A new hat

My first foray into cabling. This Calder Beanie is a pattern by ROWAN, using their pure wool superwash worsted. Heaps of thanks to Fruity Knitting for the clear instruction.

Who should 'fix' the West? Men or women?

In response to the right's narrative that women have caused the demise of modern society and therefore it's up to them to fix it:

I'll begin by saying I understand the frustration men have with modern women- their lack of commitment, their promiscuity, their choosing of degenerate partners, and so forth. 

But lessons of antiquity can offer us a helpful perspective if we really want to shine light on the origin of these problems.

Men are the solar principle, women the lunar; we reflect the light of men (and therefore the lack of light).  As a visual: the stone pillar of the bridge (Shiva) must be stable enough to handle the thrashing water (Shakti).

I would argue that in these times, while it's true that women hardly ever bring a real feminine principle to relationships, neither are men possessing a true masculine spirit. When men do, women will reflect that light. 

In the Vedic literature it is mentioned that a sign of degeneration was when women began to breed with men of lower caste (sidenote: I prefer the varna perspective, which I understand to be like caste but earned, rather than merely born into as the modern caste system operates). But we have to ask: how had the solar principle degenerated to lead to this?

Either way, I do not expect any large-scale changes in men or in women in modern times, especially in the West. Because of this, as a female, I choose to develop the solar principle within myself as much as possible, while making sure to also nourish and keep it balanced with the lunar principle inherent to my nature. It is similar to the idea of self-initiation in a time when truly holy and divine gurus and spiritual teachers cannot be found. So, we take on more of the work ourselves, as individuals. Does this have an inherent disability? Yes. But it's the Kali Yuga and we adapt and do what we must. There are forces at play, and those of us who are qualified to identify, absorb, and transform them should do so.

How long have humans been around? The case of the Olduvai skeleton.

In 1913, at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, a fellow by the name of Hans Reck, a paleontologist and geologist at Berlin University, found a reasonably complete human skeleton that was anatomically modern. This skeleton was buried in Upper bed II at the gorge, which is 1.5-1.7 million years old. 

Olduvai gorge; image from Wikimedia Commons

Debate about this finding went on for decades, until finally, in the 1970's, a professor at Frankfurt University named Reiner Protsch, claimed to have tested the skull from the same skeleton discovered by Hans Reck back in 1913, and had come up with an age of 10,000 years. 

So if this skeleton is only 10,000 years old, why was it unearthed in a layer of earth one-and-a-half million years old?

Most evolutionists will challenge, with an air of snarky self-assuredness, as I myself regrettably have in the past, "To disprove evolution, you just have to find one fossil out of place!"

My first thought was: maybe this person was buried long ago. In archaeology, this is referred to as intrusive burial. The problem with that hypothesis is that, as you would imagine, there would be evidence of disturbance surrounding the burial, especially directly on top of it. In this case at Olduvai gorge there were no signs of intrusive burial.

It also turns out that Reiner Protsch, the Frankfurt professor who dated this skull to be 10,000 years old, ended up resigning after a Frankfurt University committee revealed numerous radiocarbon dates he had falsified. (Quick digression: one has to wonder what the incentive would be to do such a thing, no? I mean, why do that?)

The theory of evolution claims that modern humans, people who look like us, evolved around 300,000 years ago. Though the influences of the time we live in shape what we passionately defend to be true, and the average person possesses a strong normalcy bias and fears social ostracization above all, at this point in all I've read, I would warn anyone against thinking of Darwin's theory as a fact. 

The above is only one small finding to ponder, there are many more which I'll share soon.

Amusing ourselves

At first, the attraction to arcana is born of curiosity and intrigue, and probably boredom. Ones ordinary life gets injected with a newfound glimmer, feeling secrecy and mystery now surrounding him. This is only an initial, immature phase of esoterism; and we mustn't linger there.

In the West, fascination with phenomena and mystery keeps one trapped at a lower level-- nevermind the fact that the experience of 'phenomena' certainly doesn't point to having experienced anything of a higher level whatsoever. Your own nature determines whether you stay at this level or are qualified to rise higher, out beyond ordinary life. The trappings of awe are such that they keep us in the psychic realm of amusement-seeking, which is inferior to a truly spiritual domain.

"...how could they affect one who, seeing all things in their principle, knows that no matter what the appearances may be, they are ultimately only elements of the total order?" 

Currently reading

 A new book and a new knitting project, too- finally learning cabling!

The divine state

Abandoning all desires, acting without cravings, free from all thoughts of I and my, that man finds utter peace. This is the divine state, Arjuna, absorbed in it everywhere, always, even at the moment of death, he vanishes into God's bliss.(Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, verses 71-72)

Today's hike up the mountain

One of the joys of hiking is the noticing- rocks, bones, leaves, blossoms, birds, prints, smell of pine, of sage, sound of birds, wind. But we can take it beyond this when the trek up the mountain becomes a micro spiritual pilgrimage. Whether it's one or the other of course depends on our individual constitution. With each step taken toward the ascent, the senses noticing fades to a peripheral blur and the walker and the symbol merge, joined by the hazy euphoria of detachment that washes over when we let the petty fall away, the mundanities of a chattering mind. Timelines intersect- the very long, very large, geographical ones and our own small biology passing through, so relatively short and transient, we bring our whirling minds along the trail, until finally we merge with the symbol and the hike becomes just another practice. Of course it is! The trail up the mountain is a representation of the journey upward, full of struggle, dangers lurking, breathing hard, carrying a heavy load, sun beating down on us... we stumble and are humbled, and we smile, even if consumed, because in our strife there is meaning, purpose, connection, an experience far beyond the ooh of an interesting rock, bone, or leaf. And death is no fear.

Does it matter which path we take to reach the top of the mountain?

Click to listen ^

The idyll

 

I love this painting so much. To me, it represents the idyll- a solitary ascetic life, tending the basics, and otherwise reaching for union with God at every second. There are so many distractions in regular life, such striving to become, so much we mistake as being important.

Currently reading

 

Observation from a coffee shop drive-thru

The perceived dullness and mundanity of modern life is due to the state of modern minds, and does not speak to reality itself. In any given moment, there is much more available to us, so if you feel life to be mundane, boring, dull, trivial... you must call upon yourself to deepen so that more of the experience, beyond the five senses, can be interacted with. 

Rene Guenon, "The Reign of Quantity & The Signs of the Times"

Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance (a rant)

The reframing of dissenting opinions (those that differ from the popular narrative) into "hate speech" is a truly terrifying path we're on in the West. I have watched otherwise decent and intelligent people fall prey to these narratives; I used to be able to disagree with a friend, have conversations, and go on loving them despite, and this is something I'm still willing to do, but I'm seeing proof that the politically correct folk who follow the popular narrative espoused by the establishment and the likes of NPR, are no longer able to do this. Is it their own decision? Their own growth? I have a hard time believing so, as we were able to have such conversations just a few years back, and go on being friends. Instead, I feel that it's the downloads they're getting which relabel disagreement as dangerous, as deadly. It's extreme, it's cult-like, but the programming has happened gradually enough that they see it as normal. But were it not for the media, would they hold these views, these definitions, these filters of seeing through, of categorizing? And with such conviction, like carrying a sacred object! Isn't it proof that the modern mind, steeped as it is in dense matter, believing in only the physical world, in the temporary, who has slain all things of the transcendent nature, still longs to cling to something, to hold something as sacred, and that something just happens to be the current events of their era. It's hard for me to imagine such a void now, such a simplistic way of living, so empty and weightless that it gets carried with the tide of the day, but it's not impossible to imagine as I've been there too. I've thought in that way before, with conviction. I've been a staunch Materialist, a Liberal, a Libertarian, an Anarchist, an Atheist, a Protestant Christian. And I'm thankful for all of these phases as it helps me more easily put myself between the ears of different groups of people who I now vehemently disagree with. 

I am a person who loves nuance- in both the large-scale arena of thought where philosophy, science, history, politics, art, etc. can be torn apart and put back together again if someone is willing to go there with me, and I'm also this way down to my personal relationships and the conversations that happen there. I welcome disagreement, so long as it is done respectfully, and working my brain in that way feels as good as a physical workout at the gym. I believe our brains need various challenge just as our muscles need resistance to stay strong. 

But a realization I've come to over time, sometimes mournfully and other times with deep frustration,  is that hardly anyone is willing to go there in earnest. Maybe we don't have the time, which I understand as these kinds of conversations do take a good deal of that precious resource, but I think mainly what is lacking is the wherewithal, the actual love and care for truth. It seems obvious to me that our preference of comfort and fitting in almost always wins. And who wants to go about the heavy work of changing their whole worldview, I mean fundamentally, anyway? 

My fear is that this trend is only going to continue spiraling downward, to grow increasingly worse, as we continue to get slammed with so much information, less time, and--this is a big one--the more we allow our emotions and sentimentality to pave the path to truth. On that topic, here's a bit of a nuanced digression: I do believe that 'feeling' is an important aspect when seeking the transcendent, but not so much when discussing modern politics, as our "leaders" speeches and media presentations are compiled to cater to and trigger those emotional brains of ours.

A simple quote I came across recently that hits the nail right on the head with a deafening and far-reaching ring is this:

"Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance."*

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could bring back nuance and the real taking of time to study and have exchanges before arriving so firmly at a position?

Concerning many of the pop-up movements that have trended over the last couple of years, I've been slow to come 'round, needing the time for this cherished nuance, desiring to suss out as many angles as possible, and to seek new angles even (original thought is gratifying, no?), wanting to ask questions... but have caught slack for doing so. Even asking questions that aren't categorized as politically correct will now get you silenced, cut off. What happened to engagement? To answering the question? Are people so worked up emotionally, so high-strung, that they no longer trust themselves to engage in difficult conversations?

The Western thought bubble seems to contain a graphic of Occam's Razor. Nuance is not prized, what is prized instead is simplicity. A decreasing of all categories, especially thought, to the lowest common denominator. For a group that claims to be so egalitarian and democratic, they certainly place themselves at the top of the hierarchy of thought, asserting an authority, a monopoly even, on truth.

And this all ties in to a paragraph I read last night in Guenon's The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times, in the chapter entitled Unity and 'Simplicity' --

"We have seen that a desire for simplification can become illegitimate or pernicious and that it has become a distinctive feature of the modern mentality; this desire is so strong that certain philosophers have given way to it in the scientific domain, and have gone to the length of presenting it as a sort of logical 'pseudo-principle', in the form of a statement that 'nature always takes the simplest course.' This is a perfectly gratuitous postulate, for there does not seem to be any reason why nature should work in that way and not in any other; many conditions other than simplicity can enter into its workings, and can outweigh simplicity to such an extent that nature seems, at least from our point of view, often to take a course that is extremely complicated. Indeed, this particular 'pseudo-principle' amounts to no more than a wish arriving from a sort of 'mental laziness': it is desired that things should be as simple as possible, because if they really were so they would be so much the easier to understand; and all this is quite in accordance with the very modern and profane conception of a science that must be 'within the reach of all', but that is obviously only possible if it is so simple as to be positively 'infantile', and if all considerations of a superior or really profound order are rigorously excluded from it."

*quote by filmmaker Albert Maysles