Two of Europe’s greatest contemporary enemies recently got together to compare notes and discuss how they were going to further undermine and destabilize what remains of the Continent’s civilization. Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met on June 17, in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace to discuss the issues which will be raised at a Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, from July 7-8.
The Vatican said that Frau Merkel and the Pope discussed the need “for the international community to combat poverty, hunger, terrorism and climate change.” Ms. Merkel, in an obvious swipe at US President Donald Trump, said that “we are a world in which we want to work multilaterally, a world in which we don’t want to build walls but bring down walls.” The reference to “walls,” of course, was to President Trump’s promise to construct a wall on the Mexican-American border. The pope, too, has been critical of Mr. Trump’s proposed plan.
Ms. Merkel also lamented about the Trump Administration’s decision to opt out of the 2015 Paris climate accord. Pope Francis urged President Trump to remain in the accord and gave him a copy of his encyclical, “Praise Be,” when they met earlier this spring. The encyclical elevated “climate change” and protection of the environment as “moral obligations” while it criticized “perverse” economic development models that “enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor.”
As has been the case since the Second Vatican Anti-Council (1962-65), popes have spent most of their time on secular concerns in which they have little competency and less on matters of the Faith. Pope Francis has taken this to a new level and rarely preaches on doctrine. This, in one sense, is good because when he does speak on religion, he usually spouts out some heresy or falsehood which scandalizes the Church. His many blasphemies and heresies, plus the fact that he was never ordained as a priest in the traditional Catholic rite or traditionally consecrated as a bishop (neither was Benedict XVI), makes him ineligible to be a true Catholic pope.
The latest fraud that these two cretins are now pushing is the supposed threat of global warming. The idea that “climate change” has had some nefarious effect on the environment has long ago been debunked by legitimate scientists and scholars. Climate change is a ruse used by global elites to further tax, regulate and enslave humanity.
Facts and sound theory, however, do not bother the collectivist minds of Pope Francis and Angela Merkel. What they are interested in is power and control and they intend to keep it through lies like global warming and by coercive massive migration which will fundamentally alter Europe’s demographics to their New World Order masters’ advantage.
Had it not been for the likes of Pope Francis and Ms. Merkel, it is unlikely that Europe would be under a deluge of mostly Mohammedan “asylum seekers.” The claim that the invasion was “spontaneous” due to the turmoil in the Middle East from US and Western nation-states military intervention is implausible. The region has been unstable for decades. Why all of a sudden is there a mass exodus and why it is mostly of young single Muslim men?
The invasion of Europe was carefully orchestrated and planned by the world’s power elite whose goal is to eliminate what is left of the Continent’s white Christian heterogeneous male population. Pope Francis and Ms. Merkel are the New World Order’s puppets carrying out their marching orders.
While the outlook for Europeans may currently appear grim, it is not hopeless. While Pope Francis and Angela Merkel cannot at present be deposed for their crimes, they can be defeated in the court of public opinion. For Europe to become once again the center of human civilization, the ideals of multiculturalism and the fraud of global warming must be slain on ideological grounds.
This is the duty that confronts those that seek a return of Europe’s previous glories. While the task appears monumental, it must be remembered that the pagan Roman Empire was eventually converted by the teaching of twelve men and one indomitable former Pharisee from Tarsus.
In the last post, your humble blogger began a thread about the ROOT SOURCE of the crisis in the post-conciliar church. Furthermore, the crisis in the post-conciliar church has exacerbated the crisis in that part of society whose traditions are founded in the Catholic Faith, i.e. Western Civilization.
The official HYPOTHESIS of the Deus Ex Machina blog is that the ROOT CAUSE of the degeneration of Western Civilization can be traced back directly to the Nominalist Heresy, initially espoused by William of Ockham. (see here)
Nominalism in turn created the environment for Cartesian philosophy, which appeared in the first half of the 17th Century. Cartesian “philosophy”, or rather it’s significance is captured in this Wikipedia entry quite well:
Descartes has often been dubbed the father of modern Western philosophy, the thinker whose approach has profoundly changed the course of Western philosophy and set the basis for modernity.[10][64] The first two of his Meditations on First Philosophy, those that formulate the famous methodic doubt, represent the portion of Descartes’ writings that most influenced modern thinking.[65] It has been argued that Descartes himself didn’t realize the extent of this revolutionary move.[66]In shifting the debate from “what is true” to “of what can I be certain?,” Descartes arguably shifted the authoritative guarantor of truth from God to humanity (even though Descartes himself claimed he received his visions from God) – while the traditional concept of “truth” implies an external authority, “certainty” instead relies on the judgment of the individual.
This Cartesian anti-rationalism can be reduced to the notion that Truth is not as Aristotle had defined , i.e. what is, that it is. So what effectively happened is that capital “T” Truth, i.e. bringing the mind into conformity with reality (‘adaequatio rei et intellectus’), became small “t” “truth”, i.e. bringing thought into line with life (‘adaequatio realis mentis et vitae’). And it is this “philosophical” tradition that was at the heart of the suppression of Thomism in the second half of the 20th Century, leading up to the Second Vatican Council.
And we have been living with the consequence ever since…
As to our understanding of this erroneous supposition, another refutation of the above Cartesian definition of “truth” has appeared recently, and is provided by none other thanDr. Jordan Peterson. Here is how he explained the ERROR of the latest iteration of Nominalist “thinkers”, i.e. the post-Modernists:
And this is also why I think that the bloody post-modernists are so incorrect. You know, they say something like: ‘there’s an infinite number of interpretations of the world. And that’s actually true. But then they make a mistake, and they say: ‘ no interpretation is to be privileged over any other interpretation.’ It’s like WRONG. WRONG. That’s where things go seriously off the rails because the interpretation has to be… and this is the Piagetian objection: ‘ if you and I are going to play a game, rule 1 is that we both have to want to play. Rule 2 is that other people are going to let us play. Rule 3 is we should be able to play it across a pretty long period of time without it degenerating. And maybe Rule 4 is that while we are playing, the world shouldn’t kill us. There are not that many games… you know, you don’t send your kids to play on the super highway right. They’re not playing hockey on the superhighway. Cause world kills them. So there is an infinite number of interpretations, but there is not an infinite number of solutions.
So the latest refutation of the Nominalist ERROR comes by way of the clinical psychologists.
Interdisciplinary verification, yes?
Which brings us to another example of a “philosophical approach gone horribly wrong”. Over at Evergreen State University, we get this report. I will reserve comment on the situation since I can’t for the life of me figure out what the position of the protestors is.
However, I have come across information that could help shed light on what is in fact happening there. There is this “faithless old man, that is going through the motions” who made the following observation recently, and I think it is quite fitting:
Remember. Memory is important, because it allows us to dwell in love, to be mind-ful, never forgetting who it is who loves us and whom we are called to love in return. Yet nowadays, this singular ability that the Lord has given us is considerably weakened. Amid so much frantic activity, many people and events seem to pass in a whirl. We quickly turn the page, looking for novelty while unable to retain memories. Leaving our memories behind and living only for the moment, we risk remaining ever on the surface of things, constantly in flux, without going deeper, without the broader vision that reminds us who we are and where we are going. In this way, our life grows fragmented, and dulled within.
I think that sums up the below post quite well.
Looking for novelty!
To bad there is no evidence that would support, whether the author of those words actually appreciates what the definition of that “n” word entails.
But at least he is using it.
So that maybe others might…
******
“Shocking” Documentary Reveals The “Stunning, Infuriating” Death Of Free Speech At Evergreen College (see here)
As we have detailed numerous times, student protesters have effectively been in control of Evergreen State University for about a month now, forcing the school to hold its commencement ceremonies at an alternative venue 40 miles from campus. The protests – and the school administration’s decision to acquiesce to the students instead of trying to hold them accountable for their actions – have prompted some in the Washington State legislature to try and pull state funding from the school.
HBO and Vice published a documentary about the protesters’ relentless efforts to shut down all dissent on campus. In it, biology professor Bret Weinstein, who students have demanded be fired and is at the center of the unrest, has gained some notoriety in conservative circles after publishing an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about the situation at Evergreen.
The documentary explores how the Evergreen administration’s handling of the demonstrations only served to inflame the situation further, as university president George Bridges acquiesced to student demands – including a request for all staff to undergo sensitivity training, while promising that no students would be held accountable for their actions during the demonstrations.
In video of the initial confrontation between Weinstein and the protesters, Weinstein can be heard pleading with students to listen to him, only to be repeatedly shut down. In the interview with Vice, he seems harried – like he’s been worn down by the attention and students’ exhausting demands.
“Would you like to hear the answer or not? No no no!”
“This is not a discussion. You’ve lost.”
Weinstein claims he’s not a racist, and that he considers himself an ally to minorities and
By virtue of the way they constructed this, you were making a statement by being on campus that you were not an ally and I feel I am an ally of people of color in their attempt to gain equity.
I feel I am an ally to people of color in their attempt to gain equity. Well, they think I’m a racist. If you stand up against one of these things, if you think it’s ill-considered, you will be branded as a racist.
One of the protest leaders interviewed by Vice accused the school of mismanaging the situation, arguing that Weinstein has “validated” white supremacists and Nazis even though there’s no record of Weinstein saying anything remotely hateful.
Vice News correspondent (and former Reasoner/current Fifth Columnist) Michael Moynihan visited the embattled campus to query the antagonists in the controversy, and the results are stunning, infuriating, bananas…
“We just wanted to be like until you’re held accountable for these actions you don’t get to teach students at evergreen. You don’t get to spread this problematic rhetoric and instill it in students. At this point we’d like Bret to be fired, but that isn’t happening, the administration isn’t choosing to take action, they’re choosing to protect this white cis professor instead of its students.”
They students are also blaming Weinstein for inciting violent threats against them because he appeared on Fox News. As one student admits…
“Although Bret has not personally said go out and attack these students go out and threaten these students, that has been the result of his actions. He has validated white supremacists in our community and in the nation and I don’t think that should be protected by free speech.”
Meanwhile, the faculty and administration aren’t the only ones who feel threatened by the protesters. One student, who asked not to be identified because she was fearful of being targeted by the protesters, said that she no longer feels comfortable expressing her “nuanced” opinions.
“I feel like I don’t have the ability to speak if I disagree with the methods used in the protest. I’m afraid that my opinions, and myself, will be stigmatized.”
In perhaps the most shocking scene, video footage shows students holding President George Bridges hostage by trying to prevent him from leaving to use the bathroom. In the video, a student can be heard telling the university president to “hold it.”
Bridges claims he felt safe during that encounter, and that the students wouldn’t have been able to stop him from going to the bathroom unescorted, but one telling exchange between him and the Vice reporter belies his characterization of events as peaceful.
Why did they want to escort you to the bathroom?
I don’t know.
Did you ask them?
Of course not.
In another clip, one protester expresses open hostility to the concept of free speech, arguing that the “safety” of minorities and LGBTQ people is more important than free expression, without explaining the disconnect.
“Fuck Free Speech. When we’re dead when people die and you’re sitting here saying at least they got to have their free speech.”
The protests erupted after Biology Professor Bret Weinstein objected to a planned “day of absence” demonstration where white students and faculty were “invited” to leave campus for a day. Weinstein argued that one group asking another to leave a shared public space is tantamount to oppression, regardless of the respective parties’ skin color. Students responded by crowding into his classroom, shouting obscenities at him, and demanding that he resign…for the crime of disagreeing with their far-left PC agenda.
The problem at the core of the protest movement is that the students only see extremes. A professor is either an ally, or a horrible racist. The irony is that worldview is just as reductive as the hateful racist ideologies they claim to oppose. Furthermore, by relentlessly hounding Weinstein and the school’s administration, they’ve effectively become the oppressors in this scenario. The worst part is that students attend Evergreen to learn, and not to protest, are the ones who’re being hurt most by the situation. Classes at Evergreen – a school that doesn’t give grades, instead favoring a “wholistic” approach to education – have faced frequent disruptions for more than half of a semester as the protests blossomed into a full-on occupation.
Over at the AKA Catholic blog, Louie Verrecchio posted a piece that really nailed the logical implications behind the current situation behind the Sacred Vatican Wall that can be termed as the “two popes” dilemma.
On an unrelated, but not entirely unrelated note, we have information about Francis, the bishop of Rome going completely and utterly paranoid. It would appear that one of the powers behind the throne, Card. Angelo Sodano, the promoter of the papabile FrancisDavosCardinal Parolin, has “requested” that all cardinals living in Rome inform Francis, the bishop of Rome as to their whereabouts. Can ankle bracelets be far behind? And not only… But I digress…
So what can one make of the above two incidents and how they are related?
Here is my HYPOTHESIS.
What everyone needs to understand is that the Francis bishopric of Rome was created and financed to be a“transformational”bishopric of Rome.
In order for the Francis bishopric of Rome to be transformational after the passing of Francis, it needs to find a foundation on which the “FrancisChanges” can be “cemented”, so as to make them permanent.
Up until the Second Vatican Council, that foundation was Aristotelian logic as refined and developed by the scholastics and specifically the 13th Century Dominicans.
But with the suppression of Thomism and by extension Aristotelian logic, the neo-Modernists were left with a huge dilemma. That dilemma was caused by violations of the Laws of Thought, i.e. Identity, Contradiction and Excluded Middle. I will not go into this now, but the Dr. Lamont post here explains it in painstaking detail.
To look at it another way, if a belief system does not abide by the Laws of Thought (Logic), then it will atrophy into relativism and die away. Think about a situation where a wife is balancing the checkbook. She spent too much money, and decides that to make here checkbook balance, 2+2=5, a la Fr. Spadaro. And since it worked this time, next month, the logically challenged house wife needs to make 2+2=10. Yet at the bank, 2+2 will always be equal 4. Needless to say, these two sides of the banking relationship need to be reconciled.
Which brings us back to Francis. There is a way for the logically challenged housewife to maintain here creative accounting practices and simultaneously maintain her banking relationship in good standing. If her brother or husband is a mafia enforcer let’s say, she can ask that relative to go over to the bank manager and make him an offer that he can’t refuse.
But the question then becomes, is this situation sustainable?
Well, no it is not.
Say the enforcer happens to get a heart attack on his way to the bank and passes away in one month’s time.
Guess what will happen to that housewife and her banking relationship in two month’s time, or when the bank manager learns of the new situation?
Moral of the story, when using an “approach” that is not based on logical grounds, the substitute approach is at best transitory.
With respect to the post-conciliar church, the analogous situation we are referring to, is the part of the Lamont text that deals with “historical perspectivism”. NB: “Historical perspectivism” is the idea that the Church is like a ship that sails into different ports throughout time and adapts to the spirit of the time at that particular port. And from the Rorate Caeli post, it would appear that this TRANSRATIONAL substitute foundation of “historical perspectivism” has finally disintegrated.
And how do we know this?
The proof that what we are observing behind the Sacred Vatican Walls is the disintegration of the neo-Modernist post-logical construct of “historical perspectivism” on which the “new springtime” is built, is the appearance of the use of FORCE on the part of the neo-Modernists.
To be more specific, in order to save the illogical and TRANSRATIONAL status quo, the current occupant of the Holy See and his brain trust have been consigned to the use of FORCE to suppress their perceived enemies.
One can say that the post-Modernist’s “historical perspectivism” ship has sailed!
Maybe he should just lock them up in a prison in Vatican City State and release them only after thorough authorization.Who knows, they may be “conspiring” against him, or even worse, planning what to do in the case of an upcoming conclave — as Francis’ own supporters did long before Benedict XVI ever “thought” of abdicating (or “being abdicated”…)
The larger problem with the above resolution used by TeamFrancis to pacify their “how to maintain power” dilemma is that the next pontiff that comes along can change everything back, or do something completely different since he will then have the keys to the Vatican dungeon.
But whatever the next pontiff does, there is no way in which he himself will be able to be “transformational” either, since his and Francis’ “transformations” will have no OBJECTIVE STRUCTURE underpinning their changes, but instead those changes were and will be, based on the capricious nature of just another wretched sinner.
And no matter how hard any future Roman Pontiff, be he legitimate or False, tries to interpret the “mind of Francis”, some adversary will come along and claim that his interpretation of the “mind of Francis” is wrong and that the adversaries interpretation is in fact the correct one.
And what will be the basis for the then “correct interpretaion” of the “mind of Francis”?
The same one that Napolean identified a couple of centuries ago, namely: God fights on the side that has the biggest guns.
It’s that simple…
And now, the AKA Catholic post that needs to be READ an DISCERNED in its entirety…
*****
“Dogmatic certainty” that Francis is pope
Consider, if you will, the following hypothetical scenario:
A Catholic man and woman are validly joined in holy matrimony.
At some point, the man abandons his wife.
No annulment is obtained.
The man, still validly wed, proposes marriage to another woman; managing to deceive even their pastor into believing that he is single.
Marriage vows are exchanged at the altar with the pastor as witness, and the “newlywed” couple is widely embraced by the entire community as man and wife.
QUESTION: Is the couple validly married?
ANSWER: No, the conditions for a valid marriage, in spite of the convincing outward appearance to the contrary, did not exist.
We might sum up the general principle being applied in this case as follows:
An act of deception, no matter how cleverly conceived or convincingly executed, cannot change the objective reality of a given situation.
Needless to say, this principle applies always and everywhere; i.e., there are no exceptional cases where it does not apply.
So far so good?
Great!
Now let’s consider an analogous hypothetical scenario:
A certain cardinal is validly elected pope.
At some point thereafter, enemies of the pope secretly pressure him via threats of harm, perhaps either to himself or to the Church, in order to force his resignation.
The pope acquiesces to this pressure and declares his intent to resign the Office of Peter.
The resignation is invalid, of course, given that “it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely.” (See 1983 Code of Canon Law, Canon 332 §2)
The pope, still the valid occupant of the Office of Peter, manages to convince the faithful – both laity and hierarchy – that the See of Rome is vacant.
A conclave assembles and promptly elects another cardinal who is then presented to the world as the new pope, and he is widely embraced by the entire community as the Holy Roman Pontiff.
QUESTION: Is cardinal #2 the pope?
ANSWER: No, the conditions for a valid conclave, in spite of the convincing outward appearance to the contrary, did not exist.
Now let’s set our sights on reality:
There are any number of reasons to suspect that the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI was in some way forced. Whether or not you see them, stick with me here…
Oh, but Benedict said that his decision was freely made!
“The simple declaration of free resignation on the part of the person in question [the pope] is not enough, because depending on the circumstances that statement could easily be forced, and the resignation therefore invalid.”
I’ve had the pleasure of debating this situation with some well-informed and intelligent friends who will readily concede that the circumstances of Benedict’s resignation suggestthat it may very well have been forced.
They insist, however, that even if it was forced and technically invalid, the simple fact that a moral unanimity of the Church has since accepted (and continues to treat) Francis as pope provides “dogmatic certainty” that he is, in fact, the pope.
In other words, even if the See of Rome was not truly vacant as conclave 2013 assembled, they firmly believe that Jorge Bergoglio is now the valid occupant of the Office of Peter.
Look, I don’t know for certain that Benedict acted under duress, but what I do know is that an act of deception, no matter how cleverly conceived or convincingly executed, cannot change the objective reality of a given situation.
To suggest otherwise in this case is to imagine that a forced resignation can be valid (i.e., God will remove the papacy from the extorted pope) under the solitary condition that the crime is carried out in such a way as to fool a moral unanimity of people.
Sorry, I’m not buying it.
At this, let’s take a closer look at this claim of “dogmatic certainty” arising from Francis’ acceptance to see if it holds up to scrutiny.
Consider:
It is a matter of dogmatic certainty that a man once made pope remains pope until such time as either he dies, validly resigns, or is deposed (which has never happened).
No one contests this.
If my friends are correct, then what we would have in this case, at best, are two competing dogmatic certainties, and that, my friends, cannot be; i.e., one of them does not apply in every conceivable situation, most notably, the present one.
My friends have cited the writings of certain venerable theologians in order to demonstrate the “dogmatic certainty” that they believe applies in the present case.
On close inspection, however, one will find that none of said writings speak to the specific circumstances of a conclave assembling under false pretenses; a situation that is not altogether unprecedented.
On April 7, 1378, less than two weeks after the death of Pope Gregory XI, the cardinals who were present in Rome assembled in conclave and validly elected the man who would be known as Pope Urban VI.
For various and perhaps even good reasons, Pope Urban was unpopular with the College of Cardinals.
So, on September 20th of that same year, many of these same cardinals assembled in conclave and proceeded to elect another man who took the name of Clement VII.
History clearly recognizes Clement as an anti-pope; the first of the Western Schism.
This recognition is not based upon the fact that only a portion of the Church recognized and accepted him as pope. (Indeed, the same could have been said of Urban VI thanks to the confusion that followed).
The fact that Clement was not universally accepted was merely a sign of the objective underlying truth that he was not a true pope.
Likewise, when a moral unanimity of the Church accepts a man as pope it is also merely a sign of the objective underlying truth that the man is pope.
NB: In neither case does this sign [of acceptance or non-acceptance] create the underlying truth; it simply reflects it, and the truth, whatever it may be, in no way depends on it.
As such, even if a moral unanimity of the Church had embraced Clement VII as pope in 1378, Pope Urban VI still would have been pope and Clement a pretender.
With all of this said, the reason Clement VII was an anti-pope is very simple and entirely objective; the See of Rome was not vacant when the cardinals proposed to elevate him to the papacy.
That’s it.
The subjective intentions of the cardinals that proposed to elect him – good, bad or otherwise – are irrelevant; i.e., even if every last one of them was somehow convinced that the Chair of St. Peter was vacant as they met, it would not matter one iota.
In light of the points raised here, my interlocutors have responded:
God will not allow the Church (again, a moral unanimity) to follow a false pope. This would be tantamount to the ‘gates of Hell prevailing’!
To which I would point out two things:
One, we know that God did allow arguably 2/3 of the Church to follow a false pope at certain points during the Western Schism and the gates of Hell did not prevail then.
So, why not 7/8 of the Church? How much is too much?
In 1958, if you were to describe the Second Vatican Council and the destruction of the liturgy that followed to a devout Catholic, he likely would have laughed it off, saying, God will not allow it as this would be tantamount to the ‘gates of Hell prevailing’!
If little else is crystal clear these days, it’s that God is willing to allow far more evil to enter the Church than most of us can imagine.
Secondly, my friends are essentially insisting that God will allow certain devious men to force His hand in removing the papacy from His Vicar if only they are crafty enough to extort the pope into resignation with sufficient stealth.
Is anyone really willing to hang their hat on this proposition?
I’m not.
In conclusion, make of these observations what you will, but just know that to insist that Francis’ acceptance provides “dogmatic certainty” that he is pope – in spite of any shenanigans that may have taken place with respect to Benedict’s resignation – you are also necessarily making claims that fly in the face of both faith and reason.
Interesting developments over the last week or so coming from inside the Sacred Vatican Walls. But to fully understand the significance of these developments, a short digression is in order.
On an aside, this post falls into the category of “life comes at you fast”. But I digress again…
Over the last couple of posts, your humble blogger has been focusing on a philosophical theme. Your humble blogger has tried to pin down the difference between the philosophical foundation of the True Catholic Faith, namely Thomism and contrasting it with the post-conciliar ideology that replaced Thomism, known first as neo-Modernism but subsequently metamorphosing into post-modernism and even post-structuralism, that underpins (?) a post-conciliar FakeTheology™.
To understand the crisis in the current Institutional Church, we need to review the difference between what constitutes a philosophy and what constitutes an ideology. To this end, your humble blogger has produced a post title Everyone Has A Plan… In that post, a distinction has been made between “normative” or ideological statements and positive or philosophical claims. This paragraph reads as follows:
In philosophy, normative statements make claims about how things should or ought to be, how to value them, which things are good or bad, and which actions are right or wrong. Normative claims are usually contrasted with positive (i.e. descriptive, explanatory, or constative) claims when describing types of theories, beliefs, or propositions. Positive statements are (purportedly-) factual statements that attempt to describe reality.
Given the above, we can then use Dr. John Lamont’s seminal essay titled Attacks on Thomism to understand the ROOT CAUSE underlying the disintegration of the post-conciliar church. In that essay, Dr. Lamont makes the following observation:
Thomism made an easy target for this propaganda, just because it is a highly developed philosophy. Any advanced field of study, such as philosophy, mathematics, or physics, can be convincingly portrayed as ‘arid’ and ‘rigid’. For most people’s tastes, this portrayal will often be true. Precise and rigorous subjects inevitably have arid components. Because it deals with fundamental questions whose answers are true always and everywhere, philosophy will be ‘ahistorical’ and ‘immutable’. It will not meet the desires and expectations of individuals or societies, because these desires and expectations are never geared towards subtle and difficult concepts. It will meet their needs – if it is true. But a demonstration of philosophical truth is a feeble counter to propaganda.
So what happened leading up to and post Vatican II is that Thomism was replaced by another “philosophy” which was nothing more than an ideology in disguise. This pseudo-philosophy is what is known as Phenomenology. Here is the Wikipedia entry:
Phenomenology (from Greek phainómenon “that which appears” and lógos “study”) is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. As a philosophical movement it was founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl and was later expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany. It then spread to France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl’s early work.[1]
Phenomenology should not be considered as a unitary movement; rather, different authors share a common family resemblance but also with many significant differences. Accordingly:
A unique and final definition of phenomenology is dangerous and perhaps even paradoxical as it lacks a thematic focus. In fact, it is not a doctrine, nor a philosophical school, but rather a style of thought, a method, an open and ever-renewed experience having different results, and this may disorient anyone wishing to define the meaning of phenomenology.
Given that “A unique and final definition of phenomenology is dangerous and perhaps even paradoxical as it lacks a thematic focus”, we can then go to Dr. Lamont’s poignant debunking of what in essence is the “phenomenology as philosophy” narrative.
In the Lamont afore mentioned essay, he explains how the mid-20th Century neo-Modernists used two notions of the concept of “historical perspectivism”, one true and one false, to advance their phenomenological ideology. But at the end of the day, the false notion of “historical perspectivism” violated the law of thought known as the Law of Contradiction (non-Contradiction) and consigned the neo-Modernists to that Trotskyite trash heap of history. Here is that passage:
In addition, no great philosophical expertise is needed to see that the historical perspectivism of the neomodernists is self-refuting. Historical perspectivism is a universal philosophical claim about the nature of human concepts and human knowledge, a claim that is presented as being true for all people at all times,and as being known to be true by the neomodernists. But such a claim (it) contradicts historical perspectivism itself, which denies the possibility of knowledge of this sort.
So the neo-Modernists quietly rode this horse until they found a better, albeit a more irrational one. Actually, the neo-Modernists have been riding a series of more irrational ideological horses as time has gone by, over the last 100 years of so. But I digress…
Fast forward to the present and the current bishopric of Francis. Today we see that the ideology du jour is post-Structuralism. Just to provide a flavor of Francis’ favorite “philosopher”, one de Certeau, here is that passage:
“Of all the French theorists… de Certeau is the most radical. He is critical of the poststructuralist Foucault for his use of documentary evidence and of Derrida for the way he privileges the practice of writing. For de Certeau, writing is a form of oppression… he argues… writing itself constitutes the act of colonisation…”
It’s really something to be even more TRANSRATIONAL than Foucault and Derrida… But I digress…
For Postmodernists like de Certeau, Derrida, Foucault and possibly Francis, if he is their disciple, falsehood or truth doesn’t matter.
The only thing that matters isachieving power for their liberal or leftist ideology.
And that ideology is… wait for it… Marxism.
NB: For my new readers, here is Dr. Jordan Peterson to explain.
And we know that Marxism, (Marxist-Leninist scientific atheism) does not provide for the possibility of a transcendent reality let alone entity,… let alone a Catholic God. The aim of Marxism is to control the physical means of production, i.e. the distribution of resources. The “poor” are a “means” to this end since it is they who need the resources. And it is the Marxists who are the ones that distribute those resources.
Which brings us to the developments inside the Sacred Vatican Walls that I mentioned at the beginning of the post. Over at the OnePeterFive blog (see here), we get a GREAT post. In that post, we have a quote from Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship. Here is that passage: (emphasis added)
But it is problematic that we seek merely human solutions as an answer for our [own quest for our] destination.” In the face of great problems, explains the cardinal, “we insist upon human means instead of lifting up our hearts to God.” [emphasis added] The African cardinal then presents a striking thought: “Sometimes I have the impression that this secularization has entered the Church in order also to reduce our Faith to a human standard.” A “Faith according to human terms” is being presented to man “which is not any more rooted in the depth of the Revelation of Christ and the Tradition of the Church, but, rather, in the claims and [purported] needs of modern man.”
PPS When watching the video at the top of the page, please take into account the hosts historic Anglican background and current “atheist” pose. Also take into account that the video is over 2 years old and from regularly watching his latest productions, it is evident that he has “evolved” in the area of metaphysics and “spirituality”.
Abstract rabbit dog sculpture – Salisbury Cathedral
TODAY IS A HUGE DAY!
Today is a watershed day. The news that appeared on the Eponymous Flower blog CONFIRMS IN TOTALITY several open threads that your humble blogger and much of the Catholic blogosphere have been pursuing. The post confirms the following issues:
The ROOT CAUSE behind the destruction of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate,
The ROOT CAUSE behind the destruction of the SOVEREIGNTY of the “Sovereign” Order of Malta,
The “KEY” through which Francis, the bishop of Rome and his RabbitChurch™ MUST be read,
The FrancisRabbitCurch™ plan for the SSPX and the breakaway Ecclesia Dei Commission communities and,
In the below post, Giuseppe Nardi informs his readers and by extension you about the latest “happenings” in the case of the suppression of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. For our purposes, the key is the following passage:
Recently, Father Manelli officially and in the name of the Pope was asked to renew his allegiance of loyalty and obedience to the Pope. The demand appears to be doubtful, since officially no reproaches have been made by the founder of the Order. This, however, has deprived him of the possibility of defending himself for whatever reason. Father Manelli did not contend, but renewed the required oath.
Two weeks ago, he received another letter from the Congregation of Religious. This time he was asked to make the entire property available to the Church, as mentioned above.
“Naively, the founder of the Franciscans of the Immaculata responded,” says Tosatti, that he can not provide anything because he has nothing. The above-mentioned assets are not subject to his authority, but to that of the lay associations.
Father Manelli evidently did not see through the “trap” which had been made for him with the renewal of his loyalty first and then the money demand. Maybe he’s just too honest, too old or too tired to dodge the trappers with prudentia.
For my long time readers, you will know that the HIDDEN AGENDA behind the destruction of the “Lefebvrist drifting” FFI was for one of the other Franciscan Orders to get their hands on the FFI tangible assets. We outlined the situation in a post titled Let My People Go!in early 2015. Just to refresh everyone’s memory, at that time it was still a mystery as to why this brutal repression was taking place, with several motives identified. Needless to say, the Deus Ex Machina Pierce/Ockham Pragmatic Methodology easily identified the economic issues as the ROOT CAUSE.
NB: To my new readers, the above is what is known as Ockham’s razor. The Latin text translates as: Plurality must never be posited without necessity. In other words, the simpler the explanation to a complicated problem, the more probable that it will be the correct explanation. (More detailed explanation here.)
With respect for why this is happening, in yesterday’s postwe identified the striking similarities between characteristics exhibited by a “population” that has adapted a r Selection Theory model and the post-conciliar church. The “evolution” of the post-conciliar church has created what your humble blogger has labeled as the the FrancisRabbitChurch™.
Just to put the entire chain in one post, here is the explanation that your humble blogger offered yesterday:
Concluding, what we are seeing in the above examples is a societal breakdown created by period of unlimited resources. In the secular side of the Visibilium Omnium, this was created by national central banks printing money and the governments themselves issuing large and unsustainable amounts of debt. Greece is the poster child for this phenomenon. On the Ecclesiastical side, the post-conciliar heirs to the Catholic Church’s YUGE patrimony adopted a very reckless and likewise unsustainable approach for managing their monetary and ecclesiastical affairs.
But now, we have entered into a phase where the resources are becoming scarce. The pewsitters are long gone and the churches are being, or have been sold off. The diocesan trust funds have been monetized and depleted…
And just to finish this chain of thought, the post-conciliar FrancisRabbitChurch™ has entered a phase where it is trying to gather as many of the “free” resources as it possibly can in order to survive and keep the r Selection environment going.
So what does this tell us about the intent behind the “kind” offer of recognition made by Francis to the SSPX?
Well, what it tells us is that at present, Francis can’t get his hands on the SSPX’s assets since he has no CONTROL over them. But if he can bring them into the FrancisRabbitChurch™ fold, he will have leverage to execute one of his “cunning as a fox who just got appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University” plans.
Like they say, better to have some leverage than no leverage at all.
But what does this mean for the SSPX breakaway communities holed up in the Ecclesia Dei Commission?
Simple. They are just the bait.
And once the fox is caught, there will be no more need for the bait.
And finally, what this post also does is it confirms that the only way you can read the FrancisRabbitChurch™ is through Carl Marx…
And now, the Giuseppe Nardi post that appeared on the Eponymous Flower blog…
*****
“‘na roba”, the Franciscans of the Immaculate and the New Chess Move of the Congregation of Religious
(Rome) There is no end of the Calvary of Father Stefano Maria Manelli, the founder and until his dismissal, head of the Order of the Franciscans of Immaculata. Since July 2013, the young and, until then, flourishing, Order has been under the administration of a Commissar appointed by the Roman Congregation of Religious. Although four years have passed since, and the second Pontifical Commissioner has already overseen the prescription, there is still no official reason for the grave intervention in the Order. An alleged “Lefebvrianian deviation” was attributed to the Order. “What makes this all so comical today is that the Pope is ready to welcome the heirs of Marcel Lefebvre with a Personal Prelature into the Church,” as the Vaticanist Marco Tosatti noted two days ago.
The Commissioner and a slander campaign
Tosatti sees “from the outside,” a “variety” of reasons leading to the provisional administration of the Order: first the attack against the founder by a group of “young Turks” who wanted to take over the Order, “one of the most flourishing with vocations.” Today the vocations must be imported, contrary to the Vatican directives, which provides training on location, from Nigeria), but then also for property, “na roba”, the “reason”.
What Tosatti does not mention, however, is to be guessed at: that the Order which had changed with Pope Francis, and with the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, had changed from the new to the traditional form of the Roman Rite, and yet (or precisely for this reason) attracted numerous vocations while the “modern”, “cosmopolitan” orders dried up. Benedict XVI held his protective hand over this extraordinary case among Catholic religious orders. With the new pope, the defeat of the Order began, as it was evidently a thorn in the eye.
The assumption of background touched upon by Tosatti in any case helps to understand the “angry slander campaign” which was unleashed against sisters of the Order because of alleged abuses. The starting point of the campaign in November 2015 was with Corriere della Sera, the flagship of the Italian “quality press”. The alleged “scandal” led to investigations by the prosecutor’s office, which concluded a year later and was unceremoniously archived. The media claims proved to be what one would call Fake News today.
“However, they will probably have a sequel to some newspapers and websites with severe financial consequences, because they are civilly faced with high claims for damages by the victims,” Tosatti said.
“Na’ roba”
There are now fresh actions of the Roman Congregation of Religious. It is not so much about the Cardinal Prefect, the Brazilian João Braz de Aviz, but “about the secretary of the Congregation, the Franciscan José Rodriguez Carballo, who has a direct connection with the Pope,” says Tosatti.
Carballo is one of the first personnel decisions of this pontificate. Pope Francis proclaimed him on April 6, not four weeks after his election, as Secretary of the Congregation of Religious. Until then, the Spaniard was Minister General of the Franciscan Order. As such, he is directly involved in the financial scandal that exploded in December 2014 and brought the general leadership of the Order to the brink of bankruptcy. The Swiss public prosecutor’s office had seized accounts of the Franciscan Order in October 2014 because of the suspicion of money laundering. The money, several tens of millions of euros, had been invested in ill-fated companies, which are being investigated for illegal arms and drug trafficking. Nothing is known of consequences of any kind against Carballo in the Vatican.
This brings us to “,na roba”, which is not insignificant in the Order of the Franciscans of Immaculata (canonically recognized in 1990, not to be confused with the Franciscans, founded 1210/1517). It has about 59 buildings, 17 properties, five photovoltaic plants and a series of banking accounts. The entire property, however, is not in the hands of the Order, since it has the vow of strict poverty, but in the hands of lay associations. The proceeds from the estate were given to the Order for its duties in pastoral care and mission.
When the Order was placed under the Commission, the first Commissioner, Father Fidenzio Volpi, a Capuchin, who died in office in 2015, had the property confiscated. The court then decided completely differently. The entire assets were released again and reunited with the lay associations.
As the Congregation of Religious could not get at the Order through the secular courts, it is now exerting pressure on the now 84-year-old founder of the Order, Father Manelli. Since the provisional administration, he has been under house arrest by the Vatican, “which in 2017 is in extremely bad taste,” says Tosatti.
Recent actions of the religious congregation: the “Trap” and the demand
Recently, Father Manelli officially and in the name of the Pope was asked to renew his allegiance of loyalty and obedience to the Pope. The demand appears to be doubtful, since officially no reproaches have been made by the founder of the Order. This, however, has deprived him of the possibility of defending himself for whatever reason. Father Manelli did not contend, but renewed the required oath.
Two weeks ago, he received another letter from the Congregation of Religious. This time he was asked to make the entire property available to the Church, as mentioned above.
“Naively, the founder of the Franciscans of the Immaculata responded,” says Tosatti, that he can not provide anything because he has nothing. The above-mentioned assets are not subject to his authority, but to that of the lay associations.
Father Manelli evidently did not see through the “trap” which had been made for him with the renewal of his loyalty first and then the money demand. Maybe he’s just too honest, too old or too tired to dodge the trappers with prudentia.
Tosatti wrote:
“Perhaps he would have done better to meet with the laity and to present the Vatican demand to them.The laity, who are not under obedience, would have made a decision. But he did not apply this ruse.”
The “weapon of obedience” and an “act of disobedience”
His response is now interpreted by the Vatican as an act of disobedience to the Pope. With the letter one wants to turn him with a rope. In other words, in the Congregation of Religious, it is now believed that they have the occasion to impose sanctions against the founder in the Church. And all without being told by the Vatican why the Order is under commissionerial administration, and why Father Manelli was deposed as General-General.
In the Vatican, someone is obviously rubbing his hands. So far, the Congregation of Religious and Pope Francis have been wrong. In which state can sanctions be imposed without charges, without the possibility of defense and without a regular canonical procedure? Now, however, one must not talk about it any more, because one has the statement by Manelli, who answered truthfully, but not satisfactorily. Is this for an ecclesiastical condemnation? In the face of the bad experiences the Order has had to overcome for the last four years, no one in the Order would doubt it.
The real concern, however, is “‘na roba”, the property. Manelli is particularly stifled, because he can not “relinquish” the possession of valuable property. Legally, he is unquestionably in the right, which is why the Vatican operates the moral lever. The exact disposition of the lay associations are not known, but they can be seen. For a long time the hope existed (and perhaps still exists) that the Order of the Franciscans of the Immaculate could be reestablished in the bosom of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, then it would have the means to continue its work blessedly. Such a new foundation has been prevented by the Vatican for four years. Yet another reason is not insignificant: it can be argued that the benefactors who have given the estate to the Order have left it to the Order founded by Father Manelli. Not to any order or in general “of the Church,” but in a very particular order with a very definite charism. However, after four years of commissionership, it is no longer the same order.
“As a sidenote” it is also addressed, again to quote Marco Tosatti, “that it is more and more frequent that obedience is used as a weapon. Let us recall how Fra Matthew Festing, the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, was forced by the Pope to resign and sign a letter of doubtful content, by obedience. A bad habit, which is at the risk of becoming chronic … “
Today I re-post an article that appeared at the Zero Hedge website, written by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com website, with which I completely agree.
However, as good this post is at identifying what could be termed “symptoms” (defined as: any phenomenon or circumstance accompanying “something” and serving as evidence of it) of a “something” that is transpiring, it does not even try to identify what that “something” is.
So today I will take as stab at what that “something” is and why it is happening.
As to the something, I think that it is easy to name. That something is what we call the “Restoration of all things in Christ”.
I will leave this claim hanging just for a minute or so…
As to why the “Restoration of all things in Christ” is happening, and is happening in a much wider space than just the ECCLESIASTICAL subset of the Visibilium Omnium, et Invisibilium, I have a theory.
Allow me to explain.
What I think is behind this wider Restoration is what is known in the biological sciences as the r/K Selection Theory within Evolutionary Ecology. I did a post on just this titled Lex Armaticus, r/K Theory And The Rabbit Papacy…
A quick review. ( I add emphasis and added emphasis)
In r/K Selection Theory in Evolutionary Ecology, if you provide a population with free resources, those who will come to dominate the population will exhibit five basic traits, called an r-selected Reproductive Strategy.These traits are all designed to best exploit the free resource availability. In nature, the r-selected strategy is best seen in the rabbit, which lives in fields of grass it will never fully consume. The five traits are, competition and risk avoidance, promiscuity, low-investment single parenting, earlier age of sexualization of young, and no loyalty to in-group. These traits are ultimately designed to selfishly maximize the numbers of offspring produced. Each of these offspring, though of lesser fitness, will be able to survive and reproduce freely themselves, due to the free resource availability. In r-selection nobody ends up dead, and killing or being killed is not a concern.
In r/K Theory, there is also a strategy exactly opposite to the rabbit’s, which emerges under conditions of resource scarcity.It is called the K-selected Reproductive Strategy. There, where resources are scarce, competition for resources is everywhere, and some individuals will die due to failure in competition, and the resultant resource denial that this produces. This produces the K-strategy,which is best seen in the wolf.This strategy also has five psychological traits – competitiveness/aggressiveness/protectiveness, mate monopolization/monogamy,high-investment two-parent child-rearing,later age of sexualization of young, and high loyalty to in-group. This psychology is designed to form highly fit and competitive groups that succeed in group competition, all while capturing and monopolizing the fittest mate possible, as a means of making their offspring genetically fitter than those of competitors. Here, the goal is not to simply consume as much as possible yourself and produce as many baby-making machines as you can, with little regard to their fitness. Here, the goal is to help your group succeed in its competition for the scarce resources, and then produce offspring of as high a fitness as possible, so they may carry your genes forward by succeeding in competition themselves. It is obvious why every r-strategy ideal would act as a repellent to a K-strategist, since each ideal would guarantee failure in the K-selected environment.
Now just to once again stress the critical point. The r/K Selection has been observed as holding across all of God’s creatures, including man. The difference with respect to man is that he exhibits both types of Selection criteria, depending on the state of the RESOURCES that he has at hand.
In other words, when RESOURCES are abundant, man will tend toward the r Selection, while when RESOURCES are scarce, he will be forced into the K Selection mode. And these have bee identified as epigenetic processes that take place in the human body regardless of whether that person is conscious of them or not.
Once again, hold that thought.
Event 1
In 2005, the Vatican Conclave elected Joseph Ratzinger as the supreme Pontiff. This was a very surprising move since it put the Universal Church under a “conservative” regime.
This “conservative” regime was continuously under attack throughout the entire pontificate by a cabal that would eventually be known as the St. Gallen Mafia and the operational unit was Team Bergoglio. It also came to light that there was most likely outside influence being exerted on the conservative regime from such insitutions as the Obama White House, the German soft power forces through the SWIFT clearing system and Deutsche Bank specifically, and countless other Non-Governmental Organization including the United Nations.
The result was the instillation of a dissident regime that exhibited the characteristics of the r Selection reproductive theory. Those characteristics can be identified as 1) competition and risk avoidance (the aversion to proselytization) , 2) promiscuity (Fr. Ricca, say no more), 3) low-investment single parenting (dereliction of seminarian training and dilapidated state of seminaries – think seminary in Buenos Aires), 4) earlier age of sexualization of young (introduction of sexualization into Catholic schools), and 5) no loyalty to in-group (hate Catholics and prefer protestants, muslims, etc., i.e. strong ecumenism).
Event 2.
In 2016, Donald J. Trump unexpectedly (to most clueless people) won the presidential election. He won due to a platform that was highly based on characteristics of a K Selection strategy. The characteristics of Mr. Trump’s platform were: competitiveness/aggressiveness/protectiveness (change US doctrine to one of competition with other nations), 2) mate monopolization/monogamy (married three times, but always loyal to current wife), 3) high-investment two-parent child-rearing (Don Jr. Eric, Ivanka and Barron – need I say more), 4) later age of sexualization of young (all adult family members in stable relationships), and 5) high loyalty to in-group (America First).
And finally, it needs to be repeated that the reason that humans and the rest of God’s creature select either of the two strategies has to do with the availability of resources.
Using the availability of resources as the metric, we can now make the following observations.
We can infer that the Bergoglians have have the luxury of employing an r Selection approach since they have all the patrimony of the Church at their disposal. They also have no offspring (officially), so they have no pressing need to bequeath anything to posterity. Therefore, true to the rabbit mentality, they can consume everything that they can now.
On the Trump side, he has a large family and a successful business, therefore he has a pressing need to adopt a K Selection strategy, which he did for himself. Being in a competitive environment, he has to invest in his off spring so that they will also be able to compete. And now as POTUS, he is implementing the K Selection strategy for the entire country and by extension forcing it onto the rest of the world.
Aside, I think it is the “competition” aspect of the Trump administration’s K Selection strategy that the Eurolanders simply hate.
Now that we have the framework in place, we can try to explain why the youth (Generation Z) is becoming very “conservative”.
Now as the author of the below post quite clearly explains, this new “conservatism” isn’t your father’s or grandfather’s Rockeffeler or neo-conservatism. What this new conservatism is, as can clearly be seen from the above, is the K Selection conservatism.
This is pure Natural Law and Natural Moral Law conservatism.
Or to put it another way, this is Catholicism!
And why is this K Selection based conservatism reestablishing itself?
Due to the fact that the younger generation is beginning to experience a scarcity of resources.
Don’t believe me?
Here is one anecdotal headline that should provide all the context that is needed to support my point:
Concluding, what we are seeing in the above examples is a societal breakdown created by period of unlimited resources. In the secular side of the Visibilium Omnium, this was created by national central banks printing money and the governments themselves issuing large and unsustainable amounts of debt. Greece is the poster child for this phenomenon. On the Ecclesiastical side, the post-conciliar heirs to the Catholic Church’s YUGE patrimony adopted a very reckless and likewise unsustainable approach for managing their monetary and ecclesiastical affairs.
But now, we have entered into a phase where the resources are becoming scarce. The pewsitters are long gone and the churches are being, or have been sold off. The diocesan trust funds have been monetized and depleted. The national governments have amassed a massive debt burden and the debt service alone is making their debt unsustainable. The markets do not want to purchase this debt any longer, so the central banks are intervening to bail out the governments. In Italy we have a situation where the European Central Bank is the lone purchaser of Italian government debt. Greece is on life support from the EU and globalist institutions. So all in all, one can say that the rats have eaten all the cheese.
The brunt of the above situation however, is being born by the young. The youth, not having any assets, find it hard to get jobs (European unemployment for 18-30 year olds is above 30%), they can’t start families, those that do are forced to live with their parents, they can’t afford to purchase homes since they do not work, and the list goes on and on…
Therefore, they are being forced to adopt a K Selection reproductive strategy by their environment. And this choice that they are making is beginning to be reflected in the voting choices that they are making.
So when Dr. Jordan Peterson sees that what is most important to youth is to assume “responsibility”, this is by no means a frivolous or independent, stand alone decision. But before you can assume responsibility, you need to satisfy you basic physiological needs. At least to the point where you can move out of your family’s basement.
And as it just so happens, the above situation also fits in very well with the Catholic Church and its immemorial doctrine. On the one hand, it makes for a strong support community. On the individual level, if the Catholic Church teaches anything, it is personal responsibility. But not only does it teach individual responsibility, it also provides the FRAMEWORK for how to reduce the suffering in this vale of tears. That FRAMEWORK is what is known as Catholic Dogma. And it is this time proven Catholic dogma, dogma that has allowed EVERY generation of Catholics, whether they face a scarcity or abundance of RESOURCES to survive if not prosper, but also to work out their salvation in fear and trembling.
And it would appear that there are many Catholic prelates and clerics who might understand just this. This is the reason that I included the background of the Benedict election. I would appear that some in the hierarchy (majority of the College of Cardinal) knew something was going horribly wrong back in 2005.
It had to take a concerted conspiracy to dethrone Pope Benedict. And now they have chaos and most likely regret their decision!
So finally, finally it would appear that something is changing.
Five Reasons Why America Is About To Become A Very Conservative Country
For generations, we’ve seen the political landscape in this country teeter back and forth between the Left and the Right. Usually about every 8 years or so, whichever political party is dominating Congress, the Executive Branch, and the state legislatures, is kicked out by voters and replaced with the other political party.
However, there’s something very different going on this time around. Donald Trump’s ascent to the oval office represents a major shift in our society and culture, and I’m not talking about the intermittent shuffle of politicians that we see every few years. Instead, the pendulum is about to swing very hard to the right.
I think that the political landscape in America is going to be drifting towards conservatism for the next 20-40 years. Though it may not be identical to what we view as conservative today, and it certainly won’t be the phony neoconservatism that dominated the past, it will be right-wing nonetheless. Here’s why:
1. The Supreme Court Is About To Change
President Trump has already chosen one Supreme Court justice, and there’s a good chance that he’s going to wind up choosing several more (much to the dismay of the Left). Because of their advanced age, we may see three more Supreme Court justices retire or die over the next four to eight years, two of whom lean to the left.
If Trump lasts two terms, we’re definitely going to see a Supreme Court that is dominated by conservatives for the next 20-30 years. So even when liberals take back Congress and the presidency on occasion, many of their most radical ideas won’t be able to take hold for many years.
2. Immigration Is Going To Decline
The percentage of the population that is foreign born hasn’t been this high since the early 1900’s, and most of those immigrants are liberal. That’s why our loose borders, combined with The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, have probably done more to bolster the ranks of the Left than any other law.
But just as our nation’s political landscape tends to swing back and forth between the Left and the Right, so to does number of immigrants in America. In the short term, we can expect people like Trump to restrict the border and maybe pass laws that will decrease immigration to some degree.
But there’s a long term trend to consider as well, because the election of Trump likely represents a turning point for our society. Considering how crucial his immigration stance was to his victory, it’s clear that a growing number of Americans want the border tightened up, and the number of immigrants moving here to decrease. And rest assured that in the near future, there will be more conservatives voting for politicians who will try to lower immigration rates, because…
3. The Next Generation Is Incredibly Conservative
Over the years we’ve seen each generation of Americans become a little more liberal than the last, but that’s about to change. According to a study from last year, Generation Z, which represents kids born after the year 2000, is the most conservative generation since World War Two. To give you an idea of just how right-wing the next generation is, when asked if they are “quite conservative,” 14% of teenagers say they are, compared to just 2% of Millennials. That’s a mind boggling shift, from one generation to the next.
4. Liberal Birth Rates Are Declining
The Left is about to pay a huge price for denigrating the family and traditional gender roles for so many years. Because liberal women tend to be more career minded and wait longer to have children, they often have fewer kids over the course of their lives. That’s why liberal states always have lower birth rates than conservative states.
All of the states with a birth rate of of 60 or less per 1000 people are liberal, and all of the states with a birth rate of 70 or more per 1000 people are conservative. That may not sound drastic, but consider that these states still have a sizeable mix of conservatives and liberals. Even the most liberal states have millions of conservative residents and vice versa, which offsets the results. If ideology is really driving birth rates, then liberals are probably having very very few children. They’re probably not reaching the minimum replacement rate of 2.1 children per mother.
When you consider how many values kids learn from their parents and carry into adulthood, it’s obvious that the Left has a serious demographic problem. The only way they’ve been able to create more liberals, is through immigration and through indoctrination in the school system. Unfortunately for the Left, they’re not going to have a stranglehold on our schools for much longer either.
5. Leftist Academia Is In Serious Trouble
From Kindergarten to college, our schools are breeding grounds for liberal ideas. That’s become abundantly clear in recent years, as we’ve seen the horrifying rise of political correctness and social justice beliefs on college campuses. These institutions are little more than indoctrination centers for the Left.
But this isn’t going to go on for much longer. We have a whole generation of kids who were buried in over a trillion dollars worth of debt, just so they could get worthless liberal arts degrees that won’t ever help them get a job. They paid tens of thousands of dollars to be indoctrinated by liberal professors, before going back home to live with their parents.
That’s why student loans constitute a bubble in our economy, and once it pops, colleges are going to have to cut back on many classes that don’t actually increase the earning power of students. Coincidentally, the fields of study that harbor the most liberal professors, are the ones that don’t help most students get jobs, like the arts, humanities, liberal arts, gender studies, etc. Someday soon, colleges are going to be forced to trim the fat, and many of these Marxist professors and diversity administrators are going to get the axe. Their positions are incredibly superfluous.
As for the leftists public schools, let’s not forget that the number of kids being homeschooled is growing rapidly, and most of their parents are conservatives. They’re raising a new generation that isn’t going to be brainwashed by government run schools.
And let’s not forget that the mainstream media, which has been largely wed to the left, is dying. So basically, every institution that the Left uses to teach its ideas, from the media to academia, is slowly crumbling away.
In summation, everything liberals have relied on to bolster their ranks, propagate their ideas, and pass their laws, are failing. So there shouldn’t be any doubt. Over the next few decades, America is going to become a very conservative place.
As you know, your humble blogger called the 2016 US Presidential Election the Flight 93 Election. It was the election that could have saved our country, our civilization and out way of life.
Yet the forces of evil are not relenting and have not accepted that they lost an election. It is as if elections have no consequences. They also have declared complete war on the free peoples of Western Civilization.
Observing what is happening, I think it is still early in this campaign. What I also think is that the best way to fight this evil at present is through the wallet.
To be more specific. What I would like all my readers to start doing is becoming very discriminatory about what and where they spend their Catholic Dollar/Pound Stirling/Euro/Zloty/Forint etc.
The first place to start is by canceling your cable subscriptions. This is the best place to start because as the old saying goes, politics is downstream of “culture” and “culture” is downstream of economics.
NB: Notice how I didn’t say “everything is downstream of economics”. That’s because we are not communists. But I digress…
To help understand the gravity of the situation, as well as the prophylactic steps we all can take now to try and battle this evil, I have republished a Gateway Pundit post that sets out the idea below.
And before I leave off, and since we are speaking about money, I would like to remind everyone here about why God created money. For those who don’t know…
GOD CREATED MONEY TO BUY FOOD AND GUNS.
Please spread this good word far and wide.
Your lives and the lives of your children could just depend on …
Our study shows that conservatives in the US control the purchasing power of nearly 60% of all household purchases in the country.
We performed an analysis to determine whether conservatives or liberals account for more of the purchases of products and services in the US. To determine this we obtained various sources of data.
We first obtained the most recent information we could find regarding purchasing power per US household per state. This data was readily available from 2015. Next we obtained the number of households per state which was available from the US Census Bureau along with population. Finally, we obtained the number of representatives per party in the House of Representative for the same time period (2015). We used the US House of Representatives as it is a good estimate of the level of conservative versus liberal households in a state.
By multiplying the purchasing power per household by the number of representatives per party per state we derived the purchasing power equivalent for each party.
Our results show that 57% of the purchasing power in the US is by Republican or conservative households. This is nearly 3 out of 5 household dollars are spent by conservative households. If you take away California and New York the results would be even more lopsided.
The results of our study are not shocking. In May of 2014 we performed an analysis of Congressional Districts at that time. The outcome of that study showed similar results. We collected the 2012 US census data housed at the government census site. We also obtained a list of Congressional Representatives and their party affiliation from the US Congressional website for the 113th Congress voted into office starting in 2012.
What we found from the US Census data was that Democrats were the party of the super rich with 14 of the top 20 richest districts in America being Democratic districts at that time.
But what was also found was that 36 of the 39 poorest districts in America were Democratic districts.
(Note that the data used at that time did not include the US territories of Guam, Samoa, Mariana Islands, Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico which are also represented by Democrats and are also very poor districts.)
If you excluded the 20 richest districts and the bottom 39 poorest districts there were 225 Republican working class districts and only 152 Democrat working class districts. Republicans overwhelmingly represented the middle class districts by almost a two-to-one ratio.
The middle class has the purchasing power in the US and the middle class predominantly votes Republican.
US corporations take note because conservatives are the people who buy your products and services.
When corrupt and dishonest Soros-funded liberal machines like Media Matters contact you to stop advertising with conservative media like the Gateway Pundit or Hannity know that the majority of country’s purchasing power lies with conservatives.
Ignore this at your own peril.
Soros and the Democrats stand with violent Black Lives Matter while conservatives are your major purchasers. It’s an easy decision to choose which side to focus on (Hint – not Black Lives Matter).
In yesterday’s post we identified and explained Francis’ FakeTheology™. Your humble blogger also identified what I consider as the ROOT source of this contemporary phenomenon: nominalism.
We also explained how FakeTheology™ has its counterparts in other subsets of the Visibilium Omnium, et Invisibilium. The equivalent phenomenon in the communications subset of human activity is obviously known as FakeNews.
Today we move over into another area of human activity, i.e. the physical sciences. The below post is an example of the counterpart of Francis’ FakeTheology™ in the field of quantum physics.
One can call it FakeScience.
And yes Virginia, a purely objective science like quantum physics is seen as “oppressive to marginalized people”. And if the sensitive post-modernist “theoreticians” could just get those “rigid” scientists to “deconstruct” the male hierarchical nature of quantum physics and “re-construct” the science along “feminized intersectionality” (whatever that is), then quantum physics can be remade so as to enable“apparatuses that allow for new possibilities of safer spaces.”
Didn’t you know that dear reader?
Because after all, “enabling apparatuses that allow for new possibilities of safer spaces” is what science is all about.
And just to track back to Francis’ FakeTheology™, todaywe have another great example of post-modernist’s deconstructing the male dominant hierarchical structured Catholic Church into something else.
Now to understand the deconstruction of Catholicism that Team Francis is undertaking, we must understand the foundation of a typical program for priestly formation. In the typical seminary education program, the future priest receives instruction in philosophy. The recommended philosophy program includes: the study of logic, epistemology, philosophy of nature, metaphysics, natural theology, anthropology and ethics.
The key to understanding what it is that is being deconstructed, is to understand what is natural theology, i.e.:
The study of the philosophy of nature, which treats fundamental principles like substance, form, matter, causality, motion, and the soul, provides seminarians a foundation for the study of metaphysics, natural theology, anthropology, and ethics.
Pretty objective stuff, if you ask me.
But hold that thought.
In yesterday’s news cycle, we have a report from the Catholic Register where we can find the following passage: (see here)
And this “faded, weak faith and to that kind of cultural Catholicism” is opposed by:
From the Pentecostals, Martinez said, the first thing Catholics can learn is “love for the Holy Spirit, who remains the great unknown for Catholic theology.”
Which leads to the question: how did the Pentecostals “learn” about this “Holy Spirit”?
Furthermore, how was it that the Pentecostals “learned” about this “Holy Spirit” while the Catholic Church, with its highly developed theology which includes the study of logic, epistemology, philosophy of nature, metaphysics, natural theology, anthropology and ethics” et. al, and spanning 2000 years, has not?
And how did a “catholic bishop” learn about this new fangled “direct experience of God’s saving grace” and why did he not tell anybody else about this?
One would think that this “knowledge” would constitute a major academic/theological/doctrinal breakthrough in our understanding of the nature of God?
These questions however, are not answered.
I guess we just have to take it on faith.
Kind of like Whitney Stark’s claim that quantum physics is “culturally oppressive”.
*****
Academic Journal: Quantum Physics Is ‘Oppressive’ to Marginalized People (seehere)
Culture and gender-studies researcher Whitney Stark argues that physics is oppressive.
A feminist scholar has published a paper claiming that quantum physics is oppressive and that we must use “quantum feminisms” to make the science more intersectional.
In a paper for The Minnesota Review, culture and gender-studies researcher Whitney Stark argues that physics is oppressive because it has “separated beings” based on their “binary and absolute differences” — a structure that she calls “hierarchical and exploitative” — and the same kind of system is “embedded in many structures of classification,” making it “part of the apparatus that enables oppression.” Stark explains:
This structural thinking of individualized separatism with binary and absolute differences as the basis for how the universe works seeped into/poured over/ is embedded in many structures of classification, which understand similarity and difference in the world, imposed in many hierarchical and exploitative organizational structures, whether through gender, life/nonlife, national borders, and so on.
According to Stark, the tendency to categorize in this way particularly hurts marginalized people because it can cause the activist efforts of minority groups to be “overshadowed” by the efforts of dominant groups.
“For instance, in many ‘official’ feminist histories of the United States, black/African American women’s organizing and writing are completely unaccounted for before the 1973 creation of the middle-class, professional National Black Feminist Organization,” Stark writes.
“Part of this absence is the frequent subsuming of intersectional identities under supposedly encompassing meta-identities more readily recognized by/as hegemonicized groupings,” she continues. “For instance, black women subsumed under ‘black,’ equated with male, or ‘feminist’ equated with white women.” ‘Combining intersectionality and quantum physics can provide for differing perspectives on organizing practices long used by marginalized people.’
Thankfully, Stark has a solution to this very clearly serious problem: “quantum feminisms” and “intersectionality.” “By taking a critical look at the noncentralized and multiple movements of quantum physics, and by dehierarchizing the necessity of linear bodies through time, it becomes possible to reconfigure structures of value, longevity, and subjectivity in ways explicitly aligned with anti-oppression practices and identity politics,” she writes. “Combining intersectionality and quantum physics can provide for differing perspectives on organizing practices long used by marginalized people, for enabling apparatuses that allow for new possibilities of safer spaces.”
Honestly, all of this makes perfect sense. Personally, whenever I think about oppression, the very first thing that comes to my mind is: “Damn it Isaac Newton! This is all your fault!” I’m just glad someone is finally writing about it. Maybe someday we can take it a step further, and replace all lessons on the outdated, sexist, racist concept of “quantum physics” in our schools with lessons on quantum feminisms. Ah, yes. Then, and only then, will our nation be truly great.
This story was initially covered by the College Fix.
Today we continue our CONVERGENCE theme with a republication of a Nick Taleb post that appeared at the Zero Hedge website. For those who are new to this blog, the CONVERGENCE theme can be summed up as follows: that part of human knowledge that is know through the “natural light of human reason from the things that are made”will always CONVERGE with that part of human knowledge known through “divine revelation.”
This epistemological phenomenon is defined by your humble blogger as ORGANIC GROWTH, i.e. :
the reconciliation of reason with revelation, of science with faith and of philosophy with theology, SUBJECT TO: that source of our Faith that comes from divine Revelation.
So today, we take several unrelated and independent events that transpired in Italy at the G7 Summit and at the Nato summit and explain them through a theological discussion contained in a post written by a derivatives trader.
We start with a general reference to the Catholic understanding of what is a VIRTUE. The following link will take you to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the best reference source for the definition of what constitutes a VIRTUE that I am aware of.
Now that we have established the framework for what constitutes a VIRTUE, I will draw your attention to the G7 Meeting in Italy this past Saturday, the meeting at which President Donald Trump stood up to the “leaders” of the other six most developed countries with respect to the global warming hoax. For a short introduction, I refer you dear reader to Sundance from The Conservative Treehouse blog:
Leaders of the G7, a finance-centric geopolitical group of international leaders, issued their joint summit statement on Saturday. U.S. President Donald Trump refused to align the United States with the joint declaration pledging commitment to the Paris accord on climate change.
[Page 6 pdf below] …”The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics. Understanding this process, the Heads of State and of Government of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom and the Presidents of the European Council and of the European Commission reaffirm their strong commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement, as previously stated at the Ise-Shima Summit.”
And finally, the above actions by the President of the United States, as opposed to those by the other G7 “leaders” is exactly what the derivatives trader Nick Taleb explains in the below post.
Biblical references and all…
PS And here is how the President Trump’s power game positioned the “European” opposition. But I digress…
I will always remember my encounter with the writer and cultural icon Susan Sontag, largely because it was on the same day that I met the great Benoit Mandelbrot. I took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist event, in a radio station in New York. Sontag who was being interviewed, was pricked by the idea of a fellow who “studies randomness” and came to engage me. When she discovered that I was a trader, she blurted out that she was “against the market system” and turned her back to me as I was in mid-sentence, just to humiliate me (note here that courtesy is an application of the Silver rule), while her female assistant gave me the look, as if I had been convicted of child killing. I sort of justified her behavior in order to forget the incident, imagining that she lived in some rural commune, grew her own vegetables, wrote on pencil and paper, engaged in barter transactions, that type of stuff.
No, she did not grow her own vegetables, it turned out. Two years later, I accidentally found her obituary (I waited a decade and a half before writing about the incident to avoid speaking ill of the departed). People in publishing were complaining about her rapacity; she had to squeeze her publisher, Farrar Strauss and Giroud of what would be several million dollars today for a book advance. She shared, with a girlfriend, a mansion in New York City, one that was later sold for $28 million dollars. Sontag probably felt that insulting people with money inducted her into some unimpeachable sainthood, exempting her from having skin in the game.
It is immoral to be in opposition of the market system and not live (like the Unabomber) in a hut isolated from it
But there is worse:
It is even more, much more immoral to claim virtue without fully living with its direct consequences
and this will be the main topic of the chapter: exploiting virtue for image, personal gain, careers, social status, these kind of things –and personal gain is anything that does not share the downside of a negative action.
By contrast with Sontag, I have met a few people who live their public ideas. Ralph Nader, for instance, leads the life of a monk, identical to the member of a monastery in the sixteenth century,
The Public and the Private
As we saw with the interventionistas, a certain class of theoretical people can despise the details of reality, and completely so. If you believe that you are right in theory, you can completely ignore the real world –and vice versa. And you don’t really care how your ideas affect others because your ideas make you belong to some virtuous status that is impervious to how it affects others.
Likewise, if you believe that you are “helping the poor” by spending money on powerpoint presentations and international meetings, the type of meetings that lead to more meetings (and powerpoint presentations) you can completely ignore the individuals –the poor is some abstract reified construct that you do not encounter in your real life. Your efforts in conferences gives you a license to humiliate them in person. Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison, more commonly known as Hillary Clinton, found it permissible to heap abuse at secret service agents. I was recently told that a famous socialist environmentalist who was part of the same lecture series abused waiters in restaurants, between lectures on equity and fairness.
Kids with rich parents talk about “white privilege” at such privileged colleges as Amherst –but in one instance, one of them could not answer D’Souza’s simple and logical suggestion: why don’t you go to the registrar’s office and give your privileged spot to a minority student who was next in line?
Hence the principle:
If your private life conflicts with your intellectual opinion, it cancels your intellectual ideas, not your private life
and
If your private actions do not generalize then you cannot have general ideas
This is not strictly about ethics, but information transfer. If a car salesman tries to sell you a Detroit car while driving a Honda, he is signaling that it may have a problem.
The Virtue Merchants
In about every hotel chain, from Argentina to South Africa, the bathroom with have a sign meant to gets your attention: “protect the environment”. They want you to hold off from sending the towels to the laundry and reuse them for a while, because avoiding excess laundry it saves them tens of thousand dollars a year. This is similar to the salesperson telling you what is good for you when it is mostly (and centrally) good for him. They, of course, love the environment but you can bet that they wouldn’t have advertised it so loudly had it not been been good for their bottom line.
So these global causes: poverty (particularly children’s), the environment, justice for some minority trampled upon by colonial powers, or some unknown yet gender that will be persecuted; these global causes are now the last refuge of the scoundrel advertising virtue.
But virtue is precisely what you don’t advertise. It is not an investment strategy. It is not a cost-cutting scheme. It is not a book selling (and worse, concert tickets selling) strategy.
Now I have wondered why, by the Lindy effect, there was no mention of what is called virtue signaling in the texts. How could it be new?
Well, it is not new, but was not seen as particularly prevalent in the past. Indeed, let’s check Matthew 5 and 6.
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Unpopular Virtue
Virtue without courage is an aberration: in fact you see cowards endorsing a public face of “virtue” as defined by the mainstream media, because they are afraid of doing otherwise. Their cowardice leads them to avoid association with, say anti-Al Qaeda in Syria because some Saudi shill (or some AlQaeda promoter like Charles Lister) will accuse them of Putinism, racism, anti-democracy, or some accusation that will cause ostracism.
The best virtue requires courage; accordingly it needs to be unpopular. If I were to describe the perfect virtuous acts, it would be to take currently frowned upon positions, those penalized by the common discourse (particularly when funded by lobbyists). Like fighting the Monsanto claims, and promotion through shills that they are “saving the children” with their poisonous products, so anyone opposing them becomes easily described as a baby killer.
The more costly, the more virtuous the act?—?particularly if it costs you your reputation. When integrity conflicts with reputation, go with integrity.
Other Virtues
True virtue lies in being nice to those who are neglected by others, the less obvious cases, those people the grand charity business tends to miss, those causes that are not (yet) promotional.
Today’s post is a re-publication of the commencement address given by Nassim Taleb, a favorite of your humble blogger, in 2016. I like this address since it demonstrates many themes that I have hit on over the last few posts. (see here)
Actually, I like commencement addresses in general since they give one a good idea of what… is the current thinking at the major universities. So given that the last few posts have been dealing with putting pew sitters back into the pews, and given that according to Dr. Peterson, the college students tend to be seeking advice as to how to structure their future career… and life for that matter, I think the below post could provide some insights into what this one group of individuals, the matriculating students are currently hearing.
And finally, given that the commencement speakers are individuals who have attained major accomplishments in their lives, it is interesting to understand what advice they offer if for no other reason than as a frame of reference of the attributes and qualities that allowed them to become successful. This information provides context and insights into the universality of not so much Dr. Taleb’s specific advise, but the complete back backdrop of what produced a man like Taleb.
Note bene: Notice the difference between the pre-Vatican II Jesuits of old, mentioned in the Taleb address and those of the present. (see here)
Sad!
*****
Commencement Address, American University in Beirut, 2016
Dear graduating students,
This is the first commencement I have ever attended (I did not attend my own graduation). Further, I have to figure out how lecture you on success when I do not feel successful yet –and it is not false modesty.
Success as a Fragile Construction
For I have a single definition of success: you look in the mirror every evening, and wonder if you disappoint the person you were at 18, right before the age when people start getting corrupted by life. Let him or her be the only judge; not your reputation, not your wealth, not your standing in the community, not the decorations on your lapel. If you do not feel ashamed, you are successful. All other definitions of success are modern constructions; fragile modern constructions.
The Ancient Greeks’ main definition of success was to have had a heroic death. But as we live in a less martial world, even in Lebanon, we can adapt our definition of success as having taken a heroic route for the benefits of the collective, as narrowly or broadly defined collective as you wish. So long as all you do is not all for you: secret societies used to have a rule for uomo d’onore: you do something for yourself and something for other members. And virtue is inseparable from courage. Like the courage to do something unpopular. Take risks for the benefit of others; it doesn’t have to be humanity, it can be helping say Beirut Madinati or the local municipality. The more micro, the less abstract, the better.
Success requires absence of fragility. I’ve seen billionaires terrified of journalists, wealthy people who felt crushed because their brother in law got very rich, academics with Nobel who were scared of comments on the web. The higher you go, the worse the fall. For almost all people I’ve met, external success came with increased fragility and a heightened state of insecurity. The worst are those “former something” types with 4 page CVs who, after leaving office, and addicted to the attention of servile bureaucrats, find themselves discarded: as if you went home one evening to discover that someone suddenly emptied your house of all its furniture.
But self-respect is robust –that’s the approach of the Stoic school, which incidentally was a Phoenician movement. (If someone wonders who are the Stoics I’d say Buddhists with an attitude problem, imagine someone both very Lebanese and Buddhist). I’ve seen robust people in my village Amioun who were proud of being local citizens involved in their tribe; they go to bed proud and wake up happy. Or Russian mathematicians who, during the difficult post-Soviet transition period, were proud of making $200 a month and do work that is appreciated by twenty people –and considered that showing one’s decorations –or accepting awards –were a sign of weakness and lack of confidence in one’s contributions. And, believe it or not, some wealthy people are robust –but you just don’t hear about them because they are not socialites, live next door, and drink Arak baladi not Veuve Cliquot.
Personal History
Now a bit of my own history. Don’t tell anyone, but all the stuff you think comes from deep philosophical reflection is dressed up: it all comes from an ineradicable gambling instinct –just imagine a compulsive gambler playing high priest. People don’t like to believe it: my education came from trading and risk taking with some help from school.
I was lucky to have a background closer to that of a classical Mediterranean or a Medieval European than a modern citizen. For I was born in a library –my parents had an account at Librarie Antoine in Bab Ed Driss and a big library. They bought more books than they could read so they were happy someone was reading the books for them. Also my father knew every erudite person in Lebanon, particularly historians. So we often had Jesuit priests at dinner and because of their multidisciplinary erudition they were the only role models for me: my idea of education is to have professors just to eat with them and ask them questions. So I valued erudition over intelligence –and still do. I initially wanted to be a writer and philosopher; one needs to read tons of books for that –you had no edge if your knowledge was limited to the Lebanese Baccalaureat program. So I skipped school most days and, starting at age 14, started reading voraciously. Later I discovered an inability to concentrate on subjects others imposed on me. I separated school for credentials and reading for one’s edification.
First Break
I drifted a bit, with no focus, and remained on page 8 of the Great Lebanese Novel until the age of 23 (my novel was advancing at a rate of one page per year). Then I got a break on the day when at Wharton I accidentally discovered probability theory and became obsessed with it. But, as I said it did not come from lofty philosophizing and scientific hunger, only from the thrills and hormonal flush one gets while taking risks in the markets. A friend had told me about complex financial derivatives and I decided to make a career in them. It was a combination of trading and complex mathematics. The field was new and uncharted. But they were very, very difficult mathematically.
Greed and fear are teachers. I was like people with addictions who have a below average intelligence but were capable of the most ingenious tricks to procure their drugs. When there was risk on the line, suddenly a second brain in me manifested itself and these theorems became interesting. When there is fire, you will run faster than in any competition. Then I became dumb again when there was no real action. Furthermore, as a trader the mathematics we used was adapted to our problem, like a glove, unlike academics with a theory looking for some application. Applying math to practical problems was another business altogether; it meant a deep understanding of the problem before putting the equations on it. So I found getting a doctorate after 12 years in quantitative finance much, much easier than getting simpler degrees.
I discovered along the way that the economists and social scientists were almost always applying the wrong math to the problems, what became later the theme of The Black Swan. Their statistical tools were not just wrong, they were outrageously wrong –they still are. Their methods underestimated “tail events”, those rare but consequential jumps. They were too arrogant to accept it. This discovery allowed me to achieve financial independence in my twenties, after the crash of 1987.
So I felt I had something to say in the way we used probability, and how we think about, and manage uncertainty. Probability is the logic of science and philosophy; it touches on many subjects: theology, philosophy, psychology, science, and the more mundane risk engineering –incidentally probability was born in the Levant in the 8th Century as 3elm el musadafat, used to decrypt messages. So the past thirty years for me have been flaneuring across subjects, bothering people along the way, pulling pranks on people who take themselves seriously. You take a medical paper and ask some scientist full of himself how he interprets the “p-value”; the author will be terrorized.
The International Association of Name Droppers
The second break came to me when the crisis of 2008 happened and felt vindicated and made another bundle putting my neck on the line. But fame came with the crisis and I discovered that I hated fame, famous people, caviar, champagne, complicated food, expensive wine and, mostly wine commentators. I like mezze with local Arak baladi, including squid in its ink (sabbidej), no less no more, and wealthy people tend to have their preferences dictated by a system meant to milk them. My own preferences became obvious to me when after a dinner in a Michelin 3 stars with stuffy and boring rich people, I stopped by Nick’s pizza for a $6.95 dish and I haven’t had a Michelin meal since, or anything with complex names. I am particularly allergic to people who like themselves to be surrounded by famous people, the IAND (International Association of Name Droppers). So, after about a year in the limelight I went back to the seclusion of my library (in Amioun or near NY), and started a new career as a researcher doing technical work. When I read my bio I always feel it is that of another person: it describes what I did not what I am doing and would like to do.
On Advice and Skin in the Game
I am just describing my life. I hesitate to give advice because every major single piece of advice I was given turned out to be wrong and I am glad I didn’t follow them. I was told to focus and I never did. I was told to never procrastinate and I waited 20 years for The Black Swan and it sold 3 million copies. I was told to avoid putting fictional characters in my books and I did put in Nero Tulip and Fat Tony because I got bored otherwise. I was told to not insult the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal; the more I insulted them the nicer they were to me and the more they solicited Op-Eds. I was told to avoid lifting weights for a back pain and became a weightlifter: never had a back problem since.
If I had to relive my life I would be even more stubborn and uncompromising than I have been.
One should never do anything without skin in the game. If you give advice, you need to be exposed to losses from it. It is an extension to the silver rule. So I will tell you what tricks I employ.
Do not read the newspapers, or follow the news in any way or form. To be convinced, try reading last years’ newspaper. It doesn’t mean ignore the news; it means that you go from the events to the news, not the other way around.
If something is nonsense, you say it and say it loud. You will be harmed a little but will be antifragile — in the long run people who need to trust you will trust you.
When I was still an obscure author, I walked out of a studio Bloomberg Radio during an interview because the interviewer was saying nonsense. Three years later Bloomberg Magazine did a cover story on me. Every economist on the planet hates me (except of course those of AUB).
I’ve suffered two smear campaigns, and encouraged by the most courageous Lebanese ever since Hannibal, Ralph Nader, I took reputational risks by exposing large evil corporations such as Monsanto, and suffered a smear campaign for it
Treat the doorman with a bit more respect than the big boss.
If something is boring, avoid it –save taxes and visits to the mother in law. Why? Because your biology is the best nonsense detector; use it to navigate your life.
The No-Nos
There are a lot of such rules in my books, so for now let me finish with a few maxims. The following are no-nos:
