Profile for Najosz Thjsza Kjras
| Field | Value |
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| Displayed name | Najosz Thjsza Kjras |
| Member number | 6388 |
| Title | Lifecrafter |
| Postcount | 794 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
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| Not yeti another photo thread in General | |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Thursday, February 8 2007 14:10
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I refuse to post photos in this photo thread until you cohere to photo thread nomenclature protocol. This is Abominable Photo Thread VI: Return of the Yeti. So there. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| Why? in General | |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Sunday, February 4 2007 19:40
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quote:*chortle* quote:SW is also unusually white and male even for internet communities, which trends IQ upwards. Because IQ tests are biased to the point of uselessness. [ Sunday, February 04, 2007 19:50: Message edited by: Protocols of the Elders of Zion ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| Why? in General | |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Sunday, February 4 2007 19:23
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quote:IQ is not a valid measurement of intelligence, and trying to lord it over people is a good indicator you're not as smart as you think you are. You've got some growing to do, kid. People are a lot more patient with you if you aren't arrogant or defensive. My name comes from a splendid work of historical inquiry which unveils the treachery of the hated Jew. (Note to self: update Pseudohistory.) [ Sunday, February 04, 2007 19:24: Message edited by: Protocols of the Elders of Zion ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| Things to improve Dikiyoba's ausome story! in General | |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Sunday, February 4 2007 16:58
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Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| George Bush in General | |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Sunday, February 4 2007 16:41
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quote:If by 'terrorism at home' you mean 'Arabs at home', then yes. The European relationship with Israel has been defined by bigotry, whether positive or negative. Zionism was allowed to establish itself among English Jews, who were by far the most powerful and influential of the Jewish communities in Europe, because Victorian England believed the Jews controlled the world and making nice with them would result in controlling the world by proxy. Once the Holocaust got it out of their system, the Brits eventually let the Israelis go because they were too much of a nuisance to hold onto. The rest of Europe detests Israel because, obviously, they are anti-Semites. (The European left, generally, no - but anti-Israelism isn't, like in the US, confined to the radical left in Europe, and that's why.) They don't much like Palestine, except as a tool to tweak off the Israelis. And now the Palestines are part of the Arab unterkultur they hate so much, it's time to swing towards Israel. Why? Obviously, there are no Palestinians in Europe; for the most part, European Muslims are Turks and Maghrebis, with the occasional African Arab - Libyans, Egyptians, etc. - thrown in for leavening. But Islamophobia is necessary to keep the European economy going. The Islamic underclass is becoming obvious - you need poor people to support a capitalist economy, and the Europeans have done an excellent job of making sure native Europeans don't get poor enough for that to work. So you wind up with socialism for the upper class and capitalism for the underclass - you have to justify that somehow, not just legally (the citizenship mechanism does that) but socially, so nobody changes the laws. And how do you manage that? Why, Islamophobia, of course! Slander their religion constantly, discriminate against their religious practices, make them mean and desperate, and then point and shout about the angry, angry Muslims as soon as any hothead does anything. Why Islamophobia and not anti-Turkicism or anti-Algerianism or something? Well, because Europe is united now. If you just go on and on about the dumb, savage Turke stealing our arbeit, you're gonna get Algerians from France and then what? Instead, Europe can pretend to be culturally united by bashing the underclass, who have only one thing in common: their religion. Of course, Europe is proud. They will not admit they're every bit as bad as we are, because at least Mexicans are Christian. --- Boots proffers the following: boots: What you need to factor in is the success of multiculturalism alec: Sure, but the left felt guilty about that. alec: Nobody feels too guilty about Islamophobia. boots: That is what makes it so that the only licit way to hate darky is to say that darky is incapable of tolerance. alec: Educate me here: not sure what you're talking about. alec: The darky does not know it's Ramadan? boots: The darky only knows that it is Ramadan. alec: And thus he does not know that it is Christmas. boots: Darky is not capable of liberal tolerance. boots: Therefore darky does not deserve liberal tolerance. -- I'm still for the repeal of the amendment limiting Presidents to two terms. Bush will never win another; someone that bad will get to be hated like the poison he is before eight years are up anyway. [ Sunday, February 04, 2007 16:55: Message edited by: Protocols of the Elders of Zion ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| New Comics! Featuring WtC! in General | |
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Lifecrafter
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written Saturday, February 3 2007 04:59
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Yes, because when I read Garfield I think to myself 'It's good, but could it be done with thought balloons photoshopped onto pictures?' I'm just glad Milton Friedman didn't live to see this. [ Saturday, February 03, 2007 04:59: Message edited by: Protocols of the Elders of Zion ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| George Bush in General | |
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Lifecrafter
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written Thursday, February 1 2007 23:52
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quote:A nuclear plant. Iran may or may not have nuclear ambitions. Frankly, if a pissant state like North Korea can have them unmolested, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Middle East kind of has them coming. And just because Ahminwhatever is a crazy jerk doesn't mean he'll nuke anyone. Nuclear weapons are less than useless in combat, because they bear the risk of retaliation. Not even nuclear retaliation, either; use a nuclear weapon unnecessarily and you're gonna be a pariah state forever. The US used nukes on the Empire of Japan, one of the most actively vile nations ever to blight the Earth, and it is still deservedly catching crap for that. Nuking is not done, period. It's too politically messy. That's why nukes are useful: they're a rock so heavy you can't throw it. The mere possbility of firing up the forklift and having a go is enough to get people to shake at your command, though. ... I'd like to pose an uncomfortable dilemma for you all: Iran elected the guy ruling it as democratically as you could expect. He is, in a great many ways, the Shia/Persian answer to George W. Bush. He has a lot of problems, but that's because Iran has a lot of problems. He's an anti-Semite, but France, China, Israel, and Russia are all ruled by dyed-in-the-wool Islamophobes. Doesn't mean they're angling to A-bomb Medina. That's because Ahwhatever rules on a mandate from the Iranian people, who prefer not to face nuclear retaliation, just as Chiruh and Jinwhatsit and Puwhozat and Olmastein rule under mandates from their respective people, who similarly disdain fiery atomic death. However good it might make Ahmadinejad look to nuke Tel Aviv and strut, he'd no sooner pay attention to the counsel that advises he do so than Bush did to that which advised he turn Baghdad (or, lately, Tehran) into glass. (And, of course, strut.) The American people have mastered the atom and that demands an attending level of respect. So have the Iranian people, and they're gonna deserve that same respect when it comes to going to the bargaining table. (Before anyone thinks they are snarky by using the same for North Korea: North Korea is a villainous kleptocracy that oppresses its people. The Iranians, for whatever reason, have willed the oppression onto themselves. The normal laws of diplomacy apply.) ... If you want to know how to disable the like of Ahmadinejad or Bush, it's pretty simple. Kill the rich. I'm serious. Bleed them to death. The class at the top of society (ANY SOCIETY, not just rich or poor!) continuously attempts to agglomerate more and more power and wealth until brought violently to heel. They do this in a variety of ways - much of it driven by their control of the means of acculturization. In America, the interests of the wealthy - oil billionaires, defense contracting tycoons, and other modern robber barons - are represented not just by the idiot-in-chief, but the education system that produced his backers and the society that reinforced their self-destructive behavior. In much of the Middle East, it's much the same - oil tycoons, like the Sauds, descended from old aristocracy with land in the right places, use their tremendous clout to keep the poor oppressively stupid with 'fundamentalist' Islam, which is like its Christian counterpart obsessed with keeping its followers in a pre-Enlightenment stupor. If we had invaded Iraq, redistributed useful property seized from the government-backed elite equally among the people, and held off reactionary efforts at couping the government for a few years, the place wouldn't be the insurgent haven it is now. Nobody fights on a full stomach. Nobody votes for jackasses like Bush or Ahmadinejad if they haven't skipped a few meals - or, at the very least, if they don't want to make sure others do so. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| George Bush in General | |
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Lifecrafter
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written Thursday, February 1 2007 23:12
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quote:Granted, but the dollar cost is why the human cost is being laid down. It's not the republic, it's not WMDs, it's not Saddam Hussein, it's the bottom line. quote:Halliburton is a construction and defense contractor - so yes, they don't make tanks, but I was employing metonymy. ('Halliburton' is used to represent the military-industrial complex pretty commonly, although I'll admit kind of hamhandedly.) And the more tanks that get destroyed, the more that have to be replaced. And if they get humiliatingly destroyed, why - that's an excellent opportunity for pork-clogged R&D, where the complex of companies the Pentagon contracts to (with exceptionally little actual competition, so the costs stay absurdly high) churn out marginal improvements for trillions of dollars. And yes, I said 'trillions'. That's the development cycle for you: when you have a budget larger than Congress's discretionary budget to work with - what Ludacris, a greater expert in the field than I, refers to as 'silly money' - you kind of have a free hand to spend that kind of lucre on asinine stuff. quote:Depends on where you put it. An RPG rigged into an improvised mine can destroy a modern tank just fine. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| George Bush in General | |
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Lifecrafter
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written Wednesday, January 31 2007 14:19
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quote:You're pretty close. AK-47s are more or less obsolete now; on the other hand, a $50 rocket-propelled grenade launched from a $200 RPG launcher can disable or destroy a main-battle-tank (vintage European Cold War, a.k.a. the superpower war over open plains and autobahnen that never happened) that costs more than would modern schools for half of Iraq. Who loses in that calculus? The American taxpayer, to the tune of however many millions that MBT is; and the Iraqi people - including the insurgent - to the tune of whatever the cost of that MBT could have brought them. Who gains? Whoever manufactured the tank and whoever manufactured the rocket launcher. In other words, what we have spent on Iraq has, for the most part, disappeared into the American arms industry's maw, with a brief stopover in the arms manufacturers of the People's Republic of China. To simplify it a little, and give rough figures to support it: because we bought into the myth of pre-emption, the American taxpayer has shovelled around $10,000 into Halliburton's mouth - apiece. And for every 200 such shovellings there's a human body to show for it. If you're some kind of monster and only want to count the American bodies, that's one corpse for every 100,000 living. WMDs, Saddam, and democracy were an excuse from the word go. We're footing a horrific bill to enrich the elite backers of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party. And if we are still duped, and the President is allowed his war with Iran, we will face the same costs before he is even out of office. But yes, Ahmadinejad is an evil anti-Semite and must be stopped. Preferably with billions of dollars of bombs and trillions of dollars of ships and armor. How anyone with the wits to operate a computer could be as credulous as the lot of you is beyond me. Pre-emption or no, we're spending thousands of lives for the privilege of being robbed blind. [ Wednesday, January 31, 2007 14:21: Message edited by: Protocols of the Elders of Zion ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| American - Canadian Relationships in General | |
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Lifecrafter
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written Thursday, January 18 2007 10:14
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There've been various half-serious proposals for union with Canada over the years, and they're basically wrongheaded. The right direction is south. Los Estandos Unidos de Nortamerica is a good and moral idea. After all, if we're gonna be screwing 'em, they might as well be getting alimony for it. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| Saddam Hussein's Execution in General | |
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Lifecrafter
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written Saturday, December 30 2006 19:59
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quote:He doesn't have to be a friend to UBL to be a martyr. Or popular, for that matter. People treat Hitler as a martyr, and Hitler was much, much worse, both for Germany and as a human being. quote:Prison is a terrifying hellhole where dodging fatal violence and brutal rape is a full-time job. It's difficult to wrap your mind around how horrifyingly abusive the American prison system is even if you're not deliberately ignoring it. But, of course, the concerns of fostering 'responsibility' outweigh any empathetic connection to prisoners as human beings, right? I guess I'm not old enough to have learned how to look at these problems intellectually instead of emotionally. You cozy, sanctimonious jackass. [ Saturday, December 30, 2006 20:30: Message edited by: Protocols of the Elders of Zion ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| Saddam Hussein's Execution in General | |
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Lifecrafter
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written Saturday, December 30 2006 11:32
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quote:It wasn't the right thing to do. It was wrong then and it's wrong now and just because the liberal elite in the 80s was glad they never had to deal with Nixon in the dock doesn't make it right to prevent him from receiving the criminal trial he deserved. quote:[/b] Ford's and Kissinger gave Suharto, premier of Indonesia whose sole ally was the United States, the green light to invade and attempt to completely depopulate East Timor. Ford has more blood on his hands than George W. Bush, and that takes some doing. quote:Sure will, if we bomb the hell out of them, put 2% of their population to the sword, and blame their former leaders for all of it. Democracy on the march. At the end of the day, Saddam Hussein deserved to be incarcerated permanently; he was a danger to the world. However, he was not, and this is important, tried in his capacity as leader of Iraq. If he had been, he would have been charged for different crimes, like the gassing of the Kurds or whatever else everyone likes to go on about. What he was tried for was massacring a village for producing someone who took a shot at him. That's a ridiculous and self-centered act, and can be distinguished from the standard behavior of statesmanship. And Saddam Hussein's execution means nothing. Everyone in Iraq wanted him gone, because they labor under the delusion it means we're going to leave them to their own business. Once it sinks in it doesn't, there'll be a couple of hardliners who treat him as a martyr, but only a couple. For the most part, business will continue as usual in Iraq. And that's the most horrible thing that could happen there. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| 5353: Pseudohistory Phatassathon in General | |
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written Friday, December 22 2006 23:32
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Fun fact: that was actually one of the primary motivations behind Britain encouraging the early settlement of Israel. (That encouragement was later withdrawn, but the project was initiated under the assumption that whoever influenced the Jews best held the keys to the Earth.) Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| 5353: Pseudohistory Phatassathon in General | |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Friday, December 22 2006 10:38
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The third entry (out of the scheduled thirty) is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A hoax perpetrated by Russian reactionaries at the turn of the 20th century, the Protocols ostensibly describe the plotting of the Jews to dominate the world and oppress their Christian subjects. Long story short, the Protocols presume that the Jews are a parasitic race who use their position of power in society (something the Protocols also assume them to have) in order to control the world from behind the scenes. According to the Protocols, Jewish plots include progressive taxation, every major novel ideology of the 19th century (except, of course, absolutist monarchy), world government, women's suffrage, democracy, freedom of speech, and human rights, porno, atheism, depressions, wars, and foreign debt. Freemasonry is also purported to be a Jewish conspiracy, mostly because of its republican leanings. The Protocols can be pinned down as a classic example of the phoenomenon of false consciousness, especially in the Marxist sense. They were best-received among the marginal elements of the economy - literate peasants and factory workers - because the supposed Jewish plots include both obvious causes of their misery and the suggested reforms of the intelligensia in response to them. The intent of the Protocols is to foster loyalty among the masses to a traditional elite that was essentially responsible for every malady that it threw on the Jewish people - and in so doing, urge them to suppress reforms in their own interest, and destroy any possible solidarity with Jews in the same position. (The Jews of Russia were not any better-off, in general, than its Christians.) The Protocols remain popular throughout the Third World for exactly that reason: they suggest an easily-contained enemy responsible for the woes of the poor, and shifts blame away from those already in power. The Protocols are widely understood to be a plagaristic forgery, even by their proponents, and known not to detail any real meeting between Jewish elders. However, there are a few unfortunate exceptions: the authenticity of the Protocols is widely endorsed by Arab leaders due to the ongoing conflict with Israel. The Protocols are also accepted widely as true and well-read in fairly developed countries, such as Turkey and Japan; in both countries, it is on the bestseller list. The Australian new-age magazine Hard Evidence published a long article endorsing the authenticity of the Protocols and blaming the Jews for the Bali bombings of 2002; unfortunately, this seems to be illustrative of a trend in the West. Outside Field and Bias: The Protocols, unlike Illig and Blavatsky's work, are not intended in any serious sense as legitimate works of historical inquiry. However, they do display a clear bias: they're intended as propaganda to sour the beneficiaries of radical programs to the people promoting them using a historically marginalized ethnic group. The Protocols have wide traction in politically closed societies with wide income disparities, which are as diverse in economic and political circumstances as Saudi Arabia and Japan but share a presumed political consensus and horrific distribution-of-wealth issues in common. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| I Have A Beef With You All in General | |
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Lifecrafter
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written Thursday, December 14 2006 20:52
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quote:Place your bets now, ladies and gentlemen! Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| I Have A Beef With You All in General | |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Thursday, December 14 2006 20:42
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Furthermore, I am neither a science major (unless you count political science, which you very seldom should) nor a debate-team jock (I debated for a year in high school) either. I think the only person he actually defamed with that was *i, who was more or less the most reasonable, well-learned man in the argument and who is, not coincidentally, a veteran policy debator (THOSE are the jocks; I just did a little LD and PF) and a grad student in nuclear physics. But invective is always fun. [ Thursday, December 14, 2006 20:43: Message edited by: Helena Blavatsky ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| I Have A Beef With You All in General | |
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Lifecrafter
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written Thursday, December 14 2006 19:53
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I will readily admit I am not a physicist or any other kind of scientist and do not deserve the esteem *i does in that discussion. However, the duties of *i's office, and the fact he is a far more polite person, prevented him from calling a spade a Goddamn spade in the Quantum Physics & Genetics (or whatever it was called) topic. Synergy holds beliefs, and practices those beliefs (apparently for a living, I might add, which is why I call him a fraud in specific instead of just a liar) in direct contravention of what he knows to be true. His efforts to convince us of those beliefs were disingenuous, and his continued efforts to debase our intelligence is an extension of that. Debate with him is pointless outside of his own shifting, inconsistent territory. It's like playing a game of Mao: amusing if you know what's going on, but pointless as an intellectual exercise. He can labor under whatever delusions he likes. I gave up on trying to convince him of anything, because by all appearances he already knows all the benefits medicine has to offer and simply denies them in public because he profits - figuratively and literally - from doing so. However, his efforts at conversion made me angry. I will not abide a man profiting from human misery, and ignorance is the worst kind of misery. So the posts from *i and myself serve separate, converging purposes. *i's posts informed in a way only he could - and mine served, or at least I hope, to prevent disinformation. When it comes to fighting intellectual fraud, science and abuse are two prongs of the same spear. I am not good for the science, but plenty good for the abuse. I humbly submit that, as a moral man, I had no other choice. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| I Have A Beef With You All in General | |
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Lifecrafter
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written Thursday, December 14 2006 19:21
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quote:It's not an offense if it's appropriate. :P You know, Alorael, I really don't like Alec-bashing becoming some kind of popularity contest. In the thread itself you were perfectly happy with my 'offending'. Which means either I've become the extremist people set up as a straw man to set themselves up as moderate by comparison or you're just bowing to peer pressure. Both strike me as unattractive situations: the first because I make a pretty lame straw man and the second because you're better than that. quote:You missed your calling being a Wikipedia editor; you belong in stand-up. quote:See, one part of this defeats the other: he skimmed exactly because he was unwilling to listen to reason. There's a reason when my opponent has a legitimate interest in an intellectual discussion I try to run what they have to say point-by-point instead of by summary. It keeps me honest; I can't do like he did and just disregard some vital part of the argument outright. For instance, Synergy didn't acknowledge until the next-to-last post that he rejected 'allopathy' without any strictly reasonable basis, never acknowledged his error in the statement about ionizing energy (he stated he probably got his source wrong, but unless he got it fundamentally wrong he was operating under a crucial misunderstanding), and when he was outmaneuvered by people more committed to science than he (I only count among that honorable body because I am not a venomous serpent in human form) attempted to abuse his way out of the conversation: (a) complained about *i, kel, etc. demanding explicit definitions in vain; (b) tried to turn the argument into 'philosophy', which he believes means 'making things up at random'; (c) attempted to shame me out of the discussion from the word go; (d) turned it into a panegyric against higher education, claiming knowledge of experience (and never acknowledging the fact that people older than him strenuously disagree with him, but...) (e) finally, when cornered as an abusive charlatan, attempted to erase all trace of his shame to save face. If any of that sounds to you like someone who could be prevailed upon to listen to reason, Alo, I have a bridge you might be interested in. Things would have been better if we had been 'polite', right? Indeed: I was the only person in the debate who was anything less than obsequiously, falling-over-backwards courteous to him from the word go, and yet he was already to (b) by the time I even got involved. Personally, I think my contribution was the most constructive. I exposed his nonsense for what it was without varnishing that exposure with warrantless politesse, rejected his ridiculous efforts to set the tone of the debate as a Carrollian tea-party blather, and when he became truculent shamed him as the fraud he was. But, of course, it was abrasive, and it is so easy to discredit someone for being abrasive. So easy, in fact, you need no other evidence. (I have yet to see anyone, outside of Synergy, actually dispute the substance of my posts; they go after me for being mean, mean Alexander Kyras, because that is enough to make what I have to say worthless.) Sometimes you need silk, Alo, and sometimes you need sandpaper. That's just how life is. [ Thursday, December 14, 2006 19:41: Message edited by: Helena Blavatsky ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| 1000th in General | |
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written Thursday, December 14 2006 18:40
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quote:You did WTC. :( [ Thursday, December 14, 2006 18:41: Message edited by: Helena Blavatsky ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| I Have A Beef With You All in General | |
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written Thursday, December 14 2006 18:36
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Well, there's that and there's the fact you're a titanic fraud no morally different from a street pusher, but I suppose you're free to choose which is more important to you. [ Thursday, December 14, 2006 18:39: Message edited by: Helena Blavatsky ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| I Have A Beef With You All in General | |
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written Thursday, December 14 2006 18:05
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quote:So I am the Borg! Woo hoo! Also: since when, exactly, is Robin an 'oldbie'? He's like one of those variable stars that goes between intense radio activity and comparative silence regularly, except instead of radio waves it's piss and instead of a star it's a contemptuous reactionary man-child. And you're basically drinking it by the flagon and shouting 'huzzah!' with him as if it is ale and this is some kind of disconcertingly homoerotic Renfaire. [ Thursday, December 14, 2006 18:05: Message edited by: Helena Blavatsky ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| I Have A Beef With You All in General | |
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written Thursday, December 14 2006 17:36
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quote:Right, because if it had gotten too much worse there would have been violence. :rolleyes: quote:As per usual, you reactionary, posturing dim-wit, you entirely miss the point. (1) On 'ideal English': The fad of Internet-persecuting poor grammarians and spellers on SW was just that - a fad. As much as you're trying to strike some kind of bold pose here, you're not actually proscribing anything that hasn't fallen into disuse already. Maybe it would have suited you to be such a hardkör hipztr rebal back when you hung around with the high-strung tools that went on to found Polaris - they were the soi-disant grammar-nazis who went into foaming rages at spelling and grammar errors. Only no, that wouldn't have made you look good. Instead, you jump on whatever looks like the bandwagon to you. Way to go! You're respectable on the Internet. (2) On unique viewpoints: Every viewpoint is unique; some are more valid than others. Your conversation on this subject is a thinly-veiled diatribe against the members who debated Synergy; it's thinly veiled and insubstantial on Synergy's actual behavior because (a) you don't like his opponents in the discussion but (b) you have no compelling intellectual reason to defend his preening, risibly false babble, and you know it. I certainly like boiler-plate naturopath quantum/philosobabble being referred to as a 'unique viewpoint', which I think in context means 'Alec disagrees with it'. That obviously means either I'm somehow the Borg or you're a tiny, tiny man too rhetorically inept to disguise his ridiculous grudges. I like the former answer, myself: Seven of Nine was pretty hot. [ Thursday, December 14, 2006 17:54: Message edited by: Helena Blavatsky ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
| 5353: Pseudohistory Phatassathon in General | |
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written Thursday, December 14 2006 11:24
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Helena Blavatsky is the second entry in our august countdown. This Victorian-era woman was born, raised, and lead a portion of her life in what was then Russia, but would lead her productive years in New York as a naturalized citizen of the US, where she wrote a number of pseudo-scientific, mysticist works, founded the Theosophist Society, and provided the mysticist framework for various later cultural abominations. Blavatsky's contribution to pseudohistory: the doctrines of Theosophy, which among other things claim a higher truth received from Indian mystics. (Indian mysticism is in fact a recurring theme of Victorian pseudohistory.) Mme Blavatsky's ridiculous sociology is worth mentioning elsewhere, but is not directly within the scope of our inquiry. Instead, of interest to us is the certainly pseudohistorical thesis of the Root Races, a series of seven races from which all human being spring. (We have seen five of them, and the later the race the better.) Of course, this wouldn't be proper pseudohistory if it acknowledged what we know now to be true: that humanity either arose as one entity or is so closely interrelated as makes no difference. The Root Race theory dismissed several groups, including a few Asian tribes and the native Tasmanians, as semi-bestial; it regarded a good fragment of humanity as the product of crossbreeds from the previous, Atlantean and Lemurian root-races; and it, of course, obsessively doted on the achievements of the 'Aryan' root race and its descendants (take a wild guess who those might be). Needless to say, Blavatsky with equal obsessiveness derided the culture and achievements of the 'Semitic' people, which is particularly bewildering given that she never disambiguated them from her Aryans. The best part of Theosophy is its ridiculous historical timeline: the earliest epoch of man is supposed to have occurred in the time of the dinosaurs, 150 million years ago, and various continents and seas are supposed to have existed more or less arbitrarily, in a fashion later thoroughgoingly debunked by plate tectonics. Absurdly, people still believe in all of this, including, among others, the head of public education in Washington State. And while neither movement adhered to its beliefs directly, Theosophy would proceed to heavily inform Nazi/Thule mysticism and the New Age movement. Outside Field and Bias: With the Victorians it's really kind of hard to know where to begin. It is pretty safe to assert that, claims of received wisdom aside, Mme. Blavatsky's ludicrous hypotheses are mostly the result of making crap up more or less at random. However, she had a relationship with several burgeoning social sciences which explains the direction that random crap took and the terminology it borrowed: Novel (and for the most part, valid) linguistics, which arose to explain the fact, newly discovered by the West, that the languages of north India were apparently Indo-European; leading linguists hypothesized the existence of an Aryan language that spread from central Persia eastward. Several of those responded bitterly to pop sociology turning their fairly valid science to form ridiculous and evil racialist doctrines. Alone among Victorian scientists, when linguists spoke of "Aryan", they generally implied only a language, nothing more or less. Anthropology, which was just getting off of the ground; at the time, antrhopology obsessively categorized the physiognomy of human beings, and that categorization lead to a number of racialist theories, including Blavatsky's. And most importantly, orientalist mysticism. Blavatsky's work cadged liberally from Hindu writ and dogma, but mostly to appropriate terms for a great pseudo-religious fiction. It's kind of difficult to absorb exactly what she means unless you're already willing to accept it as true; this owes in great deal to her appropriation of (contextually) meaningless Hindu terminology, which makes her writings almost nonsensical to a skeptical observer. Those three taken together granted a lot of legitimacy among otherwise reasonable people to Blavatsky's ramblings, especially claims that she had received wisdom from yogas and other Eastern mystics - claims that would be difficult to falsify at the time. The tragic offspring of Blavatsky's Theosophy can be seen in the racism of Nazi Germany and recent SW topics. [ Thursday, December 14, 2006 20:55: Message edited by: Helena Blavatsky ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
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written Wednesday, December 13 2006 23:27
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quote:By 'our' you mean yours and mine, right? We're pretty much the only people left who actually remember Misc, along with maybe Thuryl and a couple of others. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
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written Wednesday, December 13 2006 23:24
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quote:FYT Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |