Tag: human nature

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Part 1

Jacques Luzi
Ce que l’Intelligence artificielle ne peut pas faire
Èditions La Lenteur, 2024

For both pragmatic and mystical reasons, industrial society worships technology, and it is the adoration of technology which stymies any democratic debate or questioning regarding the legitimacy of the technocratic class in power. The dependency on machines and the devotional association which many ordinary people have with machines stands in the way of any effective critique of that class’s project to transform natural gifts into artificial ones. (more…)

1,332 words

Sebastian Junger
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
Simon & Schuster, 2016

Since its first edition in 2016, this book had been on my list of books to read. Eight years later, I finally read it this weekend, coinciding with a conversation with friends about the drama of war and how it brings out both the best and worst in human behavior. In Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Sebastian Junger once again showcases his prose, marked by clarity and precision—the same qualities evident in War and Fire. (more…)

Jean-Baptiste Regnault, Socrates Tears Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure, 1791.

2,700 words

Part 1 of 7 (Part 2 here)

Author’s Note: I am typing up and editing my lecture notes on Plato’s Alcibiades I and Gorgias to incorporate them into a new book tentatively entitled Tyranny and Wisdom: An Introduction to Platonic Philosophy. The Phoenician neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus (c. 245–c. 325) placed the Alcibiades I first and the Gorgias second in his curriculum of Plato’s dialogues, and with good reason, for together they constitute an excellent introduction to Socratic moral and political philosophy.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

2,012 words

He [Rousseau] had nothing new, but he set everything on fire. — Madame de Staël

Starting from unlimited freedom I arrive at unlimited despotism. — Shigalev, in Dostoevsky’s The Devils

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, not Karl Marx is the real father and inspiration for the theater of the absurd that is today’s Left. Rousseau’s “Man is born free, everywhere he is in chains” is the original formulation of the adolescent anarchist rally-cry, “Rage against the machine!” (more…)

Ted Kaczynski teapot by Charles Krafft

6,103 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

The following is an edited transcript of the conversation between Greg Johnson and Richard Houck on the subject of Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, that was broadcast on Counter-Currents Radio in April 2021. You can listen to the recording here.

Greg Johnson: I’m Greg Johnson. Welcome to Ted Talk. I am joined here today by Rich Houck, and we’re going to be talking about Ted Kaczynski’s Industrial Society and Its Future. Rich, welcome to the show. (more…)

Aristophanes

6,912 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Strepsiades Flunks Out

It hasn’t gone well. First Socrates bursts out of the Thinkery swearing an oath: “By Respiration, by Chaos, by the Air.” The usual places of gods in his oath are occupied by three natural forces. Socrates then rants about a particularly bad student who is “rustic . . . resourceless . . . dull . . . and forgetful.” Then he calls this student to come out. And out comes Strepsiades.

Socrates then quizzes Strepsiades on what he has learned. (more…)

A sixteenth-century engraving of Strepsiades, his son, and Socrates in Clouds.

7,651 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

“The Thinkery, a likeness of death, teaching Whirligig and Bamboozle, ‘back to nature’ without families, without the old paternal gods, and without nomoi (not paying back money owed and using unusual forms of words) . . .” — Thomas Prufer (more…)

Herbert Marcuse and the New Left gave rise to Leftism as we know it today.

1,441 words

It is always popular to try to trace the ideological lineage of one’s political opponents back to a particular philosopher. This is not without merit. Marcuse and other New Left Marxists spawned many of the ills that afflict us today, but Leftism can only be properly understood as a governing ideology. It has reigned supreme in Western societies since at least the 1960s, and its subsequent development has not been driven by theorists and their books, but in response to the practical challenges that it has faced as a state religion. It has no bible to which one can refer, but central principles which are held inviolate by its supporters and a mythology supporting them. (more…)

2,620 words

Part 2 of 4 (Part 1 here)

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

The Ideology of Sameness

“I think the entire history of the world and of societies can be fully interpreted according to two great principles,” writes the sociologist Paul Yonnet, “viz., that of equalization and that of differentiation (or the tendency to similarity and the tendency to deviation), between which relations of re-equilibration, of compensation (true, false, symbolic, or real) or consolation, are constantly being formed.”[1] (more…)

Jonathan Haidt

4,274 slov

Část první

English original here

V první části své eseje jsem se věnoval Haidtovu argumentu, že morálka se vyvinula jako reakce na různé „adaptivní výzvy“. Z těch se etablovalo několik „morálních základů“ spojených s péčí, férovostí, loajalitou, autoritou, posvátností a svobodou. (more…)

3,587 slov

Část druhá

English original here

Bývalý liberál Jonathan Haidt je profesorem etického vedení na Sternově ekonomické fakultě Newyorské univerzity. Nedávno přišel s novou knihou The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure (Rozmazlená americká dušička aneb jak dobré úmysly a špatné nápady vysílají celou generaci na cestu neúspěchu; spoluautor Greg Lukianoff), (more…)

W. H. Drake, “Then Rikki-Tikki was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog,” from The Jungle Book, 1895.

1,479 words

Allow me to share a deep character flaw of mine that it took nearly six decades to realize but only moments to rectify.

Despite outward appearances and an intensely unsavory public reputation, the sad truth is that I’m way too nice — all the way to the point where I’m not. (more…)

4,969 words

Jeffrey: I’m seeing something that was always hidden. I’m involved in a mystery. And it’s all secret.

Sandy: You like mysteries that much?

Jeffrey: Yeah. You’re a mystery. I like you. Very much.

(more…)