November 17, 2010
Pessimism about one's own nation is an all-encompassing and all-defining condition, because everything any of us positively can be or seek as individuals is affected where not wholly determined by our membership in a national community - the state broadly defined. When we refer to an "unhappy childhood," it will usually matter a great deal whether we're referring to our own childhood, and the same is true when we refer to the unhappy conditions of our national upbringing or to a "broken" national home. Yet national pessimism is still not the same as absolute pessimism. We can imagine the failure of any nation, including our own nation, as we have seen great national disasters, that would not equate with the failure of history itself. We could even come to equate the failure of a national idea as essential to some higher good: It would not be the first time for us, just the first time that we were referring to ourselves.
A national pessimist suffers a kind of exile from his own future, but he can still visit happier outcomes, on a kind of spiritual visa. Over time, he may even be accepted by the natives, and find a new home. Americans are particularly well-prepared to make this transition, because our national identity, paradoxically, is already built on the cancellation of nationality, on immigration and nothing else. Our new citizenship may not be full and authentic, of the blood and soil, but neither is the one with which we are born. The American idea at inception had before it a vast national phase to undergo, but what defined the American nation was that it was not and never could be a nation like the others: The idea of a new world had to take on a purpose-fabricated national costume for us to assume and sustain a place within the world of nations, but the realization of our idea could never have been contained in a merely national destiny. For the same reason, the victory of our "Greatest Generation," at our national apogee, was the victory over ultra-nationalism, in favor of a new international system implying the supersession of nations, justifiable as an American national project strictly on that basis. All of our history since that time has been governed by the same paradox of nationalized internationalism, but from the other, declining side, as accompanied by the conversion of American energy into mere mass - the accumulation of material wealth alongside the decay of national institutions.
We can therefore look forward to the completion of our creative self-destruction with greater hope, or at least with greater equanimity, than others in our approximate position have been able to muster. What we stand to lose is everything we never really thought was worth having. What we stand to gain is what we always sought.
June 19, 2014
What other than the actual invasion of Iraq under proven-false premises could actually prove those premises false, at least as we articulated them to ourselves while, we believed, safely ignoring the always-wrong and resoundingly re-defeated defeatists?
Continued
On “Paul Ryan on Real Progressivism”
Democracy is the only form of government that is inherently moral. Monarchy is based on the theory that a country is the private property of a family whose owner can will it to his descendants. Dictatorship is based on the theory that a hooligan can grab a country and call it his own. In the case of North Korea, the two theories are joined.
THE BLESSED HUMAN RACE ends with the words "Democracy is the political realization of the scientific method."
On “How little you know: The Deniable Darwin by David Berlinski”
Chairman Mao rejected science, closed colleges, and got high school kids to beat up their teachers. Marxism is a system that demands absolute faith.
Darwinism can be modified, rejected in part, or reconsidered in the face of new evidence. The alternative, for most conservatives today, is not honing or modifying Darwinism but replacing it with creationism. Creationism can never be questioned or modified. Faith is faith. Mao, the Inquisition, and the Salem witch trials are all the result of faith--the sin of faith.
Dogs are the result of genetic engineering, done long before the word was invented. Darwinism can be questioned, but it can't be separated from what we know about aspects of evolution. Darwin, as far as I know, never tried to explain how life came into existence. His work is based on studies of real species, both living and extinct. The greatness of science is that it can be questioned and broadened. The evil of faith is that it is immutable.
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@ adam:
The decisive moment in the appearance of humanity is told figuratively in the Genesis story of the Tree of Knowledge. Humans decided to explore the question of Good and Evil, and in doing so, discovered they were mortal, invented division of labor, and committed themselves to an artificial world in order to make up for their lack of claws and fangs.
Here are my thoughts, in the title chaper of my book.
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/Blessed.html
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Colin,
In the June 1996 issue of COMMENTARY, Berlinski wrote, "God said, 'Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let the fowl fly above the open firmament of heaven' ... And who on the basis of experience would be inclined to disagree? ... An act of intelligence is required to bring even a thimble into being; why should the artifacts of life be different?"
I cited this very creationist-sounding quotation in a letter to the editor that was published in the September 2001 issue of COMMENTARY in response to a different Berlinski article. He replied, "I regard Darwin's theories AND various theories of design as inadequate; I have no replacement for either." You say the same thing, Colin. But the segment that I quoted first sounds unambiguously creationist. Perhaps Berlinski doesn't understand what his opinions are.
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@ CK MacLeod:
If you're thinking of a revival of sorts of Lysenko's theories, then you're not at all in agreement with Berlinski. Berlinski is careful to avoid a discussion of faith, but his arguments are simply anti-evolution and not pro-anything else. He is silently pro-creationism without ever really facing the issue of why he opposes evolution. He is not interested in "as yet undiscovered processes." He ignores important facts such as the deveopment of bacteria that are immune to antibiotics--an aspect of evolution that is happening in our own time.
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@ CK MacLeod:
Genetics is based on the same principal as evolution, and Darwinian evolution is the only kind there is. There certainbly are problems when it comes to explaining irreducibly complex forms of life, but they are nothing compared with the problems of creationism.
The Bible is a beautiful, important, and historically informative set of writings. Taking it literally and using it as an argument against evolution cheapens it.
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People don't know how to read the Bible. As I said way back in November,
http://ckmac.com/thewholething/2009/11/creationism/
The Bible tells us that there is water above the sky, that the mark of Cain was placed on him to warn others--at a time when there were no others except his parents--and that he found a wife. Later on in Genesis, there is the story of Jacob, who gets animals to bear offspring with spots on them by placing branches in front of their eyes while they are mating.
The Bible is very beautiful. The stories relating to Creation are obviously not meant to be taken literally. Besides, as I wrote in COMMENTARY in a letter once cited by Colin, an intelligent Creator would certainly have wanted to make use of evolution in order to perfect His creation.
We humans have always known how evolution works and have always made use of it. We are always indulging in selective breeding and generating new variants of animals. That's probably what Jacob did in the story of placing the branches in front of the eyes. The branches had nothing to do with what happened. Jacob simply chose the animals he wanted to choose in order to get the offspring he wanted to see.
Blind faith is a force that makes good people bad and smart people stupid. There are only two doctrines in the world today that people accept with unquestioning faith: Marxism and Islam. Islam is trying very hard nowadays to teach the world the meaning of unquestioned faith. Alas, nobody is learning.
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