Other Thoughts on "Will"

After my translated article on the film "The Downfall" ("Der Untergang") was published on Majority Rights website , I had a series of readers comments on the origins of nazism. Part of it explained the Nazi roots in terms of "racial consciousness" and "will".

Studying Olavo de Carvalho workshop material on the Lavelle's "Dialetic Manual" I came across some definitions or perceptions on the matter "will" or "feeling" versus "intelligence" that fit very well on the present debate.

Excerpts from Olavo's workshop (these are not the exact terms) :
"The bad philosopher does not apprehend the limitations of the reality and the limitations of his will. He imagine the infinite as a likely possibitly again, Over and over "... "The task of the philosopher is to perceive the structure of the reality and what it is possible or not. This will make him educate his feelings and will to adjust them into of what is real and feasible."

All concepts on "will" fail to apprehend these premises.Therefore "will" is not just a matter , a subject whose studies are completely out of sight from our time's perspective (it was subject of study in the thirties) but also this is an intellectual fallacy.

The ultimate conclusion is that to leave the "will" to perform a role that belongs to the intelligence in controlling the actions of the human being, makes it to lose the correct perception of the reality.
It makes us to act in way completely dettached from the reality, as someone that thinks is possible to fly away as a bird or to have superpowers as a "superman". That is what happened in Germany during nazism: a celebration of the Triumph of the Will over Intelligence on a nation-wide scale.

Intelligence, meaning "wisdom" or the apprehension of the truth is the ultimate search of man, that begun with Plato/Socrates and Aristotle, continued with Judeo-Cristian tradition . And waht is "will" without the superior control of intelligence? Nothing but "irrationality".
Thus "will" and "racial consciousness" concepts in nazism were a kind of mythical-poetical universe structure revival. A structure that was knocked down since the emergence of Socrates in old Greece. Free of thought and free will does not have nothing to do with such "racial consciousness" or "will" concepts. They are fruits of the correct apprehension of the reality. And this search for the truth is core of what we call "conservative thought", as expressed by either Erich Voegelin, either Olavo de Carvalho. They all try to bring for the world of today the maening of the free will and its responsibilities an consequences.
"Will" is just another name for "destination", that it is the opposite to the free will.
So, concepts as "Race", "will" or "racial consciousness" are not only subjects of debate from the "Thirties". If we analyze them well, they belong to a pre-socratic universe.

Senator Durbin finally says he's sorry

It´s amazing that democrats are always bitting their tongues.
It´s "Bigmouth Strikes Again" part XXXVVIII

Durbin finally says he's sorry

By James G. Lakelyand Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 22, 2005

Sen. Richard J. Durbin yesterday said he was "sorry" after parsing words for a week about his remarks comparing U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to those of Nazi and Soviet regimes. He apologized on the Senate floor.
"I'm sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time," said Mr. Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.
"I'm also sorry if anything I said in any way cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military. I went to Iraq just a few months ago," he said, pausing and appearing to tear up at one point during the five-minute speech. "When you look at the eyes of the soldiers you see your son and daughter. They are the best. I never, ever intended any disrespect for them. Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line. To them, I extend my heartfelt apologies."
Senators from both parties said Mr. Durbin's apology should be the end of the controversy that began a week ago.
On June 14, Mr. Durbin, after reading an FBI agent's letter describing interrogation techniques at the military detention center at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said on the Senate floor, "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."
His remarks were condemned by veterans groups, the Anti-Defamation League and even Richard Daley, the Democratic mayor of Chicago, who earlier yesterday called on Mr. Durbin to apologize.
Mr. Durbin on Friday issued a statement expressing his "sincere regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings" of support for the troops. He said yesterday he thought that clarified the issue, but realized that "to many people it was still unclear."
Democrats had rallied to Mr. Durbin's defense, with most calling the attention to the remarks a Republican attempt to divert attention from their agenda.
And early yesterday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi refused to denounce Mr. Durbin's initial comments. At a press conference she called to demand creation of a commission to investigate detainee abuses at U.S. facilities throughout the world, she said Mr. Durbin's comments are one reason to have a commission.
"The fact is that Mr. Durbin's comments point to the need for an independent commission," she said. "What are the facts, how do we make judgments about how to change what is going on there, close Guantanamo or clean it up, but the status quo ... is not acceptable."
In his floor speech yesterday, Mr. Durbin did defend his remarks from a week ago, calling them "legitimate concerns that others have raised, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, about the policies of this administration and whether they truly do serve our needs to make America safer and more secure."
Throughout the last week, Mr. Durbin and fellow Democrats continued to blame the press, talk radio and The Washington Times in particular for focusing on his initial statement.
"The Washington Times, a very conservative, Republican newspaper, puts a front-page story about me on there. The White House lashes out to me, and pretty soon the mainstream media, it just follows," Mr. Durbin told WGN radio in Chicago on Friday.
Yesterday, after his floor speech, Mr. Durbin said he did not want to talk about that charge. "I'm not going to go into that," he said.
Immediately after Mr. Durbin's remarks, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, said that should be the end of the discussion. Mr. Lieberman said trying "to fester this some more is doing a disservice to the Senate and to our country." Mr. McCain said the apology was the "right thing, the courageous thing, and I believe we can put this issue behind us."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, released a brief statement calling Mr. Durbin's apology "a necessary and appropriate step."
Sen. Trent Lott, who lost his job as majority leader in 2002 for comments at the 100th birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond, said hours before Mr. Durbin's latest apology that he should consider resigning as minority whip over his remarks.
Senate Republicans pushed Mr. Lott out of his leadership post in December 2002 after saying that the U.S. could have avoided "all these problems" if the then-segregationist from South Carolina had been elected president in 1948.
At the time, the Mississippi Republican issued an apology, saying his kind words about Mr. Thurmond were not an "endorsement of his positions 50 years ago," and a "poor choice of words" -- the latter the exact phrase Mr. Durbin used yesterday.
"I had my problem, but mine was totally in jest," Mr. Lott said yesterday afternoon. "His has serious consequences. I think he should consider resigning from his leadership position."

The Defeat of the Will: an analysis on the film "Downfall"

This article was published on Majority Rights website: Thanks to John Ray

A week ago I went to a mall to watch the film "Downfall”("Der Untergang"), a skillful reconstitution of the last days of the nazist regime and its creator - Adolf Hitler in Berlin, 1945. With an outstanding performance from Swiss actor Bruno Ganz as the Führer (and the rest of the cast too) the film is superb.

I wanted to have written about it before, but this film excited a series of thoughts in me - I must say "perceptions" - that they had to be quarantined for a while until I could framed them more accurately. These perceptions simply struck my thoughts as unconscious hyperlinks that I had to follow. I took time to know why my mind lead me to them, but I finally found out. The perceptions I perceived was a set of signals, metaphors and “insights” that unfolded the subtle meaning of nazist regime to me. Let me explain that I don´t intend to explain the efficient or material causes of the national-socialism. Simply I dare to write, what it was, at least what it seemed to me.

The great revelation of this film for me was the perception that if all socialist-communist-facist-totalitarian regimes were in some degree a substitution of the natural religion for a “state religion”, nazism was the substitution of the judaism, transformed into a kind of "state judaism". But this "state judaism" would have in common with the original one as much as a black mass would have to do with catholic mass: equal values with a minus signal. A satanic counterfeit of the former, in fact.

This imitation – an “ersatz” as the robotic Maria from “Metropolis” - wanted to assume the cultural and religious identity of the original model for good, even if the complete destruction of its model was necessary.

Germany after WWI was in need of the same strenght that made Israel to stand tall before her captors in Egypt and Babylon, that defeated Hitites and other ancient nations in middle east; The same kind of power source that made Israel, her people, culture and tradition lasted for centuries.

It was the objective nazism was trying to achieve, with a capital difference: while Israel had the Yaveh´s favor to remain herself together, the god of the Third Reich was the national-socialism.But this god was also was a monoteistic god, therefore it would not permit no other belief or faith unless itself. This is the key to understand nazism.

Another parallel nazism/judaism was on the subject of "race": Jews are usually known by the gentiles as a breed apart, another kind of race. If Jews was gave the God´s favor, only to another “race” would be given a similar favor. That´s why the concept of Arian race was so important under nazism.

In national-socialist “new order”, Hitler would be the "Führer" (leader). He would be the incarnation of the "Prince" from Macchiavelli, because he managed to eliminate his inspirers - in the case the Jews- exactly as Macchiavelli had predicted. But this "prince" also added a new feature, he would be a Darwinist version of Macchiavelli´s Prince. And this link – Darwinism – is the most recurrent link.

The firm belief in the Social-Darwinism values inside the body of of nazism is cleared by the film. It is repeated over and over again during the screening, confirming that communism and nazism wer a kind of siamese brothers. In the movie for example, Goebbels condemns the German people to their own luck (that meant the death of hundreds of civilians), therefore the German people had shown weak to hinder the allied invasion, and was too weak to deserve the glory of the national-socialism. If you remember that old darwinist absurd tautology that prayed for the "survival of the fittest” but “only the fittest survive”, you are right. And there are dozens of phrases like this on film. Believing in such tautologies, destination of nazism (and the nazis) could not be different. By their own rules they failed to prove themselves as “fittest” for the mission they had started.

Also the fact Hitler had finish his days in a bunker, underneath the surface of earth, far from the light of the sun was a sign too. The truth is national-socialism always lived inside of a bunker, isolated from the light and fresh air. The perfect (and the only) culture broth to nazism to raise. There were moments that this ideological “bunker” had the size of the Europe, but it was not more a reality. In his decaying empire, Hitler asked , facing the alternative of leaving Berlin, "what the Führer would do hidden in a village?". He knew the answer: “Führer” would not exists in a natural environment, without all the imperial apparatus that surrounding him. The ideological bunker had become real. And there was no escape from it .

It can be seen in the most significant scene from the film - and the one that has more resemblances with Judeo universe. It was the scene related to the fate of Goebbels´ family.If on the book of Genesis, God order Abraham to not take Isaac in sacrifice on the very last moment, to the National-Socialism god, there was no mercy. There was no way out but the “final solution”.

But all the tragedy didn´t serve to pulled out the roots of national-socialism from the surface of the earth: they continued to grow, deeper and deeper, and their tree is ready to give “new” fruits.

"I decided the only explanation is that God and the Devil are very attentive to people at the summit (...) do you expect God or the Devil left Lenin and Hitler and Churchill alone? No. They bid for favors and exact revenge. That's why men with power sometimes act so silly."' (Norman Mailer - from An American Dream, 1965)

Asymmetrical debate

It`s been difficult to me to write a text on my own here, but the last articles wrote by Olavo and others, are so clarifying on what`s goin on - not just here in Brazil, but in the rest of the world - that I decided to put it directly here. This is an amazing article. Hope the translation went ok (I made on my own). LA

PS.: Many thanks to John Ray (from Dissecting Leftism) that helped in translation and published this article on "Majority Rights" website, under the title "The cultural weakness of the Brazilian Right". Thanks a lot, John.
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Asymmetrical debate - OLAVO DE CARVALHO (Philosopher)
From Brazilian newspaper "Zero Hora" – 12/06/05

The North-American political debate has two opposing streams of thought, with very well differentiated points of view, on politics, economics, morality, culture and religion. On one side, "liberals"”, or leftists, with their program of state interventionism, assistance for all, secularism, feminism, multiculturalism, pro-choice-ism, etc. On the other side we have the "conservatives"”, with their defense of economic freedom, federalism, individual independence and Judeo-Christian moral values.

They are two complete world-visions that oppose each other in all fields of thought and action, in a more or less balanced way, with an advantage to the left in the mainstream media and the cultural establishment, and an advantage for the right on the Internet and radio (Rush Limbaugh alone, for instance, has 38 million daily listeners, surpassing in audience all the chic leftist periodicals out of New York).

These two systems of thought correspond to two geopolitical orientations - the left is globalist, and the right nationalist - and there are two projects of government clearly differentiated: the project of world-wide government via the U.N. versus the "new American century" of George W. Bush (I will say more about that in a later article).

Further, these two projects have clearly distinct support sources: From one side, George Soros and mega-foundation types like Rockefeller and Ford; from the other side, the petrol industry and the "“new money" , as Ronald Reagan called it, from thousands of small capitalists on the make. Although the borders of these two fields do not fully coincide with the line dividing Democrats and Republicans, the American public easily recognizes one spokesman from another one and understands the nature of what is at stake in this game. And what is at stake is not only the U.S.A´s fate but humankind´s: the North-American political struggle expresses perfectly the options that humankind faces at the beginning of this century.

This is far different of what´s going on in Brazil, where the political debate features a totally non-symmetrical struggle.

The dominant left, as with icounterpartn counterart, fights on all fronts - from economic policy to gay marriage -—with inexhaustible persistence and aggressiveness. Its conservative adversaries, however, come up with an almost ashamed defense of offended group interests or go in for limited criticism on a legal-administrative level with no ideological content. At their boldest, all they can do is argue in favor of a free market economy. On all other points of division they totally forbear to speak or fall in line as soon as possible with the leftist secularist causes, pretending that educational, moral, cultural, philosophical, religious or civilizational questions have nothing to do with a confrontation that is in essence economic. The first result that they get from that is that they sound ridiculous when they accuse Marxism as "economicist"”. The second result is that they convince the crowd that all capitalists just think about money, while their socialist counterparts are worried about questions of philosophical and humanitarian values. The third result is that, unlike the American debate, the national debate here only serves to dig deeper the abyss between Brazil and the universe of history, helping the leftist establishment to enclose the country more and more within a limited circle of ideas. The fourth result is a little subtler, but not less disastrous. Because the socialists have given up on goals such the total nationalization of the economy, conceding the necessity to give space to private companies, the defense of the market economy is easily absorbed and proclaimed by the leftist establishment too , so that they can give lip service to each word of liberal economic ideals without doing or representing any harm to themselves. But without its cultural, moral or religious substance, liberal economic speech can become nothing more than an unconscious form of collaborationism.

The redemption of this country depends on the adepts of the capitalist economy losing their hesitancy to defend, not only the market economy but also the moral, cultural and religious values that made the rise of the market economy in the U.S.A. and Europe possible.

More on the "New World"

Olavo just wrote another article on the subject of the "Roots of the New World" previsously published. Here it is, translated by Fabio Lins.
Enjoy it.
PS.: It was published on "Majority Rights" by John Ray. Again.
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More on the New World

Olavo de Carvalho
O Globo, June 4th. 2005

From reading my previous article, one must not imagine that the strategy for global cultural change is simply a sordid trick invented by a group of conspirators to achieve socialism indirectly and smoothly. It is right the opposite. The very point of socialist worldview has been moved from the economic axis to the cultural;
better saying, to the civilizational axis.

Since the 40s, the recurrent impossibility of creating a working socialism has caused repeated concessions to the market economy and weakened the ambition of a radical elimination of private property amongst activist intelligentsia.

Considering the best brains of the left, the substitution of orthodox socialism for an effort of "saving" the socialist "ideals" from the debrys of state economy dates far before the fall of USSR. The first Frankfurtians already had enormous despise for the soviet experience. They gave their backs to economy and struggled to create a new general civilizational concept. The "New Left" of the 60s hardly talked about economic planning: they only wanted to deal in racial hustle, sexual liberation, anti-americanismo, feminist revolt, etc. Meanwhile, in the UN, crackpot Robert Müller conceived new paramenters of education, inspired by the American seer Alice Bailey who in her turn was guided by infallible extraterrestrial gurus. His parameters have been adopted worldwide today for the better conforming of the new generations to the planetary socialism of his dreams.

The socialization of economy, by becoming the fruit instead of the root of the "new man", is not a priority. That is why that Mr. Luis Inacio da Silva (Brazil's President) can naïvely declare that neither he nor his comrades know what kind of socialism they intend to achieve. The indefinition in social-economic objectives contrasts so much with the coherence with the practical organization of the world Left, with the uniformity
to the "moral" and cultural values that guide it, that the da Silvian's statement can be considered a Freudian slip, revealing the underlying intention – possibly almost unconscious – to postpone to an undefinite future the socialization of economy, prioritizing in chronology the militant organization for the conditioning of the
popular masses in the criteria and values of the "new civilization".
Socialist power affirms itself in psychology and moral, education and law, letting the formula for the salvific economy as the variable of the equation, being shaped little by little as the process of global transfiguration of mentalities advances.

The radicals who get impatient, longing for an old-fashioned brutal interventionism do not understand the subtlety of the new strategy. This does not mean, though, that they are of no help, since they play the part of stirring up the process, knowing or not that the energy they use is previously measured and channeled by international strategies far more intelligent than a billion Ze Rainhas. Claiming for "socialism" cannot eliminate the contradictions of socialist economy, but it helps keeping the masses in the proper mood. When the load of reality gets too heavy on the donkey's back, it is necessary to cheer the pet up showing the carrot of utopia.

Postponing socialist economy has yet the great advantage of gaining the support for its construction of many capitalists. Under the conforting claim that "socialism is over", conceited rich people sponsor the installation of socialist culture, betting that, in the short term, it will not bring them any substantial harm. On the way,
capitalism is not eliminated, but virtually criminalized while at the same time it prospers from the material perspective. In schools, books, on TV, capitalists are exposed to public despise and offense, but because they are tolerated and supported by the same governing leadership that mocks them, they still keep the hope to survive by flattery and adulation. Thus, it is not certain that one day state economy will be achieved, but it is certain that until then, capitalism, or whatever remains of it, will become an ocean of iniquities.

Blog linking (2)

I could not forget the the importance of have a link on such a honorable site.
Atlas Foundation, an organization focused in support of individual freedom and free-market, has "Blog" site. called "Atlas Blog".
Its purpose is to "Bring news and analysis from indepent voices from all over the world". "Swimming Against the Red Tide" is there: "Luís Afonso Assumpção of Porto Alegre offers a blog on the culture and politics of Brazil from a free-market point of view."

Some goods reviews on my humble blog

This week I just received - surprisily - a huge wave of linking thru the internet.
Articles posted here, from my authoring and from others, were linked on several good pages and blogs. I would like to list some of them:

http://www.no-pasaran.blogspot.com - A very critic blog on social-democracy and euro-socialism, from France
http://finnpundit.blogspot.com - Other critic blog os social-democracy, from Finland.
http:////www.findory.com - A web clipping page.
http://www.theglitteringeye.com - Another good critic blog

Special thanks to John Ray, the famous Australian blogger who started linking me in many blogs and pages where he writes. He also helped to translate my "brazilian" english to a standard one :
http://dissectlef.blogspot.com
http://www.theglitteringeye.com/
http://ofint2.blogspot.com/
http://www.majorityrights.com/

And finally Jeffrey Nyquist, that sent me this message:

"Many thanks for writing. I am glad that you are trying to alert people" - JRN

Thnaks to all - LA

The Invisible Agent

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Note: This article was published in portuguese on my portuguese blog and on MaskLess Midia site. Is the counterpart to the previous article by professor Olavo de Carvalho. Enjoy!
Translation : blame it on me.
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“The only “invisible hand” today is not the market´s but the new-communist´s hands that silently suffocates democracy, capitalism and liberty without being detected” (me myself)

For hundreds years, men have been attracted by some magical objects: The Holy Graal, The Philosopher´s Stone, The Ark of the Covenant.. In modern times, rocked by industrial era and the science fiction, new objects or goals were added to the list: space travel, time travel and the invisibility. Some of them were achieved: Yuri Gagarin went out of space in the fifties, time travel became reality in “Back to the Future I, II & III” and finally the invisibility is in use by the soviets since 1991.

Where did you think all those communist go ?

Excuse me for the ironic introduction to the core of my post, but I consider nowadays very difficul to speak out about the reality exactly as it is, at least here in Brazil. If you start talking about “communism”, you will be labeled immediatly as a “cold war paranoid”, a “mcarthyst”. “Do you believe communist eat children too?” was one of phrases I heard in reply of my points. The worst is that people I am talking about were not socialists, communists or social-democrats. They were libertarian people, who share the same view in economic terms. They believe and support democratic capitalistic system and economic freedom as the keys to achieve wealth and prosperity in the world.

This post, before being misread, has one single point: to try to explain what is going on today in a ludic way. It seems that reality itself has become “demodeé” (as french says) in Brazil. People here believe firmly that communism has faded away since the Berlin Wall fall and simply vanished totally after the events of Russia in 1991.

They don´t understand what was informed by books and authors like Anatolyi Golitsyn (“New Lies For Old” and “Perestroika Deception”), Nyquist, Olavo de Carvalho e and many others. It seems that my generation in Brazil – and I am afraid the rest of the world - has degraded into a level that the clear understanding of things is only possible if you talk to them as you do to children. So here I go.

The submersion of communist until they nearly disappeared from the surface of earth (but not from the underground) was a dissimulation in fact. It was like they had discovered the “evanescent ink”. Do you remember those old “Tom and Jerry” classic episodes, don´t you? In many of them,. Jerry used “evanescent ink” to achieve total invisibility and to drive Tom mad. Jerry punched, beated the big bulldog during its sleep and it always thinks that´s Tom. Poor Thomas, always been knocked out without knowing the reason.

Here is the parallel: our new-communist, using the powers of the “evanescent ink”, are creating the chaos inside the democratic societies. And they do exactly as Jerry´s : they rush against each “minority” group of our society and incite them against each other. Black people, women, homosexuals, indians and many others are called to the “fight”. Even muslims are incited to fight too. So, while all society is submerging into an open struggle for their mandatory “rights”, our communist are happily celebrating their achievements.

This is the reality that we are trying to unfold but our “heros”, debating over free market and capitalism, pretend that we live in a free world. They just refuse to believe in things that go against their creed. It´s a kind of thinking exactly the opposite of the leftist that thinks socialism will win, no matter how log it would take. They think the democratic new-liberalism has won – as Fukuyama stated on that infamous paper from the early 90´s – and those countries that hasn´t embrace it yet must be one of them , no matter how long it will take. It´s just a question of time. They proceed debating the outlines of ideal government under free-market rule. Entertained by these issues they don´t care about it until the day the roaring and rioting sound from the street outside impede them to go on.

Too late our “incredibles” hero-type will realize that instead of a free world , where the realization of human being depends on the individuals themselves, the ones that will be kicking at their front door will not be the “invisible hands” of the market, but the hands of new-comunist managing people as puppets with their slogans. At this time the puppets will find their “real enemy”: those who defend free market, democracy and the “opression” of capitalism – themselves.
But there´s no communism. Blame it on the “evanescent ink”.