Just passing through to say that you consistently publish some of the most insightful and thought-provoking work on Substack. Whatever you're doing to "feed that fire", keep doing it!
Related to the subject at hand here, I've noticed that many (most) creators on any platform start out with the intention of originality, but eventually get swallowed by the audience's incentives and "the discourse" and become the <subject> guy: the "distributist guy", the "militant trad guy", the "vanquisher of woke guy", etc..
In light of all that, what you're doing here is great, and I (and many others, I'm sure) are very grateful for your willingness to "think out loud" WITH US rather than proclaim false solutions from the heights of "Mt. Wisdom". Anyhow, have a good one!
So insightful and clearly articulated James, thank you for putting words to something I’ve been grappling with for the last few years.
I find myself easily seduced by these Gods, and galvanized to their needs, as you say so well. Even as I begin to congratulate myself for steering the middle channel, suddenly I’ll be reactively, emotionally defending the Titans of the Right, with receipts amply furnished, in response to lefty wrongspeak. Ironic and frustrating.
I’m printing this one out and will distribute it to the very few I know who might be able to appreciate the value of your understanding of our predicament. Yeah that probably sounds arrogant, but sadly it’s true in my world.
"Old gods and titans are famously afraid of certain mortals..." As Aphrodite apparently feared Psyche, perhaps because in Psyche, the Divine was finding incarnation. It was going beyond the archetypal, moving into a particular destiny. Musing upon this, I thought of the High Priestess, second card in the Major Arcana; she sits between the two pillars, the black and the white -- between Mercy and Severity. Both are needed, but in a balance -- a balance which seems ever to need adjustment!!! She identifies with neither, fulfills the dharma which is hers...
Interestingly I think many of us are doing a similar accounting as you’re doing with your relationship to Chomsky. Jasun Horsley is doing that with Carlos Castaneda. I’ve been doing it with various occult teachers and music figures. It does seem many were players and withheld a lot of information. Possibly for personal gain.
I abandoned astrology after 10 years when I realized the old gods are very much alive. And historically known to be rape-y and vindictive. I’m rather sick of being messed with personally. And actually Paul Stobb’s book Nephilim Angels Look Like Clowns helped shape this perspective for me too. He says demons are disembodied spirits from the Nephilim giants who died here but their souls are trapped just out of our range of perception. They were the offspring of fallen Angels and humans who were ruled by their bottomless vices— also stupid and violent. And many people it seems, including shamans, lead humans into possession situations.
As for tactics, Faulkner Blackfeather suggests David’s approach— 5 stones on hand and only one required to land between the eyes. 🪨 👀
I absolutely loved reading this, but this sentence is inscrutable. Is there a word missing or is the sentence incomplete? I don't understand how the word "cannot" functions here. I may be being obtuse but could you or someone kindly clarify? Thank you!
Thinking careers are built by naming a fragment of a god and letting the reader think it can be beaten, but cannot.
For some reason this essay reminds me of Plato's Seventh Letter, his highly personal response to the political fiasco in Sicily and the murder of Dion, for which many held Plato responsible.
If you ever get around to reading the Seventh Letter and are interested in what I think of it (and Plato, whom you unsettling remind me of in this essay) you're welcome to DM me as always.
This was an incredible letter, Chris. Popping some quotes that resonated with the piece I wrote above (and probably why you were reminded of this):
“For the one thing which is wholly right and noble is to strive for that which is most honourable for a man's self and for his country, and to face the consequences whatever they may be. For none of us can escape death, nor, if a man could do so, would it, as the vulgar suppose, make him happy. For nothing evil or good, which is worth mentioning at all, belongs to things soulless; but good or evil will be the portion of every soul, either while attached to the body or when separated from it.”
“But I do not think it a good thing for men that there should be a disquisition, as it is called, on this topic—except for some few, who are able with a little teaching to find it out for themselves. As for the rest, it would fill some of them quite illogically with a mistaken feeling of contempt, and others with lofty and vain-glorious expectations, as though they had learnt something high and mighty.”
“Anyone who has followed this discourse and digression will know well that, if Dionysios or anyone else, great or small, has written a treatise on the highest matters and the first principles of things, he has, so I say, neither heard nor learnt any sound teaching about the subject of his treatise; otherwise, he would have had the same reverence for it, which I have, and would have shrunk from putting it forth into a world of discord and uncomeliness.”
“With regard to his own power, his friends and his country the ideal of such a man would be to win the greatest power and honour by rendering the greatest services. And this end is not attained if a man gets riches for himself, his supporters and his country, by forming plots and getting together conspirators, being all the while a poor creature, not master of himself, overcome by the cowardice which fears to fight against pleasures; nor is it attained if he goes on to kill the men of substance, whom he speaks of as the enemy, and to plunder their possessions, and invites his confederates and supporters to do the same, with the object that no one shall say that it is his fault, if he complains of being poor.”
The classical values in Admiral Hyman Rickover’s speech also remind me of you, Taylor—it would be interesting to map any of overlap between the Seventh Letter and this great speech, which is in complete harmony with Plato’s mature masterpiece The Laws
First of all, thank you for crunching so much info. It makes me want to pledge you some cash but I don’t want to bias you into appeasing me. ;)
It’s just that I prefer to be challenged like some sort of intellectual BDSM.
First let me state: I also reject scapegoating, as it allows evil into our midst.
Now, you stated that as a youngster that, like many, you felt you “had some secret knowledge about the way the world is, and therefore a clear enemy to fight. I don’t think that’s totally intractable, though, because the new battle I’m talking about is a battle against categories, against easy explanations and world-closing solutions. That is a deeply personal battle against the fear in your own heart. Constant leaps of faith forward in a world without end. That’s exciting, too, if I can just get my head around it.”
This is some great honesty. It is one I also deal with. For me, it can be summed up as: who, or what, then, is Satan?
I also don't know if there are grand conspiracies, but I do believe that we have let shitty incentives run amok. What are we rewarding? Where is honor? Virtue? Character? Wisdom? Respect? Dignity?
Why do we put up with corruption and greed?
That brings me to ask about something you said: "American style of capitalism that was making us so darn wealthy" As I think we need to clarify this. When we say that the system made us wealthy, are we counting wealth merely as material abundance, or are we also considering social capital, distribution of power, civic trust, privacy, and dignity?
For the record, I am against centralization in all its forms. Big shocker.
I am also curious about this statement: "The incorrect bit of the culture warrior explanation is what you ought to do about this, as an individual who seems to find himself in a landscape of gods and titans."
Might we live greatly and put that expectation on each other?
First, we’d have to define greatly, no? As the Greeks and Romans did, or Christ, Buddha, or whoeva?
Also, you state that wherever the benefits to yourself are, there you'll find your bias grow. e.g. Jordan Peterson. Self-awareness is such an important part of logic. Understanding bias. And this seems to be an underlying thread of this piece.
I want to circle back to another thought of yours: "If one opponent ever wins, it regenerates its own opposite." This is natural, no? We cannot be stagnant. We must be dynamic. There is no perfect state.
It sounds to me like you are quite familiar with J.S. Mill's On Liberty.
Now, finally, I choose to see the best in others. Their strengths as a contribution to the whole of us. As I hope they see me. I love my neighbors this way. And I try to walk this way, as an example, and patiently live out my life. I can’t give in and not be a vote against our worser natures.
But I want to insert here another idea that is also completely natural: "That (I) would protect my soul, meaning my body, self, and progeny would flourish over a longer timeline." And it is what we are all fighting, our own natures, needs, wants, desires, and so forth.
So, isn't there a place where we are trying to reach a tipping point of culture? Or at least prevent it in a negative sense? I had a childhood friend who was suicidal a few years back, and I told him that I couldn't lose another good person. To not leave me hanging like that. That we need all the good people we can get.
And ideological allies as well. This seems to be natural. Beginning when we voted to decide when to move our camps to greener pastures, to now with all the decisions we must make. I'd like to see a population of ethical and pragmatic thinkers, but until then we must try and vote in ethical and pragmatic representatives. I have no enemy, only my many allies with shared common ground. My siblings o'er the Earth. We the People of the World United. A house divided cannot stand.
I try not to scapegoat because it is one of the mechanisms by which evil gets permission to operate. Which I think you allude to.
Maybe it is all just memetic warfare, but I don't see it as a culture war so much as a long-drawn out cultural revolution. And we are in the midst of it. And a lot of others have put in a lot of work already. And thank God on all accounts.
Now, I don’t expect our generation to bring this home, but we must keep showing up at our best. All life is the attempt at the improvement of probabilities. What do we think of absolutes? I think time teaches us all about that.
Maybe this is all just a question I’m actually trying to work out rather than answer. I mean, if evil is real, if we have such tendencies, how do I distinguish between being captured by a titan and correctly identifying something that ought to be resisted?
Everything I would want to say on substack is basically already well covered by folks like yourself. I have been nursing this fantasy of starting my own but I could never find the right angle of attack. I realize after reading this why I keep resisting. I don't really want to be the type of writer that would go viral on substack anyways, the culture wars disgust me. I will still journal, but I am never going to make money as an essayist because I don't have a point of view I am willing to defend publicly to the point of letting it subsume my whole identity. Id just become a caricature of myself over time. There has to be another way.
Search for the holistic (avoid the mythological). Embody, don’t segregate into fantasy sky-gods. It’s inevitable psychological models dissipate, they’re Ptolemaic. China has already figured this out.
Just passing through to say that you consistently publish some of the most insightful and thought-provoking work on Substack. Whatever you're doing to "feed that fire", keep doing it!
Related to the subject at hand here, I've noticed that many (most) creators on any platform start out with the intention of originality, but eventually get swallowed by the audience's incentives and "the discourse" and become the <subject> guy: the "distributist guy", the "militant trad guy", the "vanquisher of woke guy", etc..
In light of all that, what you're doing here is great, and I (and many others, I'm sure) are very grateful for your willingness to "think out loud" WITH US rather than proclaim false solutions from the heights of "Mt. Wisdom". Anyhow, have a good one!
So insightful and clearly articulated James, thank you for putting words to something I’ve been grappling with for the last few years.
I find myself easily seduced by these Gods, and galvanized to their needs, as you say so well. Even as I begin to congratulate myself for steering the middle channel, suddenly I’ll be reactively, emotionally defending the Titans of the Right, with receipts amply furnished, in response to lefty wrongspeak. Ironic and frustrating.
I’m printing this one out and will distribute it to the very few I know who might be able to appreciate the value of your understanding of our predicament. Yeah that probably sounds arrogant, but sadly it’s true in my world.
"Old gods and titans are famously afraid of certain mortals..." As Aphrodite apparently feared Psyche, perhaps because in Psyche, the Divine was finding incarnation. It was going beyond the archetypal, moving into a particular destiny. Musing upon this, I thought of the High Priestess, second card in the Major Arcana; she sits between the two pillars, the black and the white -- between Mercy and Severity. Both are needed, but in a balance -- a balance which seems ever to need adjustment!!! She identifies with neither, fulfills the dharma which is hers...
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 love this
“The thing is, you can’t win a culture war. Because the culture war doesn’t want to be won.”
Very true. It just wants more content to be consumed and more virulence & mud-flinging to occur.
Interestingly I think many of us are doing a similar accounting as you’re doing with your relationship to Chomsky. Jasun Horsley is doing that with Carlos Castaneda. I’ve been doing it with various occult teachers and music figures. It does seem many were players and withheld a lot of information. Possibly for personal gain.
I abandoned astrology after 10 years when I realized the old gods are very much alive. And historically known to be rape-y and vindictive. I’m rather sick of being messed with personally. And actually Paul Stobb’s book Nephilim Angels Look Like Clowns helped shape this perspective for me too. He says demons are disembodied spirits from the Nephilim giants who died here but their souls are trapped just out of our range of perception. They were the offspring of fallen Angels and humans who were ruled by their bottomless vices— also stupid and violent. And many people it seems, including shamans, lead humans into possession situations.
As for tactics, Faulkner Blackfeather suggests David’s approach— 5 stones on hand and only one required to land between the eyes. 🪨 👀
I absolutely loved reading this, but this sentence is inscrutable. Is there a word missing or is the sentence incomplete? I don't understand how the word "cannot" functions here. I may be being obtuse but could you or someone kindly clarify? Thank you!
Thinking careers are built by naming a fragment of a god and letting the reader think it can be beaten, but cannot.
I refuse to take part in this conversation. Wait..
Lovely piece. Weakest part is the reliance on poles. What’s forces that? Seems like a compression for narrative.
Four essays deep in one sitting while doing house chores. I am #JamesTaylorForemanMaxxing. Do people still say that…
For some reason this essay reminds me of Plato's Seventh Letter, his highly personal response to the political fiasco in Sicily and the murder of Dion, for which many held Plato responsible.
If you ever get around to reading the Seventh Letter and are interested in what I think of it (and Plato, whom you unsettling remind me of in this essay) you're welcome to DM me as always.
This was an incredible letter, Chris. Popping some quotes that resonated with the piece I wrote above (and probably why you were reminded of this):
“For the one thing which is wholly right and noble is to strive for that which is most honourable for a man's self and for his country, and to face the consequences whatever they may be. For none of us can escape death, nor, if a man could do so, would it, as the vulgar suppose, make him happy. For nothing evil or good, which is worth mentioning at all, belongs to things soulless; but good or evil will be the portion of every soul, either while attached to the body or when separated from it.”
“But I do not think it a good thing for men that there should be a disquisition, as it is called, on this topic—except for some few, who are able with a little teaching to find it out for themselves. As for the rest, it would fill some of them quite illogically with a mistaken feeling of contempt, and others with lofty and vain-glorious expectations, as though they had learnt something high and mighty.”
“Anyone who has followed this discourse and digression will know well that, if Dionysios or anyone else, great or small, has written a treatise on the highest matters and the first principles of things, he has, so I say, neither heard nor learnt any sound teaching about the subject of his treatise; otherwise, he would have had the same reverence for it, which I have, and would have shrunk from putting it forth into a world of discord and uncomeliness.”
“With regard to his own power, his friends and his country the ideal of such a man would be to win the greatest power and honour by rendering the greatest services. And this end is not attained if a man gets riches for himself, his supporters and his country, by forming plots and getting together conspirators, being all the while a poor creature, not master of himself, overcome by the cowardice which fears to fight against pleasures; nor is it attained if he goes on to kill the men of substance, whom he speaks of as the enemy, and to plunder their possessions, and invites his confederates and supporters to do the same, with the object that no one shall say that it is his fault, if he complains of being poor.”
Going to read this and get back to you
The classical values in Admiral Hyman Rickover’s speech also remind me of you, Taylor—it would be interesting to map any of overlap between the Seventh Letter and this great speech, which is in complete harmony with Plato’s mature masterpiece The Laws
https://govleaders.org/rickover-purpose.php
First of all, thank you for crunching so much info. It makes me want to pledge you some cash but I don’t want to bias you into appeasing me. ;)
It’s just that I prefer to be challenged like some sort of intellectual BDSM.
First let me state: I also reject scapegoating, as it allows evil into our midst.
Now, you stated that as a youngster that, like many, you felt you “had some secret knowledge about the way the world is, and therefore a clear enemy to fight. I don’t think that’s totally intractable, though, because the new battle I’m talking about is a battle against categories, against easy explanations and world-closing solutions. That is a deeply personal battle against the fear in your own heart. Constant leaps of faith forward in a world without end. That’s exciting, too, if I can just get my head around it.”
This is some great honesty. It is one I also deal with. For me, it can be summed up as: who, or what, then, is Satan?
I also don't know if there are grand conspiracies, but I do believe that we have let shitty incentives run amok. What are we rewarding? Where is honor? Virtue? Character? Wisdom? Respect? Dignity?
Why do we put up with corruption and greed?
That brings me to ask about something you said: "American style of capitalism that was making us so darn wealthy" As I think we need to clarify this. When we say that the system made us wealthy, are we counting wealth merely as material abundance, or are we also considering social capital, distribution of power, civic trust, privacy, and dignity?
For the record, I am against centralization in all its forms. Big shocker.
I am also curious about this statement: "The incorrect bit of the culture warrior explanation is what you ought to do about this, as an individual who seems to find himself in a landscape of gods and titans."
Might we live greatly and put that expectation on each other?
First, we’d have to define greatly, no? As the Greeks and Romans did, or Christ, Buddha, or whoeva?
Also, you state that wherever the benefits to yourself are, there you'll find your bias grow. e.g. Jordan Peterson. Self-awareness is such an important part of logic. Understanding bias. And this seems to be an underlying thread of this piece.
I want to circle back to another thought of yours: "If one opponent ever wins, it regenerates its own opposite." This is natural, no? We cannot be stagnant. We must be dynamic. There is no perfect state.
It sounds to me like you are quite familiar with J.S. Mill's On Liberty.
Now, finally, I choose to see the best in others. Their strengths as a contribution to the whole of us. As I hope they see me. I love my neighbors this way. And I try to walk this way, as an example, and patiently live out my life. I can’t give in and not be a vote against our worser natures.
But I want to insert here another idea that is also completely natural: "That (I) would protect my soul, meaning my body, self, and progeny would flourish over a longer timeline." And it is what we are all fighting, our own natures, needs, wants, desires, and so forth.
So, isn't there a place where we are trying to reach a tipping point of culture? Or at least prevent it in a negative sense? I had a childhood friend who was suicidal a few years back, and I told him that I couldn't lose another good person. To not leave me hanging like that. That we need all the good people we can get.
And ideological allies as well. This seems to be natural. Beginning when we voted to decide when to move our camps to greener pastures, to now with all the decisions we must make. I'd like to see a population of ethical and pragmatic thinkers, but until then we must try and vote in ethical and pragmatic representatives. I have no enemy, only my many allies with shared common ground. My siblings o'er the Earth. We the People of the World United. A house divided cannot stand.
I try not to scapegoat because it is one of the mechanisms by which evil gets permission to operate. Which I think you allude to.
Maybe it is all just memetic warfare, but I don't see it as a culture war so much as a long-drawn out cultural revolution. And we are in the midst of it. And a lot of others have put in a lot of work already. And thank God on all accounts.
Now, I don’t expect our generation to bring this home, but we must keep showing up at our best. All life is the attempt at the improvement of probabilities. What do we think of absolutes? I think time teaches us all about that.
Maybe this is all just a question I’m actually trying to work out rather than answer. I mean, if evil is real, if we have such tendencies, how do I distinguish between being captured by a titan and correctly identifying something that ought to be resisted?
Oh, and, uh, good morning, sunshine!
Everything I would want to say on substack is basically already well covered by folks like yourself. I have been nursing this fantasy of starting my own but I could never find the right angle of attack. I realize after reading this why I keep resisting. I don't really want to be the type of writer that would go viral on substack anyways, the culture wars disgust me. I will still journal, but I am never going to make money as an essayist because I don't have a point of view I am willing to defend publicly to the point of letting it subsume my whole identity. Id just become a caricature of myself over time. There has to be another way.
Of course we can end culture wars, by recognizing culture is maladaptive.
You just recognized it and they haven't ended. Step 2?
Search for the holistic (avoid the mythological). Embody, don’t segregate into fantasy sky-gods. It’s inevitable psychological models dissipate, they’re Ptolemaic. China has already figured this out.
behavioralscientist. org/culture-shapes-stories-of-emotion/
They still haven’t ended.