Neema Parvini (Academic Agent) gives his analysis of why the online right will remain politically irrelevant. In his videos, he is far from a dispassionate analyst and lets his emotions carry him away in a manner I find ultimately unforgivable. So, I’ve lost interest. But, this got delivered to my email inbox and it sounds about right.

Some key ideas:

Effective organisation requires individuals to be:

1 Cooperative

2 Instrumental

3 Self-effacing

4 Flexible

5 Pragmatic

6 Disciplined

7 Loyal

The online right is made up almost exclusively of people who suit the following descriptors:

1 Disagreeable

2 Truth-obsessed

3 Ego-driven

4 Principled

5 Moralistic

6 Impulsive

7 Grifting

It should not have taken you long to figure out that these seven traits are the exact opposite of those necessary for effective organisation.

https://forbiddentexts.substack.com/p/the-impossibility-of-political-organisation?r=n834w&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is at once a pointed satire of the venal and corrupt literary establishment of 1930s Moscow and an artistic re-envisioning of Christ, the Devil, and man – deeply influenced by Mephistopheles’s self-description in Faust. The novel explores themes of universal human significance, emphasizing forgiveness and reconciliation on a grand scale. By contrast, Michael Lockshin’s 2024 film adaptation of the novel reduces this expansive vision to one man’s private unhappiness and his compensatory fantasies in response to it. (Sorry errors are awaiting correction such as “peaked” instead of “piqued.”)

Michael Lockshin’s Master and Margarita: Bulgakov Reduced to Walter Mitty

 

One may take the view that all books but the Bible are false and all teachings but those of the Church are Satan’s sly snares; but few who take this view are consistent, courageous, or honesty.  Whatever they may say, most rock-ribbed religious reactionaries betray a vital faith in modern science and technology by their actions — even when, like the Amish, they disguise their penchant for progress with the science and technology of two hundred years ago.  

If Orthodoxy is right thinking about Christian religion, and Christian religion is part of the world God made and men somewhat know, it follows that Orthodoxy must, like every other sort of right thinking, generally improve with the shambling, stumbling, slouching march of time.

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Aristotelianism is meant to be a sensible middle-road metaphysics: Platonism without the weirdness. Universals exist, but only in objects or minds. Immaterial souls exist, but as forms of bodies. The world’s ultimate constituents are neither microscopic atoms nor the universe as a whole, but mid-sized objects like rocks and dogs. Aristotle vindicates the spontaneous beliefs of childhood against speculative extravagance. It presents two particular attractions for Christian intellectuals. First, with its empiricism and rejection of a separate realm of intelligibles, it seems to offer the best classical metaphysics for addressing modern scientific, epistemological, and social issues while being taken seriously. Second, because of its long history of ecclesiastic endorsement and scholasticism, it seems the best way to maintain engagement with at least the Catholic branch of the Christian intellectual tradition.

It was a philosophy I once espoused. In fact, independently of other philosophers who I later found were working along similar lines (Nancy Cartwright, Robert Koons, Wolfgang Smith, Edward Feser), I spent a great deal of time trying to reformulate physics and its interpretation treating macroscopic substances as the fundamental subjects of physical laws. Suppose mind explains brain state, thermodynamic properties explain microscopic statistical properties, particles emerge from substances, rather than vice versa. The challenge is to show how the laws of nature as we observe them and formulate “atomistically” in terms of smallest constituents could be reformulated naturally in this alternative way. I soured on Aristotle not because of my failure in this project, but because I realized how little it would accomplish for the thing I really care about–the ability to find God in the world–even if I had succeeded. I’ve come to dispute the claim that Aristotle is more philosophically defensible, a better fit for modern science, or a better contact with the entirety of historical Catholic thought than his great teacher.

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“That the Jews should cherish a belief in the downfall of their oppressor, is no more than has been done by other nations. That they should impose this belief on their conquerors, is what has been accomplished by none but themselves.”   

Frederic Huidekoper, Judaism at Rome, B.C. 76 to A.D. 140 (1887)

A revenge fantasy remains a fantasy when the fantasist is impotent, when his will to retaliate is hopelessly frustrated by the fact that he is cowardly, hesitant or frail.  The mind of such a doormat is naturally flooded with shame, this shame frequently more painful than the unavenged injury in which it was born.  To palliate this shame, a frustrated weakling normally spins emollient fantasies that either disguise his impotence as high-minded forgiveness or foretell a day when he (perhaps with supernatural assistance) will be avenged.

The inner life of most men is caked with this psychological scar tissue; indeed, emollient fantasies of false forgiveness or future satisfaction are what most men think about when they take trouble to think.

An injured and impotent nation palliates the shame of impotence and injury in the same way.  It either spins an emollient fantasy that it is governed by a lofty morality of forgiveness or an emollient fantasy that it (perhaps with the aid of a supernatural champion) will get even one day. 

If the injured and impotent nation is gifted in the art of myth-making, these two emollient fantasies may be combined.  

If the injured and impotent nation is supremely gifted in the art of myth-making, it may plant its emollient fantasies in the mind of the nation by which it was injured, and by so doing take the sweetest and deadliest revenge.

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Physical determinism typically relies on the notion of “chains of causation” tracing back to the Big Bang that are supposed to mean that every thought, feeling, and action of human beings has been pre-determined since time and the universe began. This picture relies on a materialist metaphysics and the belief that human consciousness is generated by the brain. Even if these two notions are accepted, determinism introduces radical discontinuity into reality – chunking it into causes on the one hand and effects on the other. If one imagines an amoeba searching for food, it does not stop and start in this fashion. Each movement is not the result of a cause followed by an effect. Instead, it is driven by a purpose, pulling it forward from the future and all its movements are governed by that one aim. Zeno’s paradoxes reflect the same mistake. Time is duration – the click of a second-hand, or digital succession of numbers on a stopwatch misrepresents this. Space also is continuous, known by the experiencing self. Iain McGilchrist argues that chunked, digital, pictures of reality are an artifact of left hemisphere distortions.

Here is the link to the article, comments to be posted here at the Orthosphere.

Iain McGilchrist on Determinism