Number 2 in a sporadic series.
Pulled from The Twilight of the Idols (under Things the Germans Lack)…
Everything that matters has been lost sight of by the whole of the higher educational system of Germany: the end quite as much as the means to that end. People forget that education, the process of cultivation itself, is the end—and not “the Empire”—they forget that the educator is required for this end—and not the public-school teacher and university scholar. Educators are needed who are themselves educated, superior and noble intellects, who can prove that they are thus qualified, that they are ripe and mellow products of culture at every moment of their lives, in word and in gesture;—not the learned louts who, like “superior wet-nurses,” are now thrust upon the youth of the land by public schools and universities. With but rare exceptions, that which is lacking in Germany is the first prerequisite of education—that is to say, the educators; hence the decline of German culture. One of those rarest exceptions is my highly respected friend Jacob Burckhardt of Bâle: to him above all is Bâle indebted for its foremost position in human culture What the higher schools of Germany really do accomplish is this, they brutally train a vast crowd of young men, in the smallest amount of time possible, to become useful and exploitable servants of the state. “Higher education” and a vast crowd—these terms contradict each other from the start. All superior education can only concern the exception: a man must be privileged in order to have a right to such a great privilege. All great and beautiful things cannot be a common possession: pulchrum est paucorum hominum.—What is it that brings about the decline of German culture? The fact that “higher education” is no longer a special privilege—the democracy of a process of cultivation that has become “general,” common. Nor must it be forgotten that the privileges of the military profession by urging many too many to attend the higher schools, involve the downfall of the latter. In modern Germany nobody is at liberty to give his children a noble education: in regard to their teachers, their curricula, and their educational aims, our higher schools are one and all established upon a fundamentally doubtful mediocre basis. Everywhere, too, a hastiness which is unbecoming rules supreme; just as if something would be forfeited if the young man were not “finished” at the age of twenty-three, or did not know how to reply to the most essential question, “which calling to choose?”—The superior kind of man, if you please, does not like “callings,” precisely because he knows himself to be called. He has time, he takes time, he cannot possibly think of becoming “finished,”—in the matter of higher culture, a man of thirty years is a beginner, a child. Our overcrowded public-schools, our accumulation of foolishly manufactured public-school masters, are a scandal: maybe there are very serious motives for defending this state of affairs, as was shown quite recently by the professors of Heidelberg; but there can be no reasons for doing so.
Just a page or so from Nietzsche, and so much to unpack! So much that could be written about our very circumstances today in an entirely different country! And I’m starting with this because it will be less contentious than other criticisms of Western pretenses that he makes.
Nietzsche raises a point well understood by the ancient Greeks – that education for the elite is a different matter than the education of the masses. The legacy of American Progressivism is to both support this (with the need to produce credentialed expertise for the administrative state) and deny it (via the the fiction of a college education being necessary for everyone, so that all may have the same above average income and opportunities associated with a college degree when it was not universal). That contemporary conservatives conserve this old progressive fiction is testament to the vapidity of their creed.
More recently (as in circa the 70s-90s), Christopher Lasch addressed the same issue about elite education versus common education in both The Culture of Narcissism and The Revolt of the Elites. And as he was a critic of the imported Prussian model of education, he shares some of the perspective of Nietzsche – not that he ever acknowledged it even if he recognized it. Lasch points out the inevitable need to dilute what constitutes an elite education in order to make it accessible to a broader segment of the population. This was traditionally done without really admitting the dilution was happening to maintain the facade of elite accessible to all. If anything, the radicals of the 1960s/70s can be given some credit for challenging this, though of course we know with what results (the bureaucratization of their own fetishes).
One of the American problems is that we have never really been comfortable with elitism. We utterly rejected Hamilton’s notion of a largely hereditary elite (which was much too English), and even Jefferson’s natural aristocracy was not a comfortable fit for our notions about equality. To be elite as an American is to eschew the trappings of being elite and that isn’t easy to pull off. In reading Siegfried Sassoon’s auto-biography-as-fiction, I couldn’t help but be struck at the strangeness of English class structure – at least from an American perspective. This is also an area that is difficult in Nietzsche, as he is no romantic about the masses, nor is he quite the apologist for the elite (at least the elite as it existed), yet he will criticize slave-morality and praise master-morality. That has a pretty clear bias to a social hierarchy, and not one that has many admirable instantiations. We’ll get more into that in a later discussion.
The sad human reality is, just as with organization, social hierarchy is an unavoidable part of our nature. We should be evolving away from our ancient roots, but we are oh so slow to do so. We have now perfected in our educational system mediocrity as the highest value, both for the actual elite as well as the middle class. Neither are served particularly well by this.
Now, I’ve presented Nietzsche as a critic, and he would reject that he was so limited as to being only a critic, and in fact in the ensuing paragraphs he has this to say:
In order to be true to my nature, which is affirmative and which concerns itself with contradictions and criticism only indirectly and with reluctance, let me state at once what the three objects are for which we need educators. People must learn to see; they must learn to think, and they must learn to speak and to write: the object of all three of these pursuits is a noble culture. To learn to see—to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts…
As to learning how to think—our schools no longer have any notion of such a thing. Even at the universities, among the actual scholars in philosophy, logic as a theory, as a practical pursuit, and as a business, is beginning to die out. Turn to any German book: you will not find the remotest trace of a realisation that there is such a thing as a technique, a plan of study, a will to mastery, in the matter of thinking,—that thinking insists upon being learnt, just as dancing insists upon being learnt, and that thinking insists upon being learnt as a form of dancing. What single German can still say he knows from experience that delicate shudder which light footfalls in matters intellectual cause to pervade his whole body and limbs! Stiff awkwardness in intellectual attitudes, and the clumsy fist in grasping—these things are so essentially German, that outside Germany they are absolutely confounded with the German spirit. The German has no fingers for delicate nuances. The fact that the people of Germany have actually tolerated their philosophers, more particularly that most deformed cripple of ideas that has ever existed—the great Kant, gives one no inadequate notion of their native elegance. For, truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen—that one must learn how to write?—But at this stage I should become utterly enigmatical to German readers.
I love this bit about learning to think as akin to learning to dance. The attributes to doing so naturally exist, but must be cultivated and refined. This is part of what makes Nietzsche intriguing to me. In Zarathustra he repeatedly presents this ideal man as one who laughs and sings and dances, not frivolously, but because of how deeply human it is to do those things. Just about as far from the sturm-und-drang Germanic thing as you can get. And he is always a bit ambiguous as to how he relates to Germans, at times speaking in the present plural (i.e. “we Germans”) and equally at arms length as an outside observer.
Nietzsche is also a bit disingenuous there about his critical nature, as that is always his sharpest thought. He preached the need for the transvaluation of all values, but that is a monumental, creative task and ultimately it was beyond his reach. That does not diminish the insights from his criticisms. That this one on education is as relevant to us today as it was in his own time proves that point.
Either people are chewing on this, or Monday Night Football is awfully appealing.
Everywhere, too, a hastiness which is unbecoming rules supreme;
People just aren’t being hasty. 😉
To be fair, Buffy is also on.
Lol! True.
It’s the defining television series of my
childhoodlol late twenties and early thirties.I am sitting in a bar, reading this while watching Monday night football. Mostly due to having forgotten my book, the new Elroy.
Well played!
It’s hard to fire of a quick, wiseass comment about Nietzsche.
The anti-Wilson. Yes, so much to unpack. Not correct on every point, in my opinion, but certainly aimed in the right direction.
Perhaps advancement in education should be based on not just interest but on merit? England has shown us that even a system like that will be skin-suited to push and elitist/ruling class agenda.
Like yesterday I dont have the answer. The best we have is robust free-speech and open debate but even that is thwarted at every turn. “Hate speech isn’t free speech!” they scream from the bowels of hell.
“…education for the elite is a different matter than the education of the masses.”
Who decides which is which? That is the question. Who is qualified to do so? Me? So says every man.
The elite decides. If they decide on the basis of birth – old-school aristocracy – you lose the Jeffersonian notion, and best exemplified by Hamilton – the man of extraordinary talent and questionable circumstances. Of course the natural human tendency is to favor one’s own, so birth will win out even if undeserving of the ‘privilege’ (in the truest sense). That’s the problem, but there is no one else who can decide. They just have to decide well, and nothing shows human fallibility more clearly.
“…– the man of extraordinary talent…”
Too bad marksmanship was not one of his talents.
At least Hamilton wasn’t err’in.
Educators are needed who are themselves educated, superior and noble intellects, who can prove that they are thus qualified, that they are ripe and mellow products of culture at every moment of their lives, in word and in gesture;—not the learned louts who, like “superior wet-nurses,” are now thrust upon the youth of the land by public schools and universities.
I wonder what ol’ Fred would think of our modern College of Education — and their products.
You wonder why I found this relevant?
“…superior and noble intellects…”
“…what ol’ Fred would think of our modern College of Education…”
I dunno, let’s have a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRmYlCJ70z8
So what is our modern society supposed to like?
Speaking of Prussian schools what about the Kulturkampf? The German classical liberals supported the Prussian schools since the Catholic Church weren’t running them and they believed that educated people would become liberals.
So what is our modern society supposed to like?
Society doesn’t like anything, as it has no conscious preferences. The question is more properly what should our elite be and why the masses should accept that.
German classical liberals were religious bigots – does that help answer that question?
Well the classical liberals were religious bigots in general.
The 19th Century liberal attitude was essentially:
Step 1: Have everybody move into the city, learn how to read and stop being Catholic.
Step 2: ????
Step 3: End of History
And precisely what Nietzsche criticized about them. He was no fan of liberalism.
It didn’t work so he was right on that point.
Society is an aggregate of individuals, and thus absolutely has preferences. Indeed, this is the bottom line of our arguments, populism verses legalism.
Winston surely you are capable of making some other point on occasion than the classical liberals anywhere and everywhere were too optimistic about the ever forward march of progressive liberalism.
Thing is I don’t think modern classical liberals and libertarians have learned their lesson. See Marian Tupy. Or see how many of them are genuinely shocked at the rise of the woke left, the environmental left, the natcons and the populists, etc. Since History was supposed to have ended when the USSR fell.
I don’t even know who Marian Tupy is.
You do know that Fukuyama recanted that. Even he knows he made a mistake, so why do you harp on it?
And the whole point of my effort here is to elaborate on why this isn’t a surprise, that it is an outcome entirely consistent with the internal logic of the Enlightenment. Despite the many people who don’t get that.
It’s his shtick, but in fairness to him, Fukuyama’s acolytes ran with the ball even if the man himself later recanted.
It’s peculiar to me that anti-Enlightenment sentiment is so common on the left and in “elite” academia (it’s heirs and beneficiaries), while, at least in America, it is still championed mostly by Christian religious conservatives (it’s defeated adversaries). I suppose it’s the historical fiction in which they’re wrapped up, whereby the founders were, to a man, solemn Christian moralists whose ideology was based on the Bible, rather than, at best, deists and universalist unitarians with a utopian Year Zero political ideology, some of whom (*cough* Jefferson *cough*) were genocidal fucking psychopaths.
I put superfluous apostrophes in possessive-case its because I didn’t receive an elite education, btw.
I went to the school of Hard Firsts where the only prescription was pain.
They had a great bit of debate over how to justify the notion of inalienable rights. In the end, because the populace was overall so religious, they opted to adopt ‘god given’ arguments.
I would argue that Paine made a better stab at it than they did. I am not sure Paine’s approach would have sold as well. It turned out for the best.
It is both shield and sword to the downtrodden, while, at the same time it is a barrier and burden to the victor.
Which is the whole point of it, but whateves.
It’s peculiar to me that anti-Enlightenment sentiment
Well, you are talking the difference between those who look to Rousseau (and Marx, etc.) and those who look elsewhere (a much smaller group).
still championed mostly by Christian religious conservatives
Ah, now you’re getting to what I take as Nietzsche’s view. An unholy marriage. Warby calls our current environment Post Enlightenment Progressivism. There’s been no gas in the tank of the Enlightenment for quite a while – we’ve just been coasting on it.
Speaking of education…
Randi Weingarten gets educated about exactly who is to blame for the rise in homeschooling
Funny, obligatory Ukrainian flag icon, but not Israeli on her Twitter.
That woman is worse than Nikki.
And this Bills performance is worse than that woman.
And we saw that 5 seconds in.
I actually missed the first five seconds because I was watching Buffy.
On her twitter? Doesn’t that hurt?
The big problem with education is that do we need to be educated to be free? And if so who will doing the educating? And if we need to be educated to be free then doesn’t that mean we can be educated to not be free?
What is the raw material you wish to process? Then we can talk about what the finished good might be.
I suppose I mean do you think the general public needs to be educated to be free? And if so why won’t the elite teach them to angry, depressed and stupid authoritarian socialists? Which does appear to be happening right now?
What is the role of the general public? Even the Roman Republic was hierarchically split, with some limited social mobility up and down. So are you concerned with the class of the Senate or the Populi?
If the elite rule, then shouldn’t their education be of the greatest concern to everyone?
The volcano hasn’t erupted yet, but people were able to inspect the damage.
Feels like this is going to be a big one.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=stdi-1tIUhM
There it is.
Was expecting a guy named Joe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGLKnAvzlg4
***
We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for […] great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply…
The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are… So we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm.
***
Frederick Taylor Gates (an advisor to John D Rockefeller) in his book, The Country School of Tomorrow
Will that be like The House of Next Tuesday?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aDT-TDwSH8
Nietzsche also said that once he was surrounded by darkness and despair. He found salvation in three steps: the first was right thought, the second was right speech, and the third was right deeds.
That answer overlaps with Christianity and Buddhism. How blessed are those with bad karma; they will see true enlightenment.
N-dawg vs the Notorious G.K.C. – a dramatic reenactment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MHDEjar-M
Nietzsche also said that once he was surrounded by darkness and despair. He found salvation in three steps: the first was right thought, the second was right speech, and the third was right deeds.
That’s a false attribution. It is the doctrine of Zoroastrianism. Apparently someone conflated Thus Spake Zarathustra with the religious figure, which was part of Nietzsche’s pun and this is now internet wisdom.
Oh, bravo, good sir. You’re right. Good catch.
***
Turn yourself not away from three best things: Good Thought, Good Word, and Good Deed. Zoroaster Three, Deeds, Good Thoughts
TOP 25 QUOTES BY ZOROASTER | A-Z Quotes
***
Those three things are a subset of Buddhism’s eightfold path.
I thought you were going here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N_RO-jL-90
Once, Confucius was travelling with his disciples. They saw a woman weeping on the road and asked what was the matter. The woman said that her husband and son had both been killed by a tiger. Confucius asked her why she did not move away from this place. The woman answered that she was afraid of being under the thumb of an even more cruel warlord.
At this, Confucius turned to his disciples and said:
***
An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.
***
As briefly stated a Liberal arts education meant to the Ancient Greeks the things that a free upper class man should know. They felt the elites should be educated in a way which would allow them to rule. But it reminds me of how in the Medieval times only the priests were to have direct knowledge of the Bible and they were to lead the laity. That conceit never really went away. It’s the American in me that’s talking but the idea that the masses and the elite should be educated the same is a good thing. Knowledge is not just for the elites but is the birthright of every person. We just now have the ability to give this knowledge to everyone even if large numbers of people are incapable of taking advantage of it. I think that is the real failure of modern education.
Hell, the “elites” are now actively discouraging knowledge.
Well when you educate everyone the same, you undershoot for the best and dilute down the hard stuff for the rest. That’s without even getting into the question of specializations.
I have no doubts that things could be worse under Labor in the UK….but it’s hard to imagine it being that much worse than what we’re seeing right now with the “conservatives”.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/indi-gregory-dies-after-life-support-withdrawn-against-her-parents-wishes/
link to the weekend piece: https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/11/judicial-arrogance-at-its-worst-in-the-u-k-case-of-indi-gregory/
long story short – like one of the cases a couple years ago, this baby was granted Italian citizenship and had an Italian hospital willing to conduct experimental treatment at no cost to the UK NHS…but FYTW.
Agree with the author – the parents could have morally withdrawn care under the circumstances but the UKGov is evil AF.
***
The Charlie Gard case was a best interests case in 2017 involving Charles Matthew William “Charlie” Gard (4 August 2016 – 28 July 2017), an infant boy from London, born with mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (MDDS), a rare genetic disorder that causes progressive brain damage and muscle failure. MDDS has no treatment and usually causes death in infancy. The case became controversial because the medical team and parents disagreed about whether experimental treatment was in the best interests of the child.[1][2][3][4]
In October 2016, Charlie was transferred to London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), a National Health Service (NHS) children’s hospital, because he was failing to thrive and his breathing was shallow. He was placed on mechanical ventilation and MDDS was diagnosed.
A neurologist in New York, Michio Hirano, who was working on an experimental treatment based on nucleoside supplementation with human MDDS patients was contacted. He and GOSH agreed to proceed with the treatment, to be conducted at GOSH and paid for by the NHS. Hirano was invited to come to the hospital to examine Charlie but did not visit at that time. In January, after Charlie had seizures that caused brain damage, GOSH formed the view that further treatment was futile and might prolong suffering. They began discussions with the parents about ending life support and providing palliative care.
Charlie’s parents still wanted to try the experimental treatment and raised funds for a transfer to a hospital in New York. In February 2017, GOSH asked the High Court to override the parents’ decision, questioning the potential of nucleoside therapy to treat Charlie’s condition. The British courts supported GOSH’s position. The parents appealed the case to the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. The decision of the court at first instance was upheld at each appeal.
…
On 30 January 2017, the parents launched an appeal on the crowdfunding website GoFundMe to finance experimental treatment in the United States.[22][23] Donations had exceeded £1.3 million by the end of April.[24] The publicity campaign was well under way before the legal process had started. At no time during the court process was any criticism levelled at the parents for this campaign and there was no suggestion that the court’s powers be used to limit or control this publicity.
In June, immediately after the High Court had ruled that artificial life support should be withdrawn, the parents said that they wanted to take their son home to die or to bring him to a hospice, and that GOSH had denied this; the hospital would not comment due to Charlie’s confidentiality. It was announced that his life support would be withdrawn on 30 June.[25][26] The courts, and GOSH and its staff were subjected to criticism and abuse.[15][6] On 30 June, the staff at the hospital agreed to give the parents more time with him.[27]
***
Not So Great Britain continues to circle the drain.
At least in Soylent Green (takes place in 2022), you get your choice of music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uIyIjGUEIE
One wonders what King Charles thinks about this? Other than moral persuasion, has no power to halt and is probably advised to keep his mouth shut.
Other than privately warning the Prime Minister, the royals are expected to stay entirely out of politics.
King Chuck might quietly agree with all this AFAIK – “what would Comrade Stalin think?” might apply.
https://www.cato-unbound.org/
Here is a Cato Unbound discussion about whether or not Nietzschean free spirits are required for a free society. Some of them question whether these Nietzschean free spirits will end up dispensing with liberalism since Nietzsche himself didn’t like classical liberalism.
Nietzsche himself didn’t like classical liberalism
There’s your answer. Now what exactly is your question?
Do you think that a free society needs Nietzschean free spirits or will they end up advocating a form of enlightened despotism run by themselves?
First I would ask, where is there a free society?
Second, Nietzsche does not advocate for a liberal society/govt – thus it would seem quite strange to me that anyone should find such free spirits to be well accommodated in one.
Third, Nietzsche would probably laugh at you even contemplating enlightened despotism.
I believe I said that Nietzsche doesn’t provide answers – so looking to him for such is a waste of time. It is the questions he asks that are interesting, if you have the stomach for it (and he never expected that of most).
Reminiscent of Kierkegaard in more ways than one, if Kierkegaard had decoupled his conception of truth as subjective inwardness from religious faith.
Is the problem that there aren’t enough people capable of receiving the education, or that the people capable of providing the education don’t exist in the numbers necessary to provide it? And more to the point, there really isn’t any motivation for the state to try and provide it. The goal is, as stated by Nietzsche in the context of his own times, to create good little consumers who will serve the interests of the state. I don’t think our elites consider it possible to spread to the masses a culture of higher education nor do they really desire tot o do so because that would be dangerous.
There is nothing inherently superior about our elites, though. There children are pretty easily programmed if the woke virus is any indication and I’d say at this point their own education has been watered down to nothing. It has the veneer of sophistication. It is our culture that limits what an education can be. It doesn’t prioritize deeper learning. It doesn’t even prioritize the robotic type of learning that you find in Asian countries. It’s just get the basic skills and more importantly, the credentials.
In all instances, networking and who you know is a far bigger factor in success for the average person than actual intelligence or an “education.”
I’ll reiterate – the modern elites we are producing are a joke who are capable of little more than navel gazing at best, and their naivety and stupidity has become quite dangerous.
Oh we definitely need a better elite – our’s absolutely sucks balls.
Unfortunately,our “betters” don’t confine themselves to benign navel gazing. They are actively parasitic.
The elite is always essentially parasitic. They have a role to play and ours are doing a poor job of that.
social hierarchy is an unavoidable part of our nature
It’s unavoidable, but it’s unstable: there are always tradeoffs between velocity and height. There’s always a value in stasis for some, maybe even most, and a value for undermining for others. Hierarchy once meant sacred, but it’s no longer so.
The interesting part of today’s hierarchy is the certainty that it will change. In this way the US remains superior to other countries.
We’ve been teaching what to think, rather than how to think.
Every high school world history class, 9th/10th grade has a fill in the blank question. What are the names of Columbus’s three ships? To this day, almost all of my high school classmates still remember the answer, as many of you do. It was a meaningless question but easy to grade. I’ve never been asked that question in a job interview but if ever I did, I was going to be ready.
During my student teaching days I had a student of Mexican ancestry ask, “Why is this important?” I started to give her the stock answer of the educational need of being a good citizen but I couldn’t say that, because it wasn’t true. I began to realize that things important to me weren’t important to most other people. She needed to learn how to make a living, life skills.
I think there is room for both.
“How to think” is such a nebulous concept, it can mean almost anything. Sure it’s important, but I think there is something (admittedly minor) to be said about everyone sharing the common knowledge of Columbus’s ships et al. I do think there should be a “base” of things that every American should know. Especially if those things include the reasons those old dead white people did what they did in the late 1700s.
I do not carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books.
Fine… “know about“.
Although I will still go old school and declare there is value in committing shit to memory.
Socrates was opposed to his students taking notes, because that would prevent them from committing things to memory.
***
In the PhaedrusOffsite Link, written circa 370 BCE, PlatoOffsite Link recorded Socrates’s discussion of the Egyptian myth of the creation of writing. In the process Socrates faulted writing for weakening the necessity and power of memory, and for allowing the pretense of understanding, rather than true understanding.
From Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus 14, 274c-275b:
Socrates: [274c] I heard, then, that at NaucratisOffsite Link, in Egypt, was one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. He it was who [274d] invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, also draughts and dice, and, most important of all, letters.
Now the king of all Egypt at that time was the god Thamus, who lived in the great city of the upper region, which the Greeks call the Egyptian Thebes, and they call the god himself Ammon. To him came Theuth to show his inventions, saying that they ought to be imparted to the other Egyptians. But Thamus asked what use there was in each, and as Theuth enumerated their uses, expressed praise or blame, according as he approved [274e] or disapproved.
“The story goes that Thamus said many things to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts, which it would take too long to repeat; but when they came to the letters, [274e] “This invention, O king,” said Theuth, “will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of memory and wisdom that I have discovered.” But Thamus replied, “Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; [275a] and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess.
“For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem [275b] to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.”
***
Yes, I have been through the Stargate.
That was a tough bit in Neil Postman’s Technopoly – the discussion about writing as technology (and the trade-off inherent in a technology displacing what existed before).
I use that as a defense for my complete inability to memorize random facts.
I am very good, however, and remembering processes.
This guy has flavors of Nietzsche and Marx:
***
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (German: [ˈɔsvalt ˈʃpɛŋlɐ]; 29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German polymath, whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history. Spengler’s model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan.
Spengler predicted that about the year 2000, Western civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency whose countering would lead to 200 years of Caesarism (extra-constitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of government) before Western civilization’s final collapse.[5]
Spengler is regarded as a German nationalist and a critic of republicanism, and he was a prominent member of the Weimar-era Conservative Revolution. Although he had voted for Hitler over Hindenburg in the 1932 German presidential election and the Nazis had viewed his writings as a means to provide a “respectable pedigree” to their ideology,[6] Spengler later criticized Nazism due to its excessive racialist elements, which led to him and his work being censored in his final years. He saw Benito Mussolini, and entrepreneurial types, like the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes,[7] as examples of the impending Caesars of Western culture—showcasing his stark criticism of Mussolini’s colonialist adventures.[8]
Spengler influenced later academics, as well as anti-Western ideologies such as fascism and Islamism.
***
The FCE is back to pushing for net neutrality and implementing new rules on the disparate access to boradband based on race. Apparently this was hidden in the 2021 infrastructure bill. They were to tackle the problem of “digital discrimination.”
They are basically using this as a backdoor way to regulate…all the things.
Race has been the backdoor way to regulate all the things for decades now. The country is broken.
And when you see them use the same tactic over and over again, it’s a pretty clear indicator they know they are using it as a pretext.
Like cops doing traffic stops…
As Ibrahim Kendi said In order to end Racism we need a massive bureaucracy to centrally plan everything to ensure equal outcomes.
And Chrus Rufo has been pointing out that wokeness is happening because of Civil Rights law.
He’s right. “Civil rights” law was perverted into the reverse racism we see today. Actually, we have been seeing since the early seventies. Hell, Normal Lear made a career out of propagandizing that shit.
“Norman”
This is going to pass with barely a whimper ad have long lasting and serious consequences for every American.
Media isn’t even covering it. There would be no debate.
The Americans have never had a problem with eliteism, as long as it comes from merit. And this is why “education “ is so important to the PMCs, it is the imprimatur of worthyness.
Also, Sassoon bio? Memoirs Of A Fox Hunting Man?
(Also, drinking and philosophy. It is what’s best in life.)
Memoirs Of A Fox Hunting Man?
Yes, also Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Sherson’s Progress.
Storm of Steel did it for me.
***
Storm of Steel (German: In Stahlgewittern, lit. ’In Steel Thunderstorms’; original English title: In Storms of Steel) is the memoir of German officer Ernst Jünger’s experiences on the Western Front during the First World War from December 1914 to August 1918.
It was originally printed privately in 1920, making it one of the first personal accounts to be published. The book is a graphic account of trench warfare. It was largely devoid of editorialization when first published, but was heavily revised several times. The book established Jünger’s fame as a writer in the 1920s. The judgment of contemporaries and later critics reflects the ambivalence of the work, which describes the war in all its brutality, but neither expressly condemns it nor goes into its political causes. It can be read affirmatively, neutrally or as an anti-war book.[1]
***
effects of shellshock – actual patients from WW1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWHbF5jGJY0
Unfortunately, most of the therapeutic techniques used to help these men were either unrecorded or ignored.
I have both on the night stand, Fox and Steel. Both very good, if depressing. Also, add a good collection of war poets, such as Owen, and of course, Graves Goodbye to All That.
Sunshine
That’s a good idea, keeps the kids off the grass, now I need some grass.
lol stupid human tricks
@Rhywun …
Quoi?
Well, okay, so good on you for 8 points, tho. I shouldn’t point. Broncos beat us, too.
*ahem*
Cobwebs are being shook out.
Speaking of education, did you link website that had various classes in the trades?
https://northland.plattecountyschooldistrict.com/
Thank you
Mojohowitz, you were talking about the two best Vampire movies yesterday? Easy. Vampires Kiss and Shadow of the Vampire.
I’ll take the Malkovich one under advisement. I’m giving you the side eye on Nic Cage. THAT SAID, I started watching Renfield and so far so good.
The Cage one is so out there, it makes Renfield a la Tom Waits, seem prescient.
Well good old “user friendly” Ubuntu took me just about an hour to install the Tor browser. Ten minutes to download it and 40 trying to figure out how to get “start-tor-browser.desktop” to run as executable and not open as the default text.
Finally figured out you can’t leave it in the default file manager, but have to drag the thing on the desktop and set all the permissions there.
Decided to be completely Glib and see how it worked on the site:
So in short – not good… I’ve tried several exit nodes and had the same issue. I’m assuming Jetpack blocks Tor by default and it’s the current solution by management to block various attacks.
I had a script on my desktop that in earlier versions would execute when double-clicked, but after ‘upgrading’ to the more recent Ubuntu release, it no longer does that, and I can’t find anything about the properties or permissions which would make it not run
When you unzip the tgz you should be able to just right click on the start-tor-browser icon and click “executable” in the permissions tab, then double click to launch. Alternatively, open a terminal, cd to the tor directory, chmod +x start-tor-browser.desktop. Then again, Ubuntu is fucky and doesn’t do almost anything “the linux way” so who knows. You’re probably supposed to install it as a Snap package like everything else in the OS now.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.24417789&seq=606
Of course how we bring up Nietzsche and ignore how H. L. Mencken thought Imperisl Germany was being run by NiNietzsche
Fucked that up: ignore how H. L. Mencken thought Imperial Germany was being run by Nietzschean Supermen.
Or, did you mean The Knights who say NINiettzshe!
97-year-old WW2 veteran speaks; he’s healthy, happy, and lucid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZOmrMMVIUw
Stop! Or My Mom Will First!
No, no she wont. It’s way to late for that.
The boy child has somehow managed to become a shift supervisor at Pizza Hut part time, and a kitchen manager at Chipotle full time for $5/hr more than he makes at PH. Chipotle will transfer him to Springfield next fall when he goes to MSU because it’s a self-contained company. PH won’t because they don’t do interfranchise transfers.
I’m looking at these numbers fast food’s willing to pay and just getting depressed that it’s just pretty worthless. But also I’m tired of hearing people screaming about raising the minimum wage. Nobody around here has had the luxury of paying minimum wage for decades. Lots of work and “good” pay if you can do it.
The important thing is that he’s working, and so gaining experience and money. In Arabic, they say a hair pulled out of a pig is a gain.
Oh, yeah. The kid has hustle, for sure, and I’m really proud of him for that. He fires on all cylinders when he’s thoroughly engaged and worn out.
Welp. Thanks, ABC for turning 538 to shit.
I was never a big fan, but what in particular is annoying you?
Can’t find the NFL standings and odds like 538 used to have it. ABC sent me offsite to gambling sites, but not to where their standings are.
I can’t decode this.
Nate Silver’s old site, fivethirtyeight.com that came tofame because he had correctly predicted the outcome of some election. Well, they did a lot of sports, and that’s where I went to go Chiefs navel gazing at the standings and predictions. ABC news bought it and now sports is buried and that chart is nowhere to be found. https://abcnews.go.com/538
Ah, I had no idea.
That was 2008, btw. And he hasn’t called one since any more accurately than an aggregate of public polls. It amazes me he’s still getting his nuts gargled as some kind of incredible prognosticator 15 years later for correctly calling Obama winning in 2008, as if it were some kind of triumph of statistical analysis.
It really wasn’t that hard to predict the 2008 election, either. It was going to be a strong blue win. Who the hell really thought McCain was going to pull that out?
Point. The Blues could have run Hildog and still pulled it out. Post GWB it was always gonna be blue.
Since the reign of FDR only once has the same party won the White House three times in a row (RR/RR/GHWB). Add in a weak candidate like Mccain versus Chocolate Jesus and it was a foregone conclusion. The same condition, plus being unlikable, helped to doom HRC.
Josh Allen has become pretty easy to defend. Just play a two high shell and dare him to not fire the ball 15 yads down field into coverage. He’s seemingly physically incapable of doing it. Like calm your tits dude it’s a tie game. You don’t need 28 points with every throw.
This was the big difference between him and Burrow last year in the playoff game in the snow. Burrow threw a bunch of passes around 10-15 yards or under. Allen was firing everything down field. In that weather in particular, but especially given what the defenses were doing, it’s just a bad idea.
Stupid question… why are there so many psoriasis medicine commercials? Like dozens every day. More than Viagra FFS.
Why are there so many for the AIDS? What percentage of people watching NFL football are HIV positive?
Insurance pays full freight?
Yeah of course it’s a $$ thing but it just seems so odd and random.
I haven’t encountered someone with that for 30+ years.
One sells what one has.
A breakthrough in boner pills? One sells boner pills.
One makes headway in defeating some insidious disease that allows several avenues of treatment, that is what one sells.
They really need to make a one pill AIDS/psoriasis treatment. And a series of upbeat commercials to hawk it.
We have had that forever. FFS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvDX30jwHYA
Isn’t it an autoimmune condition? Triggered by childhood vaccines? Then plenty of potential customers.
Yes to the former, meh to the latter – my mother has it and her childhood vaccination schedule was pretty light.
There’s a strong genetic component, and flare ups can be triggered by external factors. It is indeed autoimmune, as is the often accompanying psoriatic arthritis.
I have light-to-moderate psoriasis. My mother has the skin affliction very lightly but the arthritis moderately. Her full brother (my uncle) had psoriasis severely.
The reason for the rash (snort) of commercials is that the use of so-called “biologics”has been proven effective and safe only in the past ten years or so. Lots of autoimmune conditions are now treatable with similar drugs, so we have Crohn’s disease commercials, psoriasis, eczema, some asthmas, etc. Most are new enough to be patentable still, so they are making money while they can.
That makes sense.
Yeah, so many of all of those.
Oh, how I love the internet:
***
Before i usually bring my great grandfather to WW2 reenactments and he always complain to me why the people who plays the Officer rarely say 突撃 (Totsugeki) which is the command for “Charge” or “attack” but they always say 天皇陛下万歳 (Tennoheikabanzai) Its just Hurray to the Emperor and not a signal for attack and he noticed that the soldiers will immediately charge the enemies when the firefight just started 5 minutes or so, the frontal charge is only a thing when everything is hopeless or dont have ammo and resources, he said everybody wanted to die fighting but not dying meaningless by machine gun fire. Kill 3 to 5 enemies then die. Then i will explain to him everysingle time that this is just a reenactment and all of them dont really know.
***
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4EdetP6PaY
Banzai means “[may the emperor live] ten thousand [years] in Japanese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1pNU85Euwg
The Chinese equivalent is wan sui.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcU0tFeqMFI
The Chinese in the above video are singing that Mao lives 10,000 years, just as other Chinese sang the same for earlier emperors.
I am listening to bobbleheads on TV right now talking about how the SS was wrong to shoot at people attempting to hijack a SS vehicle and how sad it is that they missed. They are making the ‘just shoot them in the leg’ and ‘ I would have….’ arguments.
Guess what cupcakes….you dont know what you would have done. You weren’t there. You have never been shot at in your life, you have never had to make split second decisions like that, you have no idea what dealing with lizard brain, reflex is like.
They really should STFU.
Regarding the afternoon links comments about France still giving a damn about their culture, remember the French *did* give us Charles Martel.
But he was Frankish not French.
Good morning all!
Tuesday seems to call for some Morphine, which is Good.
Tuxedomoon says In a Manner of Speaking.
Share and enjoy!
Good Morning all
3 months now, and DA from Cherokee nation still has not told wife why she was arrested.
Its a crazy world.
Wake up Glibbies!
😁☕
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u04b4TQ6Fnk
🎶🎶
Another chilly morning, yay for remote start.
Good morning, Sean, ‘bodru, Beau, and Roat!
Mornin’, reprobates!
Good morning, ‘patzie! How’s tricks?
Busy preparing for Mrs. Patzer’s hip replacement Saturday. Attempting to schedule my hernia surgery for December. You know, Old Man stuff.
Ooh! Coming right up! Will she be sprung by Thanksgiving so you and Jungpatzer can whip up a nice dinner for her?
In and out in a day if all goes well (no euphemism). Roast Beast for Thanksgivng. I have no desire to carve a Turkey.
Ah, but a Grinch like you can carve a Roast Beast! 🍖
Regrettable that this comes so very late in the discussion, but I think the latest from el gat Malo is relevant to the conversation.