philosophy – Page 87

The Minor Renaissance And The Major Renaissance

Renaissance means ‘rebirth’, and is the name given to the rebirth of the intellectual, philosophical and scientific culture of the West some 600 years ago. The Renaissance is understood to refer to a complete rebirth of higher awareness, as if we had awakened from a stupor, but a closer examination shows that only half of the job was done. As this essay will discuss, there are two great cultural rebirths – and one hasn’t happened yet.

There was much that was great about the Greco-Roman culture of the classical age. Philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle laid the intellectual and moral foundations for the entire Western world. The degree of moral insight they achieved has never been replicated, and works such as The Republic continue to inspire scholars and intellectuals around the world.

The Roman Empire that followed was one of the greatest feats of all of human civilisation. Its peak population was around 60-70 million, and the city of Rome had a million inhabitants at this time, about 1,900 years ago. Its great figures, like Julius Caesar, Augustus and Nero, are known to most today.

As this great culture was gradually destroyed by Christian and barbarian invaders, the West fell into the Dark Ages, where most knowledge and culture was lost. Europe regressed back into primitive superstition, and stayed there for almost a thousand years.

Beginning mostly in Italy, the Renaissance saw great minds such as da Vinci, Machiavelli, Galileo and Giordano Bruno restore much of the glory of those ancient days. Their contributions to mathematics, science and to the study of human nature lifted humanity out of the dark times and back to an age where reason triumphed. To the scholars and intellectuals of this new age, it felt very much like a rebirth of a higher order of consciousness.

This essay calls this the Minor Renaissance.

The Minor Renaissance, then, is the revival of the scientific and inquisitional culture that was championed by Greeks such as Archimedes, Eratosthenes and Aristotle. The Minor Renaissance gave us industrialisation, global empires, penicillin, spaceships, atomic bombs and computers. Its apogee may have come in 1969, with the first Moon landing.

But as glorious as the Minor Renaissance was, it’s still only a minor one.

Many of us have come to wonder what else there is in life. Somehow we don’t feel fulfilled buying big screen TVs, newer smartphones, bigger cars or bigger houses, and neither do we feel fulfilled flying or driving around the place. Career successes don’t bring any meaningful gratification and bringing children into a world like this is not easy to justify.

This sense of longing is compounded by the fact that our popular culture is overwhelmingly atheist. It’s very rare that the mainstream media expresses any spiritual wisdom, obsessed as it is with tawdry celebrity and crass consumerism. Our communities have decayed, our lives have become atomised, and our spiritual senses have become atrophied to the point where they barely still exist.

It’s little wonder, then, that suicide rates are rising across the West, along with anti-depressant and anti-psychotic prescriptions. The great process of learning and discovery that led to all the engineering and scientific achievements mentioned above, glorious as it was, did not leave us with the spiritual tools to confront the lack of inherent meaning in life on this planet. Bereft of such tools, we drift as if lost in space.

Because the Minor Renaissance was not a complete return to the glory of the Greco-Roman past, we await a Major Renaissance that will be. The Major Renaissance will see the rebirth of the Greco-Roman spiritual culture, some 600 years after the rebirth of the Greco-Roman intellectual and scientific culture.

This Major Renaissance will herald the spiritual rebirth of the soul of the Western people, which has remained dormant for some 1,600 years now.

Ever since the Eleusinian Mysteries were destroyed by Alaric and the Visigoths in 396, Westerners have lost their connection to the divine. The Eleusinian Mysteries had served to enlighten countless people during the thousand years they ran for. Today, however, spiritual truths that were once known by all are only known by society’s outcasts.

The Major Renaissance, therefore, would involve a rebirth of the Greco-Roman spiritual science that reached its highest expression in the rituals at Eleusis. This probably used some kind of psilocybin-based psychedelic sacrament, in conjunction with a ritualised and theatrical moral lecture, to shatter the false conceptions and false conditioning that befall all beings who manifest in the material plane.

A reinstatement of the Mysteries of Eleusis would involve the founding of a 21st century psilocybin mushroom cult. Eventually this would grow to become popular enough that most of the influential people in the world would want to be initiated. This collective enlightenment would provide the energy that sparked a spiritual renaissance that lifted the entire Western World – the Major Renaissance.

A spiritual renaissance would involve a widespread anamnesia, or unforgetting, of spiritual truths once widely understood. As this newspaper has argued before, a spiritual renaissance is happening right now. This is all but inevitable on account of that the truth, as Buddha observed, cannot be hidden for long. If this new spiritual age would come to define the age we lived in, we could be said to have gone through the Major Renaissance.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.

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Our Cruelty To Each Other Is What Keeps Them In Power

With another election fast approaching, many are taking the time to cry about the current New Zealand Government and how terrible it is. Few of these people are willing to take the time to consider that the alternative is at least as bad. As this essay will examine, they keep us like so many puppets on strings, and our cruelty to each other is what enables them to do so.

There’s no denying that Jacinda “The Unready” Ardern is a terrible Prime Minister. She looks and sounds every bit like an inexperienced young woman who would rather be at home suckling a child than trying to lead a modern nation. Making emotion-driven decisions with no apparent philosophical grounding whatsoever, she comes across as a horribly out-of-her-depth Marxist puppet.

Ardern rightly comes in for a lot of criticism, but what her critics neglect to acknowledge is that she only got in to begin with because the alternative was shit. This can’t be overemphasised. It was the utter shitness of the Fifth National Government – their hamfisted incompetence and psychopathic lack of empathy for the nation’s disadvantaged – that caused Winston Peters to finally say ‘Enough!’ and throw his lot in with Labour.

If the National Party hadn’t neglected the mentally ill by negligently underfunding the mental health system – something that was reflected in the nation’s suicide rate – they might have won enough votes to keep power. If they hadn’t proven themselves incompetent to deal with issues like medicinal cannabis law reform – something that saw African nations like Zimbabwe surpass us – they might have won enough votes to keep power.

Many on the right like to bitch about smacking, as if abusing a child was an inherent right that was granted with being a parent. These people have no respect for how appalling the rest of us find it. Society at large is also responsible for cleaning up the psychological damage caused by the trauma that smacking inflicts.

Again, it’s not reasonable to demand the right to abuse children and then complain when someone who opposes this gets voted into power. The right’s own cruelty, and their own stubborn, arrogant refusal to acknowledge that their cruelty is cruelty, gave the power to the left to put Ardern in charge.

By the same token, however, neither will the left have the right to complain when the National Party inevitably takes power again.

When the Labour Party decided to double the refugee quota to 1,500, they consigned tens of thousands of New Zealand women to the lifelong trauma of being a victim of sexual assault or rape. They did this in the name of wanting to appear “anti-racist” – in other words, to virtue signal.

Labour’s decision this week to lift restrictions on refugees coming from the Middle East and Africa was the sort of stupidity that will see many people turn away from them. The reason for those perfectly reasonable safeguards was the appalling rate of sex and violence crimes committed by men from the Middle East and Africa. The restrictions – in place since 2009 – will have had the effect of preventing hundreds, if not thousands of rapes.

What sort of evil would expose thousands of innocents to the depredations of people like Mohammad Farah, just for political capital?

Farah, who has sexually assaulted a string of women since coming to New Zealand as a refugee from Somalia in 2000, has repeatedly expressed the attitude that women owe him sexual favours – and he shows no sign of repenting. Why would he repent, when this attitude is common in his part of the world and is probably held by many of his male peers?

The Labour Party move will open the borders to more unrepentant sexual predators. More New Zealand women will get sexually assaulted or raped in the street, in local parks, at the swimming pool or in their homes. Grooming gangs will start up, preying on working-class Kiwi children of all races. Critics of the measures to open borders to the worst of the world will be pilloried, and threats to revoke their rights to free speech will be made.

Would it be any wonder, then, if vulnerable and marginalised Kiwi voters, demoralised by such insane moves, elected not to vote next year, and did so in sufficient numbers so that National came back to power? Simon Bridges (or Judith Collins) might well end up being another ignorant, cruel, out-of-touch autocrat, but they will only get away with it because of Labour’s own ignorant cruelty.

The only permanent solution is one based around genuine compassion for our own peers and neighbours. If we had the wit and will to take care of our own problems, rather than crying out to politicians like baby birds in a nest, there would be no reason to subject ourselves to the cruelties of the ruling class.

Labour can only get away with their bullshit because National neglected the mentally ill, the homeless and medicinal cannabis users. National will only get away with their bullshit because of Labour’s stupidity in opening the borders to cultures that believe women owe men sexual favours. If we Kiwis would govern ourselves correctly, with a long-term view informed by accurate science and genuine solidarity, we wouldn’t need either pack of scumbags.

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What The “Thug’s Veto” Means For New Zealand

Further confirmation that the New Zealand Justice System is comprised of arse-licking cowards was delivered by this week’s verdict in favour of the Auckland Council and Phil Goff, who had last year banned a couple of Canadian speakers from speaking at council-owned venues. Despite the fact that the ban was clearly a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the New Zealand High Court let them get away with it. This article discusses what this decision means for New Zealand.

It seems when the men and women of our Justice System aren’t locking up cannabis growers for years while letting repeat sexual marauders go free, they’re busy undermining our God-given and natural human rights.

New Zealanders have the right to free expression and the right to freely share opinions. This right is not only granted by the Will of God, but it’s also written into our Bill of Rights Act, Section 14 of which reads: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.”

We also have the right to freedom of assembly (viz. Section 16: “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.”) and the right to association (viz. Section 17: “Everyone has the right to freedom of association.”) and the right “to adopt and to hold opinions without interference” (Section 13).

Therefore, New Zealanders had the right to attend the Molyneux-Southern talk, and the move to ban it was in violation of those rights.

The High Court decision clearing the Auckland Council and Goff from any wrongdoing sets a very worrying precedent. It’s now official in New Zealand that if you want to silence someone, all you have to do is threaten violence, and that person will be kept quiet out of safety concerns, and then the courts will take your side.

This is not the first time such a thing has happened. In Nelson last year, author Bruce Moon had been due to give a talk at the Nelson Public Library, but it was cancelled on account of threats made to library staff.

Neither those whose threats cancelled the Molyneux-Southern event nor those whose threats cancelled the Moon talk were ever prosecuted. This is astonishing – and deeply worrying – because both acts were undeniably acts of terrorism. Using the threat of violence to deny New Zealanders the right to assemble peacefully and to peacefully share ideas is terrorism by any honest standard.

What these two cases have in common is that, in both cases, the alt-left were the terrorists and they were motivated by a desire to silence those they perceive as political enemies. Central to alt-left mentality is a persecution mania revolving around a supposed Nazi resurgence. This persecution mania leads to alt-leftists justifying all kinds of abuses in the name of the greater good (yes, history repeats).

The worry for many, especially those who understand how free speech is absolutely vital to the correct functioning of civilisation, is that the cowardly High Court decision will give the greenlight to further threats of violence. Now that it’s possible to silence your political enemies by threatening violence, more of society’s dregs will be motivated to do it.

This is of particular concern to us, being a media enterprise that champions free speech. VJM Publishing, despite a committed adherence to alt-centrism, is in no way exempt from being targeted by the alt-left, as our Fan Mail column proves (we have also been targeted by the Human Rights Commission). Therefore, a High Court ruling encouraging violence against those perceived to be enemies of the alt-left must be cause for concern.

All of this is part of a wider leftist rejection of free speech as a tool that upholds oppression. As those who identify with the left continue to sink into Slave Culture, they will become ever more resentful of those with the ability to freely discuss intellectual ideas about political issues that concern them. This resentment, coupled with the High Court’s approval for threats of violence, means that future attacks on free speech are likely.

Unfortunately, as this column has previously mentioned, the left doesn’t care about free speech, or much else to do with freedom. They have happily drifted into authoritarianism, and they now fight for that. This week’s victory for the authoritarian left is a loss for New Zealand. The rest of us can only hope that the judgment is overturned on appeal.

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How to Cope With Climate Hysteria

A recent article on NewsHub offered some advice for coping with climate anxiety and despair. What is needed, however, is advice for coping with something far more dangerous than climate change: the mass hysteria around climate change. This essay gives some advice to those trying to find a way to cope with the Climate Chimpout.

The Climate Chimpout is best personified by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who is jetting around the world to warn us of the consequences of excess consumption. In a voice quavering with rage, Thunberg admonishes us adults for our part in destroying the planet. Like Blade Runner‘s Roy Batty, Thunberg sees us as stealing her life potential.

Thunberg is far from unique. The human mind, having evolved over several hundred thousand years to solve short-term survival issues of finding food, water and shelter, is not at all suited to solving long-term global issues like climate change. The very thought of world-ending catastrophe just makes us chimp out. The more the media pushes the issue of climate change, the more hysteria our monkey brains will generate.

The first thing to keep in mind is that climate hysteria cannot be prevented.

Climate change itself may or may not be preventable, but the hysteria now has its own momentum. The people who own the mainstream media have an interest in keeping the consumer class in a state of anxiety, because anxiety keeps people consuming. The owners and manipulators of the apparatus of propaganda are skillful enough that they can produce virtually any result they desire – and they desire fear.

There are a limited number of things one can do about the hysteria, and they fall into two categories: things that are unhelpful and things that are helpful.

The most unhelpful thing that one can do is go along with the crowd and panic. Yes, it may well seem that scientific data is pointing towards major lifestyle changes being enforced upon us by resource scarcity. This is not a reason to panic and to add to the hysteria. Panicking will just lead to more shitty, short-term decisions being made.

These changes forced on us, no matter how major, will take place over many years and decades. Better to focus our energies on things like mindfulness and centering practices. A person could help things by calming their own frequency down to the point where they can think more clearly. This can inspire others around them to do the same.

Another unhelpful thing one can do is to fall into anarcho-nihilism. Global problems have the tendency to make individuals feel powerless. A paralysing condition known as learned helplessness can set in, making it impossible to motivate oneself to take any action. The result has been satirised with the Doomer meme, and described with the Black Pill meme, but is really just depression.

Much like panicking, falling into despair can also become contagious. The sight of another person in despair is sometimes enough to engender it in oneself, which is why the Greta Thunberg Show could be said to be a black magic ritual performed for the sake of seizing control. A moral imperative exists, therefore, to not despair, so that one might keep morale high.

Hedonism is a third option. This isn’t necessarily a failure, because there may be nothing more to life than the imperative to entertain the gods. Living to enjoy life as much as possible, while ultimately pointless, is at least meaningful in the immediate present. Acting to pursue pleasure, or at a minimum novel experiences, is at least a gameplan.

However, hedonism fails where the other two strategies fail: it does not significantly alleviate the suffering associated with human existence. The best it can do is distraction. As mentioned above, there may be no more to life than the patterns of behaviours we perform to distract ourselves from the suffering inherent to existence. But it is for those who feel there is more this essay is written.

At its most basic, the challenge brought about by climate change is an existential one.

One a deeper level, there is one brutal truth that can neither be escaped or denied. That is the fact that we were all going to die anyway, climate or otherwise, and therefore climate change doesn’t change the basic existential equation. In fact, most people today can expect to die before climate change causes them major survival challenges.

Most of us alive today will be dead within 60 years, as the natural metabolic processes of our bodies lead to them becoming worn out. Almost certainly, everyone currently alive will be dead within 120 years, and, even if we discovered some kind of process that allowed for extreme life extension, eventually the Sun will transform into a red giant and consume the Earth in cosmic hellfire.

Climate change, no matter how bad it gets, does not alter the essential truth that our great war is a spiritual war.

No matter how bad things appear to become in the material world, the fact remains that we are spiritual beings having a limited human experience. The solution, therefore, remains the same as it ever was. Make peace with God, then make peace with your neighbour. Enjoy the company of all the people you can, good and bad ones alike, for they are all cursed to die, just as you are.

It’s apparent that we cannot take any physical wealth with us into the next world, and it’s not clear that the social connections we have on this side will mean much either. It’s far from a sure thing that if we are intelligent, wise or strong-willed in this world we will be so in the next one. All of these qualities are merely contents of consciousness, and therefore as transitory and ephemeral as the others.

What is believable is that our frequency of consciousness continues beyond the death of the physical body. It is this that determines our fate when we stand, stripped of all illusion, before God. A high-frequency consciousness of kindness and understanding will reincarnate among like-minded. A low-frequency consciousness of narcissism and brutality will also reincarnate among like-minded.

Climate hysteria cannot affect a truly spiritual person, because they will understand that climate change doesn’t really change anything. The basic facts of life are still the same, and the most important thing is still coming to terms with them.

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