Rene Descartes led The West into its first Critical Turn in thinking: "masked I advance":
I began this series of posts on 'The Critical Insurrection' five years ago (here, and here), by noting that despite the heated talk of insurrection at the time, the real and ongoing insurrection against America has had very little to do with what happened in our capital on the day of Jan 6th (a bitterly laughable claim). Much more to that point, are the innumerable insurrectional ideologies that have beset America with a century and more of attacks, whose most significant aspect is not those attacks we see still to this day, but the acceptance of that behavior by so many amongst us. That indicates where the critical damage is being done, not in open rioting, but within the ideas being thought within our minds, and so masked, the insurrection advances.
The various forms that 'Progressive Education' has taken over the last two centuries, have enabled the insurrection to advance unseen, by progressively purging the Western Mind of its history & literature. Too often lost in the distractions of rising illiteracy rates, falling test scores, and calls for more 'education reform!', is the reality that without the natural defenses that those lessons of history & literature had provided, we've become less able to identify, let alone confront, the ongoing insurrection that the enemies of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West, have been executing against us.
The Anchorage School District puts a warning label on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
The most obvious ones we lack today, are those that were once commonly learned from those now mostly forgotten stories, such as the one I referenced in the 2nd of these posts, where Hercules fought the Hydra, the many-headed monster that grew two new heads for each one that was cut off. In that adventure, Hercules & his companion Iolaus realized that they couldn't defeat the hydra just by cutting off its heads, because for each one they severed, it grew back two more to attack them with. What they soon realized was that if after Hercules cut off a head with his sword, Iolaus quickly cauterized its stump with his torch, it could grow no more heads from that neck, and so as they severed & cauterized one neck after another, they soon rendered the many headed Hydra, headless, and were able to bury what was left of the beast under a massive stone.
Sure, I realize that many (not you, of course) might be saying:
"Swell story Van, but we're not facing many headed monsters, and we have no swords or torches to cut and cauterize them with if we did! What we need are STEM skills, not stories!", and my reply to that, is:
Stop being so naive.For those with eyes to see, the plain fact is that we are fighting a many headed monster, and it is devouring both our children and our society, and it is our willful ignorance of that, that has made it so easy for the beast to lay us low.
So yes, shallow perceptions aside, the fact is that:
- we most definitely do have a monster confronting us in the guise of a govt whose power has broken free of its proper limitations, working in league with an 'educational system' designed to make you unwise enough to accept it
- its many heads stem from fraudulent rights and perverted virtues that're supported by a long neck of unjust laws & new 'norms' that've grown out of the boldest of its lies
- we do have a sword: Truth, and we do have a flaming torch to cauterize the necks we sever: Principled arguments rooted in metaphysics, causality/logic, and ethics, which provide the high degree of truth needed for unseen errors to be found & corrected and for lies to be exposed, which is what it takes to ignite & burn sophistry with the heat of a thousand suns
One would have to be a fool, or one so dis-educated as to be indistinguishable from one, to dismiss such gems as little more than 'Talking snake stories', but achieving that level of cognitive blindness is and has been the point of our pro-regressive dis-education, and having achieved that state of mind by the early 20th Century, is what made it child's play for our experts in 'Progressive Education' to then discard Greek & Latin, and Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas, and even Shakespeare, from the minds of the last several generations that their beast has been busily 'educating'.
“In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college.” ~Joseph Sobran
The West was able to achieve what it had, through how it learned lessons from its foundational stories, and recovering both those stories and how to read them, could do that for us once again, if we would just stop doing everything else but that. It's worth considering, that one uncomfortable lesson that those stories are ready to teach us, is that a STEM Skill centric people - having skills without understanding - is the intended result of cutting all the tall poppies down to size.
Some of you (not you, of course) might be saying:
"Oh come on... give me even one example of a 'lesson' like that applying today!"Ok, tell ya what, here are three relevant lessons worth learning from Hercules & the Hydra for the price of one:
Provoking you to rash actions is how such monsters go about killing and eating you, or as Saul Alinsky put it when radicalizing students into Leftist activism:
- By imagining yourself in the position of the monster that grows two new heads for every one that's lost, you might learn that the monster wants to provoke its opponents to rush in and cut off one of its heads, because that's how it gets enough heads to overwhelm them with.
- Knowing that the Hydra wants to be attacked by bold & impetuous heroes whose tempers can easily be inflamed, teaches you that it's wise to consider a situation carefully before rushing in to attack what you're being provoked with.
- From stories such as these you learn that those who're ignorant of such lessons, are more prone to following their natural (ignorant) reactions to rush in where angels fear to tread, and so assist the monster they're battling against, to defeat them.
- Bonus Lesson: No Hydra wants you to learn lessons such as these, from stories such as those!
"Their reaction is your action!"Is this just theory? No, and a quick check of recent history abounds with the consequences of allowing the hydra to provoke the rash behavior of popular opinion, again & again... here are three off the top:
And as you begin to notice that provocations and insults are routinely deployed to get us to attack the obvious issues being waved in front of our faces, it's worth remembering Alinsky's other favorite training phrase:
- Ten years ago when trans-gender bathrooms and drag-queen story hour emerged, the public was outraged and demanded change!... which was then exploited through policies ensuring gender affirming care, porn in public school libraries, and further diluted and reduced the presence and position of women in society through the zealotry of 'trans women are women!', men beating women in women's sports, and men being named as 'woman of the year'
- Twenty years ago when parents were angered by convoluted math problems and the vapidness of assigned 'texts', they rushed into their school boards and loudly demanded change! (to what? for what?) and more rigorous testing (testing of what? for what?), and 'struck down Common Core!' (or so they thought); which on the one hand helped usher in the ideological intensification of SEL, CRT, and DEI, and 'School Choice' on the other (the 'choice' isn't what you think it is), both of which add additional bureaucratic facts, policies, reduced understanding, and ever worsening results
- A hundred years ago sensational stories about political corruption led to a big push for more 'democracy!' and the first wave of campaign finance reform being waved in We The People's faces, which resulted in passing the 17th Amendment... which reduced meaningful representation for every person, incentivized corruption, and transformed the federal govt into the untouchable hydra that We The People are still battling against today
"The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution!"
C.S. Lewis: "The Screwtape Letters"
, and remember that their tactics are all about provoking you to react to the latest outrage in as shallow a manner as possible (anger & miseducation being the preferred one-two punch of monsters everywhere & everywhen), so that it can intensify our reactions and advance its divisiveness forward over our positions, positions which, lacking the perspectives which those lessons could have provided a solid foundation for, become more easily overrun, and prone to collapse before the critical insurrection.
The treasury of the West, from Homer to The Bible, from Virgil to Dante, and Shakespeare, abounds with meaningful lessons and truths which reveal its foundations in the rock of what is real and true, and those can still be as readily communicated to us today, as they were to our Founders in their era, and so provide the metaphysical stability needed to fill the mind, body, and soul, with far more than 'just stories', and the Hydra gnos that.
I've noted before, how at the outset of the pro-regressive transformation of what we had known education to be, into the malicious creature it is today, an astonished essayist commented in the late 1800s that:
"...The notion that literature can be taken up as a branch of education, and learned at the proper time and when studies permit, is one of the most farcical in our scheme of education..."
The Palmerworm is adept at showing how seemingly useful answers are used to suppress and violate vital principles, such as: The Anthropological Line
, and he said so because to think that what literature transmits to our understanding can be thought of as being only a secondary branch of a 'STEM' education, rather than the soil, root and trunk of what an education is developed through, was still recognized by most people in his day to be completely absurd. Since then, however, that has become the norm, as anyone trained in 'Critical Thinking Skills' today would tell you (like my college professor troll), and they'll find ready support from those on 'The Right' who will jump at any opportunity for still more 'education reform' (which mainly enlarges the schools' bureaucracy and further diminishes the education they provide) to boost those test scores, provide 'accountability' and ensure improved 'thinking skills'. But take note:
Being trained to seek surface answers leads a person to neglect their awareness of underlying structures of principled understanding which are revealed through attention to theme, plot, and character development (you did learn about theme, plot, and character development in school, right? ...and that it was one of the most important lessons to learn...?), and not just those found in stories & literature, but in other narratives as well. That habit of mind is vital for developing a solid depth of understanding about what you've read or heard, and without that, the habit weakens, you become comfortable with its absence, and ever more willing to accept whatever 'answers' you're given, as substitutes for having given the serious consideration to a matter that's required to come to a conclusion about it that's worthwhile - actual, not artificial intelligence.
- What do stories provide?: grammar, context, theme, plot, characterization, through which readers develop a basic understanding of logic, causality, ethics, and the ability to infer principles through, and learn lessons from, what they've read.
- What do stories not provide: Answers.
- What does modern schooling train you to seek and accept?: Answers.
Excellent demonstrations from Courtenay Turner, on how to see the larger story being lost behind the 'answers' that're given, in:
"The Simulation State" and "The Factory Reset"
"The Simulation State" and "The Factory Reset"
Don't forget:
striking off the monster's head is the easy part..., and that requires it to do nothing more than wave the easy answers of divisive facts in our faces, to get an ill-considered reaction from us. And unless you actually understand the issue which it inflamed your reaction to, then even if you manage to cut the head off the neck you're being faced with, you'll lack the depth of understanding that's needed to generate enough heat to cauterize its bloodied stump, and so you enable the hydra to sprout still more heads for tearing us all apart with....as the monster intends it to be
A Grimoire of philosophical spells: "Hegel and the hermetic tradition", by Glenn Alexander Magee
That lack of depth in our understanding (Note: this isn't a matter of intelligence, but of what is left unconsidered by even the most able thinkers), is what inclines us to lash out at every provocation, which is what has been on full display in the usual responses to issues like students being led (by their teachers and administrators) out of school to protest for 'Black Lives Matter!' or 'Ice Out!', as the Woke Left & Woke Right (or just Pro-Regressive, for short), shout that "It's about white supremacy!' or 'It's about hating white people!", both of which advance a common narrative of racial division. What's then able to go unnoticed in those (deliberate) appearances, is that the actual issue is not about race, race is just what they know they can rely upon to provoke a rash response from both you and their friends on the 'other side'.
The issue is never about the apparent issues of education, or race, or illegal aliens, or about what 'gender' you identify as, but the churning that happens on every ideological front, as with the 2nd Amendment where the dialectical churning from each side ('Left' or 'Right') making it all about guns - for or against - diverts everyone from thinking about the individual rights that the 2nd Amendment secures to us by preventing the government from infringing upon our right to keep and bear arms (Note: it says 'arms' in general, not 'firearms' in particular) - that churning is the insurrection in action.
The pattern to be noticed emerging from that, that of a provocative distraction, reaction, action, is the footprint (and mating call) of the monster that we're actually facing (which is not the guise of govt that it wears, but the monster beneath that mask), and 'somehow' that pattern mirrors how we've all been taught to think about and approach the issues of the day.
The initial provocative distractions and the public reactions to them - 'transgender bathrooms', 'low test scores', 'teachers unions' - seize upon surface facts and easy answers, and then - 'somehow' - with an action of philosophical sleight of mind (have you noticed how activism around hot-button issues like 'freedom of speech!' and 'Don't cancel me!', typically intensify the problems they purport to be concerned with?) the underlying issue slips by and progressively metastasizes (reproduces?) and sprouts two new heads as matters steadily worsen.
Whichever head of the hydra is being battled, as we react to the distracting movements that the hydra churns up around an issue, the doors to the halls of power are swung wide open by our impetuous heroes calling for 'Change!' from all sides, and the only thing that can be counted upon, is that it will result in still more policies, media denunciations, and more, as the spiritual and political corruption of the Hydra's venom seeps in deeper and spreads still further... which is the 'Left, Right, Left, Right, Forward... March!' of the revolution.
Eric Voegelin:"Science, Politics, and Gnosticism"
How has that 'somehow' been accomplished? Well, in a word - and this word might be a bit provocative itself: Magic
I know, many (not you, of course) are probably saying:
"Really Van? Magic?!"Yes, but, because the word 'Magic' has multiple meanings, it's important to clarify that what I mean by that has less to do with the hocus-pocus sense of a Merlin the Magician, and more to do with the skilled stagecraft of a philosophical Houdini. Much of what has been attributed to complex issues (1st cousin to 'hocus-pocus') like 'rising illiteracy', 'trade wars', 'the decline of the family', are in fact the natural consequences of simple perceptions, decisions & actions we're routinely led into, whose import is effectively obscured and hidden from us by the artful misdirection & subterfuge (much of which is done unconsciously) of those who put on the airs of an expert (magician).
No doubt most of you (you too?) are pushing back on even that 'stage magician' identification of the term, but I'll ask you: What is it that you have in mind to explain what has enabled bearded men to publicly identify as woman, and to do so with the assurance that thousands if not tens of thousands of highly educated people will accuse you of 'transphobia' and 'hate speech', for objecting to their ludicrous claims? If the sum of your assessment of that is something to the effect of
'Oh...hell-If-I-Know...somehow!', then I submit to you, that your exasperation and acceptance of it, is that same sense which both the stage magician and the philosophical sorcerer cultivate, because to be successful they both need their audience to have that level of misunderstanding about the tricks they're performing upon them "Wow... somehow he pulled a rabbit out of a hat!". Just as the stage magician uses sleight of hand to appear to pull a rabbit out of a hat, the philosophical sorcerer uses a conceptual sleight of mind to slip impossible ideas into what 'everyone knows', in order to do what every sane person would otherwise say is insane to even consider. And they do this with the assurance and expectation that they will be applauded for doing so on the national and international stage, just as the stage magicians are applauded for tricking their audiences in Las Vegas.
We'll put legs under this as we go through this series of posts, but I submit to you that if the audience 'knows' only those apparent 'answers' that the magician gives them ("you can see there's nothing in this hat") and doesn't understand the nature and causes of what they are seeing happen before them (such as how to conceal a rabbit), then those 'answers' they think they know about the trick, coupled with their misdirected attention and absence of interest in understanding what has happened, means that their audience's understanding of events differ very little from either sense of those observing a magician perform 'Magic'. I contend that nothing less than the widespread shallowness of understanding that is compatible with either sense of 'Magic', could have enabled someone to confidently identify as 'trans', and to feel assured that you would be penalized by the rest of the audience for heckling their performance.
Deceptions such as these have not only enabled the Pro-Regressives to bury us under layers and layers of the hydra's provocations, but they also whisper to us why it is that they operate in this way. Antonio Gramsci (who, BTW, was decades late to the pragmatic propaganda party) infamously identified the West's 'Cultural Hegemony' - that western culture being the result of the philosophy, religion, history, stories and myths of the Greco/Roman - Judeo/Christian civilization, has dominated all others - as the greatest defense against, and threat to, his Marxist's ideals, because he saw that our regard for our stories and religion and the understanding of them, was far more central to and foundational for that 'Cultural Hegemony', than any scientific and technical aspect of 'progress' in the modern world (none of which could have occurred without them).
What it is that Gramsci & others before him intended by attacking the West's 'Cultural Hegemony' and why, and how that was meant to be wielded against The West, by 'defenders' of The West using its technological powers against itself, is what we need to identify, sever, and cauterize into lifeless stumps, in order to bury the headless beast beneath an unmovable stone. Only then, will we be able to re-secure a sound understanding of America, within the minds of Americans today, and tomorrow.
Using 'Critical Thinking' to identify the nature of that 'somehow', progressively clarifying its footprint, profile, and purpose, and the familiar and trusted appearances it operates through and hides behind, is what this series of posts will be digging into.
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