A video discussion with Eric Metaxas: After telling of his experiences in China where he was born in the 1940’s, Guinness speaks of a moment when a civilisation loses touch with its roots. He suggests, there then are three alternatives: renewal, replacement or decline. As the modern jacobins rise up again, our civilisation faces that Read More…
Defending our Civilization
Origenes on the self-defeating incoherence of the [hyper-]skeptic
Origenes is on fire these days, so let’s headline: [Origenes, emergence play thread, 57:] The skeptic wants to criticize, but he doesn’t want to be criticized himself. We all make statements of belief, skeptics included. But the skeptic posits a closed circle in which no beliefs are justified. Yet at the same time, he arrogates Read More…
That inconvenient US State Dept memo on mass correspondence voting — in Ukraine
Yes, they had to know the fire they were playing with — notice, testimony to congress: Now, you try to tell me that this time and place it’s different. All you will do is raise the question whether you are an empty headed talking point parrot or something worse. Much worse. END PS, here is Read More…
L&FP, 61: Learning about Agit Prop from the H G Wells, War of the Worlds broadcast (and from the modified JoHari Window)
Notoriously, on the evening of October 30, 1938, many people missed the opening remarks for Orson Welles’ radio dramatisation of H G Wells’ War of the Worlds. As History dot com recounts: Millions of Americans, as they were every night, huddled around their radios, but relatively few of them were listening to CBS when it Read More…
L&FP, 59: Building a body of knowledge in a hyperskeptical, ideologically polarised era that often dismisses truth and objectivity
It’s not hard to recognise that we are in a hyperskeptical, ideologically polarised warped thinking age at war with objective truth and knowledge. Fundamentally, our academics have betrayed us, starting with putting the inferior substitute, skepticism, in the place of prudence. Once that was done, there is no firewal on skepticism so it spiralled into Read More…
L&FP, 57: What is naturalism? Is it a viable — or even the only viable — worldview and approach to knowledge?
What is naturalism? (And why do some speak in terms of evolutionary materialistic scientism?) While everything touched on by philosophy is of course open to disagreements and seemingly endless debate, we can find a good enough point of reference through AmHD: 3. Philosophy The system of thought holding that all phenomena can be explained in Read More…
AI promotional vid — is the AI future realistic? Is it utopia emerging? Or, dystopian?
Are they already emerging as conscious as complexity rises? Vid: Or, do we need to ask pointed questions about limitations of computation, oracle machines and Smithian cybernetic loops with two tier controllers [can we have an oracle there?]? Does a fancy Si Rubber face — like those used for many years in Sci Fi flicks Read More…
DEVELOPING, the US Supreme Court reverses Roe v Wade (is it cry havoc?)
Having returned from a shopping trip to Junction, Jamaica [here for 4x bereavement reasons], I noticed news as captioned. I clip: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/06/24/supreme-court-overrules-roe-v-wade-in-dobbs/ Supreme Court Overrules Roe v. Wade in Dobbs Decision – Returns Abortion to State Lawmakers WASHINGTON, DC – The Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade on Friday, holding in the Dobbs case that Read More…
Is China seriously contemplating [imminent?] invasion of Taiwan?
In 1958, full orbed hot war threatened to break out after dogfights over the Taiwan straights that saw a breakthrough use of Sidewinder missiles that brought down several Red Chinese Migs. We may be contemplating that brink again, if a current report on a claimed, leaked audiotape of discussions by Chinese authorities is credible. (The Read More…
UK Spectator: “Why is Canada euthanising the poor?” (Slippery slopes dept.)
April 30: Since last year, Canadian law, in all its majesty, has allowed both the rich as well as the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living with dignity. In fact, the ever-generous Canadian state will even pay for their deaths. What it will not do is spend money to Read More…
BREAKING: Leaked US Supreme Court Draft that would overturn the rulings that have led to 63+ million abortion deaths in the US since 1973
This, seems worth pondering on the state of the US’s ongoing 4th generation civil war as a civilisation level issue: A draft Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade has been leaked to the press in one of the greatest scandals to ever hit the nation’s highest court and a possible attempt to intimidate one Read More…
Francis Schaeffer’s “line of despair” model of our civilisation’s intellectual history:
We can adapt Francis Schaeffer’s themes, looking back to the Christian Synthesis of the heritage of Jerusalem, Greece and Rome, and the onward flow of ideas and cultural agendas since Paul of Tarsus: Schaeffer thought that once there was an upper/lower storey approach that in effect gave up on solving the problem of the one Read More…
To get change, create or exploit a crisis . . .
to control the change, set the agenda and control thought to a thesis, an antithesis and your desired synthesis. So, we see, in a cartoon: Where, let us recall the change challenge: . . . thus the fallacy of the false dilemma pushing a simplistic dichotomy of choices: . . . and the Overton Window Read More…
Dr Zelenko challenges officialdom for over-reaching
He speaks to “sociopathic oligarchs.” Here: Food for thought. END
L&FP, 54: J C Wright on the haunting “Morlockery” of many today, in the neo-gnostic, nihilistic “Technoplutocracy”
Mr Wright, a noted Science Fiction/Fantasy writer [and married to another, L Jagi Lampwriter Wright] observes a pattern of our times: Technoplutocracy is my term for our current intellectual elite, a combination of traditionally leftwing and rightwing elements [–> outdated reference], dominating our public institutions, political and legal and scholarly, corporate culture, international finance, but Read More…