We reached 1000 posts yesterday.
That is almost 1.3 million words, enough for at least 10 books or so.
It’s been a wonderful experience. Writing makes ideas clearer than reading ever could.
My One Hope
My one hope is that some of you have been motivated to live a fuller life, that is focused on God, love, adventure, intellect, poetry, tradition, and so on. Anything but the deadening effects of consumer society and the destructive and ugly positivist philosophy.
I was at a virtual social event recently, during which one fellow told me his problem: when you have so many subscription services, you have to spend a lot of time deciding what to watch next.
I can assure you that when you are in hospice care, struggling to breathe as your organs fail one by one, or during a sudden death when your life flashes before your eyes, you will not be thinking: “I wish I had watched more TV in my life.” Or, “Doc, please save me, there is a new series on Netflix that I want to watch.”
Don’t squander your human incarnation with trivialities.
Writing Style
A basic readability analysis of the posts seems to show that they are written for the 3rd to 10th grade level. Those numbers, however, are based on the number and the length of words, not on the content of the posts.
This was done deliberately, since complex ideas should be expressed in language as simply as possible, although not simpler. The inability to do so may mask misunderstanding, or it may be used to impress the “professionals”; but erudition is not intellectual knowledge.
Not surprisingly, documents written by lawyers, politicians, or bureaucrats have poor readability numbers. Obviously, that is not because the concepts are so difficult to understand. Rather, it demonstrates an inability to make ideas clear.
The translations also have poor readability numbers. That is because it was the custom of that time to write like university professors, or else a writer would not be taken seriously.
In this regard, Schopenhauer, who always wrote lucidly, is our guide for writing about metaphysics.
Idea Density
The best measure for intellectual content is Idea Density. Unfortunately, computer algorithms cannot pick out the number of ideas. The expression of more ideas in the fewest words is the goal; the alternative is just rambling. In practice, this requires simplifying grammar and choosing the more expressive vocabulary word over the more general.
Printing Style
The technology of printing limits style. Rock carvings are simple. Even papyrus documents have limitations and sentences were jammed together without punctuation. Much of what is considered good punctuation is due to restrictions of typesetters.
In electronic delivery, we can used ordered and unordered lists, section headers, tables, and so on, to make ideas clear. Space is not an issue and software will take care of layout changes. Many limit themselves to what typewriters could do.
Organization
Some comments have point out that the site needs better topical organization. That sounds like a good task. I will try to create a topical table of contents. I am certainly open to suggestions.
Thank you
Thanks to all the supporters who have been reading this, writing to me, offering corrections to grammar and facts. It requires a much higher than average intelligence to understand it. Even where you think I am wrong, it still takes intelligence to pinpoint objections.
Charles Peguy had an odd list of three philosophical influences. Junger listed three seemingly incompatible saints. I listed three influences, but they are deeply buried.
Thank you Cologero for quoting that passage. It seems that this is the way the western world is heading; even after the fall of the Soviet Union, a new line of marxism is making its way into politics and culture, a sort of Communism 2.0, under a different guise yet indistinguishable from bolshevism. Where I live cultural and economic marxism is gaining ground even if the bourgeoisie is trying to fight it.
The “tortuous stretch of the Antichrist” is already here and it is only a matter of time when war breaks out openly. Almost everyone is confused, myself included. Some military professionals have stated that WWIII has already started, only its nature is so different from the last two that people generally don’t recognize it; one line of the war is the “economic war” that has no less casualties than open armed conflict.
After the period exhausts its possibilities, the tortuous stretch of the Antichrist lies ahead. The population that survives the coming conflicts will easily fall under the promises of an earthly paradise that will bring a synthesis between inverted spirituality and transhumanist science. But such is only the external consequence, deep down, each one must overcome the dark age in their own souls. My best wishes.
I have no influence on contemporary civilization, so there is no upside to pursue that line right now. Besides, it would most likely be a series of footnotes to this passage from Guenon’s “Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power”.
Throughout the Western world the bourgeoisie has succeeded in seizing power, in which the monarchy had first improperly involved it. It does not matter, moreover, whether the bourgeoisie then abolished the monarchy as in France, or whether it allowed it to subsist nominally as in England and elsewhere; the result is the same in all cases, and it is the triumph of the “economic”, and its openly proclaimed supremacy.
But, as we sink deeper into materiality, instability increases, and changes occur more and more rapidly. Therefore, the reign of the bourgeoisie can only last for a short time, compared to that of the regime which it followed. Furthermore, as usurpation calls for usurpation, after the Vaishyas it is now the Shudras who, in their turn, aspire to domination: this is, quite exactly, the meaning of Bolshevism. We do not want to make any predictions in this regard, but it would probably not be very difficult to draw, from the above, certain consequences for the future: if the most inferior social elements come to power in one way or another, their reign will probably be the shortest of all, and it will mark the last phase of a certain historical cycle, since it is not possible to descend any lower. Even if such an event does not have a wider impact, one can assume that it will at least be, for the West, the end of the modern period.
I keep coming back to this website now and then, and I find the content very good, even if I follow a different path. I used to voisit almost daily to read old posts.
I’d love to see more critic and analysis of contemporary civilization – if one can call it that anymore – and what I ‘d also like would be you to print the most essential content into a book or two; the Gornahoor series or something like that.
Thank you.
Thanks for the feedback. As they show up on “On this Day”, I’ve been moving them to the literature site. (new decameron) I’ll try to be more diligent about it in the future.
For example, the paintings with significantly nude women and the explicit stories about Fornication, Alcohol and Gambling… It would be great if there were a Halal button somewhere on the site to filter out the content unsuitable for Muslims…
Since the best of your Content is derived from Tradition it shouldn’t be too hard to rewrite the same information in a more Islamic way, Inshallah.
1001: Guenon
1001, Guenon.
Thanks Zebulon, but you don’t have permission to copy it to Gornahalal.
I am in the process of reorganizing and restructuring, so LMK why posts are haram. I am moving some posts to the literary site.
Perhaps I should not have revealed publicly what goes on inside an esoteric school, in which complete honesty is mandatory. Perhaps you need to read more of Ibn Arabi’s poetry to understand. I accept that I don’t do it as well or as elegantly as he, but I tried. There was no attempt to be “sleazy” for its own sake, but rather to expose the human condition. You may also read Schuon’s writings on the Sufis; again, not that I am comparing myself, but only to show that things are not so simple as you might believe.
Thanks Cologero for those of your posts that Inspired me,
It’s a shame some of the content on this site is Sleazy.
Would you object if I copied the whole site and edited it into Gornahalal?
Salutations, seeing how knowledgeable man you are i would like to ask you to write something about famous language of the gods, green language(lingue verte) or mostly known as language of the birds which adept Fulcanelli equates with his Phonetic Kabbalah.
Also would like to hear your analysis of Perceval from Chretien de Troyes.
One of my favourite websites. Thank you.
Please don’t stop.
Congratulations. This blog is in my top 10