Funny, I remember a whole chapter of his book where he argued, quite convincingly, I might add, that people such as him should die out and be replaced by "the mediocre" and then argued for his readers to pursue mediocrity for its assurance of survival among the herd of Man... and in the very same chapter, said something about how so few people will ever understand what he was truly doing by sacrificing his newborn son to Dionysus... let us thank him for his temerity and his oblation
While we are talking about complete non-entities that for some reason a bunch of retards assumed were oh so wise philosophers, let's add Schopenhauer to the list. And I've never been particularly fond of Machiavelli either despite all the fanfare he seems to get from... Traders?
I found Myamoto Mushashi to be far superior to most so-called "modern" philosophers.
Essentially when Philosophy stopped being the study of what was once called Natural Philosophy, which really was the study of the very nature of reality, the gammas invaded the entire genre with their nonsensical "but if you are just a dream of a dreamer's dream, then, are you really here?" Smacks to their foolish ears is all they deserved.
When I was briefly in minor seminary studying philosophy, my impression once I had finished was that very little spilled ink after Aristotle amounted to much, and after DeCartes, most of what has been written was just error compounding on error.
I think people try to use the Prince, but gloss over/forget the context surrounding why he wrote it -- as an antidote to the saccharine "manuals" that if followed would only result in good men being killed/deposed/exiled.
I can't say that I'm an enjoyer of his Art of War. As I recall when his theories were put into practice Milan suffered several military set backs, leading to him being imprisoned and having lots of time to write...
A lot of the alt right pagan LARPers would look up to Nietzsche back when I used to use Facebook. I found those guys a little annoying; like something was off. I bet a good portion of them were gammas.
Most interestingly Vox's inversion rubric fits the best here. That is to say, Nietzsche killed his ability to see God, or was simply too autistic to perceive God's work, and can no longer see him. It's as if he tore out his own eyes and declared the world to be shrouded in darkness.
Being a great stylist is not a harbinger of truth. Many people followed Freud, who won prizese for his essays, much of which had no basis in reality. At all.
Well, they did have a basis in reality; it's just that he was inverting reality. His patients were being raped by their own family members, who were the people paying Freud so handsomely that he was obliged to ignore the evidence he gathered and create a completely upside-down story to blame the victims.
I have also heard that Freud's work applies marvelously to jewish families and family dynamics. So just add that addendum to every sentence of his. "The son wants to kill the father and sleep with the mother (in jewish families)", and so on. The apologists say that his main clientele were jews so he couldn't help but have their neuroses paint his worldview, which does make sense.
I see a spiritual curse from continuously rejecting their Messiah. Knowing the Son is knowing the Father, and continuing to reject the Son is rejecting the Father, which translates to the human fathers by association.
There’s an inextricable link between authors/films that are considered “cult-classics” and their predominant gamma audience. It explains why as a delta it’s been difficult to share the enthusiasm for movies like Donnie Darko, Clockwork Orange etc. that other men do
A little harsh how he treated his moon cameraman, Tyrone, though. They told Tyrone they were going out for smokes and would be back in a while, but he's still waiting, probably a little sad and maybe acting out in school and such. He took some great video of them leaving with that excellent panning work.
Blog reader request: Vox can you do an article about dress standards for gamma men and their personal hygiene like haircuts facial hair etc? I really want to see this article because it’s just too damn fun. Another trait I’ve noticed is men wearing polo shirts buttoning the top button that’s so weird looking.
Once again Vox makes me laugh with the bottom picture. That beard which is unkept is gross and he looks like an annoying know it all type. I really got to know where Vox gets these images and what AI he is using.
Nietzsche wouldn't be a reddit atheist, he would probably consider modern secularism to be an extreme form of slave morality. His atheism lost hard. He ended up achieving his dream of being a high status ubermensch posthumously so the insults ring pretty hollow. I'd say being one of the most influential philosophers of all time is a bigger achievement then making women like you.
He hated his own country so much he insisted France was superior, renounced his citizenship which rendered himself stateless, said Germans had no future, and tried to claim he was in fact of Polish blood. I’m convinced he would 100% be a Redditor if he were around today.
'anomie"- a perfect name for those who despair, and if given the chance would go out and murder as many others as possible before committing suicide or dying raped to death in the big bubba house of despair. loser nietzche is only 'famous' due to jewish control of all our narratives, along with the other jewish plagarists, pedophiles, and liars whose 'fame' have ruined our civilization.
If your goal in life is to have sex and children, you are quite literally living like an animal. Nietzsche called this phenomenon The Last Man, it's a sad thing to have to live through.
Marriage and children are the two things which women never stop talking about. It never gets out of fashion. Love isn't something people regret. Fathers and mothers willingly sacrifice themselves for their children.
How do you not praise sex and children? Or did you not pay attention to Nietzsche's dreams of a wife?
You’re way off the mark. The Last Man desired only safety and comfort. I can’t even imagine the rant Zarathustra would spew about the current year’s fat, mentally ill, underemployed, deracinated, androgynous, porn-addled consumerist slobs.
I would be okay with having kids if I was in a good position to do so. Every seething post like this throwing slave resentment at me just proves Nietzsche was on to something. I see a lot more slave resentment from e crusaders than the love and kindness Jesus taught.
Love and kindness demand Christians to sort shit from chocolate. If you expect Christians to be loving or kind, expect them to be disgusted when they spot extremely foul and bad imitations of the good and real thing.
You'll never be in a position as long as you cling to your Gamma delusions. You understand nothing about Jesus Christ or Christianity; a crabbed, bitter soul like you sees love and kindness as nothing but weakness.
And the "seething" and "resentment" you imagine is nothing but your own emotional projection.
Why do people spam me with a million rude comments unprovoked if you don't resent everyone who thinks different? I was never rude to anyone until they attacked me first. I don't need lectures about kindness from a crowd like this, I'm 1000 times closer to God than any of you will ever be.
Why are you not in a good position to do so? Obviously if you aren't physically, mentally, or financially stable enough to have children than it may be the wrong time. The dilemma is why you aren't in a position, but you twisted this into a "goal in life to have sex and children", which sounds more like you resent sex but would take more of it and trivializes what reward children bring.
Yes, to literally procreate and keep your blood line but also the true trust, bond, and love a family brings.
You're pretty naive man. You wouldn't be here had your dad not made it a goal, possibility only temporarily, to bust a nut into your mother.
Immoral sex and to some extent sex in general is not something I think deserves much emphasis but you're sneaky little shit made me want to comment.
Slave resentment? Who said I resented you? Are you sure you’re not projecting?
Regarding your position and your ability to have children, I have no clue if reality and your judgment of your reality is sufficiently accurate. So I have no comment about that.
None of our personal lives have an effect on the fate of entire race, unless your descendants are very important people who care about something more than making children. If you spam anymore incoherent schizobabble at me, you're getting blocked.
Then why are you commenting here? If a person's life is pointless, if our actions do not have an effect, why is there a point in replying to people here, people you deem to have wrong views or opinions?
"None of our personal lives have an effect on the fate of entire race, unless your descendants are very important people who care about something more than making children."
The people who grasp at being important generally end up unimportant. There is no shortage of failed ambitious men.
The people who live out humble lives according to their God-given purpose inherit the land and decide the direction of their civilization. Be fruitful and multiply.
The Deltas as a group matter more than the Alphas striving to lead them. The importance of an Alpha is proportional to his ability to serve the needs of his Deltas, who are the group.
Hence why the greatest man in human history is the one who laid down his life for all mankind on the Cross.
"None of our personal lives have an effect on the fate of entire race, unless your descendants are very important people who care about something more than making children."
The claim that 'none of our personal lives have an effect', isn't a confession you get to hear from a man in the ranks. The alpha, the bravo, the delta, the men who humble themselves to the team, and the women they know, everyone knows what happens when they don't clean up after a lovable idiot's ass. Why would we forget you or let you starve, if you come to save us from the cold or the dark?
So? All people who don't grasp at being important end up unimportant. The meek don't inherit the earth, elites rule the earth. Numerous peasants might be used as a cudgel by elites to crush other groups though.
Why didn't Nietzsche call the phenomenon The Last Animal then? Freddy Nietzsche is a real downer. I'd rather hang with Ray Nitschke. Furthermore, having a lot of sex and children sounds fantastic to me.
Holy Mother Church celebrates the anonymous saints on All Saints’ Day. I fervently hope to be among them. That’s my yardstick, and the latter option is much more likely to lead me there.
I will note that the metric of "actually mattered" promotes charlatanry, lies and deception. It's far easier to corrupt an institution or use advertising to become famous than to create something. This sort of thinking promotes Dr. Anthony Fauci, super liar murderer, over the less famous doctors who have saved hundreds if not thousands of lives defying Fauci.
Needless to say, when "actually mattered" is simplified into lies vs truth, the Nietzschean favors lies.
What little I could stomach of Nietzsche's writings are morally retarded and deeply anti-Christian (obvious correlation) and are replete with personal power fantasies. At the risk of mixing philosophical metaphors Nietzche was the ultimate fox pretending to be the ultimate lion.
His Master/Slave Morality dichotomy is particularly repugnant and you can see a direct line between his thought and the disaster of WWII, just as you can see a direct line between Rousseau and the disaster of the French Revolution.
Rousseau gets a very bad shake because of how his work was endorsed -- and distorted -- by Robespierre and other French Revolutionaries. He was very much a pioneer of the Counter-Enlightenment movement and is well worth another look, particularly his last and unfinished Reveries of the Solitary Walker.
There's a really good book from a British political philosopher who covers the distortions and of Rousseau's thought in great detail:
He takes rural living to be ideal and most natural for man, and takes cities to be cesspools, urban living more or less being the source of corruption and perversion in man. His political project is concerned with making city life more palatable and less perverse.
Beyond that, he affirms the need for religion, the importance of the Bible, and laid the foundation for Montessori style education.
One may not agree with some of his positions, but he's hardly in the category of Nietzsche.
Rousseau wrote parenting books while dumping all his own children at the orphanage, for starters.
His insistence on the absolute purity of children and rejection of original sin is the basis for modern society's indulgence of every childish temper tantrum.
His BS about the "Noble Savage" laid the ground work for White Guilt.
Whoa! I had no idea he had kids and abandoned them. Well, shit. I'll eat my words and concede that that makes him a pretty terrible person.
He did oddly advocate for letting children learn from the natural consequences of their actions rather than outright disciplining. Obviously don't spare the rod, but there is something to letting them see how things unfold on their own at times.
The white guilt/noble savage connection I think is people reading him wrong -- he's explicit that the "noble savage" is still a deficiency, and that it is a premature state to be left behind.
But yes, on the whole, point taken that he was a scumbag.
I had such trouble making sense of his writings probably because the IQ gap so I am glad we have people of capacity to give us cliff notes.
It sounds like he was writing from the position of a absolute superiority, holding all of humanity to a ruthlessly high standard he himself could never achieve. Having been unable to make sense of his writings I have no idea if he was aware of this contradiction but it sounds like he was purely delusional.
Nietzsche's IQ is not terribly high. What you failed to do is follow the largely disjointed ramblings of a madman, which is no great failing on your part.
I dont doubt it. I have no idea how to even gauge his IQ. I cant tell if his super complicated writing style was just a gamma attempt to sound smart through obfuscation or if there was actual concepts I was failing to grasp. Probably a bit of both.
All Word Salad is designed to make the writer look smart and the reader feel dumb so the writer looks like a genius in comparison. Once you understand that Word Salad is just a rhetorical wizard trick then it loses it's ability to manipulate you and when you see Word Salad you can dismiss it as nonsense quickly.
I have it on good authority that German prose translates into the most awkward, clunking, tortured English imaginable. It's a feature of the linguistic style that Nietzche leaned into.
Can confirm. German doesn't translate well into most languages because of its building-block style. It's very natural to create words on the fly in German to illustrate a phenomenon, but the consequence for translators is that seldom is there a fitting word already existing in other languages.
A lot of rich connotation for common words is lost, too. E.g., the German word for mood is "Stimmung," which originally referred to the tuning of stringed instruments. Built into the idea of a mood in German is being tuned in a certain way or being attuned to something in a particular way. Just as an instrument produces different sounds with different tunings, so too with moods.
It's amazing how such a beautiful language can both sound so heinously ugly and translate in such an ugly and impoverished way.
Our language might not be as melodic as French or Italian, but it enables us to specify anything in a very precise manner. Why do you think we've been crushing so hard when it comes to machines?
Anyway, I admit that German has a rather technical tone, but you've obviously not been around drunken Finns if you think German sounds "heinously ugly". If I was some torturer in Guantanamo, I wouldn't waterboard those guys, I would put them in a bar somewhere in rural Finland every night.
btw, we've tried to eliminate the translation issue twice in the 20th century (we've been very open about it the second time), but, it didn't work out. Now we have to learn all those other languages in school.
Glad you enjoyed my reference to Cioran in the prior post... Nietzsche suffered from an "unspeakable megalomania", but there's a reason he's still discussed and quoted so much to this day; and that reason, imo, isn't so much the will to power or the ubermench or what have you, or even his interesting style, but rather his correct identification with the transvaluation of values brought forth by Christianity to upend the Roman world. The dichotomy between the pathetic state of his personal life and his conception of the ubermench, while funny, is utterly dwarfed by this identification, imo. His "On the Genealogy of Morality" was mind-blowing and answered the question about why everyone is so obsessed with equality/egalitarianism in all its forms...
As mainstream historian Tom Holland explains:
"If you look at the cross, it’s such an odd thing to have as a focus of veneration, and to have as a fundamental symbol of civilization. Because a cross is a symbol of torture. And to the Romans it was an emblem of their power to torture to death their inferiors. So crucifixion was inflicted on those who opposed Roman power in the provinces. But it’s also the paradigmatic fate that is visited on slaves who rebel against their masters. And everyone who’s seen Spartacus remembers the rows of crosses lining the Appian way. It’s a billboard advertising the ability of Rome to crush rebellion by the weak, and therefore it serves as a symbol of the powerful over the powerless. Christianity absolutely upends that it says the cross is a symbol of the powerless triumphing over the powerful, the slave triumphing over its master, of the victim triumphing over the torturer, and this is such a radical notion its hard to express how radical it is. And the idea that the last shall be first, that there is inherent dignity and value and power in being a victim, this is something that would have been utterly bewildering to the Romans. And it takes a long time for first the Roman world and then the world of the Germanic conquerers in the west and so on to properly synthesize and understand it. And thats why I think in a way we are so habituated to it that it takes an effort to understand just how weird and strange that idea is.
And its why actually I think the modern who has most profoundly and unsettlingly understood just how radical that idea is, how radical the idea that the cross of all things should become the emblem of a new civilization was a man who was not just an atheist but a radically hostile anti-Christian atheist Frederick Nietzsche, and Nietzsche said this is a repellant thing. Nietzsche identified the power and the glory and the beauty of classical civilization and he thought that Christianity was notoriously a religion for slaves and he saw in the emblem of Christ nailed to the cross a kind of disgusting subversion of the ideals of the classical world, privileging of those who properly should be ground beneath the heels of the mighty, and he saw it as a kind of sickness that then infected the “blonde beast”, that this primordial figure of the warrior gets corrupted and gets turned into a monkish figure who’s sick with poverty and sympathy for the poor and the oppressed, and Nietzsche thought it was disgusting. Now those ideas, however vulgarized, of course feed into a very septic subject which is fascism.
Fascism, I think, was the most radical revolutionary movement that Europe has seen since the age of Constantine. Because unlike the French Revolution, unlike the Russian Revolution, it doesn’t even target institutional Christianity: it targets the moral/ethical fundamentals of Christianity. The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution are still preaching the idea that the victim should be raised up from the dust and that the oppressor should be humbled into the dust; it’s still preaching the idea that the first should be last and the last should be first just as Christ has done.
The Nazis do not buy into that. The Nazis buy into the Nietzschean idea that the weak are weak and should be treated as weak, as contemptible, as something to be crushed….
Atheists of today [like Richard Dawkins et al]… they are basically Christians. Nietzsche saw humanists, communists, liberals—people who may define themselves against Christianity—as being absolutely in the fundamentals Christian, and I think he is right about that because I think that in a sense atheism doesn’t repudiate the kind of ethics and the morals and the values of Christianity."
'Christianity absolutely upends that it says the cross is a symbol of the powerless triumphing over the powerful, the slave triumphing over its master, of the victim triumphing over the torturer, and this is such a radical notion its hard to express how radical it is. And the idea that the last shall be first, that there is inherent dignity and value and power in being a victim, this is something that would have been utterly bewildering to the Romans.'
I've heard arguments that this was God's way to show his finger to everything the Roman Empire stood for. Their value system was upside-down in His eyes, so God decided to turn their symbol of torture into His symbol of Victory.
This is a bit of a tangent, but regarding what Tom Holland says about the cross—at the symbolic level, a cross is more than just a torture device.
Aside from the various symbols and geometries evoked by the image of the Christian cross, there is also the fact that the cross was used as a religious symbol in various cultures for thousands of years before Christ appeared in human form.
I think they appear culturally Christian because they’re fish in water. All they manage to do is recreate Christian forms with debased window dressing. It’s kind of sad.
Most of them don’t even seem to realize they’re Christian in every way but the most important parts, the things that make it work. They’ve got their concept of original sin, their eschatology, their own take on immortality and divinity, just dressed up in scientism. They lack any real concept of repentance, forgiveness, sacrifice, or surrender to a higher power (±their unborn AI God, depending on sect).
At least the pagans (neo- and otherwise) are trying to do their own authentic thing. With varying levels of success. New Atheism is like a low-quality Chinese counterfeit of a successful product.
Nice! Anyone who would like to understand the Verbal Attack Patterns in this comment should give Dr. Elgin's book "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense" a look.
There's misdirection (PUA losers! You are not a PUA loser, are you citizen?)
He uses the "Only a [++BAD-identified thing] would say that."
There's an embedded assumption of secret knowledge "something so stupid" and an appeal to an irrelevant expert.
Some obvious out-grouping attempted, and in-grouping with flattery.
The only one missing is "EVEN Vox could recognize that Nietzche" etc.
P.S. It's also relevant, I think, that the woke churches have emptied out. Apparently real Christians don't find those messages consonant with Christianity, even if some of the corrupt and worldly pastors do.
One of the problems of your analysis is that you look at Christianity like it's one unchanging monolith. When in fact it has splintered into thousands of different Protestant groups whose beliefs have evolved over time. Modern "pastors" hanging political Black Lives Matter flags on their churches are not necessarily being influenced by the letters of St. Paul. In many cases these people are signaling for status in the secular world. I think you're painting with a very broad brush. Which doesn't work over a 2000 year time period during which most of the world was Christian and a lot of the power struggles were within Christianity.
I just stumbled upon this article about how public school "became a thing" in Massachusetts. And the author points out that the Universalists took over Harvard from the Calvinists and wanted to re-educate society starting with the children. The Universalists sound a lot like the Masons, working to undermine real Christianity in favor of a "do what thou wilt" Luciferian attitude which would free them up for more sinning and more money-making. I think it's important for you to de-average your analysis over the past 2000 years. You've already pointed out that Catholicism, with its hierarchy, wasn't quite so revolutionary, which is a good observation. Similarly, when you look at this article, you'll see that this shift from Calvinism to Unitarianism was a radical change. Not because Unitarianism was closer to the original premise of Christianity, but because powerful people wanted to radically change people's beliefs. Were they really trying to bring Christianity to its logical conclusion? Or were they trying to undermine it for their own purposes?
"An intellectual event of great importance—probably the most important in American history: the takeover of Harvard by the Unitarians in 1805 and the expulsion of the Calvinists. No event has had a greater long-range influence on American intellectual, cultural, and political life than this one."
I’ve been a Calvinist my whole life and only recently begun to reject it for Holy Mother Church. But that is total nonsense, except maybe your first point.
Weren't those the public heads-and-hands in stocks for criminals, scarlet letters, tar-and-feathers for malfeasant officials, and Salem Witch Trials guys?
Who wrote "Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War"
Not a Protestant myself, but the non-denom church I was in did not start with "Christianity and--" until the Covidiocy hit. Although they failed the test #3 and #4 were still not in evidence.
#2 was there, though it seemed to be mostly (20/20 hindsight) in aid of Fantasy dreams of martyrdom. Not helpful.
#1 is tough, because ALL Christianity assumes the potential brother- and sister-hood of mankind. Synagogue of Satan types et al, are not our brothers until they repent and follow Christ.
Where are you getting this stuff? Are you just confusing the sell-out churches who trade worldly status for the faith?
The lack of attribution and the casual, disdainful arrogance isn't a good look, imo, but hey, it's your house.
The "Jesus is everything" take was best argued by Orthodox priest David Bentley Hart in the following 2003 essay, "Christ and Nothing": https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/10/christ-and-nothing . He does not agree with Nietzsche's take, but he takes the arguments seriously and has significant sympathy for them. By actually engaging with the arguments instead of a caricature, by steel-manning his opponents instead of straw-manning them he get much closer to the truth, imo.
Casual, disdainful dismissal is all that feeble posturings merit. Nietzsche has never been worthy of anything but open mockery. It's amusing that you think it is somehow arrogant to dismiss a lunatic's boastful rantings.
The whole point about what you think the Cross represents is just flat-out wrong. It doesn't represent powerlessness and never has. It represents the divine power that broke the rule of sin and death.
Nietszche was absolutely and confirmably wrong. There is zero question about it.
It's not true that "it [the cross] represents the divine power that broke the rule of sin and death." If you want a proper symbol for that power, consider the empty tomb or the rolled stone. THESE represent victory over the cross, a symbol of collectivist worldly power, elitist cruelty, and enthusiasm for crushing dissidents. We could add, and I do, that the cross represents also Israelite collaboration with the enemies of Israel. Remember the leaders who handed Jesus over to the Romans to do their dirty work for them. The cross is their tool, too.
After the body had been removed from the cross, the latter disappears from the narrative. While the body was in the tomb, there was yet no victory over death. This triumph comes with the resurrection, but this act does not break the rule of sin. The resurrection breaks the cross, but it's not the concluding work of redemption.
Just because you call him a lunatic doesn’t make it so. you think and behave as if we are in the Middle Ages and you Catholics are top dog and have a continent-spanning secret police behind you but you don’t.
All you have is a little internet echo chamber and a religion that is built on the flimsiest foundation that cannot stand up to any criticisms.
So you arrogantly dismiss them. but the vast majority of people aren’t convinced by your bluster anymore and haven’t been for centuries.
You come off as weak and ignorant now more than ever.
It's an absolute historical fact that Nietzsche was a lunatic. He literally died in a state of "raving dementia".
"Detailed evidence shows that he passed through each of the three stages: the chancre of primary syphilis immediately after infection; the terrible pox, fever, and pain of secondary syphilis that emerges months or years later; and the dreaded third: paresis. ‘Paresis,’ like the word ‘syphilis’ itself, refers to a syndrome. An acronym, its mnemonic is: personality disturbances; affect abnormalities; reflex hyperactivity; eye abnormalities; sensorium changes; intellectual impairment; and slurred speech."
Nietzsche was a diseased madman and his writings reflect that.
Vox, I would love for you to say or write more on this issue at some point, this claim that Christianity was created to undermine the Roman Empire, and, on a longer timeline, to undermine all Europeans.
I agree with you that this distortion and slander of Christianity is just wrong. I love your point that Christ is also the Alpha. Christianity is The Truth.
And even viewed non-religiously, Christianity works--it essentially created Western Civilization as we know it and it remains the most obvious Schelling point for our people. Our modern problems are driven more by people falling away from Christian belief than anything else.
But I keep seeing this claim in various corners of the "dissident right." There are pagan LARPers, vitalist BAPers, Mark Brahmin the Apollonian, a bunch of Neoreactionary Moldbug readers, etc. They have differing motivations and differing levels of dishonesty, some of which are easy to see through. But they do make a few interesting observations, including about the pathological altruism of Western Christians, as you've noted for example in the case of Minnesotans almost eager to be ripped off by Somalians.
So I would love to read somewhere, either written by you or referred to by you if you're aware of any good sources, a rebuttal of some of these ideas.
"...the pathological do-gooder-ism of Western Churchians"
FIFY again.
Whenever something gets more like a god in one's life, nearer it becomes a demon.
You are describing "Christianity AND ... anything but obedience to God"
God will not be mocked. My husband calls it the cult of nice.
Hang on, I think I can find a short essay on it. I think it's also in Orthodoxy. Yes: It is in Mere Christianity.
"God will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest [pharmacy aka] chemist's shop."
It’s a good bet that those who think that way tend to resemble Nietzsche themselves.
And I just remind myself that suicidal Westerners are apostates, not Christian, and as such would be under harsher divine condemnation than pagans who never were Christian.
It's an easy claim to make if you are ignorant of the history, but it fails to answer very simple questions.
1) Why would Greeks, Romans, and Ethiopians care about a Judean non-citizen, especially enough to die for him? If you argue that Paul invented Christianity - another nonsense - then why would they care about the cult of a random citizen?
2) How is it that the religion not only survived the fall of Rome, but persevered in the East, in Africa, and in Europe for a millennium more? It not only persevered, but it conquered the tribalist and warlike pagans of those areas at their relative heights.
3) How is it that the religion resisted the Arabic Muslim conquests, to the degree that it even pushed them out of conquered Spain?
"Christianity absolutely upends that it says the cross is a symbol of the powerless triumphing over the powerful"
To think this you have to be ignorant or delusional, and probably evil. The triumph belongs to God alone. If one thinks otherwise, one probably would've demanded Christ be a worldly conquerer, too.
I do like the hostile description, because it captures the paradigm shift that Christ brings. How can dying to your enemies be powerful?
But the POWER of Christianity is that their most powerful weapon, Death, is rendered toothless. Their symbol of power, the cross, now belongs to Christ because he won and to the victor the spoils.
"For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."
They don't just disbelieve, they denigrate and pervert. A good faith mythologizing of the Passion would be something akin to the homecoming of Ulysses:
"The Cross represents the promise that a just King will return, and all tyranny will end."
I agree, they miss the whole point of the crucifixion -- it has nothing to do with power or powerlessness in human terms.
God's justice must be perfect -- every sin must be punished; God's mercy must be perfect -- every repentant sinner must be forgiven. How do you square this circle? God punishes every sin by voluntarily taking the punishment onto himself unto death.
Funny, I remember a whole chapter of his book where he argued, quite convincingly, I might add, that people such as him should die out and be replaced by "the mediocre" and then argued for his readers to pursue mediocrity for its assurance of survival among the herd of Man... and in the very same chapter, said something about how so few people will ever understand what he was truly doing by sacrificing his newborn son to Dionysus... let us thank him for his temerity and his oblation
I don't think he thought of himself as Übermensch.
Surely there are some folks out there who have strengthened their faith in Christ by taking Nietzsche seriously?
Drinking his urine for 11 years is ALPHA. 😂
While we are talking about complete non-entities that for some reason a bunch of retards assumed were oh so wise philosophers, let's add Schopenhauer to the list. And I've never been particularly fond of Machiavelli either despite all the fanfare he seems to get from... Traders?
I found Myamoto Mushashi to be far superior to most so-called "modern" philosophers.
Essentially when Philosophy stopped being the study of what was once called Natural Philosophy, which really was the study of the very nature of reality, the gammas invaded the entire genre with their nonsensical "but if you are just a dream of a dreamer's dream, then, are you really here?" Smacks to their foolish ears is all they deserved.
When I was briefly in minor seminary studying philosophy, my impression once I had finished was that very little spilled ink after Aristotle amounted to much, and after DeCartes, most of what has been written was just error compounding on error.
Machiavelli is an excellent political philosopher. Don't judge him by The Prince or his Art of War. His Discourses are the work worth reading.
Discourses on Livy is great, highly recommend.
I think people try to use the Prince, but gloss over/forget the context surrounding why he wrote it -- as an antidote to the saccharine "manuals" that if followed would only result in good men being killed/deposed/exiled.
I can't say that I'm an enjoyer of his Art of War. As I recall when his theories were put into practice Milan suffered several military set backs, leading to him being imprisoned and having lots of time to write...
Admittedly I have not read those. The previous two made me conclude he was an impractical theorist at best.
I judged the same. Thanks for that info. I'll check out discourses
A lot of the alt right pagan LARPers would look up to Nietzsche back when I used to use Facebook. I found those guys a little annoying; like something was off. I bet a good portion of them were gammas.
Nietzsche is dead (and God has killed him)
kill confirmed
Most interestingly Vox's inversion rubric fits the best here. That is to say, Nietzsche killed his ability to see God, or was simply too autistic to perceive God's work, and can no longer see him. It's as if he tore out his own eyes and declared the world to be shrouded in darkness.
i think the term "Spiritually Crippled" is a good fit for this!
I'm surprised I haven't read this before hahahaha short and sweet.
Neechee's translation went hard, though. I can really feel the ranting, raving madman through the text of the aphorisms!
Being a great stylist is not a harbinger of truth. Many people followed Freud, who won prizese for his essays, much of which had no basis in reality. At all.
Well, they did have a basis in reality; it's just that he was inverting reality. His patients were being raped by their own family members, who were the people paying Freud so handsomely that he was obliged to ignore the evidence he gathered and create a completely upside-down story to blame the victims.
I have also heard that Freud's work applies marvelously to jewish families and family dynamics. So just add that addendum to every sentence of his. "The son wants to kill the father and sleep with the mother (in jewish families)", and so on. The apologists say that his main clientele were jews so he couldn't help but have their neuroses paint his worldview, which does make sense.
This is brilliant, you guys just unlocked the whole fraud of it for me... I'm so glad I didn't read him, this is all I needed
"The son wants to kill the father"
I see a spiritual curse from continuously rejecting their Messiah. Knowing the Son is knowing the Father, and continuing to reject the Son is rejecting the Father, which translates to the human fathers by association.
Them: His blood be on us, and on our children.
God; OK.
There’s an inextricable link between authors/films that are considered “cult-classics” and their predominant gamma audience. It explains why as a delta it’s been difficult to share the enthusiasm for movies like Donnie Darko, Clockwork Orange etc. that other men do
Except for Remo Williams.
Don't kill across me: it's very rude.
I think stanley Kubrick is a genius. If that makes me a gamma then so be it.
His moon landing videos were a big hit, for sure.
I liked Eyes Wide Shut.
Barry Lindon was his best film. Fight me.
It is a better movie.
A little harsh how he treated his moon cameraman, Tyrone, though. They told Tyrone they were going out for smokes and would be back in a while, but he's still waiting, probably a little sad and maybe acting out in school and such. He took some great video of them leaving with that excellent panning work.
Should have left the bike alone.
Done
Blog reader request: Vox can you do an article about dress standards for gamma men and their personal hygiene like haircuts facial hair etc? I really want to see this article because it’s just too damn fun. Another trait I’ve noticed is men wearing polo shirts buttoning the top button that’s so weird looking.
It’s the smell
Once again Vox makes me laugh with the bottom picture. That beard which is unkept is gross and he looks like an annoying know it all type. I really got to know where Vox gets these images and what AI he is using.
That picture isn't generated. Thats a very old meme.
But I to would like to see a Darkstream where he demonstrates his method for prompting.
Not me, I was eating lunch when I scrolled down and gagged. Luckily, I didn't need the Heimlich procedure.
Nietzsche wouldn't be a reddit atheist, he would probably consider modern secularism to be an extreme form of slave morality. His atheism lost hard. He ended up achieving his dream of being a high status ubermensch posthumously so the insults ring pretty hollow. I'd say being one of the most influential philosophers of all time is a bigger achievement then making women like you.
He hated his own country so much he insisted France was superior, renounced his citizenship which rendered himself stateless, said Germans had no future, and tried to claim he was in fact of Polish blood. I’m convinced he would 100% be a Redditor if he were around today.
Is that a joke? Fathering children is the only true legacy and you can’t father children if women think you are a gamma.
'anomie"- a perfect name for those who despair, and if given the chance would go out and murder as many others as possible before committing suicide or dying raped to death in the big bubba house of despair. loser nietzche is only 'famous' due to jewish control of all our narratives, along with the other jewish plagarists, pedophiles, and liars whose 'fame' have ruined our civilization.
I prefer women liking me. Especially if they're really hot. In addition, I think a high status ubermensch is a married guy with five plus children.
If your goal in life is to have sex and children, you are quite literally living like an animal. Nietzsche called this phenomenon The Last Man, it's a sad thing to have to live through.
Marriage and children are the two things which women never stop talking about. It never gets out of fashion. Love isn't something people regret. Fathers and mothers willingly sacrifice themselves for their children.
How do you not praise sex and children? Or did you not pay attention to Nietzsche's dreams of a wife?
You’re way off the mark. The Last Man desired only safety and comfort. I can’t even imagine the rant Zarathustra would spew about the current year’s fat, mentally ill, underemployed, deracinated, androgynous, porn-addled consumerist slobs.
Neitzsche was too optimistic.
“Give birth to a dancing star”… cool.
“Proud cat dad”…. You’re not ubermensching right.
'The Last Man desired only safety and comfort.'
That is the dream of a wounded and lonely invalid. It's the opposite of an omnipotent superman.
If you are true to your values, you will not have any children to pass them on to. And you will have done people a favor. Thank you.
I would be okay with having kids if I was in a good position to do so. Every seething post like this throwing slave resentment at me just proves Nietzsche was on to something. I see a lot more slave resentment from e crusaders than the love and kindness Jesus taught.
Giving you the straight truth man to man is loving.
Kindness is for those who are weaker. (arising from or characterized by sympathy or forbearance)
Are you stronger or weaker than the e-crusaders?
Love and kindness demand Christians to sort shit from chocolate. If you expect Christians to be loving or kind, expect them to be disgusted when they spot extremely foul and bad imitations of the good and real thing.
You'll never be in a position as long as you cling to your Gamma delusions. You understand nothing about Jesus Christ or Christianity; a crabbed, bitter soul like you sees love and kindness as nothing but weakness.
And the "seething" and "resentment" you imagine is nothing but your own emotional projection.
Gamma confirmed.
Why do people spam me with a million rude comments unprovoked if you don't resent everyone who thinks different? I was never rude to anyone until they attacked me first. I don't need lectures about kindness from a crowd like this, I'm 1000 times closer to God than any of you will ever be.
Im ok with you not having kids.
Why are you not in a good position to do so? Obviously if you aren't physically, mentally, or financially stable enough to have children than it may be the wrong time. The dilemma is why you aren't in a position, but you twisted this into a "goal in life to have sex and children", which sounds more like you resent sex but would take more of it and trivializes what reward children bring.
Yes, to literally procreate and keep your blood line but also the true trust, bond, and love a family brings.
You're pretty naive man. You wouldn't be here had your dad not made it a goal, possibility only temporarily, to bust a nut into your mother.
Immoral sex and to some extent sex in general is not something I think deserves much emphasis but you're sneaky little shit made me want to comment.
Slave resentment? Who said I resented you? Are you sure you’re not projecting?
Regarding your position and your ability to have children, I have no clue if reality and your judgment of your reality is sufficiently accurate. So I have no comment about that.
Because you wasted your time insulting the bloodline of a stranger you don't know for having a different philosophical opinion, pathetic loser.
if you do not have sex and children, your race will die out- exactly what jews intend for the White race. hmmm. yeah, no. go be sad somewhere else.
None of our personal lives have an effect on the fate of entire race, unless your descendants are very important people who care about something more than making children. If you spam anymore incoherent schizobabble at me, you're getting blocked.
Then why are you commenting here? If a person's life is pointless, if our actions do not have an effect, why is there a point in replying to people here, people you deem to have wrong views or opinions?
"None of our personal lives have an effect on the fate of entire race, unless your descendants are very important people who care about something more than making children."
The people who grasp at being important generally end up unimportant. There is no shortage of failed ambitious men.
The people who live out humble lives according to their God-given purpose inherit the land and decide the direction of their civilization. Be fruitful and multiply.
The Deltas as a group matter more than the Alphas striving to lead them. The importance of an Alpha is proportional to his ability to serve the needs of his Deltas, who are the group.
Hence why the greatest man in human history is the one who laid down his life for all mankind on the Cross.
"None of our personal lives have an effect on the fate of entire race, unless your descendants are very important people who care about something more than making children."
The claim that 'none of our personal lives have an effect', isn't a confession you get to hear from a man in the ranks. The alpha, the bravo, the delta, the men who humble themselves to the team, and the women they know, everyone knows what happens when they don't clean up after a lovable idiot's ass. Why would we forget you or let you starve, if you come to save us from the cold or the dark?
So? All people who don't grasp at being important end up unimportant. The meek don't inherit the earth, elites rule the earth. Numerous peasants might be used as a cudgel by elites to crush other groups though.
Why didn't Nietzsche call the phenomenon The Last Animal then? Freddy Nietzsche is a real downer. I'd rather hang with Ray Nitschke. Furthermore, having a lot of sex and children sounds fantastic to me.
Live a life of futility, misery, and frustration, so that after you die, neckbeards will hold you in high regard? Not much of an achievement.
Think of the opposite: someone who lives life fulfilled, respected, and happy, but after he dies, he is little remembered.
Which would you choose?
The latter.
Holy Mother Church celebrates the anonymous saints on All Saints’ Day. I fervently hope to be among them. That’s my yardstick, and the latter option is much more likely to lead me there.
I have thought about this too. The Saint is the actual human Ubermensch.
Neckbeards also hold Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walther Breen in high regard. Fine company, that.
The latter.
The life that actually mattered, duh. I agree with him about seeking greatness, not mundane pleasures.
I will note that the metric of "actually mattered" promotes charlatanry, lies and deception. It's far easier to corrupt an institution or use advertising to become famous than to create something. This sort of thinking promotes Dr. Anthony Fauci, super liar murderer, over the less famous doctors who have saved hundreds if not thousands of lives defying Fauci.
Needless to say, when "actually mattered" is simplified into lies vs truth, the Nietzschean favors lies.
A woman’s look of desire for 2 seconds is worth more than all the fame Nietzsche got.
Is leaving comments here a representation of your “greatness”?
Seeking greatness is foolish.
Seek virtue. Greatness may or may not follow.
What *do* they teach young men in these schools?
Greatness, like happiness, is a result. It comes to one but cannot be pursued.
THIS.
Or knowledge. Or wisdom. Or beauty. Any of the subordinate virtues. Again greatness may or may not follow.
Both glory or length of days will be of equal unconcern. And such pleasures as you enjoy will be well-earned and your life will be pleasing to God.
What is “greatness” to you?
lols. sadman seeks sensational fame. lols.
I prefer mundane pleasures.
"He's a high status ubermensch" whose legacy is "an extreme form of slave morality?"
What little I could stomach of Nietzsche's writings are morally retarded and deeply anti-Christian (obvious correlation) and are replete with personal power fantasies. At the risk of mixing philosophical metaphors Nietzche was the ultimate fox pretending to be the ultimate lion.
His Master/Slave Morality dichotomy is particularly repugnant and you can see a direct line between his thought and the disaster of WWII, just as you can see a direct line between Rousseau and the disaster of the French Revolution.
Rousseau gets a very bad shake because of how his work was endorsed -- and distorted -- by Robespierre and other French Revolutionaries. He was very much a pioneer of the Counter-Enlightenment movement and is well worth another look, particularly his last and unfinished Reveries of the Solitary Walker.
There's a really good book from a British political philosopher who covers the distortions and of Rousseau's thought in great detail:
https://www.amazon.com/Rousseaus-Counter-Enlightenment-Republican-Philosophes-Political/dp/0791456048
No. Rousseau was awful in his own right. And he was an absolutely horrible man.
I'm curious as to what makes you say that.
He takes rural living to be ideal and most natural for man, and takes cities to be cesspools, urban living more or less being the source of corruption and perversion in man. His political project is concerned with making city life more palatable and less perverse.
Beyond that, he affirms the need for religion, the importance of the Bible, and laid the foundation for Montessori style education.
One may not agree with some of his positions, but he's hardly in the category of Nietzsche.
> I'm curious as to what makes you say that.
Rousseau wrote parenting books while dumping all his own children at the orphanage, for starters.
His insistence on the absolute purity of children and rejection of original sin is the basis for modern society's indulgence of every childish temper tantrum.
His BS about the "Noble Savage" laid the ground work for White Guilt.
Whoa! I had no idea he had kids and abandoned them. Well, shit. I'll eat my words and concede that that makes him a pretty terrible person.
He did oddly advocate for letting children learn from the natural consequences of their actions rather than outright disciplining. Obviously don't spare the rod, but there is something to letting them see how things unfold on their own at times.
The white guilt/noble savage connection I think is people reading him wrong -- he's explicit that the "noble savage" is still a deficiency, and that it is a premature state to be left behind.
But yes, on the whole, point taken that he was a scumbag.
This is reported in Paul Johnson's excellent work, "Intellectuals".
I had such trouble making sense of his writings probably because the IQ gap so I am glad we have people of capacity to give us cliff notes.
It sounds like he was writing from the position of a absolute superiority, holding all of humanity to a ruthlessly high standard he himself could never achieve. Having been unable to make sense of his writings I have no idea if he was aware of this contradiction but it sounds like he was purely delusional.
Your experience mirrors mine and others so I dont think its an IQ gap.
Its simply a bit of inspired writing mixed with an increasing bit of madness.
It's not you bro. Here, this guys more interesting than Nietzsche.
https://www.amazon.com/Mean-Sunday-Autobiography-Ray-Nitschke/dp/0385068980/ref=sr_1_2?crid=QKY4PCX2IWZU&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.vOhB_zmdtityrlK-s5P3h_9KPDOENKG9UyG5F5xQxJywC7iQx4E2a4Uq797I3d-Z6etqEv7k2pOcZRq5wqejfhmMNZl-zBFrjcXBPdVg9W8juXGkbsTVqoH23TYrFaQ4zjkn3J_k85P9sZcHn8f6TNsi4pHEbmxEjXoF9Z4zeczMbG0aoymmzkTSMbCeqCAn.URBtsvCjPSvJlI8jW7QcYG3qY9JUaI8j7xrR-GZCOaE&dib_tag=se&keywords=ray+nitschke&qid=1718907789&s=books&sprefix=ray+nitschke%2Cstripbooks%2C68&sr=1-2
I don't know about his IQ but I always attributed his opaqueness to the syphilis.
Nietzsche's IQ is not terribly high. What you failed to do is follow the largely disjointed ramblings of a madman, which is no great failing on your part.
I dont doubt it. I have no idea how to even gauge his IQ. I cant tell if his super complicated writing style was just a gamma attempt to sound smart through obfuscation or if there was actual concepts I was failing to grasp. Probably a bit of both.
All Word Salad is designed to make the writer look smart and the reader feel dumb so the writer looks like a genius in comparison. Once you understand that Word Salad is just a rhetorical wizard trick then it loses it's ability to manipulate you and when you see Word Salad you can dismiss it as nonsense quickly.
I have it on good authority that German prose translates into the most awkward, clunking, tortured English imaginable. It's a feature of the linguistic style that Nietzche leaned into.
Can confirm. German doesn't translate well into most languages because of its building-block style. It's very natural to create words on the fly in German to illustrate a phenomenon, but the consequence for translators is that seldom is there a fitting word already existing in other languages.
A lot of rich connotation for common words is lost, too. E.g., the German word for mood is "Stimmung," which originally referred to the tuning of stringed instruments. Built into the idea of a mood in German is being tuned in a certain way or being attuned to something in a particular way. Just as an instrument produces different sounds with different tunings, so too with moods.
It's amazing how such a beautiful language can both sound so heinously ugly and translate in such an ugly and impoverished way.
Our language might not be as melodic as French or Italian, but it enables us to specify anything in a very precise manner. Why do you think we've been crushing so hard when it comes to machines?
Anyway, I admit that German has a rather technical tone, but you've obviously not been around drunken Finns if you think German sounds "heinously ugly". If I was some torturer in Guantanamo, I wouldn't waterboard those guys, I would put them in a bar somewhere in rural Finland every night.
btw, we've tried to eliminate the translation issue twice in the 20th century (we've been very open about it the second time), but, it didn't work out. Now we have to learn all those other languages in school.
Glad you enjoyed my reference to Cioran in the prior post... Nietzsche suffered from an "unspeakable megalomania", but there's a reason he's still discussed and quoted so much to this day; and that reason, imo, isn't so much the will to power or the ubermench or what have you, or even his interesting style, but rather his correct identification with the transvaluation of values brought forth by Christianity to upend the Roman world. The dichotomy between the pathetic state of his personal life and his conception of the ubermench, while funny, is utterly dwarfed by this identification, imo. His "On the Genealogy of Morality" was mind-blowing and answered the question about why everyone is so obsessed with equality/egalitarianism in all its forms...
As mainstream historian Tom Holland explains:
"If you look at the cross, it’s such an odd thing to have as a focus of veneration, and to have as a fundamental symbol of civilization. Because a cross is a symbol of torture. And to the Romans it was an emblem of their power to torture to death their inferiors. So crucifixion was inflicted on those who opposed Roman power in the provinces. But it’s also the paradigmatic fate that is visited on slaves who rebel against their masters. And everyone who’s seen Spartacus remembers the rows of crosses lining the Appian way. It’s a billboard advertising the ability of Rome to crush rebellion by the weak, and therefore it serves as a symbol of the powerful over the powerless. Christianity absolutely upends that it says the cross is a symbol of the powerless triumphing over the powerful, the slave triumphing over its master, of the victim triumphing over the torturer, and this is such a radical notion its hard to express how radical it is. And the idea that the last shall be first, that there is inherent dignity and value and power in being a victim, this is something that would have been utterly bewildering to the Romans. And it takes a long time for first the Roman world and then the world of the Germanic conquerers in the west and so on to properly synthesize and understand it. And thats why I think in a way we are so habituated to it that it takes an effort to understand just how weird and strange that idea is.
And its why actually I think the modern who has most profoundly and unsettlingly understood just how radical that idea is, how radical the idea that the cross of all things should become the emblem of a new civilization was a man who was not just an atheist but a radically hostile anti-Christian atheist Frederick Nietzsche, and Nietzsche said this is a repellant thing. Nietzsche identified the power and the glory and the beauty of classical civilization and he thought that Christianity was notoriously a religion for slaves and he saw in the emblem of Christ nailed to the cross a kind of disgusting subversion of the ideals of the classical world, privileging of those who properly should be ground beneath the heels of the mighty, and he saw it as a kind of sickness that then infected the “blonde beast”, that this primordial figure of the warrior gets corrupted and gets turned into a monkish figure who’s sick with poverty and sympathy for the poor and the oppressed, and Nietzsche thought it was disgusting. Now those ideas, however vulgarized, of course feed into a very septic subject which is fascism.
Fascism, I think, was the most radical revolutionary movement that Europe has seen since the age of Constantine. Because unlike the French Revolution, unlike the Russian Revolution, it doesn’t even target institutional Christianity: it targets the moral/ethical fundamentals of Christianity. The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution are still preaching the idea that the victim should be raised up from the dust and that the oppressor should be humbled into the dust; it’s still preaching the idea that the first should be last and the last should be first just as Christ has done.
The Nazis do not buy into that. The Nazis buy into the Nietzschean idea that the weak are weak and should be treated as weak, as contemptible, as something to be crushed….
Atheists of today [like Richard Dawkins et al]… they are basically Christians. Nietzsche saw humanists, communists, liberals—people who may define themselves against Christianity—as being absolutely in the fundamentals Christian, and I think he is right about that because I think that in a sense atheism doesn’t repudiate the kind of ethics and the morals and the values of Christianity."
From: youtu.be/c0gsPo2ilj8
'Christianity absolutely upends that it says the cross is a symbol of the powerless triumphing over the powerful, the slave triumphing over its master, of the victim triumphing over the torturer, and this is such a radical notion its hard to express how radical it is. And the idea that the last shall be first, that there is inherent dignity and value and power in being a victim, this is something that would have been utterly bewildering to the Romans.'
I've heard arguments that this was God's way to show his finger to everything the Roman Empire stood for. Their value system was upside-down in His eyes, so God decided to turn their symbol of torture into His symbol of Victory.
"...inherent dignity and value and power in being an innocent victim triumphant in glory over the guilty and unjust Accuser."
FIFY
And correct! This was, literally, world-shaking stuff
This is a bit of a tangent, but regarding what Tom Holland says about the cross—at the symbolic level, a cross is more than just a torture device.
Aside from the various symbols and geometries evoked by the image of the Christian cross, there is also the fact that the cross was used as a religious symbol in various cultures for thousands of years before Christ appeared in human form.
That Spider-Man dude is also a historian?
Frankly, I find his conclusions reductive and lacking the nuance of Garfield or Maguire.
> Atheists of today... they are basically Christians.
You seem more interested in sounding smart than thinking ideas through.
Christians actively work to be free from sin and stand against evil.
The modern atheist thinks sin is good and doesn't believe in evil.
The atheist philosophers need to appear culturally Christian because they are trying to subvert and corrupt Christian teachings.
I think they appear culturally Christian because they’re fish in water. All they manage to do is recreate Christian forms with debased window dressing. It’s kind of sad.
Most of them don’t even seem to realize they’re Christian in every way but the most important parts, the things that make it work. They’ve got their concept of original sin, their eschatology, their own take on immortality and divinity, just dressed up in scientism. They lack any real concept of repentance, forgiveness, sacrifice, or surrender to a higher power (±their unborn AI God, depending on sect).
At least the pagans (neo- and otherwise) are trying to do their own authentic thing. With varying levels of success. New Atheism is like a low-quality Chinese counterfeit of a successful product.
And this is why God pulls us out into deep waters where we can't swim alone. We need Him and we need each other. Do it without that, well, good luck.
Banned for lying.
Nice! Anyone who would like to understand the Verbal Attack Patterns in this comment should give Dr. Elgin's book "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense" a look.
There's misdirection (PUA losers! You are not a PUA loser, are you citizen?)
He uses the "Only a [++BAD-identified thing] would say that."
There's an embedded assumption of secret knowledge "something so stupid" and an appeal to an irrelevant expert.
Some obvious out-grouping attempted, and in-grouping with flattery.
The only one missing is "EVEN Vox could recognize that Nietzche" etc.
Ok Chad.
Are you trying to turn Chad into an insult instead of a compliment?
Do you know what else is piercingly correct? My identification of your SSH-rank:
Gamma male!
Lol. Right. As if that would matter at all. You go, girl, Vox has your back!
P.S. It's also relevant, I think, that the woke churches have emptied out. Apparently real Christians don't find those messages consonant with Christianity, even if some of the corrupt and worldly pastors do.
One of the problems of your analysis is that you look at Christianity like it's one unchanging monolith. When in fact it has splintered into thousands of different Protestant groups whose beliefs have evolved over time. Modern "pastors" hanging political Black Lives Matter flags on their churches are not necessarily being influenced by the letters of St. Paul. In many cases these people are signaling for status in the secular world. I think you're painting with a very broad brush. Which doesn't work over a 2000 year time period during which most of the world was Christian and a lot of the power struggles were within Christianity.
I just stumbled upon this article about how public school "became a thing" in Massachusetts. And the author points out that the Universalists took over Harvard from the Calvinists and wanted to re-educate society starting with the children. The Universalists sound a lot like the Masons, working to undermine real Christianity in favor of a "do what thou wilt" Luciferian attitude which would free them up for more sinning and more money-making. I think it's important for you to de-average your analysis over the past 2000 years. You've already pointed out that Catholicism, with its hierarchy, wasn't quite so revolutionary, which is a good observation. Similarly, when you look at this article, you'll see that this shift from Calvinism to Unitarianism was a radical change. Not because Unitarianism was closer to the original premise of Christianity, but because powerful people wanted to radically change people's beliefs. Were they really trying to bring Christianity to its logical conclusion? Or were they trying to undermine it for their own purposes?
https://reason.com/1979/03/01/why-the-schools-went-public/
"An intellectual event of great importance—probably the most important in American history: the takeover of Harvard by the Unitarians in 1805 and the expulsion of the Calvinists. No event has had a greater long-range influence on American intellectual, cultural, and political life than this one."
Hi Crush, Protestant sects, despite how many of them are, share the following attributes (especially its Calvinist and Puritan strains):
1. The universal brotherhood of man.
2. The futility of violence.
3. The fair distribution of goods.
4. The managed society.
These are all religious beliefs, of course, and are not derived from reason. How Christianity changes over time is what is called the egalitarian ratchet effect and which is discussed here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why
I’ve been a Calvinist my whole life and only recently begun to reject it for Holy Mother Church. But that is total nonsense, except maybe your first point.
Weren't those the public heads-and-hands in stocks for criminals, scarlet letters, tar-and-feathers for malfeasant officials, and Salem Witch Trials guys?
The Puritans had great execution sermons. I recommend Samuel Danforth's "The Cry of Sodom Enquired Into".
Who wrote "Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War"
Not a Protestant myself, but the non-denom church I was in did not start with "Christianity and--" until the Covidiocy hit. Although they failed the test #3 and #4 were still not in evidence.
#2 was there, though it seemed to be mostly (20/20 hindsight) in aid of Fantasy dreams of martyrdom. Not helpful.
#1 is tough, because ALL Christianity assumes the potential brother- and sister-hood of mankind. Synagogue of Satan types et al, are not our brothers until they repent and follow Christ.
Where are you getting this stuff? Are you just confusing the sell-out churches who trade worldly status for the faith?
You are full of shit. Go ask Michael Servetus if Calvinists believe violence is futile.
His radical idea was neither new nor radical. He was wrong about that just as he was wrong about everything else.
Jesus Christ is not just the Omega. He is also the Alpha.
The lack of attribution and the casual, disdainful arrogance isn't a good look, imo, but hey, it's your house.
The "Jesus is everything" take was best argued by Orthodox priest David Bentley Hart in the following 2003 essay, "Christ and Nothing": https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/10/christ-and-nothing . He does not agree with Nietzsche's take, but he takes the arguments seriously and has significant sympathy for them. By actually engaging with the arguments instead of a caricature, by steel-manning his opponents instead of straw-manning them he get much closer to the truth, imo.
Casual, disdainful dismissal is all that feeble posturings merit. Nietzsche has never been worthy of anything but open mockery. It's amusing that you think it is somehow arrogant to dismiss a lunatic's boastful rantings.
The whole point about what you think the Cross represents is just flat-out wrong. It doesn't represent powerlessness and never has. It represents the divine power that broke the rule of sin and death.
Nietszche was absolutely and confirmably wrong. There is zero question about it.
It's not true that "it [the cross] represents the divine power that broke the rule of sin and death." If you want a proper symbol for that power, consider the empty tomb or the rolled stone. THESE represent victory over the cross, a symbol of collectivist worldly power, elitist cruelty, and enthusiasm for crushing dissidents. We could add, and I do, that the cross represents also Israelite collaboration with the enemies of Israel. Remember the leaders who handed Jesus over to the Romans to do their dirty work for them. The cross is their tool, too.
After the body had been removed from the cross, the latter disappears from the narrative. While the body was in the tomb, there was yet no victory over death. This triumph comes with the resurrection, but this act does not break the rule of sin. The resurrection breaks the cross, but it's not the concluding work of redemption.
Just because you call him a lunatic doesn’t make it so. you think and behave as if we are in the Middle Ages and you Catholics are top dog and have a continent-spanning secret police behind you but you don’t.
All you have is a little internet echo chamber and a religion that is built on the flimsiest foundation that cannot stand up to any criticisms.
So you arrogantly dismiss them. but the vast majority of people aren’t convinced by your bluster anymore and haven’t been for centuries.
You come off as weak and ignorant now more than ever.
It's an absolute historical fact that Nietzsche was a lunatic. He literally died in a state of "raving dementia".
"Detailed evidence shows that he passed through each of the three stages: the chancre of primary syphilis immediately after infection; the terrible pox, fever, and pain of secondary syphilis that emerges months or years later; and the dreaded third: paresis. ‘Paresis,’ like the word ‘syphilis’ itself, refers to a syndrome. An acronym, its mnemonic is: personality disturbances; affect abnormalities; reflex hyperactivity; eye abnormalities; sensorium changes; intellectual impairment; and slurred speech."
Nietzsche was a diseased madman and his writings reflect that.
Is that you Kathleen Kennedy?
Can't be. Not one single reference to Lesbian Space Witches.
Centuries? Who are you talking to, Vox or your own insecurities? Frederick is dead, God still lives. Stick that in your craw and choke on it.
Vox, I would love for you to say or write more on this issue at some point, this claim that Christianity was created to undermine the Roman Empire, and, on a longer timeline, to undermine all Europeans.
I agree with you that this distortion and slander of Christianity is just wrong. I love your point that Christ is also the Alpha. Christianity is The Truth.
And even viewed non-religiously, Christianity works--it essentially created Western Civilization as we know it and it remains the most obvious Schelling point for our people. Our modern problems are driven more by people falling away from Christian belief than anything else.
But I keep seeing this claim in various corners of the "dissident right." There are pagan LARPers, vitalist BAPers, Mark Brahmin the Apollonian, a bunch of Neoreactionary Moldbug readers, etc. They have differing motivations and differing levels of dishonesty, some of which are easy to see through. But they do make a few interesting observations, including about the pathological altruism of Western Christians, as you've noted for example in the case of Minnesotans almost eager to be ripped off by Somalians.
So I would love to read somewhere, either written by you or referred to by you if you're aware of any good sources, a rebuttal of some of these ideas.
"...the pathological do-gooder-ism of Western Churchians"
FIFY again.
Whenever something gets more like a god in one's life, nearer it becomes a demon.
You are describing "Christianity AND ... anything but obedience to God"
God will not be mocked. My husband calls it the cult of nice.
Hang on, I think I can find a short essay on it. I think it's also in Orthodoxy. Yes: It is in Mere Christianity.
"God will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest [pharmacy aka] chemist's shop."
It’s a good bet that those who think that way tend to resemble Nietzsche themselves.
And I just remind myself that suicidal Westerners are apostates, not Christian, and as such would be under harsher divine condemnation than pagans who never were Christian.
It's an easy claim to make if you are ignorant of the history, but it fails to answer very simple questions.
1) Why would Greeks, Romans, and Ethiopians care about a Judean non-citizen, especially enough to die for him? If you argue that Paul invented Christianity - another nonsense - then why would they care about the cult of a random citizen?
2) How is it that the religion not only survived the fall of Rome, but persevered in the East, in Africa, and in Europe for a millennium more? It not only persevered, but it conquered the tribalist and warlike pagans of those areas at their relative heights.
3) How is it that the religion resisted the Arabic Muslim conquests, to the degree that it even pushed them out of conquered Spain?
"Christianity absolutely upends that it says the cross is a symbol of the powerless triumphing over the powerful"
To think this you have to be ignorant or delusional, and probably evil. The triumph belongs to God alone. If one thinks otherwise, one probably would've demanded Christ be a worldly conquerer, too.
"Powerless"
Interesting way to describe the ultimate font of power overcoming death for those he chooses to protect.
I do like the hostile description, because it captures the paradigm shift that Christ brings. How can dying to your enemies be powerful?
But the POWER of Christianity is that their most powerful weapon, Death, is rendered toothless. Their symbol of power, the cross, now belongs to Christ because he won and to the victor the spoils.
"For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."
They don't just disbelieve, they denigrate and pervert. A good faith mythologizing of the Passion would be something akin to the homecoming of Ulysses:
"The Cross represents the promise that a just King will return, and all tyranny will end."
I agree, they miss the whole point of the crucifixion -- it has nothing to do with power or powerlessness in human terms.
God's justice must be perfect -- every sin must be punished; God's mercy must be perfect -- every repentant sinner must be forgiven. How do you square this circle? God punishes every sin by voluntarily taking the punishment onto himself unto death.
Indeed. He raises up the weak and gives unto the needy, as he humbles the wise.
It's a lot of thought to compress into a comment, but it's good.