✌️ https://lewisdwilliams.substack.com/p/mayday

“The absence of a transcendent dimension in secular society weakens this social contract in which each supposedly limits his or her freedom in order to live in peace with others. Such universalism of interest is another aspect of modern illusion. There is no such thing as scientifically based human solidarity. I can convince myself that it is in my interest not to rob other people, not to rape and murder, because I can convince myself that the risk is too great. This is the Hobbesian model of solidarity: greed moderated by fear. But social chaos stands in the shadows of such moral anarchy. When society adheres to moral norms for no other reason than prudence, it is extremely weak and its fabric tears at the slightest crisis. In such a society, there is no basis for personal responsibility, charity or compassion. We need instruments of human solidarity that are not based on our own instincts, self-interest or on force. The communist attempt to institutionalize solidarity ended in disaster.” — Leszek Kołakowski

“Traditionalism is the most revolutionary ideology of our times.” — Julius Evola

“We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering. What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy.” — Bertrand Russell

“It is instructive to inquire why it is that the State, in contrast to the highwayman, invariably surrounds itself with an ideology of legitimacy, why it must indulge in all the hypocrisies that Spooner outlines. The reason is that the highwayman is not a visible, permanent, legal, or legitimate member of society, let alone a member with exalted status. He is always on the run from his victims or from the State itself. But the State, in contrast to a band of highwaymen, is not considered a criminal organization; on the contrary, its minions have generally held the positions of highest status in society. It is a status that allows the State to feed off its victims while making at least most of them support, or at least be resigned to, this exploitative process. In fact, it is precisely the function of the State’s ideological minions and allies to explain to the public that the Emperor does indeed have a fine set of clothes. In brief, the ideologists must explain that, while theft by one or more persons or groups is bad and criminal, that when the State engages in such acts, it is not theft but the legitimate and even sanctified act called ‘taxation.’ The ideologists must explain that murder by one or more persons or groups is bad and must be punished, but that when the State kills it is not murder but an exalted act known as ‘war’ or ‘repression of internal subversion.’ They must explain that while kidnapping or slavery is bad and must be outlawed when done by private individuals or groups, that when the State commits such acts it is not kidnapping or slavery but ‘conscription’ — an act necessary to the public weal and even to the requirements of morality itself. The function of the statist ideologists is to weave the false set of Emperor’s clothes, to convince the public of a massive double standard: that when the State commits the gravest of high crimes it is really not doing so, but doing something else that is necessary, proper, vital, and even — in former ages — by divine command. The age-old success of the ideologists of the State is perhaps the most gigantic hoax in the history of mankind. Ideology has always been vital to the continued existence of the State, as attested by the systematic use of ideology since the ancient Oriental empires. The specific content of the ideology has, of course, changed over time, in accordance with changing conditions and cultures. In the Oriental despotisms, the Emperor was often held by the Church to be himself divine; in our more secular age, the argument runs more to ‘the public good’ and the ‘general welfare.’ But the purpose is always the same: to convince the public that what the State does is not, as one might think, crime on a gigantic scale, but something necessary and vital that must be supported and obeyed.” — Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (1982)

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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ― Margaret Mead

Monday could be a pivotal moment in history — whichever way it goes.

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” — Ephesians 6:10-12

“Maybe there’s more to life than ordering shit from Amazon.” — Tucker Carlson

“Men’s hearts are failing them for fear, not knowing any longer where to rest. We look this way and that way, and catch at one another like drowning men. Go where you will, you find the same phenomena. Science grows, and observers are adding daily to our knowledge of the nature and structure of the material universe, but they tell us nothing, and can tell us nothing, of what we most want to know. They cannot tell us what our own nature is. They cannot tell us what God is, or what duty is. We had a belief once, in which, as in a boat, we floated safely on the unknown ocean; but the philosophers and critics have been boring holes in the timbers to examine the texture of the wood, and now it leaks at every one of them. We have to help ourselves in the best way that we can.” ― James Anthony Froude

“If human beings were in fact the members of a truly social species, and if their individual differences were trifling and could be completely ironed out by appropriate conditioning, then, obviously, there would be no need for liberty and the State would be justified in persecut­ing the heretics who demanded it. For the individual termite, service to the termitary is perfect freedom. But human beings are not completely social; they are only moderately gregarious. Their societies are not or­ganisms, like the hive or the anthill; they are organiza­tions, in other words ad hoc machines for collective living... With­out freedom, human beings cannot become fully hu­man.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958)

I’ve recently been making a concerted effort to watch as many things as I can around the subject of Christ as a part of my recent interest and desire to adopt his ― or rather His ― teachings (along with any and all reading I can do). One of the film’s that I was reminded of was Martin Scorsese’s Silence, based on a novel from a Japanese Christian. The story follows two Portuguese priests as they smuggle themselves into Japan ― during a time when Christianity was outlawed and anyone caught preaching it or professing their belief in it was forced to apostatise else be tortured and executed ― in search of their old mentor who has reportedly denounced the Christian God publicly during his own mission there. I believe I would most effectively convey the essential essence of the film by describing it as a Christian’s 1984. For in a similar manner to Winston whereby his determination to never stop loving Julia is subverted through physical and psychological torture, the foreign priests undergo such a torture of their own determination to never stop loving and thus imitating Christ ― and with similar results (I was reminded of Huxley’s discussion of conditioning by physical torture and terrorism in Brave New World Revisited, namely by the Chinese communists ― a collection of writings I would recommend anyone read, even in lieu of having read Brave New World). Like what made O’Brien’s torture of Winston so sinister being that he did, however unexpectedly, ultimately succeed in getting him to genuinely lose his love for Julia, and irreversibly, by getting him to give her up and beg, genuinely, for her to take his place in Room 101, subsequently replacing his love for her with a love of Big Brother (“We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves”), so too does the Japanese inquisitor succeed in getting the foreign priests to lose their faith, replacing it with their own; but in their case by turning the Christian ideals of protecting others from suffering and putting oneself in their place, as a martyr if necessary, in on itself: by torturing, killing, and martyring others ― rather than the priests themselves, as they would come to have expected, accepted, even wanted (for it is the ultimate imitation of Christ) ― according to their willingness or unwillingness to apostatise. This subversive method of torture is quite the reversal, a turning inside-out, of the story of Christ’s crucifixion; and it is this that the foreign priests ― and we the audience ― have to wrestle with: is denouncing Christ in the name of imitating Christ in keeping with what Christ taught, or would have taught had he been the subject of such devilishly intelligent methods of torture? One finds themselves inevitably asking ― of course ― “What would Jesus do?” As much as Christ’s sacrifice was a trial (superbly, gruesomely ― the most gruesome thing I’ve ever watched in fact ― reenacted in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, which I also watched recently; although I am quite sure one does not need my testimony to consider watching that), the most brutal one anyone could undergo in the name of their faith, conviction, love for their friends, family, humanity, and so on, the trial that the foreign priests are subjected to is of a radically different, more sophisticated kind. It is more of a psychological trial than a physical one, for the physical torture that is being done is being done to someone else in one’s stead, and with one being denied what they would have come to have expected to be their opportunity for martyrdom in such circumstances completely throwing their moral calculation of what to do into disarray, this works to inflict on them an immensely powerful psychological torture (one which works by turning what they would have thought to be an impenetrable defence against such evil into a weapon against themselves ― a weapon of their own making). And this is the true evil of the “mind-manipulation” ― to borrow Huxley’s phrase ― employed by the inquisitor. While Christ’s crucifixion is a demonstration, through all of its gore and barbarity and inhumanity, of the ultimate act of love and glory and triumph as Christians conceive of it (in non-violently resisting tyranny by using the horrific torture and murder of one’s own body, as Christ did, as a symbolic example in order that no one else has to experience such a fate ― but also to force the perpetrators to grapple with, morally, the horrors they are inflicting or supporting being inflicted on a defenceless man ― in the hopes that such defiant love will overcome the hate that seeks to destroy its physical embodiments; an equally subversive psychological tool, but of the best, most positive kind, that has been employed by every pacifist and every pacifist movement since the time of Christ), martyring oneself is much easier for one to wrap one’s head around, wrestle with, come to accept, than the martyring of others in the name of one’s commitments, one’s principles, even one’s faith and commitment to God (hence the inquisitor’s ultimate success). And honestly, had it been Jesus facing such a trial, I believe that Christ would have apostatised too if it meant preventing the suffering of those who followed him; whether or not one agrees with me (or the priests) is up for debate, but that is the moral dilemma the film leaves us with once the credits roll. With all that said, I would highly recommend the film, Christian or not ― it is a fascinating analysis of morality, evil, and the human condition. I endeavour to read the book when I can.

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“War is not a law of nature, nor even a law of human nature. It exists because men wish it to exist; and we know, as a matter of historical fact, that the intensity of that wish has varied from absolute zero to a frenzied maximum. The wish for war in the contemporary world is widespread and of high intensity. But our wills are to some extent free; we can wish otherwise than we actually do. It is enormously difficult for us to change our wishes in this matter; but the enormously difficult is not the impossible. We must be grateful for even the smallest crumbs of comfort.” ― Aldous Huxley, Ends & Means (1937)

“Silence is the end of the world.” ― Albert Camus, Neither Victims nor Executioners (1946)

“It is strange that science ― which in the old days seemed harmless ― should have evolved into a nightmare that causes everyone to tremble.” ― Albert Einstein

“War is a purely human phenomenon. The lower animals fight duels in the heat of sexual excitement and kill for food and occasionally for sport. But the activities of a wolf eating a sheep or a cat playing with a mouse are no more war-like than the activities of butchers and fox-hunters. Similarly, fights between hungry dogs or rutting stags are like pot-house quarrels and have nothing in common with war, which is mass murder organized in cold blood. Some social insects, it is true, go out to fight in armies; but their attacks are always directed against members of another species. Man is unique in organizing the mass murder of his own species.” ― Aldous Huxley, Ends & Means (1937)

“Every road towards a better state of society is blocked, sooner or later, by war, by threats of war, by preparations for war. That is the truth, the odious and inescapable truth, that emerges, plain for all to see.” ― Aldous Huxley, Ends & Means (1937)

“Such is the world in which we find ourselves ― a world which, judged by the only acceptable criterion of progress, is manifestly in regression. Technological advance is rapid. But without progress in charity, technological advance is useless. Indeed, it is worse than useless. Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” ― Aldous Huxley, Ends & Means (1937)