This is simply not true. And consider this: if it wasn’t, would it be more useful for them for you to think that it was or that it wasn’t?
I’m not saying it’s Adam Smith out here. It is also decidedly not what you say.
Because at the bottom it is Plato we are battling, as long as you have philosophical prowess at least equal to Plato’s, you already know more than they do. That includes strategically, tactically, situation-on-the-ground level.
That is why Nietzsche was so important.
Sure there were greater philosophers than Plato before Plato. But Plate buried them all. And nobody caught up, until Nietzsche. You can tell, because first thing he did was bring all those motherfuckers back.
Nietzsche did always understand philosophy as war, from the very beginning…
That’s also why Nietzsche said, quite comfortably, that philosophy would be counted before him and after him. Because all he had to do was be greater than Plate, which he was.
When I said there were greater philosophers before Plate, I meant in terms of the quality of the questions they asked, not their philosophical achievements.
"Sure there were greater philosophers than Plato before Plato. "
They weren’t philosophers. The other “philosophers” before Socrates represented a direct intimation of Being, and each produced an independent island-universe that I call the ONTOS; a guiding image of thought. Each of the pre-socratics appeared seemingly overnight, without precedence, fully formed. But they could not truly interact, there was no true philosophy yet. Socrates was the first. Nietzsche is a return to the ontos, and by taking a step backward, allowed us to see where a step forward could be made. Sometimes that is necessary. I do not value Nietzsche very much; only for that. But it is well known, that I am not a Nietzschean, though his personality and chronic pain and life tragedy (and life comedy) were very much like my own. I even have my own Salome.
I don’t think these super-elites are soulless, well some of them are. I just think that Option C usually prevails: I insulate myself and my family from the world and withdraw into a subculture of equally rich guys. And then I talk to these guys. And human nature takes over and we start to all kind of think the same way.
As to my remark about state-sponsored monopolization.
I wager that it is true. A company can rise to a certain point. They don’t care about multi millionaires, or even billionaires. But there is a kind of barrier embedded in the structure of both US regulations, International law, and the international banking system, that is not neutral: it has a secret political intention. That intention, is to encourage the growth of companies and organizations that will concentrate wealth a certain way, and which will help to carry out social engineering and political exercises concocted by the state. There actually is a very small, select group of people sitting around in a room with a world map and economic channels mapped on it, tied to the carefully designed banking system and international laws, as well as internal US companies. They have weaponized the economy, and transformed it into a political instrument, just as they did with Academia. The origin of it is this:
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Free-market, classical Adam Smith capitalism led to a massive national excess-capital. But it was homogenized, that is, equally distributed across innumerable very small companies. What this meant is that this excess-capital could not be consolidated into the international channels of global trade, and exported. This excess-capital could not be translated into the system of import-export that our nation came to rely on. So that meant a massive failure economically that led to the first world war.
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Okay so that didn’t work. But we still hate communism. So: In comes what Braudel called state-sponsored monopolization. We have to set up the system so that the excess we generate internally, in what was the expansionist era of capitalist free-trade, can actually be exported and converted into physical goods, imported from other nations. So we’re going to create an international banking system that will entangle everything in debt-obligations that ensure the channels by which import and export is conducted. This is the beginning of globalization. And oh what’s that? Germany wants to be self-sufficient and doesn’t wanna participate in all this good shit? Fuck em and just make them carry the entire burden of the first world war. Then people resort to eating each other in the streets, here comes Hitler, and boom: second world war.
3.) Fucking rekt both the communists and the Nazis, so we introduce an overly complicated system of internal regulations, set up several international systems of law, and better secure the international bank: and that has been working so far. Not for us I mean, but for the State. But it won’t for much longer. We have a third and final war. Three stages; three wars.
"And human nature takes over and we start to all kind of think the same way. "
As philosophers, we already know all possible things they can be thinking, and none of them are overly impressive.
“1) Free-market, classical Adam Smith capitalism led to a massive national excess-capital. But it was homogenized, that is, equally distributed across innumerable very small companies. What this meant is that this excess-capital could not be consolidated into the international channels of global trade, and exported. This excess-capital could not be translated into the system of import-export that our nation came to rely on. So that meant a massive failure economically that led to the first world war.”
Adam Smith Capitalism never existed.
Capitalism is and always has been in a state of constant tension with a myriad of enemies. This isn’t new, it’s constitutional. Capitalism is and always has been growth, never state.
War isn’t coming. War is already here.
I tend to think that WW1 was an echo of the Absolutist Monarchy vs Reformist wars before them.
It was about changing political structures, more than economic ones. The changing economic structures may have simply triggered it, allowing the cash needed to carry it out.
Another beautiful thing about Napoleon. He stood cleanly outside that debate. His disdain for reformists was only surpassed by his disdain for Monarchy. Also why there was no obvious immediate political transcendence from Napoleon.
Except I guess the independence of the entire American continent.
And the modern nation state.
And conscious capitalistic policies.
And total war.
Napoleon was first and foremost a war nerd. All the rest of what he did was in order to allow him to conduct war.
This is not an interpretation. This is what he openly discussed with his generals at their dinner table.
i mean i do but goddamn man, it would take like an hour to deconstruct all that rambling nonsense. ever walked into a room that was such a mess you didn’t even no where to start?
but none of that is really important. all that really matters here is whether or not the sense of meaningfulness and certainty you have in your head when you engage in such language that doesn’t directly represent or reflect anything about the real world, becomes a danger to you. that’s all that’s important. if it’s just a practice in benign poetic rambling and you’re in no danger because of it, then you’re good. knock yourself out. but if it’s this kind of junk that’s contributing to your being stoned for ten hours at a time and locking yourself in the house… then bro, we should probably work on that. say, aren’t you the one who plays the piano like a madman? or was that the ‘capable’ guy?
i would ask how a thirty year old is able to finance daily ten hour drug binges, but we’re supposed to not get personal on the forums. problem is, what you do, and why/how you are able to do it, would explain to me more about your general philosophical tendencies (your stripes) than anything you would ever write. we usually subscribe to philosophies that justify our prejudices and luxuries so that we can convince ourselves we deserve what we have/do with a clear conscience. rarely is a philosophical pursuit a genuine quest for disinterested ‘truth’. we’d rather turn it into a search for things we find agreeable and fulfilling.
but mines is different, see. i’ve passed through a series of stages that have culminated into what i consider some 33rd level shit. the progression looks something like this; an occupation with continental philosophy in the early years > introduction to the analytical tradition > application of analytical principles to the traditional philosophical ‘problems’ > discovery of much shenanigans > entry into active nihilism > reversion back into historical materialism (the only philosophy free of mass conceptual and linguistic confusion).
although i will admit i have always been partial to a marxist approach being a working class joe. only before i had thought there was a way around it. then i discovered all my other options were bullshit, and i’m not a bullshitter, so i had to submit to it once again. if was a troof i could no longer ignore or pretend wasn’t real, and what little humanity was left in me could be put to good purpose through it.
lol, and if only because so rarely is a philosopher able to articulate a clear cause in the first place!
yup, gonna be a rough ride, man. we’re diametrically opposed. this is clear now. i think if you had your way, i’d be a new initiate in an aleister crowley study group… and if i had my way, you’d be put through detox, provided a decent and productive job, and given a grand piano so you can straight run that shit (if that is you and not the ‘capable’ guy).
p.s. judging by your recent posting i can tell you didn’t read your daily rosa from the links i provided for you. this is disappointing, young man.
Correction:
Only philosophy articulates causes.
Alrightalright, see you all later.
Marx is an echo of pre-existing Greek philosophy, so is any extra-Marxist socialism, fascism or communism or Anarchism. It was all thought before.
Ok fuck bye. BYE.
and it couldn’t ever… not even with the ‘invisible hand’, because without that hand a pure anarcho-capitalist state would evolve and then destroy itself… while with it, this hand inevitably becomes a nanny/crony to the bourgeois.
the very origins of the dual party system of government was a forced event that happened because of the divisions of labor. when this division is made, classes emerge with conflicting interests, and both must have some representation in the governing system. hence, the right and the left. and here these western idiots still believe there is something more fundamental to the necessity of partisan politics… while in fact it’s a system that only exists because of class divisions. it’s an astonishingly simple thing that has been purposely over complicated by the founders of western civilization. and behind them stand entire droves of ‘philosophers’, starting with those godforsaken greeks.
if you want a history of the polis, of the ‘political man’, don’t read aristotle. read engels and that guy with the unruly beard.
so if ancient man wasn’t a species that universally shared similar enough physiological characteristics so that the same kinds of social and material relations took place within all civilized groups - hence giving rise to the same kind of ‘theorectical questioning’ (philosophy is praxis) of the basic structures of those interactions - and instead there was a specific group over here that was experiencing genuinely novel problems that all the other groups weren’t experiencing, you could grant some exception to the greeks and say the philosophical dialogue they engaged in was unique only to them.
butcha can’t do that. what you can do is fall under the spell that because modern endo-european languages owe much of their historical development to the greeks, the philosophical problems posed and set forth with and through that language could only have been realized by the greeks.
you are under the impression that socrates was the first person to look up into the sky and ask ‘why’, yes?
news flash: human beings have been doing philosophy since they were beating each other with sticks. the sophistication of that philosophy depends solely on the levels of complexity involved in their social and material relations. more people, more shit going on, more philosophy. moreover, the dominant philosophy existing during any literate period will be the one concocted and disseminated by those in power, with the only purpose being to sustain that power over succeeding generations. there is no search for troof here, bro, because troof is too painfully simple and leads directly to nihilism. the fact that history is a theater of hedonistic animals fighting over who’s going to do the work and that there is nothing ‘spiritual’ about any of this comedy, is a troof too embarrassing to bear for the sapient animal rationale. we’d rather like to think (if we are in power) that our status is rationalized by some grand teleology… which we then proceed to pull directly from our asses.
you don’t need to study the greeks, big P. the only thing you need to study is your ass.
But… But Marx was a philosopher… I don’t… I don’t understand…
Help me promethean! Before my self fractures and I start saying “note to others” everytime I want to say a thing!
He sure as shit wished himself into a lot of traditionalist Neo-Greek German Idealist philosophy there.