There are people who are interested in factual clarifications and I suspect they make up most of your readership. I like to think I am one of those people. Your writing patiently takes apart many of the nostrums that govern modern opinion, and I have always valued a point of view that challenges conventional wisdom.
I got a sense of tiredness from your second-to-last paragraph. Please don't give up! I, for one, would miss your blog, and I'm sure there are many others who feel the same way.
An extremely well written presentation that illustrates a lot of your usual concerns but seems to go well beyond them.
The confusion in the world can be explained by a long period of reality suppression by the elites in our culture and now, unsurprisingly, we cannot tell the difference between appearances and reality.
A devastatingly simple yet profound diagnosis that has me smiling appreciatively even as it depresses me even more.
The elites do not pay attention to reality because they do not have to. Consequences are for the little people to deal with.
This is why things like "COVID", "Hurricanes" and "the Taliban" have them so tied up in knots. These are enemies that cannot be readily bargained with, bought off, or convinced to bother someone less important.
Interesting opinions , some i agree with although i believe political thinking is derived from life as we know it and we dont all know it the same , we never will as the greeks today will tell you.
Economists , scientists , philosophers , politicians , are any of them wholly correct and free of corruption in presenting their views ? Ive not found one yet , i put that down to human nature , everyone has their price but what good are they if they are willing to present lies to us and falsify evidence , we spend too much time trying to get to the truth , what a waste , do they realize we dont trust them anymore ?
UK , Russia , EU , Ukraine , Afghanistan , an interesting melting pot of choice , to get a realistic answer to the questions about why they chose the path they did and do the missing ingredient the great influencer and enforcer has to be covered , sadly it doesnt get a mention but talking of facts it is certainly a fact that the USA pushed and cajoled all of these in the direction chosen by the great master of the universe the USA , it still is , what a cesspit ,
if the USA wants your stuff hand it over or they will apply tariffs
if the USA dont like certain countries around the world and want to make them suffer they will , as the great big bully that they are , impose sanctions on them and then they will threaten all other countries around the world that if they too dont also impose sanctions and continue to trade with that country the USA dont like they too will have sanctions imposed on them , then if any of them break the USA,s sanctions rule the USA will send round their heavies , now called the big armada .
The USA has lived above its means so long that its deindustrialization has seen jobs sent overseas to get it done cheaper for bigger USA profits , but only profits for the already rich, USA debt is staggering its in the trillions of dollars , they now plan to abandon that debt and try and switch away from using the dollar to using a bitcoins , this is basically a transfer of ownership from state into private hands and if those trying to push it through succeed , any dollars held by anyone across the world will be worthless bits of paper or worthless entries in ledgers and bank accounts overnight.
The USA is killing its own people , grabbing them off the street pulling them out of their home or their car trying to grab children from their schools , from shops and restaurants to imprison them until its decided if they can be released or sent to a prison in El Salvador.
The USA wants to control every drop of oil in the world , if you dont agree to hand over control to them or sell your oil cheaply to them thry will kidnap your president or prime minister or take over your country and everything in it or even attack it and use extreme force just ask Iraq , since the weapons of mass destruction lies all Iraqs oul is controlled by USA , the USA sell it worldwide all monies received go into a USA bank in new york and if Iraq does what its told and fills its government and industry leaders with people the USA like then USA will give Iraqi government some of their oul money but as was recently experienced by Iraqi government when then employed someone in their government whos religious slant was shia rather sunni their IRAQI OIL MONEY from new york was stopped .
I didn't know the man personally, but I have watched a lot of interviews, shows, and presentations from him. He struck me as humble, always stressing "to the best of our current knowledge". He seemed to genuinely want to educate people and engage in good faith debate when he disagreed with others.
To the best of my knowledge I've never heard anyone say anything to the contrary of my opinion of him, nor have I heard anyone suggest that he was wrong. Look him up on youtube, there's lots of stuff there, and judge for yourself.
Thank you very much for this insightful article. It very much chimes with how I view society: I often wonder whether I am the only person who sees the emperor has no clothes, and it makes it hard for me to interact with others, who always seem to have fallen for one Appearance or another. As if you are the only sober person in a world full of drunks. (And where being sober is increasingly viewed as an offence, which feels very threatening).
I used to work as a financial journalist, but when my children some years ago could opt out of economics class in high school, I advised them to do it: I told them economics as taught in schools these days is like astrology: a very complex theory that requires many years of study to master, but which unfortunately holds no truck with reality whatsoever. This was in the time we saw "zirp" and "nirp"; phenomena that were quite out of range from normal economic theories , and which caused a lot of of awkwardness and stutters, but did not lead to the conclusion that the theories must be wrong. Your article sheds light on this strange attitude, which is seen in more and more aspects of science and politics.
"It very much chimes with how I view society: I often wonder whether I am the only person who sees the emperor has no clothes, and it makes it hard for me to interact with others, who always seem to have fallen for one Appearance or another."
Sad isn't it? Lonely too. You aren't the only one who sees this, but you are in a very, very small minority. Welcome to the club. I find it's best to keep my mouth shut and carry on as best I can, and mostly just hang out by myself. Pointing out the logical fallacies of the herd in one's community just gets one shunned as "the local idiot". What is one to do?
Don't know if people noticed much, but Philosophy degrees back in the day were often structured in terms of categories as opposed to themes. General Philosophy, Philosophical Logic, Moral Philosophy etc. instead of Themes. Maybe they still are, especially in the more traditional places.
If I am wiser today, I might prefer to have written an essay then about Universals (or general terms or ideas) by referring to this divergence.
Philosophy is so much more interesting, alive and accessible when viewed through the prism of Themes such as Appearance vs Reality, probably the most preeminent among them, through which nearly all others must pass, repeatedly.
NB: Isaiah Berlin's essay The Hedgehog and the Fox ostensibly about Tolstoy's view of history might be of interest and further thought.
It reminds me of when I did a literature review of Central Bank Independence back in the mid-90s. All the papers seemed to define CBI as a CB focused on keeping inflation down, and would then determine whether the CB was independent by how well it was doing at keeping inflation down. And then there was the paper that found no significant correlation between CBI and GDP growth but still claimed that countries with CBI were better off.
1. "The apparent, observable structure of the universe could not, therefore, be used as evidence to deduce its real nature. Indeed, the reverse was true. And because the circle was the perfect form, all observations and phenomena had to ultimately be reconciled with that fact, no matter how complicated the manipulation of the Phenomena needed to be....
My argument here is that the legacy of this kind of a priori, closed-circle reasoning has had a much greater effect on western culture than we might imagine, and that tits method—starting from an arbitrary position and doing whatever violence to facts is necessary to fit them in—not only underlies a lot of our general culture today, but even influences much of what passes for political thinking, not least by those who don’t believe they are using it."
If there is one thing that would explain The Rise Of The West it is the idea that you look to the empirical evidence as it in fact is (or is not), and ignore what the forms or the traditions tell us about what kind of what evidence should be there.
It is this that gave rise to the scientific method.
2. "And certainly not in the case of Ukraine. I was interested to hear about the “initiatives” of the European Commission over the last few years, wondering if they had somehow discovered a new source of weaponry or manpower to continue the fight. No, all these manoeuvres were just clever wheezes to make more money appear. (And by “money” in the modern sense we mean ones and zeroes in bank accounts, not something you can take out and spend.)"
Surely by now, you know that governments are masters at financial legerdemain, at finding creative, even dishonest, even nakedly fraudulent ways to finance their pet projects, and the european political class has no priority other than the War On Russia.
Brilliant breakdown of how idealism turned economics into a theology rather than a tool. The bit about Soviet Afghanistan and the phantom 'working class' is telling becuase I saw similar blind spots in policy work where frameworks override ground truth. When the only question becomes 'what do the equations say' instead of 'what actually works,' practioners get sidelined by theorists. Solid read.
Sorry but your comments are mostly full of based political opinion nonsense and fabrications. The USA is a country with clear-cut laws that are being enforced to protect America and Americans. Anyone being pulled from their homes for reasons supposedly unknown is a fabrication. At this time, the US government has a priority duty to remove non-citizens that have committed crimes even if they have to go into homes "legally' and pull them out. Those that have not committed a crime have a responsibility to identify themselves and self-deport, which will be paid for by the US government. Those that don't will have to live in the shadows as being illegal and forfeit their hope of ever becoming an American. The real force to throw illegals out of America hasn't even began yet. If this doesn't happen, then the America that people around the world wish to invade will eventually become a country most people that escaped the grim reaper will wish to escape from. Turn yourself in and leave America if you are an illegal invader if you are in search of a better future. Americans are about to go 1865 viral to save America from democrat evil once again. Thanks and please refrain from spreading more malarkey BS.
I have discovered your substack only recently and enjoy it very much . Alas, for any support or contribution there are only links that require credit card info, which I have sworn not to put on the internet anymore. PayPal not possible ? Are you on Tipee ?
The answers are not always where they should be , thats not an accident , those with greater wealth have greater control , of everything , they dont want everyone to be better educated , education then gets politicized , universities become the enemy of those with the greater wealth they fear competition and fear exposure of their wrongdoing , again i will say this is human nature , being good and being fair does not come naturally to people who want more or to those who already have more and dont want to lose it.
I have always thought that Tolkein was a scholar of early English history, touched by a an unfortunate Romanticism; looking in vain for a heroic mythologised, specifically English Anglo-Saxon history in the literature. It is a dangerous ambition for prose historians to indulge, as the literary mythology didn't exist., save by borrowing or creating it. The Anglo-Saxons are not sound material for Romanticism.
It seemed to me Tolkein must have read the new literary Fantasism of George McDonald or slightly later, David Lindsay (he was a historian, his instinct is to look for sources); and tried imaginatively to create out of it a usable Anglo-Saxon mythology, of a great struggle between the heroism of an uplifting Anglo-Saxonism in its struggle with the Norman Yoke; although both were history that is, essentially prosaic. It has, however proved a saleable literary commodity in a commercial world.
I always thought that Tolkien's Hobbits had it easy. All they had to do was to chuck The One Ring into Mouth Doom and the problem was fixed for all eternity.
In our world, we can't get rid of power. Even if we don't like it, don't want it, wouldn't take it, all that means is that someone else will, and we may not like what that someone else does with his new-found power. Not only can we not live without it, those around us may use it against us.
Even worse, power is What Gets Stuff Done. We can't live with it, we can't live without it.
Except it wasn't. Tolkien didn't write much about the Fourth Age which follows the defeat of Sauron, but in what he did there are dark hints of the continuing existence of evil.
Which is hardly surprising, given that he was a staunch Catholic.
Aurelien,
There are people who are interested in factual clarifications and I suspect they make up most of your readership. I like to think I am one of those people. Your writing patiently takes apart many of the nostrums that govern modern opinion, and I have always valued a point of view that challenges conventional wisdom.
I got a sense of tiredness from your second-to-last paragraph. Please don't give up! I, for one, would miss your blog, and I'm sure there are many others who feel the same way.
S.
I second that.
Here here!!
Thank you Aurelian.
An extremely well written presentation that illustrates a lot of your usual concerns but seems to go well beyond them.
The confusion in the world can be explained by a long period of reality suppression by the elites in our culture and now, unsurprisingly, we cannot tell the difference between appearances and reality.
A devastatingly simple yet profound diagnosis that has me smiling appreciatively even as it depresses me even more.
Thanks again.
The elites do not pay attention to reality because they do not have to. Consequences are for the little people to deal with.
This is why things like "COVID", "Hurricanes" and "the Taliban" have them so tied up in knots. These are enemies that cannot be readily bargained with, bought off, or convinced to bother someone less important.
Interesting opinions , some i agree with although i believe political thinking is derived from life as we know it and we dont all know it the same , we never will as the greeks today will tell you.
Economists , scientists , philosophers , politicians , are any of them wholly correct and free of corruption in presenting their views ? Ive not found one yet , i put that down to human nature , everyone has their price but what good are they if they are willing to present lies to us and falsify evidence , we spend too much time trying to get to the truth , what a waste , do they realize we dont trust them anymore ?
UK , Russia , EU , Ukraine , Afghanistan , an interesting melting pot of choice , to get a realistic answer to the questions about why they chose the path they did and do the missing ingredient the great influencer and enforcer has to be covered , sadly it doesnt get a mention but talking of facts it is certainly a fact that the USA pushed and cajoled all of these in the direction chosen by the great master of the universe the USA , it still is , what a cesspit ,
if the USA wants your stuff hand it over or they will apply tariffs
if the USA dont like certain countries around the world and want to make them suffer they will , as the great big bully that they are , impose sanctions on them and then they will threaten all other countries around the world that if they too dont also impose sanctions and continue to trade with that country the USA dont like they too will have sanctions imposed on them , then if any of them break the USA,s sanctions rule the USA will send round their heavies , now called the big armada .
The USA has lived above its means so long that its deindustrialization has seen jobs sent overseas to get it done cheaper for bigger USA profits , but only profits for the already rich, USA debt is staggering its in the trillions of dollars , they now plan to abandon that debt and try and switch away from using the dollar to using a bitcoins , this is basically a transfer of ownership from state into private hands and if those trying to push it through succeed , any dollars held by anyone across the world will be worthless bits of paper or worthless entries in ledgers and bank accounts overnight.
The USA is killing its own people , grabbing them off the street pulling them out of their home or their car trying to grab children from their schools , from shops and restaurants to imprison them until its decided if they can be released or sent to a prison in El Salvador.
The USA wants to control every drop of oil in the world , if you dont agree to hand over control to them or sell your oil cheaply to them thry will kidnap your president or prime minister or take over your country and everything in it or even attack it and use extreme force just ask Iraq , since the weapons of mass destruction lies all Iraqs oul is controlled by USA , the USA sell it worldwide all monies received go into a USA bank in new york and if Iraq does what its told and fills its government and industry leaders with people the USA like then USA will give Iraqi government some of their oul money but as was recently experienced by Iraqi government when then employed someone in their government whos religious slant was shia rather sunni their IRAQI OIL MONEY from new york was stopped .
So what does anyone propose to do about it?
Give me a hint , what can i do ?
If I had answers, I would have spoken them long ago.
Nowhere is it written that there has to be a happy ending.
"Economists , scientists , philosophers , politicians , are any of them wholly correct and free of corruption in presenting their views ?"
Carl Sagan?
How can you always tell ?
I didn't know the man personally, but I have watched a lot of interviews, shows, and presentations from him. He struck me as humble, always stressing "to the best of our current knowledge". He seemed to genuinely want to educate people and engage in good faith debate when he disagreed with others.
To the best of my knowledge I've never heard anyone say anything to the contrary of my opinion of him, nor have I heard anyone suggest that he was wrong. Look him up on youtube, there's lots of stuff there, and judge for yourself.
Thank you very much for this insightful article. It very much chimes with how I view society: I often wonder whether I am the only person who sees the emperor has no clothes, and it makes it hard for me to interact with others, who always seem to have fallen for one Appearance or another. As if you are the only sober person in a world full of drunks. (And where being sober is increasingly viewed as an offence, which feels very threatening).
I used to work as a financial journalist, but when my children some years ago could opt out of economics class in high school, I advised them to do it: I told them economics as taught in schools these days is like astrology: a very complex theory that requires many years of study to master, but which unfortunately holds no truck with reality whatsoever. This was in the time we saw "zirp" and "nirp"; phenomena that were quite out of range from normal economic theories , and which caused a lot of of awkwardness and stutters, but did not lead to the conclusion that the theories must be wrong. Your article sheds light on this strange attitude, which is seen in more and more aspects of science and politics.
"It very much chimes with how I view society: I often wonder whether I am the only person who sees the emperor has no clothes, and it makes it hard for me to interact with others, who always seem to have fallen for one Appearance or another."
Sad isn't it? Lonely too. You aren't the only one who sees this, but you are in a very, very small minority. Welcome to the club. I find it's best to keep my mouth shut and carry on as best I can, and mostly just hang out by myself. Pointing out the logical fallacies of the herd in one's community just gets one shunned as "the local idiot". What is one to do?
Don't know if people noticed much, but Philosophy degrees back in the day were often structured in terms of categories as opposed to themes. General Philosophy, Philosophical Logic, Moral Philosophy etc. instead of Themes. Maybe they still are, especially in the more traditional places.
If I am wiser today, I might prefer to have written an essay then about Universals (or general terms or ideas) by referring to this divergence.
Philosophy is so much more interesting, alive and accessible when viewed through the prism of Themes such as Appearance vs Reality, probably the most preeminent among them, through which nearly all others must pass, repeatedly.
NB: Isaiah Berlin's essay The Hedgehog and the Fox ostensibly about Tolstoy's view of history might be of interest and further thought.
Mortimer Adlers's "Great Ideas" guides to his Great Books series take a thematic approach like the one you're suggesting.
I would also recommend Whitehead's _Adventures of Ideas_.
Possibly the funniest article I've read in months. Keep them coming.
Muy interesante su ensayo.
Started reading this at about 11PM because I couldn't fall asleep. Thank you.
It reminds me of when I did a literature review of Central Bank Independence back in the mid-90s. All the papers seemed to define CBI as a CB focused on keeping inflation down, and would then determine whether the CB was independent by how well it was doing at keeping inflation down. And then there was the paper that found no significant correlation between CBI and GDP growth but still claimed that countries with CBI were better off.
1. "The apparent, observable structure of the universe could not, therefore, be used as evidence to deduce its real nature. Indeed, the reverse was true. And because the circle was the perfect form, all observations and phenomena had to ultimately be reconciled with that fact, no matter how complicated the manipulation of the Phenomena needed to be....
My argument here is that the legacy of this kind of a priori, closed-circle reasoning has had a much greater effect on western culture than we might imagine, and that tits method—starting from an arbitrary position and doing whatever violence to facts is necessary to fit them in—not only underlies a lot of our general culture today, but even influences much of what passes for political thinking, not least by those who don’t believe they are using it."
If there is one thing that would explain The Rise Of The West it is the idea that you look to the empirical evidence as it in fact is (or is not), and ignore what the forms or the traditions tell us about what kind of what evidence should be there.
It is this that gave rise to the scientific method.
2. "And certainly not in the case of Ukraine. I was interested to hear about the “initiatives” of the European Commission over the last few years, wondering if they had somehow discovered a new source of weaponry or manpower to continue the fight. No, all these manoeuvres were just clever wheezes to make more money appear. (And by “money” in the modern sense we mean ones and zeroes in bank accounts, not something you can take out and spend.)"
Surely by now, you know that governments are masters at financial legerdemain, at finding creative, even dishonest, even nakedly fraudulent ways to finance their pet projects, and the european political class has no priority other than the War On Russia.
Brilliant breakdown of how idealism turned economics into a theology rather than a tool. The bit about Soviet Afghanistan and the phantom 'working class' is telling becuase I saw similar blind spots in policy work where frameworks override ground truth. When the only question becomes 'what do the equations say' instead of 'what actually works,' practioners get sidelined by theorists. Solid read.
Sorry but your comments are mostly full of based political opinion nonsense and fabrications. The USA is a country with clear-cut laws that are being enforced to protect America and Americans. Anyone being pulled from their homes for reasons supposedly unknown is a fabrication. At this time, the US government has a priority duty to remove non-citizens that have committed crimes even if they have to go into homes "legally' and pull them out. Those that have not committed a crime have a responsibility to identify themselves and self-deport, which will be paid for by the US government. Those that don't will have to live in the shadows as being illegal and forfeit their hope of ever becoming an American. The real force to throw illegals out of America hasn't even began yet. If this doesn't happen, then the America that people around the world wish to invade will eventually become a country most people that escaped the grim reaper will wish to escape from. Turn yourself in and leave America if you are an illegal invader if you are in search of a better future. Americans are about to go 1865 viral to save America from democrat evil once again. Thanks and please refrain from spreading more malarkey BS.
His Trumpian televangelist sermon is incomprehensible in the context of the essay.
Brain damage.
I have discovered your substack only recently and enjoy it very much . Alas, for any support or contribution there are only links that require credit card info, which I have sworn not to put on the internet anymore. PayPal not possible ? Are you on Tipee ?
The answers are not always where they should be , thats not an accident , those with greater wealth have greater control , of everything , they dont want everyone to be better educated , education then gets politicized , universities become the enemy of those with the greater wealth they fear competition and fear exposure of their wrongdoing , again i will say this is human nature , being good and being fair does not come naturally to people who want more or to those who already have more and dont want to lose it.
Concerning Human Nature, it might be interesting to read The Dawn of Everything by David Weingrow and David Graeber
I have always thought that Tolkein was a scholar of early English history, touched by a an unfortunate Romanticism; looking in vain for a heroic mythologised, specifically English Anglo-Saxon history in the literature. It is a dangerous ambition for prose historians to indulge, as the literary mythology didn't exist., save by borrowing or creating it. The Anglo-Saxons are not sound material for Romanticism.
It seemed to me Tolkein must have read the new literary Fantasism of George McDonald or slightly later, David Lindsay (he was a historian, his instinct is to look for sources); and tried imaginatively to create out of it a usable Anglo-Saxon mythology, of a great struggle between the heroism of an uplifting Anglo-Saxonism in its struggle with the Norman Yoke; although both were history that is, essentially prosaic. It has, however proved a saleable literary commodity in a commercial world.
I always thought that Tolkien's Hobbits had it easy. All they had to do was to chuck The One Ring into Mouth Doom and the problem was fixed for all eternity.
In our world, we can't get rid of power. Even if we don't like it, don't want it, wouldn't take it, all that means is that someone else will, and we may not like what that someone else does with his new-found power. Not only can we not live without it, those around us may use it against us.
Even worse, power is What Gets Stuff Done. We can't live with it, we can't live without it.
"... and the problem was fixed for all eternity."
Except it wasn't. Tolkien didn't write much about the Fourth Age which follows the defeat of Sauron, but in what he did there are dark hints of the continuing existence of evil.
Which is hardly surprising, given that he was a staunch Catholic.