Posted on 12/20/2005 8:18:22 AM PST by Noumenon
The divide of which Solzhenitsysn speaks has never been more apparent than it is today. The mostly uncivil war waged by the American Left on America itself is now out in the open for all to see.
If nothing else, Solzhenitsyn's speech is a reminder of what we're fighting against, and what we're fighting for.
Indeed.
One of the greatest thinkers of this or any other time.
BTTT
But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses.
One of the most important statements in this speech. Yet so few seem to be willing to admit that there is such a battle, much less take the fight back to the enemy. And that enemy is now out there for all to see.
Quite a remarkable statement.
Option (a) The fine art of snoring:
The peculiar something which [General] Kutusov had, the "something between Amos and the Almighty" which made him so confidently aware that the unlikeliest thing in the world was the thing which was going to happen, seems to be entirely dissociated from intellect and personal will. Count Tolstoy [remember, from War and Peace] says that young Prince Bolkonsky went away from an interview with Kutusov feeling greatly reassured about the old general's conduct of the campaign, because "he will put nothing of himself into it. He will contrive nothing, will undertake nothing. . . . He knows that there is something stronger and more important than his will; that is, the inevitable march of events; and he can see them and grasp their significance; and seeing their significance, he can abstain from meddling, from following his own will and aiming at something else." - Albert J. NockOption (b) fight like a Patton
"One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, 'Fixing the wire, Sir.' I asked, 'Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?' He answered, 'Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!' Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds."Aware of the disorientating nature beaurocratic demands, Havel gave the practical advice to "live within the truth." I take this to mean, in part, to practice good without evaluation, knowing it to be good.
That'd be . . . a bureaucratic life
But how does an agnostic know that something is "good," such that he can "live within it?"
This, above all else. And this is precisely what the Machiavellian, Gramscian Left has worked so hard to strip from our culture and from our inner selves.
And is it not those same Marxist materialists who deem us no better, and in many cases, less than than things, animals or machines? And was it not O'Brien who promised Winston that their aim was to hollow out human beings and fill them with themselves?
We have now gone sufficiently far enough down the road to totalitarianism that there is only one way to stop them. Only one way.
Well, what can I say, dear Noumenon? If one "kills God," Man is always the real victim.
God knows the difference between a man and a machine. O'Brien does not.
And Winston is confused by this discrepancy. Do you suppose Winston is an agnostic?
Definition of agnostic, Oxford Dictionary:
nounBut where, in material phenomena, does the agnostic locate the origin of Truth about the universe and our human place in it?
a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.
Just wondering....
I surely hope you are wrong about the "only way" to stop the totalitarian aggression against the American people as clearly perpetrated by the Obama Regime.
But if you aren't, you had better have God on your side....
Or so it seems to me, FWIW.
Excellent point, dearest sister in Christ, it brings up that word “ratio” again...
How about relative to the Unknown God? Can that be helpful?
For some, what is good can be known as an experience of pneumatic consciousness. Putting epistemological pressure on that experience will increase the risk of aperzeptionsverweigerung, the disease of aversion that Dr. Voegelin was quick to sniff out.
Anyone familiar with this book?
Whoa, only four used copies at Amazon at over a hundred bucks apiece.
Free download here though:
http://archive.org/details/SocialistPhenomenon
I would love to be wrong about this. Unfortunately, history and human nature strongly indicate that I am not. With all that entails.
St. Paul, too, recognizing an opportunity: "Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you." The Greek myth is answered by revelation, but the myth was helpful. Law is the same way; helpful but not enough.
Because there are kinds of agnostics, there are different kinds of responses. I recall Bouilhet once saying in a post, "To me, the best one can say is, 'That which I do not know exists, may exist.'" At the time he wrote that, Bouilhet's response was something like Wittgenstein's "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Silence won't do for a young heart.
Bouilhet also mentions William Blake's response, which is also expressed in the Robert Redford film, A River Runs Through It: even though we cannot understand another person perfectly, we can love them perfectly. If that's true, there is at least some understanding to begin with. (Where to begin? asks Calvin in the Institutes.) Knowing in part is also part of Aristotle's ethics. Aristotle resorts to a provisional (or practical) human ethic. Are people happy after they die? They might be, he says. Hard to tell, he says, and then goes on. In this way, Aristotle is one of the Greeks who gave to Western Civilization a humanism that is not secular, exactly the opposite of what is nowadays meant by humanism: an "enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him." And while Solzhenitsyn notes that out of this autonomy man is made "the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth" we see another kind of response They taught such an ethic because they understood the need in themselves for a ground and the origin of truth for the self outside themselves. So even betty boop at one time said, "It seems that both Plato and Aristotle had a Source from which they were able to draw their most profound insights into the nature of man, the structure of consciousness, etc. This does have the quality of revelation, for they recognized this." Honesty is helpful. Someone like the post general_re is probably still stuck: "Look, even if I accept the existence of revelation, upon what basis do I evaluate the truth of that which is revealed to me?
What general_re does accept is insufficient, according to Solzhenitsyn.
In contrast to genera_re, there is Socrates. It came from Socrates' admitted ignorance. After exhausting the capabilities of rational/mathematicl/logical thinking, he realized he was ignorant of what he wanted to know. Did the shoemakers know what man is? No. Did the horsetrainers? No. Did the politicians? No. Did the poets? No. It was an open question, without stability. The answer to what human nature was appeared relative to anyone who could offer an opinion. Three options were left to him after that: either to ignore that the knowledge of our human nature is insignificant (that required schizophrenia) or, to create a substitute (that required arrogance). He settled on the third option, which is called Socratic piety, awaiting an answer from those who did know.
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