Labels

Saturday, October 24, 2020

Everything old is new again – or is it the other way around? - CL

In the process of reorganizing my personal print book library – as compared to DaLimbraw Library online – I discovered an old favorite – Cliffs Notes on the Old Testament (as well as the New). I had used it years ago, but I was now curious as to its contents, particularly in light of my learning process in the last 10+ years. So I began to read – and was hooked – I am now about half way through the OT. Why was I hooked?

 Almost immediately, one thing jumped out at me. Since Cliffs Notes combines not only a summary of the biblical content of the books themselves, it does so with a historical perspective as to the author’s life, civil rulers, religion, culture and economics involved – and of course, the politics of it all.

 If we approach the bible and God only from the perspective of ‘You and me, God’, it is easy for us to forget that the bible and God are real – the bible is real history and God rules the entire universe. In many ways, history (both secular and biblical) is empirical evidence of the reality of both – whether one believes it or not. The question is not belief – it is about what is reality – in other words, what are the facts!

 As I read the Cliffs Notes on the various writers like Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, etc., that one thing I mentioned earlier was the fact that all of these prophets had the same complaint – the rulers and their ruling class associates were oppressing the common folks – repeatedly in every era. At times, I thought I was reading the articles which I often post in DaLimbraw Library – NOW!

 Nothing has changed! And it is occurring as we speak today. That includes God’s warning that justice will prevail eventually and destruction will follow – and it did – history proves it!

 It is not a secret that history repeats itself – but how many folks know their history? So where does the problem lie?

 Yesterday I posted: Otiosus rants | Essays in Idleness - DAVID WARREN

For a new generation of reactionaries, old printed books can provide a way to preserve the culture and knowledge now being systematically “re-curated” (i.e. censored and physically destroyed) everywhere I look.

But of course I meant small private libraries, that will have to be hidden from public view, and guarded against electronic penetration; not the extravagant starchitectural wonders that pass for “highbrow” among people who never formed the habit of reading.

 Reading has become a lost art. While useful to show us how to fix a faucet - we do not learn to think critically by watching videos. And don't get me started about reading comprehension.....!!

 “This is one of the reasons we founded Castalia Library. It allows every subscriber to take on the role of those monks who saved so much human knowledge from the rise of the Dark. Given their censorious behavior, do you really believe Google Books and Amazon and other converged institutions aren't going to systematically eradicate those books that they find "problematic" for one reason or another?”

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-storehouse-of-knowledge.html 

 How many people have read this - Virus That Isn’t There, Genetic Sequencing, and the Magic Trick - By Jon Rappoport

Judging by empirical evidence from our grocery shopping alone, most people are getting their ‘news’ from DaEveningNews. As Mark Twain said in his day: “If you do not read newspapers, you are uninformed. If you read them, you are misinformed!”

 And speaking of magic tricks - Of Two Minds - Everything is Staged

All the staging is a means to an end, and everyone in America is nothing more than a means to an end: close the sale so the few can continue exploiting the many.

 How and why is all this possible? “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” – Aldous Huxley

“I wish it were not so, but most human beings seem incapable of critical thought regarding how history follows a cyclical path due to human nature retaining its flaws, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and fortes throughout history. We believe we have advanced because our inventions, discoveries, and technology, but the desire for wealth, power and control over others still consumes a sociopathic portion of mankind who tend to rise to the top through any means necessary.”

Read it all: FOURTH TURNING ELECTION YEAR CRISIS – The Burning Platform - Jim Quinn (Text only)

 So now what? - Fourth Generation War Comes to a Theater Near You | Chronicles - By William Lind - As the late Jeffrey Hart wrote, the modern age began when Western men discarded metaphysics and said, in effect, “We are no longer interested in questions of ultimate meaning; from now on, we care only about the physical world.” From that time onward, a focus on the practical defined modernity. Out of it came ships that could cross oceans and navigation to guide them; steam power, then electricity, medicine that allowed Western men to live anywhere in the world; and, by the beginning of the 20th century, world domination by the Christian West.

We threw away that domination in three great Western civil wars: World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Now, the West is just one contending culture among many, the state to which the West gave birth is failing everywhere, and the questions of ultimate meaning that modernity discarded are returning to haunt its senescence.

Can the times be redeemed? Probably not, but as men of the West, we must try.