A selection of musings from my Notes Stream on Substack.

I accumulated quite a few of those since the last installment, so this is slightly longer.

Interestingly, these days some of my Notes get more views and likes than my articles here. Times change, and the Substack vibe has definitely changed. Notes has become more Twitter-like, but longer and more nuanced posts still work better here than over at the hellhole...

For more of my short notes, see previous Short Notes I, Short Notes II, Short Notes III, Short Notes IV, Short Notes V and Short Notes VI.

“Is morality universal, or is it shaped by culture and personal beliefs?”

Completely the wrong way of framing the question because, in the spirit of our times, it treats morality as an empirical issue.

And as such, the answer is obviously no: morality is not universal. I mean, there are psychopaths and pedophiles, and there are saints. Also, it’s clearly shaped by culture, with vast differences as to what is considered moral by different peoples across time and space.

But even if we could point to some form of common morality manifest across all cultures, while interesting, this wouldn’t tell us anything about what we should or shouldn’t do, or whether moral realism is true. It would just mean everybody has adopted certain values, perhaps for purely functionalist reasons (group cohesion/survival etc.).

This tells us nothing about individual moral choices in the context of an individual life, nor does it tell us whether these values are actually good: there might be an infinite number of value systems that “work”, many of which might be evil. And even if you could point out that some value system ultimately doesn’t “work”, it still could be morally better, if you accept that there might be higher values than group cohesion or other purely functionalist goals.

And even if you could observe that all people on an individual level somehow shared a certain moral core (good luck with that) independent of functionalist group considerations and the like, they still could all be wrong. After all, we might be a fallen species, or represent an evil evolutionary equilibrium (like a parasite), be controlled by an evil higher power, etc. “Just because it exists, it must be good” is not a good argument.

Treating morality as an empirical issue was and is a great mistake. There are many ways of thinking about it, but recording “what people do” or how they think alone cannot bring us closer to a solution.

Gave in to the urge to create a 1980s throwback synth pop song (with our duo Rusty Weld). Apparently people like it:

It’s also on Spotify and Apple Music.

By the way, I set up a separate Substack for Rusty Weld — not much going on yet, but we’ll compile a list of our songs there, post new songs, and I might also write some posts about music production etc. If you like to ride along on our strange musical journey, subscribe.

It just occurred to me that dissident thought during the last 10 years has essentially reverse-engineered and recreated the entire trajectory of Western philosophy.

The diagnosis: we have gone off the rails with our solipsistic “postmodern” liberalism. Let’s reclaim our heritage!

And our heritage is true liberalism, our sacred Enlightenment values!

Wait, there’s something wrong with Enlightenment values, let’s reclaim our true heritage, which is Christianity!

No wait, something is wrong with Christianity too, we need to go back to Rome and Greece! (Or is it the Bronze Age?)

The next step is postmodernism: realizing, on the basis of a good understanding of the Western canon including the Ancients, that there are a whole lot of presuppositions baked into our thought not just because of leftism, the Enlightenment or Christianity, but also because of our Greco-Roman heritage; this means we need to become aware and question those too in order to come up with fresh, more open and deeper ways of thinking about the world and our place in it. This is essentially what some of the thinkers of the 1920s and 30s were up to, such as Collingwood, Whitehead and Heidegger.

Now such inevitable “postmodern” ideas are dangerous, because they can indeed lead to solipsistic liberalism of the “self-actualization unhinged from reality as the only value” variety. But they don’t have to: they can also lead to new ways of thinking that are less constrained by the weight of our inherited unconscious assumptions. Ways of thinking which, far from disconnecting us from reality, let us see reality clearer and in more fruitful ways, including spiritual reality and our place in it all. Tradition is, after all, partly a load-bearing myth rather than objective truth about our past, and as such, while important and useful, can also trap mind and soul.

We’re almost there boys. 10 years after the critique of postmodernism gained momentum, we’re about to recreate its early stages. Which timeline we’ll enter from there we’ll see.

IQ determines the level of discourse one can participate in, but has nothing to do with truth, except insofar as some forms of truthful discourse require a certain IQ level.

High-IQ discourse often involves quickly throwing around difficult concepts, 2nd degree meta reflections etc. Not to mention math and very complex language, depending on the issue.

But IQ alone says nothing (except for limit cases) about your grasp of reality, i.e. how these complex concepts relate to deeper truth. The latter seems to be related to a kind of holistic right-hemisphere thinking, a "depth of perception informed by depth of character".

You can't measure such depth-perception the way you can administer IQ tests: because it's a very subtle affair that requires the one judging it to have that level of depth of perception himself. We are talking about something qualitative here that exists "between the lines", that is, outside the world that can be directly represented via language.

So yes, high IQ people can get things spectacularly wrong, even more so than others, because they can use their access to high-level forms of discourse and their reasoning power to get from bad axioms to catastrophe, or defend unconscious bad axioms in a way that convinces people.

They can also hide behind concepts few understand, those with lower IQ then assuming the conclusions must be right.

The antidote to that is intuition and "blink" gut reactions. You don't need high IQ for that at all.

The midwit meme rings so true because in order to be propagandized, you need a certain level of IQ, and you also need to pay attention to propaganda. People on the low end either can't understand it or just don't care.

But once propagandized by all these concepts peddled by high IQ lunatics, you need a very high IQ yourself to reason yourself out of it. But whether you actually do that or not has nothing to do with IQ.

This is actually a good illustration of how the study of history is not “scientific”, but depends on the quality of minds, specifically: one’s ability to mentally reach out to past minds.

Strictly speaking, both interpretations are possible here. But of course, one is stupid. The other may or may not be true, but in any event isn’t stupid. Which one you will prefer often doesn’t depend on “facts”, but on how developed your own mind is, and how aligned with Reality it is thanks to growth, understanding, experience, struggle, and wider study.

Kisin sounds like the archetypical humourless church lady, triggered by a mildly offensive boy joke, who then launches into a scolding fest: “Why do you have a patch on your trousers! Look at your hair! And did I see you ogling that woman?”

The tragedy with the Kisin types is that they have not the faintest clue what a huge service

One of the most foolish things we can fall into is to be jealous of those who achieved something at a younger age than us. Destinies vary widely.

We’ll never know if we are destined for greatness on this plane until we pass. And even if we find we aren’t, by that mature point we’ll have understood that life isn’t really about that, anyway: greatness is to be celebrated, but there are different forms of it, some of which are very subtle and can only be perceived by the few people whose souls are receptive for such.

So, don’t worry, celebrate greatness in others, and continue to do your thing, to listen to your own calling as it unfolds over a lifetime.

This whole lunacy of pretending ethnicity is linked to your passport, and at the same time nation and ethnicity have nothing to do with one another, started when Americans began projecting their identity issues on the rest of the world.

I remember how this crept into the German discourse: “Is Germany an immigration country?” the pundits began asking, meaning something like the US melting pot. Must have been late 90s/early 2000s. Direct US import that had no basis whatsoever before.

I think it’s funny how people try to get AI toys to say something “based” or stupid, when these sorts of games amount to little more than getting it to choose “NYT” or “right-wing blog” (or study A or study B) as the source. It’s just that the source-selecting is hidden behind complex jumble. Might as well go straight to the NYT or that blog.

A thought: Europe might be in for a very rude timeline now that the US is withdrawing.

What must happen one way or another is that reality re-asserts itself, and this means the sweeping away of the utterly moronic Eurocrats, who eventually will be replaced by an actually competent if chaotic new elite comprised of those hardened by years of opposition and thinking outside the mainstream box, à la team MAGA. It's the natural course, unless the Eurocrats manage to install full-blown dictatorial tyranny, which frankly I'm not sure they're even capable of. All they know is grift, lies and make-believe. The effects of this elite circulation alone will entail a huge amount of mayhem for Europe.

Another thing I suspect might happen is that old historical grievances start cropping up again between European nations. This had been held in check not by the EU or "European integration", as is often claimed, but by the US-led globalist faction imposing their world order both by raw power and narrative control. The EU was always just a junior partner in this, and if the US withdraws, so goes their power source.

Once the entrenched (historical, political, philosophical) narratives begin to lose their grip and people come across alternative takes on their history and morality, questioning the post-WWII order which not too long ago seemed like an eternal feature of reality, I wouldn't be surprised to see old territorial disputes flaring up, old national dreams coming back, revenge fantasies etc. Bitter disputes might erupt between France and Germany, Germany and Poland, among various eastern European countries, and between many continental countries and Britain. Not to mention the hatred for Russia in Poland, the Baltics and other eastern countries. The historical traumata and bitter conflicts run deep, and they have been shoved under the carpet for too long, unexamined, thanks to the pax Americana. It all might not come up while there is a common enemy in the form of EU lunacy, but once it is gone?

Such a pessimistic scenario might only be held in check if the US and Russia exert their power to keep these things down. Or, optimistically, people in Europe learn how to integrate new information and narratives gracefully, acknowledging their grievances and complex history, not shying away from revisionism that might not paint their respective nations as "great ancient people who have been eternally victimized and never done anything wrong", dealing with the "blood memory" of ethnic and national bloodshed and injustices without going nuts, while engaging the process of rebuilding a new order based on self-determination, good will and the "rule of normal people".

Then, of course, there’s the inevitable further economic decline. Germans in particular is ill-equipped to deal with it, being used to a high standard.

Such major transitions can easily lead to total catastrophe, but they can also offer many opportunities for anchoring ourselves in reality. Often it’s both.

Guess we'll find out.

(Note: Wrote this on Feb 12)

So apparently they’ll race-swap actors for a new Harry Potter series.

Not that I care really, but those who oppose this because it’s not true to the source material miss the bigger point.

A huge part of the Harry Potter success is that it presented a highly idealized form of British elite school, set in a romanticized past - evoking dreams and longing for something more beautiful, more pure than our shit world.

Bringing in retarded US race politics destroys precisely that.

There is one aspect to the J.D. Vance Munich saga I haven’t seen pointed out: the European populist right is divided between a more transatlanticist and a more Russophilic, America-skeptical faction. In Germany, many in the East are naturally more inclined toward Russia/the east because of close cultural ties during GDR times, the older ones also having grown up with anti-American messaging.

But the divide can be seen in the West too. Beyond Russophilia there are also those favoring a more hardcore German nationalism in the tradition of the Weimar right, which was often anti-American, seeing Weimar degeneracy partly as "Americanization". By supporting the populist right movement in Germany (and Europe), the Trump admin naturally strengthens the transatlanticist faction that is looking for American leadership anyway and, frankly, often just copies whatever happens in MAGA land. This is not only a great asset for the Trump movement, but it also might satisfy their sense of thought-leadership which they value, especially when it comes to the "motherland" Europe.

It is tempting to see this in light of the old Mackinder doctrine of separating Germany from Russia, but truth is, Germany isn't as relevant anymore. Seems that China has taken the place of the Anglo world's main rival in need of containment. But for that too, influence on Europe is still an asset, so it's not surprising that the Meddlers keep on Meddling, this time exerting their influence not on the Euroliberals, but on the Euroright. Whether that will succeed is a different matter, because as eugyppius rightly hints at, the Americans underestimate the sheer amount of brainwashing the German people went through since WWII (ironically done in no small part by the US to bring them in line), which keeps (West-)Germans from voting for their own interests, cause need to dEfEnD dEmOcRaCy.

A lot is up in the air at the moment, let's see where the chips may fall.

Some thoughts on the JD Vance “family over strangers” blowout:

People don't understand the real meaning of universalism.

It's not about some liberal open-borders sentiments. Rather, it's the idea that there are people everywhere who, in principle, are able to choose the life of the soul over an earthly life of mere expediency. (Although these people are fewer than most religions, quite self-servingly, assume.)

Therefore, choosing the soul can transcend tribal and family bonds. Everybody who has refused to be Covid-shot knows exactly what Matthew’s Jesus meant with the infamous

I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

During that time, many of us felt a deeper spiritual connection to random strangers around the world than with some of our own community and even family, and this still holds true in many ways. We sometimes have to go against our tribe in favor of our soul, and even our family. In some cases this means breaking with one’s family. But in no way does this mean we have to allow our people to be threatened, the beauty of our community and culture to be destroyed, for some supposed overriding principle of prioritizing strangers or abstract moral codes.

Ironically, prioritizing the soul today often means not being swayed by pressure from our families and peers to accept the latest idiotic narrative about embracing mass immigration, a destructive force allowed and facilitated by a cynical and perverse elite hell-bent on destroying what's right, true and beautiful.

Those with eyes to see and ears to hear will get it, and they will see with their souls. Others will just follow expediency, that is, repeating platitudes for the sake of peace: the reduction of internal and external friction, the urge not to rock the boat and not to challenge one's ingrained assumptions. Indeed, those who reject the steady undermining of our historically emerged communities and its fruits in some sense are more aligned with those of other communities and cultures who wish the same for them than with our idiotic family member brainwashed into self-destruction. This is universalism.

But the root of this alignment lies in common-sense truths, such as that our communities are different, that there's beauty in them, that they matter and need to be protected.

We have been told for a long time that we should favor technocratic globalism over the particular, the historically grown, the local, the family and the deep-rooted community. This is absurd, and no Jesus-quoting and Paul-mangling will change that.

So someone ranted on German Twitter about his rental car driving him nuts with all the nanny electronics, culminating in a sudden (unnecessary) emergency break and a refusal to switch lanes after an overtaking maneuver, keeping him in the wrong lane (!), among other nasty things.

The replies’ tenor was basically, and shockingly, that it was his fault because he didn’t indicate, so the computer couldn’t know he wanted to switch lanes, and that he is an evil man for driving so badly. Not indicating is dangerous and criminal, you know.

In essence, those people think that if, for whatever reason, you don’t properly indicate, it is morally justified your car attempt to murder you.

Peak Huxley.

This abysmal worldview (found on X) is a direct consequence of single-focussed obsession with Darwinism.

While there is no doubt that some of the beauty we find in nature has an element of straight-forward biological utility, there is no reason whatsoever to assume that this is all there is to it, that it is primary, or that it is “at the root” of the phenomenon or its “explanation”.

Just to throw one of many different ways of looking at it out there, according to Schopenhauer, the elevating effect that looking at flora and fauna has on us is part of the very reason why it exists: plants (and animals, one might say), being governed by raw will to a higher degree than us, want to participate in pure perception (of which humans are capable) and therefore express beauty to get us out of the mindset of pure will and into a state of direct, non-utilitarian apprehension of reality. In other words, while occupying a lower station in the scheme of things, they too participate in the higher order in their own way.

If your theory makes you reject the simple and common-sensical enjoyment of the mystery and beauty of nature, then there might be something wrong with your theory.

See also my essay Darwinism, Morality, and Evolutionary Thinking

The idea of democracy as we know it is over, no matter what.

Too many people at this point have realized that Western democracies are uniparty, deep state-controlled affairs that only allow conformist politicians into their club, going back at the very least to the post-JFK world. They will assassinate, soft-assassinate, or simply derail anyone going against their interests and agendas, by rigging and otherwise.

Trump is an interesting anomaly in that he survived, which in itself is a symbol for the shifting times we live in. And I’m rooting for him, as any sane person should do, if only because of what he represents: people having enough of it, people seeing and sensing something is fundamentally wrong with this world.

But does anybody really believe that under these conditions, we can just go back to pretending democracy is this great, impartial machine churning out the will of the people? Or, less ambitiously, that we can fire a few bureaucrats, change a few laws, and back we are in the imaginary golden age of free and fair elections, with nice gentlemen debating each other on TV and a socially accepted Overton Window where everybody gets along?

Democracy was just an idea, and depended on its sacred status to hold a particular society together. Once this sacred idea reveals itself overtime as containing contradictions and inherent problems, as all sacred ideas do eventually, it’s game over.

It’s all good to pretend for a moment a Trump win will fix things and we get some relief from having stared the monster in the face. And some relief we would certainly get, even if it’s just the realization that we are not alone in what we see. But once you have so stared, everything changes, and there is no going back.

Whatever comes next, and whatever we call it, and however it will be conjured up, it will be something very different, representing a major rift in our consciousness: politically, socially, intellectually, spiritually.

Buckle up. Major birth pangs ahead. Things are only getting started.

(Note: Wrote this on Nov 5 2024)

Dash: interrupts, slows down, yawn. Overrated, but sometimes good choice.

Colon: speeds up, creates suspense, adrenaline. Underrated these days.

Semicolon: breaks up, steals breath, but also unifies. Underrated, but overused by pompous asses.

Comma: neutral, just use it correctly. Use Oxford comma if it suits the rhythm, otherwise don’t. (Be shamelessly inconsistent.)

It’s all about sound, flow, composition: the music in language with all its different genres.

OK, so I asked ChatGPT to write a short story based on Goethe’s Faust in Trump style (prompt was a bit more sophisticated than that).

Lmao

—

The Art of the Deal with the Devil: A Tremendous Faustian Tale

So, folks, we’ve got this guy, Dr. Faust—very smart, believe me, the best scholar. He’s sitting in his study, all alone, thinking big thoughts, but he’s got a problem. He’s bored! Can you believe it? I mean, the guy’s got all the books, all the knowledge—everyone says so—but he’s still unhappy. Sad!

So one day, Faust says, “I’m going to make a deal, a tremendous deal. Nobody makes deals like me.” And boom, out of nowhere, who shows up? Mephistopheles. He’s like a salesman, but from Hell. Probably works for CNN, if we’re being honest. Mephistopheles says, “Faust, buddy, you want more than this, I can tell. I can make you a winner—huge success. You’ll have so much power, you won’t even know what to do with it.”

Faust says, “What do I have to do? I’m ready to negotiate.”

Mephistopheles, who’s been in the game a long time—longer than Sleepy Joe, folks—says, “Simple. You sign away your soul, and I’ll give you everything. All the knowledge, all the pleasures. You’ll get tired of winning.”

Now, most people, they’d say no. They’re losers. But Faust—he’s a smart guy, he knows a good deal when he sees one. He says, “Meph, you’ve got yourself a deal, but I want the best. None of this second-rate stuff. I want to be the most famous, the most powerful. Big league.”

Mephistopheles grins—that sneaky grin, you know the type, like the Fake News when they think they’ve got you. “Deal,” he says, “but remember, when it’s over, your soul is mine.”

Faust laughs, “We’ll see about that. I might just make Hell great again.”

And so, Faust goes on a tremendous adventure. He’s out there, learning all the secrets of the universe, getting into politics, real estate—huge buildings, folks, with his name in gold letters. Everyone’s talking about him. He’s on all the talk shows, even Saturday Night Live, which isn’t funny anymore, by the way. He’s winning everywhere, making the economy of Germany better than ever before—tremendous numbers.

But, here’s the thing, folks, and I say this a lot: when you make deals, you’ve got to read the fine print. Very important. Faust starts to realize, maybe he’s not so happy. He’s got the

(Unfortunately ChatGPT produced an error at this point and stopped printing. Damn!)