Monday, August 16, 2021

The Incipient Unraveling Of The Western World As Seen By Visionary Spanish Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1929)

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I take Wells' words literally.

Without vigorous expansion of authentic educational process, humankind seems destined for another "Dark Age," replete with the primacy of opinion, the ascendancy of rumor/gossip, ubiquitous superstition, irrationality, and even the collapse of central government. 

This new "regime" will be a right-wing paradise: men will rule by upper body strength, women will "know their place," and the ungodly rich will rule the roost of their atomized fiefdoms.

"The incrementalists" (who always comprise political power structures), will see my apprehensions as wild-eyed alarmism. 

But it is a fact that Rome fell, and Rome's Fall was followed by a 600 year-long Dark Age.

In our lifetime, the Soviet Union fell "overnight" (notably without a shot being fired).

And just yesterday - despite incrementalist predictions - Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.

It is not rocket science to see humankind's existential need for education... which begs the question, "What is education?"

Instruction And Education Aim At Antipodes

Compendium Of Best Pax-Barbaria Posts On Education (With A Failsafe Proposal For National Restoration)


Dear F

If you have not read the following blog post yet, it explains (to my satisfaction) the roots of our idiocracy.

Is Ortega Y Gasset The Most Important Modern Philosopher? The Most Discerning Prophet?


(An aside that will interest you... In the early seventies, Bob Dylan was impressed by Ortega's "The Revolt of the Masses." Dylan's fondness for the book was such that a 1970's Time magazine article referenced it.)


The Revolt of the Masses ... The Revolt of the Masses (Spanish: La rebelión de las masas, pronounced [la reβeˈljon de laz ˈmasas]) is a book by José Ortega y ...
The Revolt of the Masses ... The Revolt of the Masses is the English translation of José Ortega y Gasset's La rebelión de las masas. The Spanish original was ...

I consider "The Revolt of The Masses" a great work, not only for its insightful analysis of the ongoing collapse of Western Values (starting, arguably, around 1890), but for Ortega's courage to "go against the grain of progress" - essentially unbridled cowboy-capitalist-industrial progress, although on the spur of the moment I do not remember Ortega using the word "capitalism" in his critique of "the masses" and "mass man."

Here are two revealing quotations.

The (social) mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. And it is clear, of course, that this "everybody" is not "everybody." "Everybody" was normally the complex unity of the mass and the divergent, specialized minorities. Nowadays, "everybody" is the mass alone. Here we have the formidable fact of our times, described without any concealment of the brutality of its features.

— Chapter 1, "The Coming of the Masses"

The Fascist and Syndicalist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who "did not care to give reasons or even to be right", but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions. That was the novelty: the right not to be right, not to be reasonable: "the reason of unreason."

— Chapter 8, "Why the Masses Intervene in Everything and Why They Always Intervene Violently"

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Hope and Scorn: Eggheads, Experts, and Elites in American Politics

The Fascist and Syndicalist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who "did not care to give reasons or even to be right", but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions. That was the novelty: the right not to be right, not to be reasonable: "the reason of unreason."

— Chapter 8, "Why the Masses Intervene in Everything and Why They Always Intervene Violently"
I think it is fair to interpret much of friend Michael Brown's new book as a perspicacious elaboration of Ortega's central observation that "mass man" frequently holds elites in contempt. 

Love

A
On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 10:10 AM FV wrote:

Very comprehensive and clear but who is listening to reason. The reasonable who are vaccinated. I feel the rest have deaf ears.

On Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:10 AM Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:

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"Christian" "conservatives" (who are neither) refer to "prudence" or "erring on the side of caution.
It's as if The Law and Order Party has become the Scofflaw and Chaos Party.

A Very Readable, Highly Informative Report On The Relationship Between The Delta Variant And The Protection Afforded to Vaccinated People


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"The Case For Liberalism: A Defense Of The Future Against The Past," By George McGovern

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The Deep State Is Real: Plutocratic, Oligarchic, Unbridled Capitalism

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The Original And Enduring Conspiracy: It's About Keeping The Filthy Rich, Filthy Rich

"The Rich Plunder The Poor, Then Pile The Blame On The Dispossessed"

https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-rich-plunder-poor-then-pile-blame.html

Billionaire Nick Hanauer's TED Talk: "Capitalism's Dirty Little Secret"


 

 

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