A few months ago I posted Hard to post right now and explained that I was feeling overwhelmed by some fundamental changes underway in the world I thought I had always lived in. The old world order is gone, no more hope in western nations at least making a show of working within the UN and Human Rights Charter– it’s all dead — Europe is on the warpath, America has dropped all pretence over its motives … horrific. Now peace activists are being charged with terrorism offences and antisemitism. I’ve had time to adjust now and not be overwhelmed by the sense of powerlessness that is in various ways propagated by the media. And new media now have exposed a small light that a new generation is noticing.
But the semester holidays will be over near the end of July and I will return to full time study again then.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider donating to Vridar. Thanks!
As appalling as it is, the only way the Forces of Chaos win is for people of good heart to give up. Even a great many Americans are appalled at what we have done … not enough, but no so few as a short while ago. Why we require the feeling of the knife sliding between our ribs to understand we have been betrayed is beyond me.
We had high hopes when the internet first appeared — people could exchange ideas and organize! A great new democratic facilitator! But look what happened to that. Privatized and controlled through class interests. Techno-feudalism is here, in Yanis Varoufakis’s words.
Then we had the tens of millions coming out to protest the looming Iraq war. That was a real inspiration — things could only get better, we thought.
But it didn’t turn out that way. The numbers protesting the same kinds and even greater crimes in Gaza are miniscule by comparison and even they are being threatened by state power.
In school we were taught how the world was shaped by humanitarian values and mechanisms to avoid great wars after WW2. But now virtually all of that has collapsed, and the lynch pin in all of this is the relationship between the West and Israel.
I never really expected to see what we are seeing today. Dare one hope that a better world can only emerge with the demise of the West?
It has been hard to face what looks like an inevitable … that Palestinians will be erased from history and forgotten. Israel is not like the Nazis at all. The Nazis carried out genocide (of another European-Caucasian race) by clinical, scientific, objective efficiency. There were even a few Nazi agents who broke the rules and were prosecuted for sadism! The genocide was hidden from the world at the time. There was no wholesale national crying out for gleeful acts of murder of “an inferior race”, no rabid, public boasting and enthusiasm for the killing, no active support for all of that from the US or UK or Australia. Nazi Germany had the US, UK and Australia (who came to express decades of horror at their crimes) as their enemies. That’s the difference. Israel is not like Nazi Germany at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JADy940qXHY (go to 44 min)
am confused about your Josephus posts do you think the TF is real or there was something there that Eusebius changed or a complete interpolation? thanks
I’m discussing what a close look at the scholarly presentation of Thomas Schmidt reveals. The foundations for his argument are not always what they seem. Trying to raise some small awareness that scholars are not always reliable in their claims. They should not be taken at face value.
My own view of the TF is that it is a total interpolation. But that’s not the main gist of what I am arguing in those Schmidt posts.
Hey Neil,
I’m someone that normally doesn’t comment even in normal social media.
I just wanted to tank you, I was educated as a Roman Catholic, I went full on atheist at an early age and never cared about the fairy tails they used to tell me (including my BIASED education system teaching us a really weird history of our people (It almost seems that our education system was taken over, as if we were a puppet state)).
Enough with the presentation, I just wanted to say, thank you, this site has been eye opening in many fronts, and you’re right, the world is falling into fascism again (Also George RR Martin words, he also stooped writing because of that).
The internet has taught me something, the true nature of humans, the will to help a complete stranger across the world, the will to share knowledge, stories, anecdotes, etc. In general, just good people, trying to make a better world. (My best example are the open source projects, what a marvelous thing it is to have people just sharing knowledge and completing projects for the better of all, with no monetary intention)
It really seems as if the normal person was totally disconnected from the politics in every country, just good people, forced to do bad by a few. Some kind of dissonance between the workers and the people in power. (Like if we truly lived in the Leviathan society by Thomas Hobbes instead of in a society with the rule of the common people)
It really seems that we’re doomed to another war before the common man wakes up, the difference is that now we have the power to destroy the world and fuck it up for generations to come, not only with global warming, but we’ve already radiated the atmosphere with the large amount of nuclear test, with isotopes that doesn’t form naturally. (there’s a “fun” story regarding the fact that we can’t mine lead without it getting contaminated by the radiated atmosphere)
I recommend you watching “Dead birds” a documentary of the yanomamo tribe, they naturally developed a Tit for tat (game theory) approach, where they were always in conflict, if the member killed, wasn’t avenged the tribe believed they were going to be haunted by the ghost of their ancestors and kids will be taken to the underworld.
So you have a society in a constant state of warfare, just avenging the killings of the previous conflict.
It made me realize how utterly stupid our society is, we have the same issues as that tribe, only our levels of abstraction are way more developed.
And it’s like if the only way to stop this non sense from this developed chimp society was some kind of external force that forced us to behave.
But as that wont happen, it seems we’re doomed to keep wasting resources on the killing machinery instead of the means of survival and well being of the society in general.
It’s sad, its overwhelming, it’s truly fucked up and stupid.
I don’t see how the western powers will survive being in bankruptcy without a war.
But I just wanted to say, thank you, sharing the light of knowledge and free education with people around the world with no cost, I think, it’s one of the most noble deeds someone can do (Including the original translations of some the German texts, I will read them soon). Take your time, but please, don’t stop writing, you’re one of those few persons that are actually doing something great and unique.
You definitely will leave a mark in history with this, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I do think humans can fix this, but the whole system is rigged, not because of evil, but by ignorance and incompetence, but, what can we expect of a developing chimp society. I wonder what the solution could be if we keep following theories developed from the 1800’s-1950’s.
I think a new system must be developed with what the internet taught us, cooperation will take us farther that the shit we’re doing right now.
Sorry for the bad english btw.
I wish we could do a bbq and share a beer. I send you a hug from Mexico.
P.D. Last thing, the study on the Traits in religion in 33 hunter societies is one of the best things I’ve read in my life. Thanks for pointing me onto that study.
Thanks for the thanks, Armando. There is so much more for us all to learn and understand. …. For the benefit of interested readers, A’s reference to the 33 hunter societies is found at https://vridar.org/2024/06/28/origins-of-religion/