The scene is this: Dr Stephen Maturin, physician and surgeon of England’s Surprise sits dining with his messmates in the … Continue Reading A Brief Note On Democracy, Authority & Power Inspired by Patrick O’Brian: Houellebecq Trump-Is-Good Update
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Eternity is a very long time, so settle back.
THAT THROUGH THE VISION OF GOD ONE BECOMES A PARTAKER OF ETERNAL LIFE
1 From this consideration it is apparent that the created intellect becomes a partaker in the eternal life through this vision.
2 For, eternity differs from time in this way: time has its being in a sort of succession, whereas the being of eternity is entirely simultaneous. But we have shown that there is no succession in the aforesaid vision; instead, all things that are seen through it are seen at once, and in one view. So, this vision is perfected in a sort of participation in eternity. Moreover, this vision is a kind of life, for the action of the intellect is a kind of life. Therefore, the created intellect becomes a partaker in eternal life through this vision.
Notes Being beings stuck in time, and noticing nothing but successions, such as lessons, this is extremely difficult to see.
3 Again, acts are specified by their objects. But the object of the aforementioned vision is the divine substance in itself, and not in a created likeness of it, as we showed above. Now, the being of the divine substance is in eternity, or, rather, is eternity itself. Therefore, this vision also consists in a participation in eternity.
4 Besides, if a given action is done in time, this will be either because the principle of the action is in time—in this sense the actions of temporal things are temporal; or because of the terminus of the operation, as in the case of spiritual substances which are above time but perform their actions on things subject to time. Now, the aforementioned vision is not in time by virtue of what is seen, for this is the eternal substance; nor by virtue of that whereby the seeing is accomplished, for this also is the eternal substance; nor even by virtue of the agent who sees, that is the intellect, whose being does not come under time, since it is incorruptible, as we proved above. Therefore, this vision consists in a participation in eternity, as completely transcending time.
5 Furthermore, the intellective soul is created “on the border line between eternity and time,” as is stated in the Book on Causes, and as can be shown from our earlier statements. In fact, it is the lowest in the order of intellects, yet its substance is raised above corporeal matter, not depending on it. But its action, as joined to lower things which exist in time, is temporal. Therefore, its action, as joined to higher things which exist above time, participates in eternity. Especially so is the vision by which it sees the divine substance. And so, by this kind of vision it comes into the participation of eternity; and for the same reason, so does any other created intellect that sees God.
6 Hence, the Lord says: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God” (John 17:3).
Notes Even after forever, you won’t know all of God.
The dissolving of the We’re-Not-All-Boy Scouts we all know about. And we heard about Julian Von Abele’s troubles for daring to say he liked whites. But there was lots more Doom!
Item 10-YEAR-OLD BOY DANCES ON STAGE FOR MONEY AT ADULT GAY BAR IN NEW YORK
“Drag Kid” Desmond Is Amazing delivered a headlining performance at a sleazy Brooklyn gay bar on Dec. 1, where the ten-year-old boy danced on stage in a crop top and full face of makeup as a throng of adult men in the audience showered him in dollar bills.
A reminder that homosexuality spreads by homosexuality.
Item Germany Approves Third Gender, ‘Diverse’, for Official Documents
A reminder the international socialists kicked the national socialists in the ass last century.
Advertising watchdogs are to ban ‘harmful’ gender stereotypes from TV commercials.
Gone will be the traditional, and largely out-dated, view of the housewife.
And companies will not be able to suggest men are lazy or useless when it comes to doing what used to be considered typically female roles, such as changing a nappy…
The industry watchdog has issued guidance for companies and advertisers on how the ban, coming into effect in June, should be applied.
Many brands such as Unilever have already taken voluntary measures to end gender stereotyping.
In other words, depictions of normality will be outlawed. This is tyranny.
Item Nebraska principal reportedly bans candy canes, says ‘J shape’ stands for Jesus
An elementary school principal in Nebraska was placed on leave after telling teachers to avoid decorating their classrooms with Christmas-themed ornamentations so as not to offend those who don’t celebrate the holiday.
The principal at Manchester Elementary School, identified by Fox affiliate KPTM as Jennifer Sinclair, sent out a memo earlier this week with guidelines as to what is considered appropriate for classroom decorations and assignments.
Teachers were reportedly told that generic winter-themed items, such as sledding and scarves, and the “Frozen” character Olaf, were acceptable.
Decorations that included Santa, Christmas trees, reindeer, green and red colored items and even candy canes, however, were not acceptable for the elementary school.
The candy canes, according to KETV, were prohibited because Sinclair deemed them to have religious significance. “Historically, the shape is a ‘J’ for Jesus. The red is for the blood of Christ, and the white is a symbol of his resurrection,” she reportedly wrote. “This would also include different colored candy canes.”
Let’s make this a thing, gang. Carry a candy cane prominently in your breast pocket, and when in any engagement with a SJW, bring out the candy cane and nonchalantly wave it about. When they’re taking you in—for, say, the crime of reminding people of the fact of sexual reproduction—whip out your cane and yell “Freedom!”
What was wrong with perverts?
Pony, an endangered Bornean orangutan, was discovered in February 2003 in a brothel village at Kareng Pangi, Central Kalimantan chained to a wall and lying on a mattress.
She had been ruthlessly and abhorrently exploited by local palm oil farmers who would come to the village and pay £2 to have sex with her.
Bestiality is a sexual orientation, bigots.
Item Why men should give their wives a cheat pass this Christmas
When I told my husband I was interviewing a writer who thinks men should give their wives a ‘cheat pass’ this Christmas, he understandably had some questions. “How would the wife find someone suitable for the occasion?” he wondered. (We were talking in the abstract, of course, and I deemed it safer to treat this as rhetorical.) I assured him that yes, it was all very unfeasible, and concluded he’ll more likely gift me jewellery.
The lady writer is Rosa Silverman. We should all feel pity for Mr Silverman.
Item Kevin Hart’s homophobia caught up with him. Is losing the Oscars enough?
If there’s an upside to this whole mess, it’s that it neatly lays out a number of issues that we really ought to resolve, if only to save ourselves and the public figures of the world a lot of time and energy.
First, is there a statute of limitations on nasty and bigoted speech? It’s true that norms change, and that ideas that are widespread in one decade might seem repugnant in the next.
But even by this standard, Hart still doesn’t have much of a case.
The lady writer is Alyssa Rosenberg. It is clear she would sit on a panel of judgement, dispensing punishment on “homophobes.”
If there is an upside to this story, it is that Hart did not apologize (I write this a week in advance). Again, for he apologized before. Which he should not have done, given you cannot and should not encourage anybody to perform sodomy, which is one of the worst things you could ever do to your body.
Item ‘I am a gay Christian’: Debates about LGBTQ acceptance roil Seattle-area nonprofits, churches
Legally, religious groups fall into a separate category: Discrimination is allowed. It quietly flourishes, fed by convictions many see as dictated by faith and revered for thousands of years.
Yet a growing number of gays belonging to various faiths are challenging traditional theology and opening up discussions with even the most conservative believers…
Facing it head-on now, he has studied biblical passages and varying interpretations. One argument persuaded him: The scant, censorious references to homosexuality in the Bible never address loving, committed relationships.
The lady writer is Nina Shapiro. Which can’t mean anything.
Anyway, that God. He was often judgmental and harsh in his treatment of what He considered sinners. Thankfully, say the people Shapiro admires, that era is ending, opening on a new dawn of the triumphant religion of Man (and Woman!). That is an interesting point, one too big for our weekly Doom.
Item Kyler Murray apologizes after old homophobic tweets surface hours after he wins Heisman Trophy
Armed robbery is subject to a statute of limitations. So is rape. But call somebody queer and you must run from the mob forever.
The scene is this: Dr Stephen Maturin, physician and surgeon of England’s Surprise sits dining with his messmates in the ward room, near the end of the Napoleonic wars. The French prisoner and utopianist Dutourd is among the guests. From The Wine-Dark Sea.
Stephen’s mind wandered away on the subject of authority, its nature, origin, base or bases: authority whether innate of acquired, and if acquired then by what means? Authority as opposed to mere power, how exactly to be defined? Its etymology: its relation to auctor. From these thoughts he was aroused by an expectant silence opposite him, and looking up he say Dutourd and Vidal looking at him across the table, their forks poised: reaching back in his mind he caught the echo of a question: ‘What do you think of democracy?’
‘The gentleman was asking what you thought of democracy, sir,’ said Vidal, smiling.
‘Alas I cannot tell you, sir,’ said Stephen, returning the smile. ‘For although it would not be proper to call this barque or vessel a King’s ship except in the largest sense, we nevertheless adhere strictly to the naval tradition which forbids discussion of religion, women, or politics in our mess. It has been objected that this rule makes insipidity, which may be so; yet on the other hand it has it uses, since in this case for example it prevents any member from wounding any other gentleman present by saying that he did not think the policy that put Socrates to death and that left Athens prostrate was the highest expression of human wisdom, or by quoting Aristotle’s definition of democracy as mob rule, the depraved version of a commonwealth.’
O’Brian was not a democrat; or, at least, his heroes were not. This is not an essay on tradition, political systems, and so forth as seen by O’Brian, but one should be written. This is instead a brief quick incomplete note on a passage in O’Brian’s great twenty-volume novel, coming three-quarters of the way through.
A king rules with authority, a tyrant with power. A people accept rule by authority because of reverence. A people accept rule by power because of fear. Authority flows from Truth; power is based on lies.
Democracies can rule with authority when it is recognized the leaders, and when too the great mass (not just a majority) of people, acknowledge an authority higher than man, higher than themselves. Or when the great mass of people and leaders share the same spiritual goals. Voting when it happens when all share the same spiritual definition is then about uncertainty—what will happen if we do this and not that? Nobody can predict the future well, and voting makes sense.
But once the populace splits into factions of differing spirituality, or once man becomes, tacitly or openly, seen as the ultimate arbiter of all things, the democracy must devolve into a tyranny, or just-plain dissolve. This is because man is insane, inconstant, intemperate, shifting, deceitful, and ludicrous. Eventually one or many of these traits will be seen as “good” by a bare majority, or not even that, and will be voted as “good” by the democratic system. Voting won’t be about direction, but about definition. The losing side will find it impossible to accept the new definition. This happens because either the leaders capitulate to the mob, or the leaders sway the mob through underhanded means. Somewhere after this is when tyrannical rule must begin. Those that do not accept the insanity of the new definitions, whatever they are, must be cowed into at least keeping silent about it, or into active participation.
The mob relishes its newfound powers with increase verve, and things go from bad to worse. It’s either anarchy or tyranny. Both end badly. As will our democracy, if we have slipped past the point of no return.
Update As illustration, the point above was made in a recent piece by Michel Houellebecq: “Donald Trump Is a Good President“. As one of Trump’s good moves, he say this.
The Americans have stopped trying to spread democracy to the four corners of the globe. Besides, what democracy? Voting every four years to elect a head of state—is that democracy? In my view, there’s one country in the world (one country, not two) that enjoys partially democratic institutions, and that country isn’t the United States of America; it’s Switzerland. A country otherwise notable for its laudable policy of neutrality.
We can agree with Houellebecq. Switzerland has about as many people as New York City, though it isn’t nearly as diverse. It is largely white European and Christian (roots, anyway), but with a growing number of Muslims (5%), but with a tenth the number of Jews (0.2%) of the USA. There are only about 0.6% blacks (circa 2005; who complain of “discrimination“). There are a number of other, growing groups, such as Tamils, due to immigration.
Switzerland, in short, is not diverse. It is also small. Its citizens are well armed and enthusiastic about it. They are rich. The country has not yet abandoned all of Christianities tenets. There are still largely shared goals and spirituality. And so it can function as democracy.
But as it grows more diverse (if trends continue), then it will suffer the same fate as the rest.
People, as we already know, voluntarily carry tracking devices with them most places. These devices allow woke corporations and the (woke) government access to the habits and activities of the volunteers. What makes it hilarious to us curmudgeons is that people not only voluntarily do this, they willingly pay for it.
Cells phones show where you are, to within reasonable accuracy, where you have been, who you called, when you called, who you texted, what sites you looked at, who you called called and who they texted, the duration of calls, and so on and so forth. We’ve spoken of these data many times. Even not knowing the precise content of your communications, government and corporations can still do a decent job of discerning what you’re up to.
Now comes a new way to be tracked. Embeddable chips.
UK firm BioTeq, which offers the implants to businesses and individuals, has already fitted 150 implants in the UK.
The tiny chips, implanted in the flesh between the thumb and forefinger, are similar to those for pets. They enable people to open their front door, access their office or start their car with a wave of their hand, and can also store medical data.
Another company, Biohax of Sweden, also provides human chip implants the size of a grain of rice. It told the Sunday Telegraph that it is in discussions with several British legal and financial firms about fitting their employees with microchips, including one major company with hundreds of thousands of employees.
The chips talk to door scanners, computers, vending machines, whatever. Key cards now already allow a company to know precisely when you come and go, and chipped credit cards are close, but this is something more. Why? Because RFID readers can be placed anywhere. If you want to maximize efficiency, it pays to have data, so why not install readers along well traveled pathways? In the toilets, in meeting rooms, in your cells (i.e. cubicles).
That’s not very inventive. Don’t most retail stores now have RFID readers at their entrances and so forth? Why not share data with them! They’ll be happy, we can imagine, to give this data up in exchange for the data on the people from Company X who requested the store’s data.
How hard would it be to put readers at major intersections? Helps estimate traffic flow, you know. And why shouldn’t, when asked, Company X share its tracking data with Company Y, or the government? Internal company or national security could be at stake.
And why should you worry if some company knows where you’re going at all or most times of each and every day? If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide. Tracking improves safety, and these scientific studies show. Are you against safety? Besides, the chips act like credit cards, and cash is used by criminals to commit crimes.
Since there is no reason for you to object to being chipped, there is even less reason for you to give up your DNA to our beneficent overlords, who love us and only want what is best for us.
Science magazine (a journal of politics) asks “Is it time for a universal genetic forensic database?” Guess what the answer to that question is. If you guessed “Yes, because racism”, you win the prize.
Several countries—the United Kingdom, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia among them—have even toyed with creating a “universal” DNA database, populated with data from every individual in society, obviating the need for any other DNA source (1). Although this move would be controversial, it may not be as dramatic as one might think. In the United States, for example, the combination of state and federal databases (containing genetic profiles of more than 16.5 million arrestees and convicts) and public and private databases (containing genetic data of tens of millions of patients, consumers, and research participants) already provides the government with potential access to genetic information that can be linked to a large segment of the country, either directly or through a relative (2, 3).
It may not be as dramatic as one might think. True words. Most will volunteer for this Get a 20% coupon for a new TV at Big Box Store for a drop of your blood. Want to work at Mammoth Corp Inc International? See HR with this cotton swab. How else can you verify this is your tax return without a DNA stamp?
We’ll still need chips, even with facial recognition. It’s getting better, though there are still a few bugs, but it’s possible a fake moustache will always fool it.
You recall the story. The “mark” of beast is not a punishment. Removing it is.
Addendum After writing this, I came across story Sweden Is On The Verge Of Going Completely Cashless: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?