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antilagardelle · 2 years

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In June of twenty-nineteen, in order to escape an abusive domestic arrangement, I quite readily seized the first most available offer of a room for rent that Facebook marketplace could yield. I quickly became the fourth tenant in an abode which happened to house three socailist LGBTQIA+ activists. I resided there from June to October of the same year, before moving into my own apartment, during which sojourn I gleaned the following from their rhetoric and our various discourses: It would seem to me evident that the ultimate ideological premise governing the LGBT movement–though scarcely made explicit–is the belief that things really do not have a nature. It is the claim that there really is no design to anything; that things–even beyond the concepts of “male,” and “female,” despite their role as the chiefest manifestation–are not possessed of any clear and definite shape; and that any reference to design is offensive because it is evil; that it is evil because it is oppressive; and that it is oppressive because it limits one’s individuality. They would have it that all the universe is a vast of endless solubility, subject to change as they so elect. The issue with this echo of the sartrean declaration that, “existence precedes essence,” is the very prescription by the statement of an essence under which existence is to be pinned. In other words, it dictates of existence that it is that which must necessarily precede essence. Even this supposes a hard-and-fast nature to which things are necessarily beholden. To even rebel against design, one requires design.

Now an examination nearer the surface of the LGBT movement, provides a clearer fons et origo from which its principles extend. It may be duly observed that the Nazi movement, and the contemporary ideology to which we may loosely attach the appellation of “multiculturalism,” run opposite directions but from the same point of departure. The Nazi’s posited that the human faculties define human worth. They then concluded naturally from this premise, that any innate differences in faculty between the sexes and the races, suggested a superior race, and a superior kind of person. To avoid this mistake, the transgender movement has fled the opposite direction, crying that the human faculties define human worth, and thus, the assertion of any innate differences exhibited between the sexes and the races, must necessarily be bigotry; or that, if any statistical merit corroborates them, the differences beheld must necessarily be artificial, or methodically inculcated by the patriarchy, and so in no way natural. All the while, there is a quiet voice to which neither side seems to pay much attention, which ever so timidly surmises that perhaps the human faculties do not define human worth; and perhaps, then, it poses no threat to human equality to argue that men and women tend naturally to excel at different things. Perhaps it is not contrary to the equality of our race to suggest that the overwhelming percentages of women in social work, and men in engineering, are not even remotely arbitrary, but in fact correlate directly with the general discrepancies of disposition inherent to each. Why they refuse to simply check the premise that the human faculties define human worth, I cannot profess to know. ...Or can I?

#philosophy #religion #science #politics #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqplus #humanities #psychology #christianity #atheism #catholicism #catholic #socialism #capitalism #marxism #libertarianism

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antilagardelle · 2 years

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The bromide that "Science is not opinion," easily disintegrates under not only the superstitious leaps of empiricism, but the invariably innate existence of tendentious agendas across mankind, from which we cannot faithfully exempt peer reviewers, else we undermine the equality of humanity.

#philosophy #politics #climate science #religion #science #psychology #capitalism #marxism #history #socialism #christianity #atheism

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antilagardelle · 2 years

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The emphatic blunder of that notorious cousin, whose annual mission it is to address the evils of Capitalism at Thanksgiving dinner, is their lofty oversight of the fact, that, far from complicit silence, one cannot possibly assert apolitical diversions--such as designated times of year wherein we congregate at lavish family feasts, and place acrimonious disputes on hold, regardless how dire, in order we unite to see the basic humanity within us all--are anything less than indispensable to the end of defeating such iniquities. Only the buffoon cries, "With all the racism, sexism, transphobia, and imperialist oppression and exploitation on behalf of this country, and of which Thanksgiving is a direct part, you expect me to remain silent at Thanksgiving dinner while all these evils pervade the globe?!" To which the answer is yes. For even if we suppose these evils an existential threat that operates imminently as we speak, one cannot reasonably suppose that mere unity at Thanksgiving dinner plays any less than a necessary part in mitigating these disorders, be they exploitation, transphobia, income inequality, racism, etcetera. A complete absence of unity within a people, exacerbates every kind of evil, and mitigates none.

#philosophy #politics #capitalism #religion #psychology #marxism #history #socialism #christianity #atheism

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antilagardelle · 2 years

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Ornamental panel with a ‘memento mori’ of skulls and burning bones Engraving

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antilagardelle · 2 years

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The Materiality And Substance Of Myth

The thought befell me over my recent divinations, that the most unusual trait of reality is our need of fairy tales to express it. Were a child never exposed to fictional literature, or wild tales of fantastical and otherworldly plots, his understanding of reality would be sorely wanting. The anthropological disposition has quite curiously been for man to chronicle the manifest and formulaic laws of his behavior--as they obtain in the microcosm and macrocosm alike--through the counterintuitive invocation of dragons, faeries, goblins, wizards, and all manner of fictitious forms. In this sense, then, the true fruit and mystery of literature is in its not being so very distinct from mathematics after all. Deposited extensively within any sound literary work are problems and solutions functioning predictably under a system. Literature proffers and instantiates equations; it tests and applies various inputs, outputs, and projections through the interactions of its characters and their environment. The absolutes of human behavior find their expression in literature as of something approaching a reticulate transfer function spanning the pages of any given novel.

As a child is introduced to fairy tales and works of fiction on the whole, he subconsciously internalizes these creative problems and solutions. He is then able to apply to ordinary life, what he was not entirely aware he had absorbed imprimis. He employs equations he did not know he knew. The further down this line I pondered, the more irresistibly evident it became, that had the greatest scientific minds never received fictional literature as part of their instruction as youths, their ability to make such monumental scientific discoveries and advancements would not only have been impeded; it would have been altogether absent. An Einstein without the knowledge of, say, Peter Pan or The Scarlet Pimpernel, could not have possessed the creativity required to hypothesize and establish that E = MC2. A Niels Bohr who had no acquaintance with, say, Hans Christian Anderson’s tales or the works of Charles Dickens, would have been to subatomic investigations as is a turtle to a chaise-and-four.

The generation of hypotheses is perpetuated by a sort of subliminal ignition whose spark is rather cloudy and unbeknownst. It is the experience of any thinkers intimate with the scientific model, that to hypothesize is to roll the darwinian dice, as it were. It is no doubt that hypotheses consist in some degree of the certitude and implications of data already established. To some degree, however, they do not. To choke the art of hypothesis off from any and all creativity or intuition, would be to altogether kill it. When a scientist hypothesizes, he draws from two sources, each as vital as the other: First, he consults the existing scope of data and experimentation. Second, he consults the cavernous recesses of his intuition--wherein we find the stored calculations from his education in fairy tales--and exacts therefrom a potential equation, which when applied to the anomaly he endeavors to solve, ideally proves to some if not absolute avail. While hypotheses extend into the darkness from ports of statistical veracity, these points of departure cannot govern the direction by which these educated postulates extend without the auxiliary role of creativity, imagination, and intuition. The worldly necessitates the otherworldly.

#philosophy #religion #science #politics #agnosticism #christianity #atheism #catholicism #skepticism #catholic #mythology #literature #psychology #carl jung

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antilagardelle · 3 years

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SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SPREADING MISINFORMATION IS RIGHTFULLY PROTECTED UNDER FREEDOM OF SPEECH

#philosophy #politics #religion #history #literature #psychology #capitalism #marxism #christianity #atheism

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antilagardelle · 3 years

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Friendly reminder that any and all socialists are parasites (as are any persons to the left of Ben Carson/Ted Cruz/Ron Paul)

Disclaimer: nevertheless, parasites are to be tolerated and seen as equally human to those who behave in such manner as to not be a societal parasite, seeing as the only difference between say the Nazi party and the proverbial party of truth is not that the latter does not recognize its opponents as objectively parasitic, but that they understand parasitic views must necessarily be permitted freedom of expression, because freedom is a double-edged sword, and to deny them such right would be to become the very parasites one aimed to silence imprimis(for this same reason spreading misinformation is rightfully protected under freedom of speech).

#socialism #capitalism #philosophy #politics #religion #economics #marxism #libertarianism #history #literature #psychology

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antilagardelle · 3 years

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On Gods And Tyrants

(Name Redacted)

Prof. P____

Conversatio 1

9-15-21

Fewer themes engage the annals of human history with such importunate vigor as the contest of the individual, the collective, and the divine. Each man construes his own ideal configuration of the three, and each lives out this very contest in every action he pursues, whether consciously or not. The timeless interplay between these forces is beautifully exemplified in an equally timeless play: Sophocles’ Antigone; wherein not only may a remarkable depiction be found of the ceaseless clash between God, man, and state, but wherein also is a fourth party to be found mixed with this tripartite dialectic; and that would be the intrapersonal. Upon reading this powerful work from the fifth century BC tragedian, one is met with the ancient and tested observation that whatsoever tumults pervade the individual, shall likewise pervade the state. What manifests individually, manifests collectively in due proportion; and thus, man has yet to know an external war not derived from internal battles; a societal polarization not resultant of intrapersonal divides; a corruption at large not originating in a corruption at home: that is, within the self.

Examining Antigone under a jungian light, it may be observed that the City of Thebes, in which it takes place, is a symbol of the self, and each character an element of one’s psyche. Cities, towns, and houses often symbolize the self in literature, drawing from their consisting in an ordered system of cogs. Upon stepping into this play of Sophocles, the reader finds Thebes in the aftermath of a civil war between Antigone’s two brothers, Polyneices and Eteocles, culminating in each killing the other simultaneously. To demonstrate the manner in which this rapine of Thebes simulates the rapine of the human psyche, requires first the exposition of a deeper symbol beneath it all, which serves to nourish Antigone’s greater theme. Antigone, Polyneices, Eteocles, and their sister Ismene are children of Oedipus and Jocasta. What makes this disturbing is that Jocasta and Eodipus are mother and son. This would not be the only incestuous taint upon the characters of the story, nor the first in the theban lineage. Not only is Creon, the King of Thebes, Antigone’s uncle, making her affiance to his son Haemon quite close-knit, but Jocasta, Oedipus’ mother and wife, was only a distant cousin from Oedipus’ father Laius to begin with. What is the symbolism behind this? The prevalence of incest in the story, is a symbol of misaligned or improperly differentiated relations between the psychophisiological elements of the self. The warring brothers, whose father is their brother as well, signify the disorders actuated by such a backward psychological alignment. The moral to be extracted--appertaining especially to the relation of the individual, the community, and the divine--is that the political maladies of the community find their direct source in the intrapersonal maladies of the individual; or perhaps more specifically, from his neglect to advance any effort at their amelioration.

Probing textually for traces of this theme, one is brought to an instance where Creon is expounding on his edict that since Eteocles died fighting to defend Thebes, and Polyneices traitorously against it, only the former shall secure a proper burial whereas the latter will be left for the birds and dogs. Creon describes the latter as having, “sought the taste of kindred blood.”(Hadas 127) It would appear that this selection of words on Creon’s behalf, symbolically relates this clash of brothers to Oedipus’ having conceived four children with his mother, designating the latter as a prefigurement of the former. This theme also crops up in an exchange between Ismene and Antigone in the beginning of the play, while the two dispute Antigone’s resolve to defy Creon’s orders to refuse Polyneices any burial. Ismene says, “How our father perished, amid hate and scorn, when sins bared by his own search had moved him to strike both eyes with self-blinding hand; then the mother and wife, two names in one, with twisted noose destroyed her own life; and last, our two brothers in one day--each shedding, luckless man, a kinsman’s blood--wrought out with mutual hands their common doom.”(Hadas 124) The “Self-blinding hand,” the “twisted noose,” the two brothers shedding “A kinsman’s blood,” and begetting “with mutual hands their common doom,” all symbolize incest in the play, and its representation of a maladjusted psyche. Lastly, one finds this concept broached in one of the synchronized chants of the chorus of theban elders, who periodically add a sort of poetic narration to the play, and who seem to signify a kind of collective voice. After Creon decrees that he will have Antigone thrown in a rocky vault, where she will starve to death, the chorus breaks out into a kind of soliloquy, wherein they lament that, “Love, unconquered in the fight [...] ‘tis thou that has stirred up this present strife of kinsmen.”(Hadas 142) It is as if the family's inbred roots alone are culpable for all the story’s entropy.

The dynamic of the individual and community having now been dissected, the question remains as to the proper station of the divine within this hierarchy. Where is God to be interpolated amidst this convoluted triad? To answer this question may require a rather roundabout course, in order that provision be made for those both of theistic and atheistic (or agnostic) sentiments. Perhaps no scene in the play conveys Antigone’s unshaken purpose so consummately as when she is brought before Creon for questioning. He inquires, in this scene, if she knew his edict forbade Polyneices any burial, to which she replies affirmatively. Creon then asks, “Did you then dare transgress that law?” to which Antigone answers with the same unapologetic certitude that had Caiaphas rend his raiment, stating “Yes, for it was not Zues that had published that edict; not such are the laws set among men by the Justice who dwells with the gods below. Nor did I deem that your decrees were of such force that a mortal could override the unwritten and unfailing statutes of heaven.”(Hadas 134) Regardless whether the reader believes in god or not, a sound argument could be made in favor of Antigone’s resolve. Antigone’s choice to bury her brother--or rather, to sprinkle sediment upon his corpse--derives an adequate justification from a reverence for the innate profundity of the human body.

To date, all developed nations have laws against defiling the body. A man guilty of murder, who also decimates or skins the corpse of their victim, can and usually will be hit with additional charges for the act, not merely due to the obfuscation of evidence, but also to the act’s inherent profanity against the human body. This is because one’s body is a significant part of precisely who they are. It constitutes no small part of their overall humanity. Now Creon’s pretext for refusing to bury Polyneices is that he is a traitor against Thebes. This, however, begs a dire question: at what point ought the humanity of an offender not be recognized? And to answer this question with anything less than an unequivocal, “never,” is to deny not only the humanity of the offender, but that of the whole race. Reiterating those famous words spoken on that happy day in 1945, “That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”(Robert H. Jackson, 1945) This invocation of The Nuremberg Trials is eminently pertinent, as is drawn from the fact that the very value of the assertion of man being the peak of all vices and virtues, individually and thus collectively, is in the very extent to which it is true. Not only is it the case that every individual contains within them the daunting capacity to orchestrate such heinous and vile crimes against humanity as did the Nazis; but even, as a deeper and more frightening psychoanalysis would reveal, the sadistic desire to do so. Within each and every human person dwells both the guards at Auschwitz, and Mahatma Gandhi; Emperor Nero, and Christ himself; The Green River Killer and the Dalai Lama. That is to say, that what makes the antagonists of human history so terrifying is just how human they were; and to bring this back to Creon’s decree, it necessarily follows that to disrespect the human body--as it constitutes a profound and ineffable part of who the man was as a child of God, from a religious perspective, and as a member of humanity, from an atheistic view--is necessarily to miss this important lesson of human nature. The lesson that we all contain the same capacity for evil, and for good. A lesson from which one garners a deeper faculty of self-reflection; and it can be anticipated that a populace who shuns self-reflection, can only precipitate malady after malady, resulting in scenarios as unconscionably wicked as those wrought by the men whose humanity they elected to disregard imprimis. Thus, any failure to recognize the humanity of the worst offender, is itself an offense of no less severity. This failure is averted by handling the bodies of such transgressors with a basic human decency.

Now the foregoing is not to be misconstrued as an echo of Manicheism. Nor is the aim to imply, by contending all humans to contain the same capacity and desire for evil, that man is incapable of delivering any justice to the wicked. It is true that some men choose to act objectively better than others. But it is only this: a choice. It is a practice; and as such, it denotes that there is some baser nature they must necessarily labor against. The worst crime is in denouncing the existence of this baser nature in oneself, as to do so is to deify oneself; to deify oneself is to empower oneself absolutely; and, to allude to Lord Acton’s famous adage, is to thereby corrupt oneself absolutely.

There is, however, another argument here being made. It is of the nature of reverence, to connote a sense of mystery in the thing for which the reverence is had. Why have humans entertained such customs as removing hats in church? Why dress nicely for funerals, or weddings? Or to give more dire scenarios: from whence does man derive the notions of not killing unarmed persons, or those who surrender in war? Why is it diabolical to disregard white flags, or enact cruel and unusual punishments on prisoners? There are two primary reasons. The first, is because things are inherently ineffable. The second, because there must be a line that one simply does not cross. That line, whatever it may be, and on account of the limited nature of human understanding, will necessarily have some mystery about it, and therefore, demand reverence. Thus, a world without reverence would be an upside-down and hellish waste, which could only be imagined as The Holocaust tenfold. Depravity alone can ensue from the complete absence of reverence. There must be a space reserved for what is sacrosanct; for what is inviolable; for what is universally unbreakable; and to finally answer the question as to the divine’s place in relation to the individual and the community, this ineffable window of things so superior to man that he dare not violate them, is what we call, God. It is beside the point if one believes in God or not. Perhaps one holds that this space for the inviolable is defined by natural law, or by human altruism. The point is that whatever one designates to fill this position must necessarily have two principal traits. It must be above him, in that he is invariably answerable to it, and not vice versa; and of those things which it demands of him, they cannot always be said to be easy or in line with his personal wishes. These are the things which define God, and outline his relation to the self and the collective, as far as our investigation is concerned. That man whose rendition of God fails this criteria, effectively echoes Creon in thundering, “Am I to rule this land by other judgement than my own?”(Hadas 141)

In conclusion, Sophocles’ Antigone will ever hold a place among the literary classics. The compelling clash of Creon’s indignant rigidity with Antigone’s adamantine resolve, will always proffer a breadth of moral, political, and intrapersonal lessons, as well as entertain its audience. It is a story of love, a story of conviction, and a story of our natures, both the nobler and the baser. Under the lens of the relation between God, man, and state, the play will never cease to yield boundless insights, nor to be fruitful to those who read it.

Bibliography

Hadas, Moses. “Antigone.” The Complete Plays Of Sophocles, Bantam Books 1967, p.127

Hadas, Moses. “Antigone.” The Complete Plays Of Sophocles, Bantam Books 1967, 124

Hadas, Moses. “Antigone.” The Complete Plays Of Sophocles, Bantam Books 1967, p. 142

Hadas, Moses. “Antigone.” The Complete Plays Of Sophocles, Bantam Books 1967, p. 134

Jackson, Robert H., “Opening Statement Before The International Military Tribunal.” Robert H. Jackson Center, November 21, 1945

Hadas, Moses. “Antigone.” The Complete Plays Of Sophocles, Bantam Books 1967, p. 141

#philosophy #politics #religion #literature #history #mythology #psychology #capitalism #marxism #christianity #atheism #catholicism #agnosticism #science

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