So, what books are you reading right now?

Taking my time with Only Revolutions. Great book, but I can really only read 16-or-so pages in a sitting. Unless I go into a fugue state and plow through, like 80 pages (which has happened). I loved House of Leaves and, actually, I think I like this one even better. Some of the lines are just great “I’m all school in summer: no class”. I totally use that one to describe myself now. Plus it is just fun to read. Each time I pick it up, I have to re-learn how to read it.

Re-reading “After Virtue”. Always good for me to brush up on VE. It is also a good re-read now that I know a little more about VE. It is good to go back and re-examine it.

Just started “Confessions of a Mask”. It is good to see where everything started. Both in terms of Mishima’s literary career as well as his life because the book is highly autobiographical. Fun stuff.

And, to my shame, “A Thousand Sons”. Err, the less said about that the better.

I’m reading a book about genetic engineering, in fact, I think it may be called, “Genetic Engineering.”

It’s more about the Social Science aspect of it than the scientific aspect, the majority of the book is just people making cases for and against genetic engineering of plants, animals, people, etc.

They could probably sub-title the book, Christians vs. People Who Know What the Fuck They Are Talking About and they’d be just fine. I sort of understand why the Christians would not be fans of genetically engineering humans, but plants for God sake?

The thing about the Christian argument is, it evokes the Bible about four times every paragraph. You can’t evoke a book as a cited source if that book has not been conclusively proven to be based entirely on fact, and the Bible hasn’t. That’s like using something that, “God said,” as proof of the existence of a God, it’s just silly.

Fortunately for the Christians, some of their arguments against human genetic engineering actually strike a few chords that are unaffiliated with the Religious aspect of things, even though the still evoke the Bible in doing so.

But plants?

We’ve been genetically engineering plants forever, it just hasn’t always been under microscopes.

Besides, since when does the Bible advocate unnecessary starvation, anyway?

I’m nearly finished with my second time through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance By Robert Persig. Both times I have read it I get about two thirds of the way through the book and start to get lost. I’m not much of a mathmatician these days and I’m not very read on the teachings and writings of Aristotle, and the author makes many references to these subjects through a few of the chapters in that portion of the book. Still, this book is incredible. The discussion of Quality and what it “is” throughout, will truly twist your mind into knots. This being my second time through I have tried to read it more slowly, only allowing myself to read a chapter at a time and then trying to process what I just read. Going at it this way has helped me understand some of the book that was lost in my first time through, but I feel as though I need to read it again and have a notebook alongside to jot down names, notes and such, so that I can put in some research before I really understand everything Robert Persig is talking about.

A truly brilliant book in my, and many others I suppose, opinion. Has anyone else read this in the past few years? Or has it gone by the wayside since being a staple in Philosophy classes during the late 70’s?

I read this book back in the day, and it really impressed me. Here is what I wrote on it, in two parts.

Yesterday and today I have been reading a book that has made me realize how intellectually sterile I have been for the past few months. This book contains real food for thought. It is called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance written by Robert M. Pirsig. Pirsig is a good writer and a clear thinker. He makes clear and understandable what is normally impossible for me to grasp. He deals with the subjects of science, mathematics and philosophy in a very clear, straightforward style that is possible to understand and is also important to our times. You could say that this book reconciles the aforethought antithesis of Quality and Technology.

I am inspired once more by the idea of caring about Quality. I am not a scientist, but the cold intellectual beauty of a great discovery is very wonderful. The idea of Quality as a pre-intellectual reality also explains why the mathematician-scientist and the poet can both be creative. If as Maritain argues, poetry comes from the pre-conscious life of the intellect, and scientific discovery from the pre-intellect, then you have two processes that are bound in the same function and derived from the same reality – Quality. Only the basic conventions and ultimate goals are different; the process is the same.

I just had a thought about Pirsig’s dead persona, Phaedrus. I was going to say that Phaedrus was his alter-ego, but he always speaks of him as if dead, like a ghost. Then at the end he says that often he can’t distinguish between the reality of himself and the ghost that used to be himself. This presents a problem when reading the book. Whatever Pirsig used to be before his mental breakdown, the subsequent personality is trying to remember, to explain and justify – in terms of philosophy. The book is very sad because Phaedrus was a fantastic mind caught up in a grand desire to set Quality up as a basis for philosophy. He conceived the idea at a university where he taught. It was a conception sprung from intuition, found at the butt-end of a most complex and orderly logic. Phaedrus then became obsessed with the desire to move the concept of Quality, undefined by its nature but known by its manifestations, to the fountainhead of all knowledge and all philosophy. The sad part is that the Phaedrus that conceived this idea was so paranoid that he gave too much time and energy to a desperate effort to find authority for his concept so that it would have a foundation to stand on top of. How he got this mental mind-set I cannot figure. When you look at the structure of his logical argument, the intellectual footwork and inspirational zeal, there is no reason not to be inspired and enlightened in turn. When you look at his life, however, it is very sad. What he values in Technology is questionable. I do not think of myself as a mirror reflection of what Technology has done. I am not the car I drive, no more than he is is motorcycle. Yet he is implying that the human psyche is somehow welded or merged with the machine it is dependent on. I may be protesting too much, as they say, but I sure hope he’s wrong there.

I just can’t understand how the thought structure of his argument was conceived so brilliantly and so logically in such a sick mind. He is so removed from people and the world, it is horrifying. He is saying that this very removal from the world, the eventual insanity and the dead personality, were not only a necessary criterion for the revolutionary new discovery of a new philosophical fountainhead, but were qualities to be valued in a society where new answers need to be formed. No argument that a new way of looking at Technology is valuable. There is so much ugliness and phoniness that a sensitive person in search of “truth and beauty” needs some philosophic authority to set her path straight. But why it breeds insanity is beyond me. More food for thought there.

There are those who would say that the philosophic system established by Aristotle has provided the foundation upon which our modern society rests. The supremacy of Science and Technology has all but overshadowed the very existence of Truth and Beauty. Our society has grown from the roots of dialectic and Reason. They would say that as long as we allow such a system to maintain its supremacy, our society is lost – doomed. Not until we raise the idea of Quality, by its nature undefined, to the fountainhead of philosophy will we be able to effect a balance. A balance between reason and intuition (instinct) is necessary to the survival or rebirth of anything that is good in society, and probably necessary to prevent the otherwise certain doom of that very society.

Pirsig is very rational as he catalogues the problems inherent in a societal system working on the wrong philosophical premise. But he is insane of his own nature. How do you reconcile the insanity of the subject with the brilliant and logical exposition of the source of his mental illness and the society around him? It just doesn’t make sense. Perhaps such insanity, filtered through the process of writing, can project an appearance of almost super-sanity. It certainly is thought-provoking.

E. E. Sleinis. Nietzsche’s Revaluation of Values. Apart from one chapter - value and power - it merely repeats what’s already been said about Nietzsche a hundred or more times. Thumbs down.

THE POLITICAL MIND: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century Politics With an 18th-Century Brain.
by George Lakoff. A linguist and cognitive scientist Lakoff analyzes why conservatives have been better that liberals at influencing public opinion for the past 30 years. He recommends progressives use cognitive science to get better at it.

If you want to hear, from their mouths, the philosophy of the ruling elite, then these would be a good place to start.

scribd.com/doc/3421664/Betwe … Brzezinski
Between Two Ages by Ziggy Brezinski – Obama’s head adviser.

static.scribd.com/docs/ik49d3hz4exyx.pdf
The Grand Chessboard by Ziggy B

sacred-texts.com/mas/md/index.htm
Morals and Dogma by Albert Pike (The esoteric roots of Masonry explained)

archive.org/details/TheFirstGlobalRevolution
The First Global Revolution by the Club of Rome Thinktank. (This one is interesting because it shows how the original political plan for the NWO was to create a ‘global cooling’ propaganda but they later realized it would be easier logistically (chemtrails) to heat the earth rather than cool it.)

static.scribd.com/docs/6ybexob7tuueu.pdf
The Anglo-American Establishment by Carrol Quigley (The CFR’s historian, who pretty much explains the ‘real’ history)

static.scribd.com/docs/a7ugfcn1go4ln.pdf
Tragedy and Hope by Carrol Quigley (His thoughts on the whole thing)

static.scribd.com/docs/85krglc8z8w4z.pdf
The Next Million Years by Charles Galton Darwin (Back in this guy’s time they only thought they would predict the next million years or so.)

This is going on my reading list

The Brzezinski books are definitely worth reading.
I would question the suggestion you make here that these books form one story.
Doesn’t there appear to be a rift between the suggestions of parastitic, occult banker control on the one hand, and political ideology on the other?

I side with Brzezinski, in looking at it from an interest in preservation of global order. There is one superpower, and it must remain this way, otherwise the world becomes unpredictable. If ‘they’ would let ‘us’ control the world - that is, ‘set it free’, then, so Brzezisnki is convinced, the cause of our ancestors will be lost, and the mainland of the Earth, Eurasia, will simply fall prey to another total war.

Not a bad analysis per se.
That being said, there is no doubt a lot of nasty stuff against us going on besides.
I simply wonder where these lines intersect.

Political propaganda is the play, and all the world is a stage. I’ve realized if you truly understand how money works then you cannot help but come to that conclusion. It’s a farce. All of it. Money and politics link up perfectly, my friend.

I’m not denying that money and political power are in many instances virtually the same, we can agree on that. But what’s missing in the puzzle here is the link between Zbigniews political philosophy, because you can call it that, and the malicious will to power of private societies.
In my eyes there’s no direct link, which leads me to believe the only link is money. Zbigniew & Obama need the bankers, but they do not share an agenda.

It’s a fun read.

Brzezinski–geopolitical realist?

Then read the books.

If you had I can’t see why you would ask this. Quiggley and Pike both explain what you’re asking.

I’m half-way through War and Peace. It’s a better novel on it’s own terms than anything else I’ve encountered. It says more about revered mediocrity elsewhere, but that doesn’t detract from the efficiency of ideas, intent, and creativity in the book. It’s good. My problem is that I readily understand intellectual ideas and therefore am bored by works that rely on them. More my thing is style and rhythm and emotional exploration, because I have the emotional capacity of a five year old, and they fascinate me. I am also reading The Woman Who Waited by Andrei Makine for the second time. Which is more my thing.

I like Tolstoy myself. In both War and Peace and in Anna Karenina, I see him as a novelist of the aristocratic social order and the difficulty for the individual stuck in that order looking for a way out. AK shows that there was no way out for a woman, but for a man suffering the aristocratic malaise there was the pull of the land with its peasant mystique: for Pierre Bezukhov in W&P and for Levin in AK. This does seem like a bit of romantic fantasy coming from the aristocratic point of view, and even Tolstoy himself had it in spades. The question then is, is it really possible for someone from the landowning class to really understand life from the position of a peasant, or just to imagine it in some sort of idyllic way since being an owner of “souls” (as serfs were euphemistically called) puts one in a difficult position where everything is handed to you. If you don’t really have to work for a living and find yourself stuck in a rut of dissolution and gambling, life on the other side of the whip might look pretty good, particularly if you have a sore conscience and a need for some sort of moral cleansing. It’s just that the peasants might not see it quite the same way. This is in essence the quintessential Tolstoy book.

I read this a long time ago. Isn’t this kind of Dostoevsky’s testimony to the joys of misanthropy?

Archilochus said “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” According to Isaiah Berlin, Tolstoy was a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog. War and Peace was Tolstoy’s foxy masterpiece.

That’s actually a pretty good insight. You can sense that in a big way throughout.

Don’t tell him that. Though I got the sense that even he isn’t quite convinced that he’s achieving ‘‘hedgehog status’’ when he writes.