreading (though not as widely as we might want it to). But the fact that monetary policies actually create and sustain wealth is important to note.

And this raises the entire topic of “fiat money” which is often the straw-man of those who think that a return to a gold-standard is preferable to the way the economies of the world work right now. (Such “critics” fail to address the fact that the wealth of nations is actually creating a lot more wealth, which is being distributed to more and more people).

Indeed, the middle class is growing and increasing rather than dying (those that propagate gloom-and-doom scenarios, including most politicians, are ideologues rather than economic realists).

The fact that the vast amount of wealth created in the US depends upon “fiat money” means that the dollar unhinged from metal (gold) is robust and provides consistently good results.

Money is only a medium of exchange. It has no value outside of that. To bandy about terms like “fiat money” becomes meaningless when we regard money in this way. It is a method of exchange, and therefore anything can take on that role. In contemporary economies, the gold-less approach has provided the greatest means to greater wealth creation.

In fact, the claims of stripping the “one-percent” of their wealth is nothing than pointless (and reckless) Marxist rhetoric, which seeks to further social agendas by spreading false assumption that some robber-elite has taken all our money.

Wealth does not come from nothing. It is the result of wealth working with wealth to create more.

And since the middle class is growing rather than shrinking, people have far better lives than they did just thirty years ago.

The widely influential book by Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century successfully launched the entire narrative of the “one-percent.” But its assumptions and its conclusions are false and serve only to foment dissent (perhaps the book’s true goal).

Actual data tells us that people in North America are living longer, have better lives and larger homes than people forty years ago. That is a great economic accomplishment.

The figures also plainly show – that the wealth possessed by the billionaires is hardly enough to run any country in the world.

To strip the billionaires of their wealth also means effectively shutting down the entire engine of prosperity, which provides an income for the vast majority of people of this world.

To shut down it all down and symbolically take away the wealth from billionaires is wilful ignorance.

This also suggests that arguments about economic inequality are baseless, because taxation is partly redistributed as welfare. Of course, there is poverty, but that is not the same as income inequality.

Further, the billionaires, like everyone else, actually earn their money, by providing products and services that people need, and which are good for society.

Taking such economic realism further, we have to bear in mind that money (whether it belongs to billionaires or not) is either spent or saved. There is nothing else you can do with money.

If it is saved, it becomes the engine of investment, which in turn gets put into industry or services that then provide jobs. If money is spent, it increases the consuming of products (made by industry) and services. Again, this money creates jobs.

Thus, whether money is spent or saved it continues to fuel the engine of the wealth of nations, in which everyone participates, billionaire or not.

To simply repeat Marxist talking points about taking away money from the “rich,” while providing no viable alternative once this money is taken away, is nothing more than irresponsible bluster.

In fact, the economic failures of Marxism are monumental and succeed only in creating masters and slaves.

Just consider this – Marxism, or socialism, is the ultimate Ponzi scheme – it can only sustain itself by continually taking money from others. It is not built to actually create wealth, let alone distribute any wealth to anyone.

Thus, socialism does indeed succeed in making everyone equal – but everyone is equal only in their poverty. We have only to look to Venezuela, North Korea, Bolivia for yet more examples of the socialist utopia. And poverty must always end in social collapse.

Perhaps it might be far more worthwhile to critically examine the purveyors of political rhetoric who are only interested in destroying things, rather than building things and participating in a world that creates wealth enough for all.

The engine of worldwide prosperity is the free market. Governments and Marxist rhetoric need to get out of the people’s way.

The photo shows, “St. Eligius in His the Goldsmith,” by Petrus Christus, painted in 1449.

Revolution: Russia’s Dark Age

1 Comment October 1, 2017 The Free Aristarch

This year marks the hundredth-year anniversary of the Russian Revolution, which began as moderate and democratic, but which the Bolsheviks violently hijacked.

In fact, the original Russian Revolution was simply a democratic replacement of Czarist rule.

The background to this transition was Russia’s disastrous participation in the First World War. Of all the belligerents in that conflict, Russia had the largest army (twelve million men), but also one which was the poorest equipped and rather badly led. Casualty rates were terribly high.

Often neglected is the fact that the war killed off the generation of men who by and large were loyal to the old Russia of the Czars.

The younger generation that replaced them were by and large radicalized and had no such loyalty. Socialism, of one form or another, held their true allegiance. The untold suffering produced by the war only justified their socialist ideals.

Thus, by 1917, disgruntlement in the army was high, and the Czar was seen as the cause of all the misery, both at home and on the battlefields.

And these troubles did not inflict the army alone. The general population too was a casualty of the war, for there were severe food shortages – malnutrition was a major cause of death among civilians throughout Russia. Thus, the war highlighted Russia’s economic flaws (poor land management, unstable food distribution, and low wages).

Then, there was the war itself. By 1917, nearly two-and-half million soldiers were dead, and about 5 million wounded. Death by starvation among civilians numbered nearly a million.

Thus, about two percent of the entire Russian population perished in just three years (at the start of the war, Russia had 175 million people). War-fatigue infected everything.

As with all such discontent, a seemingly innocuous event became the catalyst for cataclysmic change.

On February 18, 1917, workers at the Putilov steel mill, in St. Petersburg, went on strike. They demanded an increase in wages to meet the rate of inflation. The factory-owners refused to negotiate and locked them all out (some 20,000 employees).

In protest and solidarity, workers at other factories also struck, and within a few days most factories in the city were shut down.

Then, on International Women’s Day (February 24), the women also poured into the streets and joined the strikers.

Suddenly, over half-a-million angry people were no longer clamoring for a fair living wage; they were demanding a completely new social order.

Czar Nicholas II ordered that the unrest be put down, by force, if necessary.

This was a serious misreading of the mood of the Russian population, because Nicholas was unaware of one important fact – the goodwill of the people towards his rule was gone.

Instead of driving off the workers and the women, the soldiers sent to quell the disturbances refused to fire on their own people, and in most cases, joined the protesters.

Within a week, unrest had changed into a full-blown revolution.

Then, entire regiments mutinied, and the protesters now became a well-organized, and professionally armed, insurrection.

Government buildings were attacked, police stations ransacked, and arsenals looted for arms. The police could do nothing and often joined the rebels.

Nicholas then listened to more bad advice from his panicked generals, who suggested that since he was perceived to be the problem, the best thing was for him to abdicate, which he did on March 2, 1917.

All this in less than two weeks.

The parliament (Duma) was hastily reconvened, and the various political factions and parties (mostly democrats, moderates, republicans, conservatives, Kadets, or constitutional democrats, as well as some communists) cobbled together a makeshift government to take over from the Czar.

Needless to say, no one was ready for such a quick transition.

Because this was a haphazard coalition, it was deemed temporary, and therefore labeled, the Provisional Government. A more permanent regime would be elected by the people, once things settled down and an election could be properly organized and implemented.

The legitimacy of this temporary government was accepted by the officer corps of the army, the middle class, and the majority of the population. No one yet imagined that their revolution would be co-opted by the communists.

In fact, the Provisional Government had much good-will behind it. But, in true tragic fashion, this good-will was quickly squandered.

The fact was the Russians did not want to live under communism. The tyranny of socialism was imposed upon them because the governments they trusted (first the Czar and then the Provisionals) did nothing to counter communist strategies of takeover.

The communists had not just been sitting idly by. They had been busy building up a solid power-base – by 1917, the rank-and-file of the army, the navy, and the factory workers were staunch communists.

Then, the Provisional Government showed its lack of preparedness and began to make crucial mistakes.

The first of these was the decision to remain in the war and continue fighting the Germans, along with the other allies.

Germany had hoped that with the change in government, Russia would withdraw from the conflict. Despite the mounting losses, Russia still fielded the largest army, which meant Germany had been fighting on two fronts.

Now the Germans began to plot against the Provisionals. They contacted the chef leaders of the communists, both of whom were in exile abroad – Lenin in Switzerland and Trotsky in New York.

The communists had always opposed the war as an imperialist venture. The Germans set out to exploit this viewpoint by helping the communists grab power because they promised to withdraw Russia from the war.

It is at this time that the famous train-ride took place, where Germany secretly fetched Lenin from Switzerland, put him on a train to Finland, from where he got to Petrograd (the new name for St. Petersburg).

The Germans also likely funded Lenin and his Bolsheviks to further their aims. This is the notorious “German gold” charge against Lenin.

Before long, Trotsky also joined Lenin, but only after he was detained for four-weeks in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The two men now began to plan a coup against the Provisional Government, and both understood that this could only be done by preparing their power-base for violent insurrection.

Was Lenin working for the Germans? There is much debate on the topic, but he was certainly furthering their aims, and he was certainly in Russia because of them. If they had not helped, he would have remained in Switzerland.

Within a few months, central councils, or soviets, were established in all the important cities. Their job was to foment unrest. This period of laying the groundwork for a Bolshevik Russia would become known as, “The July Days” in later Soviet lore.

Unlike the Provisionals, the communists were highly organized and therefore very effective in meeting their objectives. They had a power-base that was not only cohesive but extremely loyal.

The Provisionals, on the other hand, had no such cohesion, nor could they muster loyalty. They were really a hodgepodge group of factions, each with views that set them against each other. Even common consensus was a difficult thing, let alone concerted action.

None of them realized that they had one common enemy – the Bolshevists.

In fact, the very name, “provisional” seemed to sustain an ad hoc mentality, and thus there was always hesitation, and continual in-fighting.

The work of tending to the daily duties of good governance was neglected, which resulted in more mistakes, such as:

The inability to become the permanent government of Russia.
The loss of control over the army by not addressing the demands of the soldiers, the chief one being to drop out of the First World War.
The inability to address the issue of land redistribution, which the peasants demanded.
The inability to organize the proper distribution of food. People were starving.

If the Provisional Government had looked after just one of these dire problems, Russia’s future would have been democratic and republican, and far less murderous.

But nothing happened. The Provisionals decided that the war would go on, while the food problem remained unsolved, wages stayed low, and the land would not be redistributed any time soon.

Lenin, however, had the answers people demanded – he offered an alternative to the wretched status quo.

In a short space of time

His Bolsheviks had full control of the army. His famous “Order Number 1,” which permitted ordinary soldiers to keep their arms, while also excusing them from obeying the orders of officers when they were off-duty – was very popular among enlisted men. It also successfully drove a wedge between the officers and the ordinary soldiers.
He vowed to withdraw from the war immediately.
And he offered a comprehensive strategy for land redistribution and food distribution.

People who hated the communists now began to give them a second look, since they alone seemed interested in addressing the grievances of the common people. Lenin decided now was the time for a coup.

Through effective agitprop (Trotsky’s expertise), armed riots broke out, the most serious of them occurring on July 16, 1917, when armed sailors, soldiers and factory workers surged into the streets and demanded a change of government.

The Provisionals appeared powerless to act.

But the appetite for violence was non-existent among the people, and the riots petered out by July 19. People saw this as a coup-attempt, and everyone turned on Lenin and his Bolsheviks – ordinary citizens did not want communism to rule over them.

The Provisionals bestirred themselves into action and arrested Trotsky and some other Bolshevik leaders, but Lenin slipped away and escaped to Finland, from where he continued the fight.

Again, when more decisiveness was needed, there was only vacillation, which led to more bad decisions – again, the war would be continued, nothing was done about the land problem, the people continued to starve.

By August, the ill-will for the Bolsheviks was vanishing. Had not Lenin alone promised the changes that everyone so badly wanted?

And there was always the in-fighting among the Provisionals. This time General Kornilov declared that he would seize power and bring much-needed stability to Russia. This message resonated with the people.

In a panic, the Provisionals called upon all parties, including the Bolsheviks, to help quell the threat (labeled a right-wing conspiracy). Of them all, only the Bolsheviks were well-funded and extremely well-organized.

Lenin understood that this was the time to quickly spread throughout Russia and take control. The Provisional Government had handed him the coup he wanted.

Kornilov might well have succeeded had he been a bit more patient and a little less confused as to what he should precisely do. Basically, he was not the man for the job. His outrage at the endless inaction could not be translated into a viable course of action.

Besides, the majority of the soldiers were already Bolshevik, or certainly sympathetic, and it did not take much convincing to get them to desert Kornilov.

The railway workers also lent a hand and sabotaged the various railway lines that Kornilov would need in order to make his threats a real danger.

Everything fell apart quickly thereafter, and in less than a week, he was arrested. Such was the “Kornilov Affair.”

But the general would dramatically escape, gather a division of crack troops, and begin a campaign against the Bolsheviks, promising to burn half the country if need be to get rid of them. By this time, the Bolsheviks were the only real fighting unit that the Provisionals had.

Kornilov proved an effective campaigner as he fought the various Bolshevik regiments that now spanned across Russia, consolidating power, enabled by the Provisional Government, whose “henchmen” they legally were.

Regions and even cities were left to resist and fend for themselves, as they tried to fight free of Bolshevik control. Civil war had now begun.

Korniliv emerged a natural leader of the resistance, but he was killed in April of 1918, when a Bolshevik shell landed on the farmhouse where he was staying.

The Bolsheviks were now the most powerful faction in the country. They were well-funded, well-organized, and very well armed. The army, the navy, the factories, and the railway lines belonged to them.

During this time, Trotsky formed the infamous Red Guard, composed of armed factory workers, who were fanatically dedicated to fighting for the communist cause. Later this unit would become the Red Army.

On October 22, Lenin returned from Finland, and rather famously declared that “Russia was the freest country in the world.” He would soon all that. In fact, Russia under Provisional rule was indeed remarkably free, a freedom it would not see for the next seventy-plus years.

The Bolsheviks were now ready to take full control.

In the early morning hours of November 7, they seized railway stations, telephone and telegraph offices, bridges, electricity plants, and the state bank.

The next day, the battleship Aurora opened fire on the Winter Palace, where the Provisional Government was headquartered.

When the Red Guard stormed the Winter Palace, they found no one inside. The Provisional Government had fled, down to the last man. Tragically, they abandoned Russia to Lenin.

The only people of real importance, still left in Petrograd, were the ex-Czar’s family. There was no one from among the leaders.

In one of those misfortunes of histories, the royal children had come down with measles, and their mother thought they should not be moved.

Little did the Czarina realize that by not acting, she had sealed her own fate and the fate of all her children. It would have been far better to flee with sick children, because the deaths that awaited them all at the hands of the Bolsheviks would be nightmarish.

When the Red Guard arrived to arrest the royal family, there was no one around to protect them, except for a few guards who put up no resistance.

On the evening of November 8, Lenin gave a banal, but dire, speech, in which he declared that he would now “proceed to construct the socialist order.”

But this new order would first need a long bloody Civil War, the murderous Red Terror, Lenin’s infamous Hanging Order, the killing of rivals by Stalin, the great purges, the annihilation of men and women of undesirable classes – all those cruel components of a methodical class war that alone can establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

And yet Lenin’s rule would also be short-lived. The maelstrom of blood that he unleashed would burgeon beyond his control. He would be shot, survive, and then eventually die in 1924, likely “on the operating table,” a euphemism used at the time to describe political assassination.

His executioner would be one of his low-grade henchman by the name of Stalin. Many more millions would then die to continue building the “socialist order.” Stalin was fond of saying that he had great plans for Russia, but people kept getting in the way.

The terror Lenin unleashed would take many decades to wind down, and then finally disappear. The period from 1917 to Gorbachev’s perestroika of 1989 should really be seen as one long Dark Age for Russia.

It is only now that this nation is emerging into the hope and future that everyone imagined and hoped for, when the Czar abdicated and Russia became “the freest country in the world.”

Only now is this great land awaking to its promised Renaissance, which it has dearly purchased, with the blood of millions of its people.

The photo shows, “The Manifest of October 17, 1905,” by Ilya Repin, painted 1907-1911.

The Triumph of History: The Death Of Globalism

October 1, 2017 The Free Aristarch

Over the past two years, a new genre of nonfiction has emerged, published by earnest and deeply panicked individuals, who feel that they need to sound the alarm.

What about? The dire consequences if globalism is allowed to flicker out. For ease of reference, we can call it, “Panic Lit.”

Fear is juddering through globalist intellectuals like Francis Fukuyama, Moritz Schularick, Christian Welzel, Nouriel Roubini, Jeffrey Sachs, William Easterly, Paul Collier, Carmen Reinhart, and others. All of them are busy writing papers and books deploring the rise of nationalism, which they know will kill their brand of globalism.

Of course, their globalism has nothing to do with people living together in peace and harmony – their globalism is about technocratic elites that siphon off the wealth of nations and into the hands of the few.

Austerity has been the lie that they have fed us all, while they sit in their high palaces, enjoying the fruit of our labors.

But they are now finally understanding that people are staring to wake up to their tactics, and the gravy boat will soon run dry.

Panic Lit has one theme in common – if globalism is allowed to end, there will be utter bestiality – people will instantly be transformed into hate-filled, narrow-minded, warmongers, shouting (oh, the horror) for patriotism, free market, less government, and secure borders.

Nothing makes elitist globalists cringe more than the call for a strong nation-state.

For a very long time, this kleptocracy has busily been nurturing and inculcating the great One World Order.

Their minions have been preaching about it forever – via the tiresome pontificating spurted by the Media-Hollywood-Education-Publishing-Sports behemoth.

The message is unchanging – how happy the world shall be when we only serve the very few post-national overlords.

And yet, despite the billions squandered in brainwashing tactics, the common people still want nationalism?!

Cue the shrieks of horror, and then the usual rending of cloth and gnashing of teeth.

But, of course, a book will solve the problem! Writing as therapy, along with some coloring books and hugs. The book as a consolation prize does have its uses, it would seem.

The mindless misguided just need to be shown what awaits them in the great yonder that is the free world, and they shall come scampering back to the gilded cage, frightened and helpless. Redemption is still at hand – all you have to do is believe in globalism, and all will be forgiven. Yes, a book will shore up the crumbling walls of Utopia.

Of course, these elites now well realize that their Erewhon, their Shangri-La is a place no one wants to inhabit.

Only the stunted imaginations of university “intellectuals” can seek to transform the entire planet into one massive prison-system, where nothing but the State matters, whose will all must obey.

What these ivory-tower thinkers did not realize, despite all their conniving mechanisms (aka, propaganda), is something crucial – politics and politicians, Hollywood and universities (there’s no real difference between the two now), publishers and the media – can only exist, let alone function, if the lowly commoners actually go along with it all.

If that cooperation vanishes, all institutions, all mechanisms of control, all machinery of producing consent, all means of indoctrination – no matter how finely crafted, no matter how sophisticated – comes to a grinding halt.

Finally, and at long last, this cooperation is evaporating, and humans are engaged in a new revolution – one in which there is no room for the globalist elite whose destiny now is to embody that terrible judgment passed by another misguided revolutionary (Leon Trotsky) – that these elite now belong in the dustbin of history.

The time has come at last for the renaissance of the strong nation-state, where loudly is heard the thrilling cry – “Long live free humanity!”

But what is this nation-state? A country that not only determines its own economic sovereignty, but more importantly one that defines itself by its unique moral character.

The problem with these various globalist thinkers has been that they worked from a faulty assumption – that life is all about the money. Keep flashing the dough, and people will follow mindlessly along.

But people do not live solely for money. They live by, with, for their moral principles. And they are willing to sacrifice a lot for these principles. “Man does not live by bread alone.”

Hence Panic Lit, to which another already-effete volume has just been added, penned by Stephen D. King, entitled, Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History.

The title is important – and rather telling.

Of course, it’s a play on Aldoux Huxley’s book, Brave New World, which laid out the grim program of globalism. But for King, the Utopia of the “Brave New Globalized World” has become a dystopia of a “Grave New World.”

For him, a world without his globalism is grim and grave. This is reminiscent of Dr. Josef Goebbels who happily killed all his six children because he could not imagine how they might live in a world without Hitler.

Likewise, King cannot imagine a world without globalism, and he fears what will come next, now that the cooperation of the common folk is disappearing fast, whose cry is age-old: “There are more of us than there are of you!”

Babylon has fallen, and great shall be its fall.

The title of King’s book also points to a concept happily embraced by all globalists of his ilk, namely, the “end of history.”

This term was popularized by Francis Fukuyama, but he also misrepresented it. In fact, it was first coined by the French philosopher, Antoine Cournot, and then fully developed by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and his disciple, Gianni Vattimo.

In effect, the end of history does not mean that events will stop happening, or that the world will end.

Rather, the end of history means that future life will be lived without certainties, without truth, and therefore it will be forever predictable and forever knowable.

In other words, people will no longer have the sense that they are moving forward towards knowledge, but will exist forever in the right-now, as if caught in an unchanging web of nebulous associations.

Think of being trapped in an Eternal Now without any hope of getting out – a rather frightening prospect for humanity, and that unending present is called, “progress,” where the perfect state of existence has been reached, and nothing more can, o should, change, because all change has already happened, and all we need to do is sit back and enjoy the fruits produced by the machine of a well-organized state.

The very idea is revolting because such stasis means the end humanity – only a machine can exist in an Eternal Now, the same forever (hence the globalists’ love of technocracy).

The end of history only makes sense for the machine, which needs neither a past, nor a future – it just wants to get plugged in and hum along smoothly forever.

The State is the plug, which exists to keep machine-humans running and therefore being eternally useful to the elite.

Such is the horror of technocracy, where a human being is a nothing more than a mechanical bio-mass. Therefore, all globalists are technocrats, intent on zapping their version of Frankenstein into some sort of animation, which may be mistaken for “real” human existence.

Imagine a life bound purely to the senses, and you have the end of history – when you have only feelings and sensations, events have no significance, no meaning, because there is no truth to strive for. Things happen, but they are not worthy of being noticed – because to notice is to give events meaning. And there can be no meaning in the Eternal Now.

Meaning needs thoughts and ideas – but what good are ideas to a machine?

Thus in a globalist state, thoughts and ideas are dangerous, because they upset the grand paradigm of a mechanical life. This is why ideas must first be controlled so they can then be destroyed.

Individualism is dangerous, and collectivism is good, and this is why we now see a resurgence of communism. How often do we hear the opinion – “Real communism has never been tried.” Why has this become a talking-point?

To make a human being into a machine requires not only a grand strategy, but also a relentless will, which the globalists have demonstrated they have plenty of. Couple that with communism, and you have the perfect strategy of control – collectivization.

Thus, also the creation of the mechanized humanoids – sexless, sterile and fully controlled. It is the globalists’ dream – the end of humanity and the rise of “humanoidity.” A new type of life that can exist forever, because mechanical parts are easily replaced.

But not all may enter into this mechanized Elysium – only the few. Thus, the cant of “too many people on the planet,” “save the planet from humans,” the wilful worship of earth as mother, as Gaia, who shall consume her own young.

Hence, also the strong link of all “progessive” ideas with antenatalism – feminism, homosexuality, gender identity. Babies are the ultimate evil for progress.

This is all, of course, Neronian, in a way – that is, Nero burned down Rome so he could build himself a vast palace, called the Golden House.

The globalists have been wanting to undertake a similar burning away of excess humanity, in order to transform the planet into a Golden House of their own, where only a few humanoids will exist eternally, as robotic slaves.

Such is the grim world of the automaton. This is what is meant by “the end of history,” and that is why it is the chief goal of globalism – the end of natural human beings, and the rise of mechanical human beings.

This makes globalism, then, the fully ripened form of nihilism.

Thus, when King’s book links the demise of globalism with the rise of history – unwittingly he is saying that humanity has risen up and is refusing to be annihilated.

History is intensely human, because history is intensely moral. When we piece together events of the past, we are really constructing a moral memory-palace – what happened and how things happened lead to the question that people are far more interested in – why did it happen in the first place?

This is why progressivism hates history (the recent tearing of statues in the US).

Whenever we ask, “Why?” we are being moral, because we are seeking the truth which alone can satisfy our moral curiosity, which in turn is our search for a greater, ultimate truth, namely, God.

King’s book is nothing but a list of dire events (versions of economic collapse) that will come about if globalism is abandoned by the West. There is even the warning that without globalism democracy itself will fall apart.

Then, he issues the call for governments to “at least attempt to challenge the inconsistencies of those who seek to pursue policies of disintegration.” Such is the final whimper, “at least try” to stop humanity from wanting to be human, wanting a future (in which to create history).

“Disintegration” means the final collapse of globalism. King clearly recognizes this – and he has no clue what to do about it, which is telling. The machine cannot think. It can only follow predetermined patterns.

In the face of morality, globalism is empty nihilism. What man or woman wants to fall into a bottomless pit?

Rather, people want to be both mortal and moral. They want history. The human soul, the true moral compass of life, will always deny the machine, because it is far stronger.

Globalism is dead. Truth, morality and hope will always win, because all three make humans intensely human. It is this intensity of humanity that globalism cannot comprehend, let alone overpower, or even control.

Be strong my friends – the hour of our freedom is at hand! Strike down tyranny and live free! And don’t buy Panic Lit!

The photo shows, “Hip-Hip-Hurrah!” by Peder Severin Krøyer, painted in 1888.

Forgotten Tragedies: The Greeks Among The Turks

October 1, 2017 The Free Aristarch

The Greek presence in Turkey and its islands has been continuous since at least the 8th century BC, if not earlier.

The legendary Greek poet, Homer, was from western Turkey, and with the division of the Roman Empire into western (Rome) and eastern (Byzantium) portions, Greek culture flowered in the region, with Constantinople (Istanbul), and the Church of Hagia Sophia, as the high watermarks of Christian Hellenic civilization.

Although Byzantium endured and flourished for many centuries, its death knell struck in 1453, when the Ottoman Turks, led by Mehmed II, invaded the region and toppled the eastern Roman Empire.

They captured Constantinople, and converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Thus was established the modern state of Turkey.

With the fall of Byzantium, the majority of the Greeks fled either to Greece, or westwards into Europe.

They took with them a vast amount of learning and knowledge, which would provide the incentive for the exuberance of the Renaissance.

However, a large number of Greeks also remained behind. Known as the Pontic, Anatolian, or Ottoman Greeks, they faced the brunt of the ethnic cleansing that the conquering Turks, who were Muslims, subjected non-Muslims.

Many were were forcibly converted to Islam, and huge swaths of the country were cleared of Greeks by slaughter. Before long, Byzantium, which was ethnically and linguistically Greek, became Turkish and Muslim.

Persecution of the surviving Greek minority continued through the ages; but in the early twentieth century, it became systematic extermination that came just after the Armenian Genocide, and also organized by the violent, fascist group known as the Young Turks, and the ensuing Greco-Turkish War of 1922.

This war ended with the Treaty of Lausanne when the two sides exchanged populations in 1923.

Thereafter, a mere 200,000 Greeks remained in Turkey. Because of continuous civil rights violations, the present Greek population in Turkey is only about 1500 people, who are concentrated around the Bosphorus.

The worst persecution was a pogrom during September 6-7, 1955. This outburst of violence was directed at the Greek community in Istanbul, with a great loss of personal and commercial property, and many instances of rape, beatings, and murder.

Many churches and schools were torched, houses and businesses looted, and Greek cemeteries desecrated, with some bodies of the Patriarchs of the Orthodox Church exhumed and defiled. Also, countless relics were destroyed or thrown to the dogs.

In 1995, the US Senate passed a resolution that recognized this pogrom against the Greek community of Turkey, and called upon the president to declare September 6, 1955 a day of remembrance of the victims of this state-organized massacre.

In 1958-1959, Turkish students (a revival of the Young Turks) actively encouraged the public to boycott Greek businesses. In 1964, all Greek permanent residents of Istanbul (those who were born in the city, but held Greek citizenship) were expelled on a two-day notice.

The tiny Greek community that currently resides in Turkey is still relentlessly persecuted. It faces discrimination, intimidation, threats against its religious leaders, and an ongoing desecration of its holy places.

The persecution is immediately discernible in the treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is one of the oldest active institutions in Eastern Europe, having been established around 330 AD.

It is the spiritual center for Orthodox Christians worldwide, as the Vatican is for Roman Catholics. The Patriachate’s printing facilities have been shut down; and the Turkish government will not allow non-Turkish citizens to become bishops, and even the Patriarch must be a Turkish citizen.

This demand is next to impossible to meet, since there are very few Greeks left in Turkey, and the Turks themselves are Muslim.

Turkey also did not allow the Patriarchate to open a representative office in Brussels, Belgium in 1994, claiming that the Patriarchate was not a legal body, and thus there was no need for it to be represented in Brussels.

In 1995, the US Senate passed a resolution condemning the relentless persecution of the Patriarchate by the Turkish government, as it violates international treaties to which Turkey is a signatory.

As well, the Turkish government closed the Patriarchal Theological School of Chalke, which was the primary educational institute for the Patriarchate clergy; many Patriarchs throughout the world graduated from Chalke.

Despite requests from the Patriarchate, the Turkish government refuses to re-open the school. In its 1995 resolution, the US Senate also recognized the arbitrary closing of the School of Chalke.

Turkey also refuses to recognize the ecumenical nature of the Orthodox Church, and thus will not allow anyone who is not a Turkish citizen to participate in the Patriarchate’s affairs in Istanbul. This effectively bars most Patriarchs and clergy who are citizens of other countries.

Further, in 1986 Turkey revoked the right of ethnic Greeks to buy, sell, trade or inherit property. Thus, all property once held by Greeks in Turkey eventually passed into Turkish hands. Greek is not allowed to be taught at Greek schools, and many young people face discrimination because of their ethnicity.

There are Greek communities throughout Turkey, and these people have been completely disenfranchised. They live dual lives of sorts, in that they carry on as Turks in the wider society, but practice their Orthodox faith secretly; nor do they have a right to promulgate their language or culture.

There is also a drive towards “turkification,” especially of names. Therefore, the Orthodox Christians that live to the east of Istanbul cannot worship in Greek, nor can they claim to be Greek Orthodox in official documents, and must describe themselves as Turkish; thus even their ethnicity is denied them.

Further, the islands of Imvros and Tenedos have been aggressively made Turkish. School property was seized, the thriving meat export industry was shut down, and a large prison was established on Imvros.

The government also appropriated property that once belonged to Greeks and turned it over to Turkish settlers from the mainland.

Through a systematic policy of persecution, the ethnic Greek population of Turkey has been driven out, its property made over to the state, and its freedom to pursue its own culture, religion and language denied.

Ethnic cleansing of Greeks in Turkey continues – and no one wants to talk about it.

The photo shows, “After the Massacre at Somathrace,” by Auguste Vinchon, painted around 1827.

Why Multiculturalism?

October 1, 2017 The Free Aristarch

Why multiculturalism? What has obligated western democracies to adopt this idea wholesale? The siren-song seems compelling enough: tolerance, inclusiveness, acceptance, and the cant of difference leading to social strength.

What can be wrong with an idea that promotes all these supposed worthy things? But in the myths of old, it was said the Siren-song was sweet in order to lure ships into treacherous waters, where they floundered and were lost. Is multiculturalism such a Siren-song? Is it luring the west to ultimate destruction?

For some reason the issue of multiculturalism is fraught with passions. Why should immigrants give up their culture? Why should they change? Why should they adopt to the ways of their new home? What about freedom?

And on the other side, if things were perfect back home, why not go back? Why leave your own country, come to the west, with all its opportunity, and then start demanding that the west become just like the country you could not wait to get out of?

The western world lives in prosperity, comfort and relative individual liberty. But our cultural consciousness has become entirely fragmented – we have convinced ourselves that we do indeed live in a global village, in which everybody wants more or less the same things that we do; that we should never presume to correct the failures and follies of other nations; that all religions are about peace and love at their very core; that the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness are biologically ingrained in each human being throughout the world.

Such are our myths, or perhaps, our values, which we think are shared by all and sundry.

And the finest expression of this unfounded laissez-faire attitude is multiculturalism. Of course, this is nothing but eager naivety, since the world is full of good and bad, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness. We need to recoup the courage to make judgments so we do not sink into the morass of relativism.

We need to rediscover, or build up, the courage to say, the west is the best, and all other cultures are abysmal failures.

We need to recover the muscular, masculine quality of western culture (what has made it the best), by dismantling the incessant feminization that now smothers the west.

But what exactly is multiculturalism? Why is it seen as the savior of the western world? What makes the entire west despise or toss away its own traditions, its own history – in order to espouse all the cultures that immigrants bring?

Is this reverse colonialism, or a form of social management? And do we really mean multiracialism when we say multiculturalism? These questions are vexing because they remain unanswered – and unaddressed – despite the fact that most western democracies have eagerly jumped on the multiculturalism bandwagon.

It is always far easier to fall back into the usual explanations – of oppressors and the oppressed.

The idea of many people existing cheek-by-jowl within the borders of one nation – and indeed coming to define the very nature of that nation – is nothing new in history.

The Roman Empire was multicultural, as was the Empire of Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, and more recently the British Empire.

There is little to be gained in the false and purely disingenuous excoriations that are cast upon the concept of “empire” and “colonialism” – it is an easy crutch used by nations that cannot solve the problems that they find themselves in – problems that have very little to do with the “evils of colonialism” and everything to do with greed and the usual appropriation of wealth and resources by the elite.

Therefore, multiculturalism, as such, is nothing new. People have always lived together, intermarried and been content and happy. But in doing so, these same people adhered to one culture – not many. And it was always the culture that provided the best results for everybody which everyone wanted.

People never clung to many cultures within one geographical location. Plurality is a euphemism for social chaos – because it destroys social cohesion.

No nation has ever exited that despised or destroyed its own culture and adopted everyone else’s – until now, that is, where the west is doing precisely that – destroying itself by promoting all the failed cultures of the world – failed, because none of them have contributed anything to modernity.

Why does the west cherish marginality, praise it, worship it? Marginality now defines our academic culture to such an extent that to critique it is to have burning coals heaped upon your head.

Critique of multiculturalism is the greatest heresy which must be destroyed by all means available. Multiculturalism is the state’s religion, to which every knee must bend, and to which every knee must not bend.

Such plurality is the very “bread-and-butter” of our education system, our culture, our politics – it is now the very defining character of the west. Why?

Multiculturalism is enshrined, advocated and defended as the perfect expression of an illumined mind, of liberal attitudes, of economic progress – with catch phrases such as, “We must learn to live together in order to survive.”

But is it not strange that multiculturalism exists only in the west – and nowhere else – nor will it ever exist anywhere else.

In order to establish multiculturalism as the “culture of the west,” we have had to negate and then eradicate history, by rewriting it.

What academic worth his/her salt not make a good living excoriating the west in lectures, articles, and books? Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

West-bashing is a thriving industry. But who funds it? And why is it so well funded?

We have had to expunge our values. We have had to destroy the very cohesion of our culture – and in the process we have actively taught people we consider to be oppressed the value of victimhood, thus training them to wax haughty, so we can admire and praise them when they yell and scream about how wretched we are, and how noble they are.

What is this penance for? For the loss of God?

Why is such blatant hatred being promoted? Why it is being tolerated by all of us?

What is the endgame here? Why has the west come to espouse guilt so completely that it is willing to kill itself over it?

Perhaps this is nothing other than naïve antinomianism – a misplaced rebellion against authority, a misguided view that our history is forever wrong and therefore must be nullified.

Most troubling is the fact that multiculturalism is actively promoted by governments – it is state sanctioned culture, which is a generous way of saying, multiculturalism is socialist tyranny.

But multiculturalism is also state-motherhood, in a western culture that largely abhors real motherhood as patriarchal oppression. This is where feminism has led us – sterility and moral bankruptcy. Think about it – there is no interest in the family. Why?

What has the west gained by adopting and promoting multiculturalism? In a word, nothing.

Although the west has economic clout, it has squandered its intellectual and spiritual capital by investing it in multiculturalism.

The west has stripped itself of all that it once had, and it now wanders about, soullessly, trying on different cultural postures, to see in which one it can best feel at home. We have entered a new Dark Ages – entirely naked.

But there are voices crying out in the wilderness. Time has come to recover the values of western democracy – which are rooted in Judeo-Christian humanism, namely, the marriage of faith and reason.

If we fail in this endeavor, we are truly lost.

We must abandon feminism, we must abandon the nanny state and its tyrannical nurturing, we must destroy the culture of sterility and moral bankruptcy being imposed upon us so relentlessly by our political class.

We must rise up at last, before we are all destroyed and made into atomized slaves to bloated elites who live in their mansions and preach “morality” to us all from on high.

When shall we finally reach moralizing-fatigue?

If we do nothing, there will be no second chance for a very, very long time, because the west will disappear. And remember, none of the cultures that are being promoted as replacements to the west have a good track record when it comes to creating a brilliant civilization.

For the sake of all our humanity, we must fight to win back our freedom. We truly have nothing to lose but our chains. (Marx did offer a few good lines).

The photo shows an updated version of Thomas Couture’s famous painting, “Romans During the Decadence,” which was painted in 1847.

W(h)ither Canada?

July 1, 2017 The Free Aristarch

In railing standeth all their revel. (Sir Thomas More, 1557)

Does Canada still exist? Certainly most people will point out a land mass labelled such on any world map. But the absurdity quickly disappears when we consider the reality of what this land mass now encompasses.

The current Prime Minister of this geographical area, Mr. Justin Trudeau, rather proudly, or perhaps philosophically, displays this wordage at all official occasions – “Diversity is Canada’s strength.”

Perhaps unbeknownst to him, this slogan simply summarizes the bêtise that Canada has become – an innominate state.

Those of a more cynical bent of mind may see here the shadow of the Spider King (Louis XI of France) who seems to have coined the phrase, “divide et impera” (divide and conquer).

Imagine a country actually wanting to be an airport, and you will find Canada

The wisdom of Brooks Atkinson needs to be reiterated at this time: “…a government…is put in…by blatherskites and populated by knaves and fools.” Of course, Atkinson was paraphrasing the Elizabethan pamphleteer Stephen Gosson’s work of 1582, Playes Confuted in Five Actions.

Canada has certainly been blessed with all manner of knave and fool populating its politics, all of whom vie stolidly to belong to the one Centrist Uniparty which has ruled Canada forever, it seems.

Distinctions such as “conservative” or “liberal” are merely emotional displays of the blatherskites which the ballot box piously tallies as “results.” Knavery, especially of the foolish variety, is most adept at stirring up emotions.

As is obvious, “centrism” defines nothing at all. Therefore, “Diversity is Canada’s strength” is the perfect motto for a state that stands for nothing at all.

But such a slogan is also extremely valuable to a state whose ambition can rise no higher than to not to be “like the US,” to be “more European,” to be “world-class,” to be “respected” on the world stage, to be, well, “nice.” Canadians love flattery. It is a national past-time and officialdom waxes well-nigh poetical with such gnomology.

the morality of robbing poor nations of their best and their brightest seems not to bother post-national Canadians

Canada has always suffered from an innate inferiority complex that expresses itself in all manner of strange ways, especially in its politics.

Again, Mr. Trudeau (fils), who likes to pontificate, describes Canada as the world’s “first post-national state,” which has “no core identity.”

In other words, Canada is a tranny-state, for Gallus-like, it has lopped off whatever it had in order to dispense the religion of the new Cybele: post-modernism. (Perhaps it’s time to give the promotion of transsexuality its historically accurate nomenclature – we are in the Age of the Eunuch).

So, by being “post-national,” Canada has become the world’s first Eunuch-State, with its Galli of feminist leaders (such as, the “feminist“Mr. Trudeau) who have no “core values,” and who therefore believe in nothing and are eager to become celebrants in the dies sanguinis of trendiness. Hail, Attis!

Canada jumps at the chance of being first in the world at anything, no matter how dubious the distinction (this peculiar condition is known by the more discerning as, being “world famous in Canada,” a phrase coined by Mordecai Richler). So, why not be the first gelding among nations!?

But just what is a “post-national state?” Who knows, but it sounds suitably “cutting-edge” and “progressive.” Canada still hasn’t outgrown that irksome hebetic tendency to take up causes in order to posture as being “world-class;” in other words, to be perceived as a grown-up among nations.

Sadly, this rapture at being the first post-national state has been long in the making. Since the 1970s, what Canadian politician worth his salt (yes, mostly “his,” except for one very brief hiccup) has not found ways to undermine or destroy all vestiges of British culture, now considered the root of all evil in the world?

Canada will eventually balkanize into different nations

The result is that the guilt-ridden British and European population of Canada has promptly chosen to vanish, by way of the usual methodology – just let the birthrate plunge, and rely on immigration to keep things going – the morality of robbing poor nations of their best and their brightest seems not to bother post-national Canadians.

But this also justifies the free-flow of a replacement population. Thus, every year 300,000 new immigrants are brought into the geographical location still known as Canada, lest the tax-base take a serious hit. But this is endemic to the entire west.

And lest tongues wag, the current Prime Minister also has a solid Family Foundation that seeks to undertake charitable work, no matter what the cost. Corporate colonialism now defines Canada, since it is now in the pockets of the Chinese and the EU.

These new immigrants are encouraged to retain loyalty to whatever land they could not leave fast enough; and before long they are happily living in two worlds – as boarders only in Canada and as nationalists who are loyal to their “real homelands.”

Of course, government money actively promotes such cultural dissociative identity disorder.

just what is a “post-national state?”

Thus, Canada has long vanished. It is now only a eunuchized geographical location where the values and cultures of the entire world are its own. Imagine a country actually wanting to be an airport, and you will find Canada.

What of the bright future? First, there is the Maoist control of language, so that even individual thought must follow party line of correct ideology. In other words, the total corruption of language to habituate the mind for self-censorship – that perfect form of propaganda.

Canada will eventually balkanize into different nations, for it no longer has a core that might justify unity. The replacement populations being brought in will grow in number, and because of multiculturalism they will remain ghettoized.

The fact of multiculturalism in Canada is very simple – no one, other than the host British population, has any real affinity or loyalty to Canada.

Thus, there will be an Islamic nation, a Chinese nation, a hodgepodge nation made up of people from the Indian sub-continent (when was India not a hodgepodge?), and some portion left to whatever British and European numbers that somehow decided to breed. As for the First Nations, they will have to decide which new nation to vanish into.

Since the current inhabitants of Canada are thoroughly propagandized by efficient state disinformation services, no one really cares about the future because – (a) they are always living elsewhere and their loyalty belongs elsewhere); or (b) the guilt-ridden British and European population is too busy pampering itself and enjoying life so it can feel less guilty.

Thus to speak about the future of Canada is to walk the path of contradiction, for once Canada denied and then dismantled its nationhood, it destroyed itself. And Canadians love it!

The only thing now left to do is see if anyone is even interested in giving this dead nation a proper burial. Any volunteers?

The Postil Magazine

Uniting Wisdom With The Soul – Vivida Vis Animi

Author: The Free Aristarch

Indigenous Ways of Knowing?

The photo shows, “Le guerrier Iroquois,” by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, hand-tinted etching, done in 1797.

Self-Annihilation?

The photo shows, “The Death of Chatterton,” by Henry Wallis, painted in 1856.

The Abuse Of History Is The Abuse Of Humanity

This photo shows, “The Waters of Lethe by the Plains of Elysium,” painted in 1880 by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope.

The Wealth Of The One-Percent?

The photo shows, “St. Eligius in His the Goldsmith,” by Petrus Christus, painted in 1449.

Revolution: Russia’s Dark Age

The photo shows, “The Manifest of October 17, 1905,” by Ilya Repin, painted 1907-1911.

The Triumph of History: The Death Of Globalism

The photo shows, “Hip-Hip-Hurrah!” by Peder Severin Krøyer, painted in 1888.

Forgotten Tragedies: The Greeks Among The Turks

The photo shows, “After the Massacre at Somathrace,” by Auguste Vinchon, painted around 1827.

Why Multiculturalism?

The photo shows an updated version of Thomas Couture’s famous painting, “Romans During the Decadence,” which was painted in 1847.

W(h)ither Canada?

In railing standeth all their revel. (Sir Thomas More, 1557)