Minneapolis commits suicide
But there are shrines to George Floyd:
The memorial itself is a 15-foot black fist erected in the middle of the intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, festooned roundabout with flowers and signs and graffiti and flags. Every conceivable surface, from the streets and sidewalks and light poles to the buildings and bus shelters and the abandoned Speedway gas station on the corner, is covered in graffiti and posters and overlapping murals…
The businesses at this intersection have been all but destroyed. Cup Foods, the convenience store where a teenage clerk called 911 after Floyd tried to pass a fake $20 bill, and where he later died, didn’t reopen until Aug. 3. The store’s owners tried to open in June a few weeks after Floyd’s death but quickly closed amid backlash from activists and a self-appointed “security force” from the neighborhood.
One of the store’s co-owners, Mahmoud Abumayyaleh, is behind the counter on the phone when I walk in. After getting death threats, he now wears a gun and employs an armed security guard at the store, which has been a neighborhood staple for the past 30 years. Abumayyaleh and his brother, Samir, own the entire building, which also includes a barbershop, a laundromat, and a mosque.
But some activists and agitators want the immigrant-owned family store to shutter for good.
Please read the whole thing.
I don’t see how the store can survive. But I also don’t see how the city can survive, except as a ghost of its former self, a set from a dystopic film that’s all too real.
The city’s so-called “leaders” – mayor and city councilors, as well as the state’s governor – abdicated their first responsibility, to keep civil order. It was sacrificed to BLM and Antifa as well as to random looters and arsonists and all-around sociopaths, in the name of righting racial wrongs. And of course, in the irony that is commonplace in such situations, the entire city suffers – most especially its minorities.
The article quotes one speaker who identifies as “center-left” as saying he is going to vote for Trump, and so are some of his friends. That would be heartening, except for two things. The first is that I doubt many leftists in Minneapolis have had the same reaction. And the second is that Minnesota is one of the states in which I think voting fraud on the part of the Democrats will be rampant (see this for a description of some of the ways this can be done).
Power Line posted a video of a retired attorney who did police cases. This man noted that George Floyd had 2x-3x the fatal dose of fentanyl, he told the cops he had used drugs via “hooping,” his lungs were 2-3x the normal weight at autopsy, Floyd was saying he couldn’t breath in the squad car and that the method to keep him on the ground and under submission was an approved method.
IOW, the police didn’t murder Floyd. All the rioting (including in Omaha) was based on a false narrative.
Case has to be moved to Rochester or Duluth.
I’ve been to the Twin Cities many times. My oldest daughter just earned her MArch from the University of Minnnesota; following in the footsteps of her grandparents. I also saw the Gophers stomp on the Corn at Gopher Stadium.
The Twin Cities are wonderful. They have been mostly ruined.
Meanwhile, Miami has just decided to dedicate a street to the memory of Trayvon, the first false martyr of BLM’s martyrology. It is rather unfortunate that yesterday, in ACB’s questioning by the biased and ludicrous Democrats (it is not easy to determine whether Spartacus or Crazy Mazie was more idiotic), she was forced to express sadness over this event, concerning which she may well have decided to accept the conventional narrative without a rigorous examination of the evidence.
My brother lives in proximity to the neighborhood, only 10 blocks away. It’s destroyed, but unfortunately, he keeps voting for this garbage. Glad I live out West, away from any large metropolitan area.
On voter fraud in my former home state of Minnesota, it is worth remembering that Al Franken was elected to the Senate in 2010 by a margin that was less than the number of convicted felons who were found to have voted illegally.
Of course, we are constantly lectured that “there is no evidence of any voter fraud…”
“Trayvon Martin Avenue”. You’re getting an idea of what much of the political class values (or wishes to appear to value) and what their voters assent to. Trayvon Martin was an ordinary youth, rather difficult for his mother and father, and bereft of accomplishments as one tends to be at age 17. It’s the same deal in Minneapolis. George Floyd wasn’t an ordinary man, of course. He’d done time in prison, he’d sired four children by an indeterminate number of women (none of them his wife), he was chowing down on street drugs in middle age, and he had at that age no trade (just taking whatever wage work he could find).
We honor people now who are known for death by misadventure. Ours used to be a serious country.
ACB’s questioning by the biased and ludicrous Democrats (it is not easy to determine whether Spartacus or Crazy Mazie was more idiotic), she was forced to express sadness over this event, concerning which she may well have decided to accept the conventional narrative without a rigorous examination of the evidence.
You’d rather obstreperous youths take condign punishment and then get on with their lives. You’d rather troublesome people cruising into middle age stop being troublesome. As it happens, both ended up with abbreviated lifespans consequent to their own misconduct and their own bad judgment. Which is sad. It’s just not a reason to go on a Burn Loot and Murder rampage or to declare them secular beati.
My brother lives in proximity to the neighborhood, only 10 blocks away. It’s destroyed, but unfortunately, he keeps voting for this garbage.
If your brother’s like mine, his self-concept is bound up in his political attitudes. Suggesting he actually assess performance in office or treat like cases like does not compute. We used to be a serious country. My siblings are doing their part to ensure we are not anymore.
The Twin Cities are wonderful. They have been mostly ruined.
What we’ve been seeing the last seven years – certainly the last 10 months – is an experience rather like banks writing down their bad loans. We’ve suddenly realized something we were only vaguely aware of before: the character of our professional-managerial class and the character and judgment of many of the people we call neighbors. What’s happened in the last five months should have ruined the Democratic Party and it’s had little effect. So, we write down those assets and discover we are, collectively, morally insolvent. Gradually, then suddenly. My uncle is 93, a retired naval officer / engineer who has spent his life generating well-being around him in his unassuming way. I am so sorry he had to see this. Each successive cohort in our country seems of lower calibre than the one which preceded it.
Hi, Neo. You and I must have read this article at about the same time (in my case, earlier this morning). A very interesting read, if of course also kind of disturbing, especially the last couple of sentences – open corruption of a youth (not just “the” youth in general, but a specific youth at that). And that business of stacking firewood next to a gas pump was also special. Firewood… gas pump… and an open-air homeless encampment in the near vicinity… yeah, I don’t see anything going wrong with that at all…. LOL.
Where’s the Boy Wonder mayor hiding himself these days, anyway? He seems to have gone dark. Even Powerline has had little to nothing to say about him for some time.
I took in the same author’s other linked article about his travels in eastern Michigan. That was somewhat interesting, too.
It is impossible for me to understand the mentality that puts up with, or even condones, violence and destruction of private property. The role of government is to provide for the common good, which includes maintaining law and order as well as protecting private property. Yet, these leftists look on it as some sort of social justice activity, ignoring the years of hard work and economic activity that went into creating these businesses. It is a philosophy of blindness to what has created the prosperity that this country has enjoyed. To accept the idea that systemic racism exists or can be cured by senseless violence, destruction of private property, and looting is to be wantonly blind to the what has occurred in this nation over the last hundred years.
Such blindness can only be attributed to many of these people being useful idiots. What is happening before our eyes is a well organized attempt to destroy the system we have now and replace it with a Marxist system. We know that the founders of BLM are openly Marxist. Their goals are Marxist:
“According to Acton, the founding principles of BLM include a guaranteed minimum income for all Black people, free health care, free schooling, free food, free real estate, gender reassignment surgery, free abortion, no new jails, reparations, and to create a global liberation movement that will overturn U.S. imperialism and capitalism.” They also back defunding the police and abolishing cash bail.
The there’s Antifa. Though they don’t openly express their goals beyond destroying the existing system, it’s quite clear from their activities that they support the goals of BLM. They are aiming for Marxist system as well. This is an extension of the assault by Marxists on our system fin the 1960sand 70s. We must put this out front and center. Marxism is evil and must be defeated.
50 Shades of post-apartheid Progressive South Africa…
Rioters Trash Portland Restaurant After Antifa ‘Reviewers’ Target It, But the Black Owner Just Got the Last Word
Not yet.
The there’s Antifa. Though they don’t openly express their goals beyond destroying the existing system, it’s quite clear from their activities that they support the goals of BLM.
The Neo-Fascists and Neo-KKK in perfect harmony.
We know that the founders of BLM are openly Marxist.
Diversity [dogma] breeds adversity.
It is a philosophy of blindness to what has created the prosperity that this country has enjoyed. To accept the idea that systemic racism exists or can be cured by senseless violence, destruction of private property, and looting is to be wantonly blind to the what has occurred in this nation over the last hundred years.
You’ll notice that only one or two members of the Minneapolis city council have made their living in private enterprise. There’s a third who worked in a guild profession for municipal governments. The rest of them held positions on legislative staffs or for shizzy NGOs. Also, only a couple of them have any children. The current mayor of Minneapolis is a lapsed lawyer, divorced and remarried, childless until a few weeks ago, and married to a professional lobbyist. His predecessor was divorced-and-remarried, childless, and has the same sketchy work history of people on the council now – staff positions at one shizzy NGO after another. The current mayor is schooled in political science and law; his predecessor’s degrees are in psychology and sociology. The palpable experience of economic life among Minneapolis elected officials consists of being paid salaries financed out of tax collections and donations and working jobs which have no operational measures of competence. It’s a reasonable inference that the lot of them don’t have the education or insight to see how odd that is.
Some time ago, Neo understandably became unsettled when the vulgarism ” cuckservative” was being thrown about.
It referred of course to spineless conservatives whose actions seemed to indicate they derived an almost sexual gratification out of being dispossessed, abused, and humiliated.
It appears that a huge slice of the populace of our polity – the majority of which in no way identifies as Republican – is composed of just such people: those who have either never had, or have had stripped from them, any sense that they have an inalienable and intrinsic right to their own lives, regardless of what someone else may have experienced or claimed to have experienced.
These rightless people seem psychologically incapable of standing up for themselves, and seem to lack any moral conviction that it would be appropriate to do so. “Cucks”, then, is an entirely appropiate term for them. And anyone who invites in and protects such as those who lack the will or conviction to protect themselves, is simply subverting his own life for no good reason or justifiable end.
I have often asked here, in a deliberately provocative fashion, why people who are happily weak and unwilling to defend themselves, should be defended by others. I have also asked in a slightly differentl vein, what claim the insistently weak have on the self-sacrificial protection of the strong.
Answers, I have seen. But good ones, no.
The urban population of America bought and paid for this with our and their money. Now they are paying for it in another way. And they morally deserve to be chained in place until every last drop of value has been delivered to them and fully experienced.
Screw “em. They piled up the kindling and kept the taper nearby and always smoldering as a monument to their resentments, and a threat against the right. Now, it has been ignited and is burning … them. So what. They are not worth the cost of concern.
Has Minnesota always been crazy and I just didn’t notice?
Sure, it’s always been liberal, but I used to think of it as that boring, cold place that Hubert Humphrey came from.
I thought Jesse Ventura, a former pro wrestler, becoming mayor of Minneapolis, then governor of the state was weird, but these days Minnesota is leaving California in the dust.
DNW:
How about this? And this? And this?
I had a little bit of Minnesota experience in the mid 1980’s when I was hired to run a group of Arts and Craft stores in Minnesota and Wisconsin with one in Fargo, a long lonely drive in the winter. At that time I was hiring store managers and almost all of my applicants had college degrees which I found interesting and then I discovered that a good deal of the sales staff and picture framing staff were also degreed and were most always looking for something better.
I had a manager who had transferred in from South Carolina and we both had what they considered to be Southern Accents, mine West Texas, anyway one day he pulled me aside and told me that even the really dumb ones, and there were plenty, were well educated and sounded smart. I kind of think that Minnesota with a Scandinavian/German population that was populist got a head start on the rest of the nation in being politically correct, that was a big deal up there in the 1980’s, a couple of lady managers took me to a lecture at the U of Minnesota about the KKK in the South and then we went to lunch and I asked them if that’s what they thought the South was like and they said of course that’s what they do and I just shook my head because in Texas folks had been working very hard to hire black workers for decades, including me when I did a lot of hiring in the South.
I was most happy when I came to the decision that I would never be accepted by those, who know better, Minnesota folks and in 1989 I sold my snow blower and moved to Dallas where all the people white, black and shades in between were much easy to work with and become friends.
Neo:
Good luck with those with DNW; a philosophy without compassion or empathy doesn’t seem too appealing IMO.
I thought Jesse Ventura, a former pro wrestler, becoming mayor of Minneapolis, then governor of the state was weird, but these days Minnesota is leaving California in the dust.
He was mayor of a suburban municipality.
Ok, I’ll bite. What about them?
[I’m not being a smartass here. I am being very, and carefully, serious; and trying not to miss any steps. And you can probably guess where I am going with that question.]
DNW:
Indeed, I know where you’re going.
But this is where I’m going: do you really not think there are at least ten good people in Minneapolis? I certainly think so – although it’s not up to me to determine it. The point of the story is not to wish for the destruction of an entire group because of the wickedness of some portion of it.
Neo at 6:47, but he couldn’t even find ten and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.
God was the final judge of Sodom and Gomorrah, not man.
One considerable difference between 20th and 21st century America is that we are much more sorted geographically. In the good old days (pick your decade) liberals and conservatives lived more chock-a-block.
Certainly there was tension and animosity, but people found ways to live in proximity. Think “All in the Family” where Archie Bunker lived with his son-in-law Michael AKA “Meathead.” It wasn’t pretty, but neither side disowned the other side as “evil.”
Although the show was created by arch-liberal Norman Lear to push his agenda, Archie Bunker became an iconic figure of that time and a weirdly respectable conservative spokesman.
If Americans continue this sorting until we reach some large percentage, there will be a civil war and the country will split. Maybe that’s the best thing. Maybe not.
Paul in Boston:
Yes, I know. But I think Minneapolis has more than that.
Meanwhile the South Koreans continue their relentless campaign toward world domination via insanely infectious music videos.
__________________________________________
Baby shark … doo doo doo doo doo doo
Mommy shark … doo doo doo doo doo doo
Daddy shark … doo doo doo doo doo doo
Grandma shark … doo doo doo doo doo doo
Grandpa shark … doo doo doo doo doo doo
–“Baby Shark Dance”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w
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6.8 billion views! Go figure.
If there are at least ten good people in the Twin Cities they still need to GTFO ASAP and don’t look back. Don’t look back because our incompetent and malign Managerialist Overlords will come down like a ton of mysteriously appearing Antifa Bricks on any pillars of salt lacking the appropriate FDA labeling. Anarcho-Tyranny, Baby.
‘Cuckservative’ is an excellent word because it precisely delineates, limns (Thanks GvdL!), snaps into sharp focus something which before was not quite clear. However once you see it, there it is.
There is nothing wrong with the conscious strategic use of vulgarity to make a point.
Ok. Since you know where I was heading we can skip all the steps that lead me to finally ask you if you are proposing that there is a real, honest to gosh, divine commandment there.
And then, of course, you also know what would follow should you answer either yes, or no.
But as you merely propose it as a story with some (if dwindling) cultural currency, I’ll ask instead whether you are really convinced that not sneering at the comeuppance of a group of enablers, or, not engaging in political Schadenfreude without taking into account collateral human damage, is really the point of the Biblical story.
Since in the story, God does in fact go ahead and kill them all after exploring that possiblity. Because, you see, despite Lot’s diminishing benchmarks, none of them in the city were found to be truly righteous … not one.
Now, because I did in those last couple of paragraphs resort to categorical language following the carefully stipulative – and boringly formulaic by now – references in the preceding four paragraphs, I guess someone could imagine that by saying urban population, I had gone from talking about the insistently weak enablers, the happy cucks without rights, and the smirking progressive pyre builders, to including Republican grandmothers trapped in their townhouses.
So to be clear, I do not look on with grim indifference or with a sense of Karmic satisfaction, at the prospect of a Republican grandmother, or the like, being immolated along with those who complicitly piled the brush and those who ignited it.
There is no telling how many there might be of these innocents at risk; but, I suppose that by looking at political party registration figures for the city, we might come up with some number of people potentially deserving of solace and of aid when they finally flee the conflagration.
I just hope that when they do, they remember to bring along their voter’s registration cards.
There can be no learning. To learn better, one must be able to see consequences and the suiciders cannot, need not, see onsequences. It’s always somebody else who spoils the Good Idea. No learning will happen.
Orange Man Bad must be stopped By Any Means Necessary!
We had to destroy Minneapolis in order to save it!
Why is this so hard to understand?
The Sodom and Gomorrah discussion reminds me of “The Last of the Just,” by André Schwarz-Bart. It was in my mother’s bookcase and I read it too young, but I still remember it. The novel is based on the idea that it is the presence of 36 just men which saves the world:
__________________________________________________________
It is said that at all times there are 36 special people in the world, and that were it not for them, all of them, if even one of them was missing, the world would come to an end. The two Hebrew letters for 36 are the lamed, which is 30, and the vav, which is six. Therefore, these 36 are referred to as the Lamed-Vav Tzadikim. This widely-held belief, this most unusual Jewish concept is based on a Talmudic statement to the effect that in every generation 36 righteous “greet the Shechinah,” the Divine Presence (Tractate Sanhedrin 97b; Tractate Sukkah 45b).
_________________________________________________________
Of course the book is leading up to the Holocaust, so is quite sad. I wonder how prominent the Lamed-Vav is as a Jewish belief. It’s a book I would like to look at again.
DNW:
I’ve not formally studied the story (or if I did in Sunday School, it was so long ago I don’t remember what was said). My interpretation is my own, and it goes like this –
I think the lesson is one of compassion for other human beings, human to human. And of asking for mercy. As far as the acts of the deity go, I have no insight about that. But the story is addressed to human beings.
As a child, the story made a very deep impression on me.
It also reminds me of the Bodhisattvas in Buddhist thought, enlightened beings who “compassionately refrain from entering nirvana in order to save others.”
huxley:
I’ve heard of that legend of the 36, as well. And when I was very young I tried to read The Last of the Just but did not understand it.
Upon reflection, I wonder if the story that comprises the referent of this post isn’t really a case of Minneapolis as a whole committing suicide, but only of part of it. A good-sized central chunk of it, maybe, but it makes me wonder if, on the outskirts, or in a sort of ring around downtown, there is hope of a new sort of local stable state forming. Sub-suburbs, you could say; not as far out from downtown as more typical suburbs would be, but still something distinct from the central business district.
For huxley and Neo (I never heard of the book).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_the_Just
“It has been described as an enduring classic that reminds “how easily torn is the precious fabric of civilization, and how destructive are the consequences of dumb hatred-whether a society’s henchmen are permitted to beat an Ernie Levy because he’s Jewish, or because he’s black or gay or Hispanic or homeless.”[5]”
(…or a conservative or a Trump supporter or a Catholic student or…)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/253292.The_Last_of_the_Just
“Amongst the literature of the Holocaust, this is an absolute masterpiece. It’s based on a twist of the Chassidic legend that there are 36 righteous people hidden in the world whose very existence justifies the existence of the rest of it, even evil. The author made mistakes with the concept, though. In his book, the status of being one of the righteous is passed from father to son, which is NOT part of the Chassidic tradition. Also, they seem to know that they are the hidden righteous, which is certainly not part of the tradition. The hidden righteous are supposed to be so humble, they themselves don’t realize that their righteousness is sustaining the world. My husband tells me that the number 36 isn’t even Chassidic tradition, but that one has become particularly well-known.
All this aside, it’s a beautifully, haunting book that begins in the Middle Ages and follows through with every generation. Each of the hidden righteous is martyred somehow, which, unfortunately, is true to life. The book focuses in especially on the generation before the Holocaust with life in the shtetl and the arranged marriage of the couple who become the parents of the final protagonist, a Jewish boy living during the Holocaust.
The book is as tragic as you’d expect, but still a literary masterpiece.”
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Just-Andre-Schwarz-Bart/dp/1585670162
“This classic work, long unavailable in a trade edition, is one of those few novels that, once read, is never forgotten.”
Not an easy read.
In fact, it’s a tough slog. The topic is difficult, the writing is difficult if beautiful (I read it in translation and I would imagine that the French is even more beautiful), and it’s on the longish side; but it’s very high on the poignancy index (if such a thing exists) and in the end it’s, paradoxically perhaps, a work of great beauty about an impossible subject.
The idea/legend/tradition of 36 “just” men (“tzadeekeem”; sing., “tzadeek” or more commonly, “tzadik”) is a fairly well-known phenomenon (if one knows of it…). It’s twice 18, a significant number in Hebrew numerology since as a word (numbers in Hebrew are expressed as letters), it is “chai” (or “hai” with a slightly guttural “h”), which means “ALIVE” or the verb “LIVES” (the plural—cha’im or ha’yeem or ha’eem—meaning “LIFE”, as in “le-cha’im”, i.e., “TO LIFE”, for all those “Fiddler on the Roof” aficionados, which is the expression used when raising a glass or offering a toast).
I wasn’t aware that the legend dictates that a lamed-vavnik (i.e., one of the 36) is aware that he/she is one. (I imagine the legend has various strands.)
In any case, it would seem to tie in with the Jewish aphorism/tenet that one should treat everyone one meets/comes across/sees/crosses paths with AS THOUGH that person could be the messiah (with or without white donkey). A nice idea, but probably honored more in the breach than in the observance. Still…
Huxley,
Minnesota as a whole is a nice, cold State with ‘hot’ summers. It has more than 10 thousand lakes and is the source of the Mississippi River. It is predominantly Scandinavian. It is still 84% White, with immigrant populations from Laos, Somalia, Ethiopia, Vietnam, etc. My maternal side is from Saint Paul Minnesota with an Irish background. Saint Paul is doing alright because they have a good mayor In Melvin Carter, his dad was a police officer and he grew up in the historic black neighbourhood in Saint Paul. He supports the police and the first responders.
Minneapolis used to be a nice City, but their north side has increasing violent crime over the past couple of decades. Because of Minnesota’s generous welfare system, families moved in to the city during the 1980’s from the Chicago area, which brought gangs and violence. However, a lot of neighbourhoods were improving with affordable homes, great charter schools, and nice neighbourhoods. That has all been destroyed. My brother said driving through Minneapolis is like Fallujah. Minneapolis has no leadership and virtue ridiculous oppressed members for their City Council. Minnesota also has a horrible, weak governor. It is a travesty.
Well I’m not the Messiah; just a Very Naughty Boy.
And how can one possibly talk about Minneapolis without bringing up the illustrious Ilhan Omar:
First, there’s the cash-for-ballot scheme which of course couldn’t possibly be true:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/09/29/project-veritas-ilhan-omar/
https://thefulcrum.us/rep-ilhan-omar
https://www.newsweek.com/project-veritas-ilhan-omar-illegal-ballot-harvesting-1534555
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/09/29/project-veritas-report-accuses-ilhan-omar-supporters-of-illegally-harvesting-ballots/
And then there’s this, in support of the destruction of Minneapolis, which of course she never possibly could have said:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-ilhan-omar-defund-minneapolis-police-theyre-cancer-we-dont-want-your-damn-reforms
(Note: the above article, found on DuckDuckGo, was—somehow—not “found” using Google…)
I guess you get what you pay for….
Barry, I have to laugh a little at your question:
It’s very simple – we’ve been doing that for over 30 comments’ worth. Just follow our example above, I would say. 🙂 Not everything about Minneapolis has to come down to her. Besides, why flatter her with the attention? I happen to think she has a pretty face, but that’s about where the good news ends for my part.
I suppose it’s a matter of whether one has any sort of personal connection to the place, however indirect. Since I’m already from the Midwest (though from a couple of states away from MN) and have been to Minneapolis once, even drove through what ended up becoming the central riot zone much later on, I feel it when travelers write about the place as in this article (although I still can’t make a dude with green hair fit into my mental image of Minnesota). In like vein, the ongoing war news from Chicago I receive with a similar attitude.
All I can say, is WTF.
When did our lives, much less our political project become tied to the concept of tragically enduring a life lived with the albatross of an amoral, life incompetent, morally vicious F**k Up class hung around our necks up close and personal, forever and ever amen.
Wasn’t the United States supposed to be a political space arranged for people who were better than that? Isn’t that why effen paupers and thieves and the insane were excluded by immigration laws … because it is obvious what happens when you clasp the serpent to your bosom or trust your kids to the care of pederasts?
Why go suicidal? Because, “compassion” or some shit? Well suffocate me with a plasic bag and call it fulfillment; because tender sad stories we murmur to each other while wearing paper chains and “locked” in an imaginary room, are obviously way better than freedom, self direction, and happy, healthy, living among morally clean ( as the Bluejacket’s Manual language might have had it) fellows?
I’ve gradually come to the realization, more forcibly yesterday than on most occassions, that my ideational development path, was from all appearances almost the direct opposite of most other’s. I started off as an almost radical nominalist and atheist, who was convinced that categories were mostly unreal and definitions arbitrary, and that all those moral stories “authorities” told were just crap that fundamentally weak adults dumped on you to keep you in line and ease their own lives. Bible stories made no impact on me.
I believed this, because in the world outside of my own home, I saw it. A kid is not yet politely blind at that point to what might be considered cruel or odious contrasts and comparisons. The plainly manipulative and self consoling nature of what most (not all, or you would have no basis for eventual comparisons) adults are up to is as plain as the noses on their faces. You notice too that they are lying much of the time. And when they are not lying about the subject matter at hand, they are implicitly lying through veiled or ulterior or manipulative motives about what they are not lying about. They, if strapped in a chair and forced to explain themselves would probably mumble something about the human condition and how it is unavoidable. “The poor ( and as they read it) and the liars, and the cheats, and the nihilist brother-in-law, you will have always with you.” So just get used to it and make adjustments, right? Wrong.
Among free men and women -men and women who do not live in fear and resentment – that, is unnecessary. It is being socially and legally shackled to each other by a fear of freedom, and into a supposedly compassionate and altruisric “shared fate” that causes the marginal cases to go bad in our effort to mainstream, include, accept, and welcome the destructive, nihilistically disruptive, and lunatic into our dwelling spaces.
That works so “great” in the classroom, as walk-away girl pointed out, that we should have more of it everywhere! Surely it will work equally well in our cities, our states, and our nation as a whole.
So we piss away our freedom, and our clarity, and our very lives in the name of some foggy minded hand-wringing negatively redounding idea of compassion; one that is kinda pseudo-spiritual in nature or something, but which cannot be defended as … well, you know, something I am willing to admit or argue God actually commanded. But, since it makes us feel good, let’s pretend. And that way we won’t wind up throwing the crazies into the snake pit, or sneering like a bunch of Nazi snobs at the short little hedonist nerd with glasses who ignobly moans with pleasure when he eats. And what could be more important than that?
Ok. I didnt really mean any of this. Sorry. Compassion is good. Compassion is great. It’s huge, and it’s really really great. In fact, it’s the best thing, many people say …
No one is as strong or wise as the philosopher. The philosopher will never grow old, never have diminished capabilities, compassion for others and empathy is for losers.
It also reminds me of the Bodhisattvas in Buddhist thought, enlightened beings who “compassionately refrain from entering nirvana in order to save others.”
neo: Which of course reminds me of this splendid line when Wanda corrects Otto, who somehow imagines himself as a deep thinker:
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Otto West : Don’t call me stupid.
Wanda : Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I’ve known sheep that could outwit you. I’ve worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you’re an intellectual, don’t you, ape?
Otto West : Apes don’t read philosophy.
Wanda : Yes they do, Otto. They just don’t understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not “Every man for himself.” And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.
–“A Fish Called Wanda”
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As I recall, Cleese explained the Buddhism line as his reaction to reading a frothy magazine article on “How to Get Ahead with Zen Buddhism.”
DNW:
I think you are mistaking compassion for stupid self-destructive misplaced compassion. I try to maintain the first while avoiding the second like – the plague. Not that it’s easy to know the difference. But too little compassion is as bad as too much.
It’s not easy to calibrate the balance of mercy and justice, but that’s the goal.
There’s an old Jewish saying (I’m doing this from memory) that goes, “Those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind.”
I think you are mistaking compassion for stupid self-destructive misplaced compassion. I try to maintain the first while avoiding the second like – the plague. Not that it’s easy to know the difference. But too little compassion is as bad as too much.
The philosopher Peter Kreeft has a discussion in one of his books on the distinction between caritas and ‘compassion’, and how compassion is troublesome for its exclusion of crucial features of caritas. I think it might be found in Fundamentals of the Faith.
Art Deco: I believe Heidegger said it best:
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To think Being itself explicitly requires disregarding Being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of beings and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics.
–Martin Heidegger
huxley on October 15, 2020 at 3:31 pm said:
Hahaha. Where is that quote from? I’ll look it up. I’ve got a shelf full of Heidegger.
For me, his writings which were either reproductions of early lectures and thus much clearer in laying out the grounding of his line of thought, or are very late philological style meditations and “after the turn” so-called, make much sense.
“Being and Time” however, is one of those books that looks as though it will contain world altering perspectives; and then when you open it has a bunch of detailed crap about moods, and concern with the ready to hand, and the droning on mental state of the Das Man, which are all posited as critical to the analysis of the question of Being. Which I guess is what is supposed to be so world altering about this treatment of “Being” … and thus: being in time toward death. Or something.
Geez, but when I was a kid and stumbled across the title on the library shelf I could not wait to read it; excitedly supposing that it was some kind of hybrid work of physics and religion in which all mysteries would be clearly explained. LOL
But since then, I have read plenty of commentaries by those who pretend to know what he is getting at with regard to the opening and so forth. But all they seem to me to manage to do is to deny that the presencing of that which shows itself, and which he talks about so much, or the relation of the subject’s consciousness to the presencing of that which reveals itself to it, is the definition of “being” after all.
Of course it is kind of interesting to think about what sense it might make to employ “being” terminology with regard to a deaf, dumb, and blind material reality which fizzes away without any conscious perceivers ever beholding it or knowing about it. The term “being” clearly involves some reflexive construction relative to its use. What that is exactly … or where it finds its locus
So if you, personally, understand exactly what Heidegger on Being is referring to, please let me know.
I’ll be so appreciative that I’ll even stop making jokes about Buddhism.
Gosh, no wonder Arendt fell for him….
DNW: Glad someone got the joke…
That’s from p.6 of the “On Time and Being” lecture (not to be confused with the “Being and Time” book). It’s supposed to be at the time of Heidegger’s “turn.” You can download it here.
https://dlcl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/files_upload/Heidegger%20-%20Time%20and%20Being.pdf
hahaha.
I’ve got that festschrift “pamphlet” at home, and, in a paragraph I deleted before posting, mentioned it, fellow thin book The Question Concerning Technology; “Was Heisst Denken”; “Early Greek Thinking”; and “The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic”, as being some of the clearer works.
I deleted that because I came to realize that apart from Sein und Zeit, most of the stuff was fairly clear in aim.
Now in the last few minutes as I prepare to leave the office, I find that there is a hidden work of his from 1937 which was only published in (in German) in 1999. Hell, several of the titles I listed were, if memory serves, only made available in the U.S. in the 1970s or after.
But since I am allowing myself to brush up here, I’ll include this outstandingly clear explanatory passage from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which I was just now reading concerning a developmental issue. As you will recall Husserl, was puzzled by the book dedicated to him, and remarked to others that it seemed not to be a phenomenological analysis so much as a work of philosophical anthropology. I agreed, when I read that.
The last sentence below, explains, in a manner Heidegger did not seem to do explicitly (so far as my long past readings and present recollection go) why that interpretation of the work as an anthropological exploration (in the philosophical sense) should be modified.
DNW: I became interested in Heidegger because I was around when Werner Erhard morphed the est Training into the Landmark Forum. Suddenly Erhard was talking in a new, even more mysterious, way. He was prattling on about “authenticity” and saying things like “taking the stand that you are the stand you take or merely living in the concept of it.”
I’m a word guy and that “taking the stand” recursion entranced me, echoing as it will down the corridors of the mind.
Anyway I tracked the new, improved Landmark-speak back to Heidegger and since then I’ve been nibbling away at Heidegger to figure out where Werner was coming from.
Werner Erhard had taken up with a Chilean prodigy, Fernando Flores, who in his twenties had been high in Salvador Allende’s cabinet until the coup, then managed to land on his feet at Stanford, doing cutting-edge work in Artificial Intelligence with Terry Winograd and studying under one of the world’s top Heidegger men, Hubert Dreyfus.
My plan is to learn enough Heidegger so I can annoy people by asking them about their eigentlich and if they have been ontological today.
Well, have you?
Have I? No. I never speak of Heidegger or his philosophy to anyone unless it is a relevant passing reference on line, as in the response to a remark like yours.
All my involvement with Heidegger’s philosophy has been pursued on my own as a kind of hobby-like continuation of related course work, and mostly, apart from a half watched series on YouTube, done decades ago.
That said I did classroom courses on Lebenswelt and critical philosophy and historicism covering Brentano and Dilthey and the like as the percursors to the phenomenological movement. Then, a course dedicated purely to Husserl and phenomenological, (and eventually existential) philosophy, per se. The reading load in the full blown phenomenology class was so heavy and the course work so dense and the language so unrelentingly novel, that I don’t believe I have ever been so taxed in trying to grasp the material. All my previous coursework in historical interpretation, Marxism, psychology, and Anglo-American philosophy gave me only the scantest preparation for the unremitting onslaught of unfamiliar terminology and its technical, or jargonistic if you prefer, uses. The transcendental reduction, the phenomenological reduction, transcendental idealism, epoche, eidetic image, hermeneutics of interpretation, apodicticity, ontic, ontical, ontological , on and on at 10 to a page it seemed. No wonder after reflecting on peeling the onion so many times, I was recurrently dreaming about standing on a glass floor above a glass floor above a … ad infinitum – each of which gave way if I dared to look down. LOL And then the French …. Geez
My plan is to learn enough Heidegger so I can annoy people by asking them about their eigentlich and if they have been ontological today.
Well, have you? –huxley
DNW: It was a joke question.
By my current understanding I’m asking if you, as a Being-In-The-World (Dasein), are inquiring into the issues of Being as only a human being (Dasein) can.
Boy, you’ve hit some hard books hard!
In Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel, “The Santaroga Barrier,” the protagonist’s last name is Dasein. Dasein is a government agent investigating a peculiar community in California in which the inhabitants turn out to be taking a psychedelic drug which elevates them into a higher Heideggerian consciousness. Though Herbert drops no names.
There is now a book on the Werner Erhard – Martin Heidegger connection in the Landmark Forum:
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The dialogue at work in The Forum functions to generate a language which speaks being. That is, The Forum is an instance of what the authors call ontological rhetoric: a technology of communicating what cannot be said in language. Nevertheless, what does get said allows those participating in the dialogue to discover previously unseen aspects of what it currently means to be human. As a primary outcome of such discovery, access to creating a new possibility of what it is to be human is made available.
–“Speaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and a New Possibility of Being Human”
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119549906/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00
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I just ordered it.
For Hux.
https://faculty.georgetown.edu/blattnew/heid/Heidegger-jargon.html
And by the way you #%!!!×#! See what you have done to me? I was up till all hours going through 35 year old worn-with-use broken spined books filled with underlinings and pages ready to fall out.
May you, my friend, be required to read all the works of Merleau-Ponty in two days and then write an original classroom essay for credit evaluating the validity of his critique of Husserl’s transcendental ego. Ha!
DNW: That’s a good jargon sheet! I have a couple others.
Blattner was Hubert Dreyfus’s most brilliant Heidegger student. Dreyfus was the prof I mentioned earlier who taught Fernando Flores.
I’m working with Dreyfus’s commentary and lectures on Division I of “Being and Time,” as well as the MacQuarrie/Robinson translation, of course.
According to wiki, the Futurama mad scientist, Hubert Farnsworth, is based in part on Dreyfus.
It’s all coming together…
I remain intrigued that Landmark Education, the fine folks who bring you the Landmark Forum, is now essentially a Heideggerian self-help cult.
What could go wrong?
To think Being itself explicitly requires disregarding Being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of beings and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics.
–Martin Heidegger
DNW: Now that I’ve gotten my head back into Heidegger, the above is actually basic to Heidegger.
His overarching concern is to establish that the Being of a human is entirely different from the Being of a stone or a hammer (tool). Our Being is not that of stone or tool with some fancy mind or soul stuff added in, as in conventional metaphysics. That previous understanding must be disregarded for the investigation Heidegger proposes.
I could do with a little less concision.
“What could go wrong?”
As you insinuate, lots.
Despite generations of study being applied to the works of both Husserl, and Heidegger, and the great influence their ideas have seemingly had among certain intellectuals, there is no universal agreement about what all these ideas are and imply in detail, or how to properly deploy them. Though, in the case of Heidegger, doing something instrumental with his insights – which are not beyond questioning in themselves or their predicate assumptions, even when grasped – is one thing we can be pretty sure he was not concerned with.
Nonetheless, Husserl certainly aimed at a program and science of transcendental psychology; which, has apparently stimulated an enthusiasm for the notion which has been manifested in inverse proportion to its real world results.
I think a great many people are convinced they can “do something” with Heidegger (I did) ; as if his shift in perspective on the notion of being, will eventually open a kind of door to an alternate or obscured reality in which we might participate if we can just absorb the insights which will liberate us from the traditional ground/detail, subject-object framework which we have inherited as part of the western philosophical tradition, and cramps our being in the world.
Or, and this was probably more common, that he gave us a pathway to a more “authentic” life. Certainly everyone from Nazis to walleyed French sodomite philosophers, to pixie haired professional church ladies have grabbed on to this or that phrase as a kind of slogan or embryo program.
Now, the notion of making an intellectual journey back to a more primordial experience of being, promises a fascinating prospect. But I am not sure – and this is a philistine remark admittedly – that we should not have had among us until very recently, living human examples of mentalities which should according to the narrative, experience being in a pretheoretic manner.
What useful, or even interesting insights concerning the “nature” of being have anthropologists reported? Are these pretheoretic encounters incommunicable, and only to be experienced? Or do we as seems to be the idea, live with them everyday, unnoticed and asking the savage a pointless exercise.
Anyway, things become clearer as more lectures and transcripts are released in critical editions.
Trying to understand Heidegger though, on the basis of Being and Time only, before these lecture materials and late books were released, was like trying to evaluate Marx on the basis of Das Kapital, without really understanding his aims and assumptions and agenda which were more fully revealed in the EPM.
Or, so it seems to me.