Chapter 1 was a false start in that I had to do it to think out what I was trying to say.
Our entire world view, derived from history, is based on that provided by Gibbon.
Gibbon history was written for his drawing room readership. So Gibbon provided a world view which was perfect for the drawing room set and today’s Mommy Professor. It said that they were the basis of all true progress and civilization. Gibbon provided a history which consisted of a look back to the heights of 1790 Britain, back across a total swamp to the Fall of a similar society, the Roman Empire, Rome, about 400 AD.
As Mommy Professor and the drawing room crowd looked back over Gibbering History, they saw that behind Rome there was another swamp, across which one could see Ancient Athens. That was a tiny peak, but behind that was another millennial swamp and behind THAT was the mountain of Ancient Egypt, rising serenely under its Scribes and Priests to the height of Ancient Rome and Mommy Professor.
You can see a perfect exposition of this in Asimov’s Foundation Series. As a very young man, he took it for granted that you had to have a giant bureaucracy and state run by intellectuals for anything to be CREATED. Creation, he said, came at the height of Gibbon’s Empire Phase of History, like the British Empire Gibbon lived in.
This nonsense underlies our entire world view. As I pointed out in Chapter 1, NOTHING was invented by Egypt. And it is no accident that Gibbon talked only about the Decline and Fall, not the “RISE and Fall of Rome.” He declared that Rome was a height of history that sprung up like Topsy. He had no idea how things BEGAN. He dedicated his discussion to how glorious and perfect Mommy Professor Societies could fall.
#1 by shari on 03/06/2008 - 10:44 am
Nothing new under the sun is there? “Pride goes before the fall.” Self-hatred is really diguised and deceitful vanity. Deal with it and get enough humility to see clearly.
#2 by Simmons on 03/06/2008 - 11:07 am
Now I can understand why western “intellectuals” dislike our Eastern Orthodox brothers they simply discount their existence as a civilization. I do have to say I have been awakened to new ideas and ways to view these subjects especially Gibbon’s translations. I admit I could not tolerate the second volume, because I have no ability to tolerate writings on religious minutae which I thought his second volume was transcribing.
But where I think you are headed Bob is to the Black Sea cultures and the flood. If I’m correct on this I do think we have positive momentum on this front. Two men who in all reality are probably the usual white liberal nihilists but for our purposes useful appear willing to break the taboos and do research regarding the Black Sea. James Cameron the director and Ballard the explorer film maker seem actually curious about breaking the graveyard of history theory. They I think could be led into the Black Sea, but not by us since we are “racist”, but by the very thrill of iconoclasm.
But they need subtle advising on how to sidestep the Jews and their christian accomplices when they do a James Watson on anyone who interupts the narrative. I’f I have taken this off base then discard this post.
#3 by Dave on 03/06/2008 - 12:21 pm
The point that I have seared into my brain is how Wordist orthodoxy supports tyranny. Gibson history is Wordist orthodoxy.
It is what is unquestioned that is important. Orwell had is right, the meaning of orthodoxy is the termination of the ability to comprehend, the ability to access truth through thought.
I think to my own education: How long did it take to get it through my head the role and function of the cult of Lincoln in America? How long did it take me to realize that Lincoln himself was a devoted tyrant and cultist?
The cult of Lincoln is relentless in America. In our public schools, this aspect has not changed since the advent of the public school system in the 1910s. Today, the cult of Lincoln is pushed above all in the huge industry that has sprung up to support the “Americanization” of the third-world hordes washing up on our shores.
The cult of Martin Luther King is nothing more than a derivative of the cult of Lincoln.
The only history they know, and the only history they are taught, is of the “giant Lincoln who freed the slaves”, and the “giant Martin Luther King” who gave a rebirth to that effort. They think this symbolizes the sum total of American history.
This is nursery rhyme level stuff. But it is the nursery rhyme level stuff that is genuinely effective. It is the nursery rhyme level stuff that is BELIEVED. It is the nursery rhyme level stuff that is accessible to low IQs.
I have always asked myself, why is it that the very people “the system” makes its biggest victims and losers turn out also to be its biggest supporters?
There is nobody more impressed, more supportive, of that petty tyrant in a black dress, talking down to him from a raised dais, than that moron and idiot who is being sentenced to 5 days in the county lockup for failure to pay his child support obligations.
Yet that same moron and idiot was given a noble tradition in law, the real law, not the made up law of tyranny, that says the procurement of your rights is YOUR (very own) RESPONSIBILITY (the adversary system), and when taken to its correct logical conclusion must conclude that it is a moral crime, YOUR (very own) moral crime, to have allowed that petty tyrant to have put on a black dress and climb onto a raised dais in the first place.
(Gibbons was just another academic clown on a raised dais.)
People who genuinely care about freedom, about human dignity, will hang anyone who attempts to talk down to them from a raised dais, and this hanging will take place with true moral righteousness, for it supports human dignity and freedom.
Americans got a tyranny, got the cult of Lincoln, because they lacked the WILL to procure their rights. And prevailing in a conflict is a matter of WILL, nothing more.
Americans must still learn this lesson and Germans must still learn this lesson, for both our nations lost their freedom in wars (that were really to some extent civil wars) that were lost. And the lesson of our (real) history is that wars for freedom MUST NOT be lost.
And that’s what makes BUGS so very important. That’s what makes the Internet so very important. These are transmission vehicles for keeping WILL alive, for keeping the cause of human dignity and freedom alive, and for refusing to submit to being conquered by tyrants and their tyrannies.
#4 by Easygoin-jer on 03/06/2008 - 6:41 pm
So, let me see if I got this right.
Once a people do all the hard work of building a society to the degree that it can support a leisurely class, they receive the benefit of having their histories recorded, by an state-ist class, that takes credit for all that is good about the society and blames the people for all that is bad about the society. As this class begins to manipulate society with theories that the explain the reality of this world view they begin to drive their societies into the ground.
So the history of the world is written by those who had actually destroyed their societies.
Naturally then, the people who actually built the society, become the hordes storming the gates of the temple.
Is that right? That’s pretty good insight.