94 words / 43:25 
This is the second half of the most recent Counter-Currents Radio episode. It is now available to download or listen to online.
Topics include:
1:27 – Are Jews unaware of the damage their behavior causes?
8:00 – Do women lament right wing political victories?
10:02 – Tips on brevity and clarity in writing
17:20 – Was Nietzsche an individualist?
21:14 – JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference
28:06 – How important is Christopher Lasch’s work?
36:35 – What parts of North America would Greg concede to non-whites?
42:30 – Goodbyes
To listen in a player, click here or below. To download, right-click the link and click “save as.”
21 comments
I’m just a midwit, but I have a hard time finding either of those philosophical arguments compelling.
Perfection implies existence? If I accept that for the sake of argument it still doesn’t do an iota of work towards proving actual existence. An entity can’t have any (let alone all) of those perfect qualities unless it actually exists in the first place to have them. It seems to be simply begging the question. Just because you can imagine something perfect doesn’t mean it exists; at best you can say that your imagination exists. Utopia doesn’t arrive.
If all things cease to exist, then after a long enough time everything will have ceased to exist, and since that hasn’t happened there must be at least one necessarily existent being? Things do cease to exist, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t new things to replace them. Every ant ceases to exist, but ants live on. The process of death and renewal could potentially go on forever, with everything ceasing to exist and yet things always existing. (The process, then, might necessarily exist, but it’s a not a being. Also, what we call “ceasing to exist” could be argued to be just a change of form. The law of conservation of matter and energy would say that nothing ceases to exist; things only change form.)
If everything can cease to exist, then given that an infinite span of time has already passed, wouldn’t the possibility that all contingent beings cease to exist at the same time have come to pass? Yet something exists, therefore, not everything can cease to exist. Therefore, there is at least one necessarily existing being.
I think it depends on the process that controls how things come into and out of being. It’s not purely random. That everything can die individually doesn’t necessarily imply that everything can die simultaneously, because they’re not independent variables. (And also, things don’t actually wink out of existence but change form. When I “cease to exist”, my corpse at least gets transformed into new life. When our sun dies, its matter may end up inside new planets, just as ancient dead stars apparently formed the Earth.)
That said, if we apply the laws of physics as we currently understand them, the universe seems destined for an eventual heat death, which is depressing, but there’s so much we don’t know.
Wrong assumptions: perfection is undefined and possibly time has not been infinite but started with the Big Bang. According to modern physical theories(which may be wrong of course), time and space are intimately connected.
ps I thought the second part much more interesting than first. FYI.
Regarding the Dante quote; more context is needed, but Jews were the antithesis of Christianity in medieval thought. If Christians show greed and chase money, Jews will see them as having failed their principles.
God is the best possible being. If so, doesn’t it make sense to say that it is better for such a being to actually exist than merely to be an idea? If so, then perfection entails existence.
The same argument actually works for the devil too: if the devil is the worst possible being, then he must exist, because that is worse than him being merely an idea.
It is supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum, but I find it convincing too.
Yes: the demontological argument.
I’ll adapt old Willie and say that it depends on the meaning of “is”. That first “is” seems to assume the conclusion. “God, if he exists as we imagine him, is the best possible being…” But then somebody can say “Well, maybe he doesn’t, then.”
I’m amused by how it works for the devil, too, but I guess it works for anything supremely good or bad. “SuperCream is the best possible dessert… therefore it exists.”
Anyway, I enjoyed the stream.
But SuperCream doesn’t exist, so it isn’t the best dessert.
Exactly. 🙂 That’s a perfectly fine assertion.
With regard to JD Vance’s speech, do people really not understand the gravity of this snub to Europe? This is worse than an insult, this is grounds to order the departure of American bases.
It wouldn’t be a bad thing in the long run. But it seems unlikely to me. Aside from Orban, Europe doesn’t have many leaders. Besides, it would be good for Europe to follow the US lead here, ditch censorship, stop/reverse migration, and allow the populist right into government.
The rise of the European populist right precedes that of the US.
That doesn’t matter. The populist Right is now in power in the US, and the Trump admin. is siding with AfD and Georgescu in Romania. This is good.
People often respond irrationally to being given criticism, even constructive criticism, taking it as a personal insult, and certainly our rulers are no different. But at the same time, it sometimes plants a seed in their mind that may come to bloom, even if they deny that the original critic had any influence on them.
Yes, they might lash out at the United States. And while it’s hard for me to imagine them ever giving up their love of national suicide, I at least appreciate us applying pressure from the right side, for once.
I just said what the room was presumably thinking. JD Vance spent 20 minutes talking about himself and his worldview, when the goal was to talk about conflicts between states. His demeanour and arrogance reversed and nullified any valid points he may have had. It gets even worse when you consider his audience: high-ranking senior military officers. I have been taught to respect the aged and not to act like a spoiled brat around them.
Totally jaundiced and delusional take.
That’s what she said. But think harder, a serious flaw in the West is the decline of manners, conduct and ethics – no sign of chivalry anywhere. Perhaps if JD Vance had been charismatic and assertive enough… but unfortunately for the most part he just made a fool out of himself.
You sound like a pompous fool.
Would Greg consider debating eventsinukraine.substack? He says that he wants to have a civil debate with someone about the sovereignty argument in regards to Ukraine.
No, he doesn’t seem to understand any of the basic issues.
Here’s the rules for writers item:
https://counter-currents.com/2018/03/rules-for-writers/
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