Everything here relates. I have written before about how everyone is shocked if I know some detail of the latest news everybody is talking about, but they are equally shocked if I remember the same detail a month later. By then, they’ve forgotten all about THAT Big News Story.
The same is true of history. It is grudgingly admitted that the coded language in Revelations might have something to do with Nero. Which is exactly like saying that a Christian document written in a world ruled by Stalin might have some reference to Uncle Joe.
But I have had people tell me in earnest in the 1960s that John was actually talking not about Nero, but about the Cuban Missile Crisis, while in 2001 he was referring to the Twin Towers.
In all but intent, this is the Big Lie technique. The big difference is that these people are lying to THEMSELVES. As I said before, most people can’t remember what news they were obsessed with six months ago. You can tell about what year a history book was written, which means is not a good history. A historian can either get published or discuss real history.
It is the same with past, present, and future. I keep repeating that it matters not [at] all whether a futurologist predicts correctly. He is getting published NOW. He is an official futurologist because he is getting grants NOW. The more provincially NOW he is the better.
Which is why [some] of the most entertaining humor you will ever read consist[s] of the confident predictions of Experts. Historians are the same about yesterday. News commentators forget everything before they comment. They have to have something for TONIGHT, and everything in history and all in future has to be related to NOW.
You cannot understand history or the future if you do not keep Temporal Provincialism firmly in mind at all times. If you do, it gives you a huge understanding denied the “professionals.”
Almost everybody who has known me for a while considers my predictions correct to the point of being creepy, even ones I had forgotten until they mentioned them. But the secret is simple: Look at history as if you were in THAT time. Look at the future not in terms of what might seem plausible now, but beyond the welter of Latest News.
#1 by Dave on 01/09/2009 - 5:29 pm
Feral dogs are trinities, one part misery, one part humiliation, and one part criminality, trinities bound to the authority of the world (which is feral).
There is no entity in the world more imprisoned than the imprisonment suffered by a real feral dog, for it does not even have surrender and resignation available to it (those being evasions to the very chains binding it).
This gives rise to a special form of power that allows a feral dog to know that all truth is subordinated to a dominating substructure of motive. Accordingly, a feral dog cares little for “news” or musings about the “future”.
In contrast, the truths touted by tame dogs serve only to veil what they cannot know and what they cannot know are the real motives loose and operating in the world (which is why tame dogs claiming to be radicals cannot escape the illumination of cop’s 500-lumen flashlights).
It is the destiny of tame dogs to stumble upon the devices of their enemies.
In contrast, feral dogs whereabouts are unknown, knowing as they do, how to hide. And hidden there in their hiding places are the real sources of destiny.
That is why we must let tame dogs take the “news” and the “future” seriously, and let feral dogs lie in wait.
#2 by shari on 01/09/2009 - 5:54 pm
Dave, You sound so pessimistic. If a feral dog’s hope of happiness is nil, and it is, then it’s cunning is only temporary, then it dies.
#3 by shari on 01/09/2009 - 8:28 pm
It seems to me, that to recover a lively hope,in the living Christ, would do a lot to dispel our temporal provincialism. This certainly was was in our ancesters present, and they were a lot braver, with a fighting spirit, than we are now. Both men and women. No wonder,the futurologists are such twirps.
#4 by Dave on 01/10/2009 - 2:18 am
Shari,
When Goethe said, “In life nothing less than everything will do”, he was not being some ivory tower intellectual. The “life” that he was referring to includes feral dogs too.
I think feral dogs are beautiful, just like people are beautiful when they are truly desperate.
The delusions of Political Correctness, no matter what its forms, always reside in the mistaken belief that anyone has any choices.
Not true! For whatever you may think, what happens and what is at this very moment and what shall be for all time to come is solely on the account of the impossibility of anything being or becoming any other way. Accordingly, the world’s authority is far more supreme than you think it is.
“Everyday” people are completely unaware of this. Their religions enlighten not at all.
That’s why when I see a cop smack his baton upside the head of the man he has handcuffed to the rail on the landing I know what I am really seeing. The blood trickling into the gutter doesn’t trouble me at all.
I am just grateful for being the seer, and to the wind in my ears which has something meaningful to say.
#5 by shari on 01/10/2009 - 10:23 am
Dave, I don’t know what Goethe meant, but you certainly make him SOUND like an ivory tower intellectual. Yes, it’s true, that many, if not most things, we have no choice about. But, there are left to each of us, vital and important choices, and those choices make ALL the difference. Your thoughts lead to despair, the ULTIMATE temporal provincialism.
#6 by Simmons on 01/10/2009 - 12:29 pm
Grade me out here Bob, for my predictive powers using Bob’s Blog Magic.
Will the scandal plagued jewish community in the West reset by accident the clock back to 1930 Germany?
#7 by Tim on 01/10/2009 - 5:36 pm
It feels like it was just yesterday when Bob called the beginning of the next holocaust. Now Hebrews have just been kicked out of Venezuela. The little brown people that the Jews were supposed to lead against the big mean Aryans are kicking out the Jews.
The White Liberals are crying and pulling their own hair out over Gaza. Venezuela expelled the Israeli ambassador. Chavez just told the Jews off.
Hugo Chavez got the set of Aryan Balls God intended for Jimmy Carter. Hitler may not have killed off the Jews. But he sure did put the jinx on them. Everything is disintegrating around them. Or maybe Bob just looked into his crystal ball XX many years ago and put the jinx on the hebrews. Bob, fess up.
#8 by Bob on 01/11/2009 - 3:12 pm
“Hugo Chavez got the set of Aryan Balls God intended for Jimmy Carter. ”
LOL!
#9 by Simmons on 01/12/2009 - 10:48 am
Well off topic (whatever that was?), James Kuntlser a gadfly of the Peak Oil prediction crew has gone off the deepend. Basically predicting that NASCAR fans and evangelical southerners along with PCtards from the sociology departments are coming for the jews in a few years.
From what I gather from super genius Bob is that we are to marshall our Mantra thinking and learn to interogate the futurologists and hence become needed or useful to the political debates.