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Moldbug's "Cathedral"
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Moldbug Cathedral Jews

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#61 Rob S.

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Posted 06 June 2013 - 07:45 AM

Well, Jews have suffered a lot.  They didn't learn/evolve to be rather deceptive for nothing.  I haven't read any of MacDonald's extended texts like you have ; I have a weak reading drive.  But I have a problem with his brushing off Jewish history as 'supposedly' (the latter word isn't a quote, but it's what he means) 'lachrymose'.  In truth, it genuinely is lachrymose.

To be a rightist -- and what's really more fundamental and coherent, to be a realist -- is to be anti-utopian by recognizing stuff like the fact that Slavs might not have much of a homeland anymore had they not attacked Jews viciously in the 1600s (started with the Khemelnitskij uprising in Ukraine, and only got worse over the rest of the century).  Jews became very numerous there through superior biological fitness.  And they were taking it over, and obviously they cared more about their own than about Slavs.  I've compared the situation to something like Whites colonizing, say, Vietnam without superior technology -- with just superior IQ and Conscientiousness and cohesion.  Suppose Whites had gone there circa 1000, which is when Ashkenazim popped up in the Rhineland (they went to Slavland later).

The damned crackers would tend to multiply a lot, and the gooks would probably beat the hell out of them over and over -- otherwise they would gradually end up totally subjugated, or maybe one day just practically /gone/.  Well, that actually happened in Europe ; Europe, like the Americas and Australia, got colonized by a more effective foreign race.  And Slavs preserved themselves through ultraviolence.  They wiped out about half the Ashkenazim in the 1600s . . . and that they were as nice as possible about it is unlikely.  It's likely they tortured and raped a large proportion of those they killed.

And while the expansionism of the Roman (or British) Empire wasn't 'evil', Roma's conquest of places like Israel was plenty brutal.

Getting kicked around by /deus, sive natura/ is one thing . . . I'm not sure it's worse to get run roughshod over by man, but it is definitely weirder.  Ashkenazim and the ancient Hebes were exposed to that, basically interminably.  It's in the nature of the world, especially the malthusian world, but it's truly horrible.

Mencius understands all this stuff, he also understands the 20th C counterattack on Europids and wishes it would just stop.  But he is as frustrated as you or me in trying to figure out how to make it stop.  This is fairly clear if you read between the lines.  He largely wants what is best for the West, and much of his wish for other Westerners to stop provoking and goading Jews comes from a genuine feeling that this is the best thing for said other Westerners.  I agree that this reconcilliation would be by far the least unpleasant way to save the West, and it may also be the only way.

What's sad is that he cannot get a grip and cease indulging himself in hyperbole about the innate pozitude and poz-evil of Europids.  He pretty much blames George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for anything nasty done by Jews in Russia -- no blame for the latter.  Sadly, it's a compulsion with him, as things in general often are with people to a fair degree.  If he just wanted to downplay Jewish aggression, that would be one thing.  I would be more sympathetic with him.  That he wants to revive the West, /and/ downplay Jewish nastiness greatly, /and/ magnify Europid nastiness . . . is a bit much.  And it ends up being pretty far from the truth, and pretty far from what's practical.  It's trash, and it's not going to help him effect any of his genuine benevolent impulses.  While he has done much more good than bad, it's sad that he can't control his base impulses and winds up diminishing his own value.  I would like to see occi-patriotic Europid and Jewish realists team up, but obviously that is fraught with great difficulty, and ultimately I don't think his writings have succeeded in creating a useable basis for that ; it's hard for me to see continuing to endorse them, or continuing to pal around intellectually with any members of his school who aren't noticably franker and plainer than he is.

I would be willing to just ignore the whole Jewish-Europid conflict, if I thought it would just fade away on a workable timescale by itself.  I do think the net force of history is tending to attenuate and dissipate the conflict, but probably not strongly enough for us to get by and do well by pretending it doesn't exist.

#62 PLEASUREMAN

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Posted 06 June 2013 - 08:15 AM

Yes, one of life's great mysteries, why does everyone hate the glorious Jews?  I think the opposite of you, I think their behavior predicated the animosity, not the other way around.  Jews didn't magically gain enemies and then learn how to cope with them--and that's certainly not how it's worked with any other ethnic group.  Rather, Jewish behavior has consistently poisoned the well, and most of their travails are their own fault.  Jews are chauvinistic, and while there are other groups known for chauvinism, Jews seem to have a special knack for irritating people.  No other ethnicity is as widely hated, except gypsies--it would be stretching things to say this is a massive coincidence, or just bad luck.

Jews can't be reconciled with, as their behavior proves over and over again.  Now that America is oppressively multicultural and whites are neutered, are Jews letting up?  No, they're doubling down--they're gloating about their success and ranting maniacally about "white privilege" in non sequitur fashion.  But no point going on about it, I sense that you see this much.

There isn't going to be any team-up with Jews, other than exotic specimens like Mickey Kaus.  The reason is that Jews themselves are motivated by a seething hatred of the West which resides in the more primitive parts of their brains.  They fear and loathe Western cohesion of any kind, which is why they are the most energetic pursuers of multiculturalism.  Because of past victimization?  Well this is the Jewish script--Jews as blameless victims, involved in a conflict they never sought.  Strange that they are unique in this respect.

Even were Jews not antagonistic towards whites, I would have problems with them.  Their morality is loophole-ridden, their religiosity is petty, they seem infatuated with deviance for its own sake, and their vaunted verbal IQ is egregiously misused.  Apart from politics, Jews dominate the most mendacious forms of public discourse.  I am not claiming the world would be honest but for Jews, yet a regular liar is satisfied with getting away with his lie.  Jews seem really devoted to the principle of lying--that is, of misrepresentation and shell game rhetoric.
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#63 GhostfaceCracka

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Posted 06 June 2013 - 08:41 AM

The kikes have suffered at the hands of non-Europeans as well, but even today, when their main antagonists are non-Europeans and non-Christians and their main benefactors are (clueless) Europeans, their wildest hatred is reserved for the latter, and I think that is because of Christ. Christ, His Church and the civilization that adopted His Church and was formed by it, are an intolerable rebuke to the self-image and identity of the Jews. Even the atheists ones believe at heart, they are truly the Chosen People. They cannot abide the fact they rejected their Messiah and lost their homeland, their Temple shortly thereafter and became wandering undesirables for the millennia, liked and esteemed by no one, ever since. While Islam also of course claims to supplant Judaism, only Christianity is a specific rebuke of Judaism and the character of Jewish piety and Jewish behavior. I think they will never rest until they can completely erase Christianity and all associated with it from the face of the Earth - "may their names be blotted out" as the traditional Jewish curse goes (in itself a terrible presumption and affront to God's mercy).

There is no doubt that the Jews are a remarkable and talented people - being a religious man of course I accept the OT - they were elevated by God to be a light to the humans but they rebelled against Him. Just as with Satan and his fallen angels, they were cursed and fell but did not lose their formidable powers, but instead turned them to malevolent ends and became an example of infamy for the nations, and their example has been well understood (except in the modern West) given their continual history of being ejected from the places they settle by their human hosts.
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#64 PLEASUREMAN

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Posted 06 June 2013 - 10:15 AM

Christianity essentially humiliated Jews.  Jews expect the messiah to become king of Israel, and their prophecy is tribal and mean.  It's basically an elaborate revenge fantasy in which Jews finally get to lord it over their enemies.  But what Christ offered was something so much larger and more magnificent that one can't help but regard the Jewish religious vision as petty and malign.  Certainly the pettiness has been reinforced by ethnic practices to such a degree that modern Jews exemplify it--they are worldly and corrupt while imagining themselves to be great social justice warriors.  Of course the worst of them are secular Jews, who are even more unhinged about Christianity without having the excuse of an alternative religious belief with its own positive creed.
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#65 Dixiecrat

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Posted 06 June 2013 - 12:48 PM

http://www.blogger.c...942439454199191

Mangan's used the term "Cathedral" on a recent post, and it kicked off this question:


Quote

What is it with you people calling the Cultural Marxist forces "the Cathedral"? I find that terribly insulting to cathedrals -- seriously, I mean, really, really seriously -- and I'm even an atheist. But the great cathedrals of Europe are the some of the finest works of art ever erected by man. It's an insult to them to associate them in any way with Cultural-Marxist tyranny.


And gets this fantastic response:


Quote

Mencius Moldbug, a half-Jewish atheist blogger, coined the term Cathedral to imply that progressivism is an outgrowth of Christianity and Christian morality. The idea is prima facie ridiculous, but it's appealing to "reactionaries" who have an axe to grind againt Christianity. It's also appealing to people who want to make things more complicated and fanciful than they really are, i.e., the people Bruce Charlton calls clever-sillies. Unfortunately, it's gained enough currency in the reactosphere that even thoughtful writers like our host are using it.



“Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.” --Joseph de Maistre


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#66 FnordOfTheLies

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Posted 07 June 2013 - 09:49 PM

View PostPLEASUREMAN, on 29 May 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

View PostFnordOfTheLies, on 29 May 2013 - 08:28 AM, said:

View PostPLEASUREMAN, on 27 May 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

The answer to your question is what else changed during that period?

Implicit in your question is the understanding that massive changes such as the rise of mass media, economic turmoil, two world wars, increased movement of populations, increased population density, and the centralization of government should have had no effect on how people group-identified.  This is a common oversight among conservatives.

All of those things happened in Japan. Only increased movement of populations didn't happen to the extent that it did in the Anglosphere.

But ethnocentrism survived in Japan; both in government policy, and in all sorts of casual everyday exclusionary behavior to non-co-ethnics. Their domestic extreme-right is much healthier than ours. Why so different there?
You're comparing an expansionist culture to a largely xenophobic island with extreme ethnic homogenization and asking what was different about it? About 10,000 years of evolution was different. They had entirely different starting points at the beginning of the modern era. You completely missed my point.

No I got your point, I just should have chosen a way to make mine that didn't start with asking the site admin a rhetorical question.

Where I was going was that I think it isn't surprising that the Anglosphere is vulnerable to Universalist beliefs, given that our ancestors were the beneficiaries of a long process of pacification. Christians converted the tribes of northwest Europe and prevented them from marrying their cousins. Feudal social structures further split people into nuclear families and moved the young adults around, increasing outbreeding. Kin-altruism genes became less advantageous relative to reciprocal altruism, and the social changes probably contributed to re purposing the mental kin concept increasingly outwards to people you are only distantly related to. The state got bigger and better at monopolizing violence, leaving the less violent, more prudent to out breed the rest. The whole thing is a virtuous cycle, enabling much greater levels of social trust.

Universalism is a kind of category error people will make after a process like that, where they don't effectively police the boundary of their "altruism zone". This would be especially likely when there hasn't been much downside to being too altruistic because you only interact with others who have been through the same process, or with people who haven't been through much of any kind of civilizing process and are no serious threat to you as a result. It's not surprising that Universalist Christians show up after a thousand years of breeding for broad-based altruism, especially in England where the closest thing they'd had to a capable hostile outgroup in hundreds of years was only other civilized, outbred, nuclear family, reciprocally altruistic Europeans. I think Christianity's biggest contribution was starting the process of civilizing the tribes, rather than any particular doctrinal elements.

Yesterday, via an old Moldbug comment on someone elses blog, I found this Peter Frost article on Christianity and the fall of Rome, which includes a few choice quotes from 4th and 5th century Christians being all universalist and pathologically altruistic about the barbarians at the gates. Frost makes the argument that the appearance of these attitudes among late Roman Christians was probably the end product of the long Roman genetic pacification process. Moldbug seemed to be quoting the Christian statements as more evidence of the irredeemable evil-ness of Christian Universalism. I'm not sure if he was oblivious to the context, or ....

I just don't fully understand why the rest of the Anglosphere belief spectrum collapsed. Universalism was even recently just one extreme in a plurality of views. No genetic explanation can work on that timescale. I'm interested in your (PMAN) ideas about structural elements that led to the changes. I think mass media played a huge role, as prior to that that there wasn't likely to be much downside for Anglos in calibrating your moral outlook to be altruistic to those you saw in a positive context on a day to day basis .

Of course mentioning mass media brings up the fact that a culture with a poorly policed "altruism zone" boundary and not much history of competent outgroup threat is particularly vulnerable to manipulation by a competent outgroup with a strictly policed "altruism zone" boundary.

#67 Saucer-Lord of the Illuminati

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Posted 07 June 2013 - 09:56 PM

View PostSgt. Lars Kikekiller, on 06 June 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

http://www.blogger.c...942439454199191

Mangan's used the term "Cathedral" on a recent post, and it kicked off this question:


Quote

What is it with you people calling the Cultural Marxist forces "the Cathedral"? I find that terribly insulting to cathedrals -- seriously, I mean, really, really seriously -- and I'm even an atheist. But the great cathedrals of Europe are the some of the finest works of art ever erected by man. It's an insult to them to associate them in any way with Cultural-Marxist tyranny.


And gets this fantastic response:


Quote

Mencius Moldbug, a half-Jewish atheist blogger, coined the term Cathedral to imply that progressivism is an outgrowth of Christianity and Christian morality. The idea is prima facie ridiculous, but it's appealing to "reactionaries" who have an axe to grind againt Christianity. It's also appealing to people who want to make things more complicated and fanciful than they really are, i.e., the people Bruce Charlton calls clever-sillies. Unfortunately, it's gained enough currency in the reactosphere that even thoughtful writers like our host are using it.

Agreed, it's like the alt-right version of one of those idiotic terms that were bandied about by neo-con bloggers through the Aughties, because they thought it sounded clever, like "idiotarian" or "fisking" or "Islamofacist".
The Tree of Knowledge has been plucked bare, and the War Pigs are gorging on a feast of its fruits. In their ravenous gluttony, they swallow it all and shit out the seeds, sowing a garden of horrors that we -- all of us -- shall reap. No sacred secret is spared; not the forces of nature, not the human mind, not the fundamental stuff of life, nor the building blocks of the universe itself. There is no territory the sinister technologists refuse to explore in their quest for Maximum Pain. Their lust for death is so strong, they've even begun creating a robotic army to extend their grim work through the twilight of our species, and beyond.

Imagine it. Metallic security guards, propelled by deathless power cells, crunching and gliding over a rotting graveyard planet. I can think of no more fitting legacy.

#68 PLEASUREMAN

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Posted 07 June 2013 - 11:51 PM

My view is an amalgamation of Tainter's theory of collapse (an essential read, but I haven't gotten around to writing it up), and John B. Calhoun's research into the behavioral changes that result from high population density (but beyond density to encompass what he termed "conceptual space"--see the Limits of Human Scale thread).  In addition Putnam's research into the relationship between low trust and genetic diversity contributes to a fuller understanding of social changes in the modern era.

Calhoun's research on population density among rats provides a basis for understanding what appears to be a rise in pathological behavior among recent generations of first world nations, in particular cultures that have achieved full secularization (this includes Japan, for instance).

The sum of all this is that environmental and biological feedback loops explain a great deal more than intellectual movements can--Tainter explicitly rejects Marxist and other political ideologies as providing helpful explanations of cultural decline.  He also rejects Spengler's "morphology" because he considers it uselessly vague on a number of levels.

I think the problem facing the West is less universalism than that expansionist cultures (Rome, Europe) inevitably face a problem with feeding their own growth, and the growth itself impairs cohesion.  Rome, as Tainter notes, was entirely funded by expansion, which is why they faced the same problems we are now facing with expansionist overreach and crumbling from within.  Expansionism doesn't necessarily equate to or require a universalist outlook, although expansionism may give rise to universalist beliefs as it incorporates larger areas already occupied by other peoples--conquering vs. settling.

I don't see Christianity as playing a causal role, it seems more likely that Christianity has tended to succeed where expansionist policies led to a growth of universalist sentiment, which is fertile soil for Christ's message.
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#69 George Obsolete Peppard (GOP)

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Posted 08 June 2013 - 10:49 AM

View PostFnordOfTheLies, on 07 June 2013 - 09:49 PM, said:

View PostPLEASUREMAN, on 29 May 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

View PostFnordOfTheLies, on 29 May 2013 - 08:28 AM, said:

View PostPLEASUREMAN, on 27 May 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

The answer to your question is what else changed during that period?

Implicit in your question is the understanding that massive changes such as the rise of mass media, economic turmoil, two world wars, increased movement of populations, increased population density, and the centralization of government should have had no effect on how people group-identified.  This is a common oversight among conservatives.

All of those things happened in Japan. Only increased movement of populations didn't happen to the extent that it did in the Anglosphere.

But ethnocentrism survived in Japan; both in government policy, and in all sorts of casual everyday exclusionary behavior to non-co-ethnics. Their domestic extreme-right is much healthier than ours. Why so different there?
You're comparing an expansionist culture to a largely xenophobic island with extreme ethnic homogenization and asking what was different about it? About 10,000 years of evolution was different. They had entirely different starting points at the beginning of the modern era. You completely missed my point.

No I got your point, I just should have chosen a way to make mine that didn't start with asking the site admin a rhetorical question.

Where I was going was that I think it isn't surprising that the Anglosphere is vulnerable to Universalist beliefs, given that our ancestors were the beneficiaries of a long process of pacification. Christians converted the tribes of northwest Europe and prevented them from marrying their cousins. Feudal social structures further split people into nuclear families and moved the young adults around, increasing outbreeding. Kin-altruism genes became less advantageous relative to reciprocal altruism, and the social changes probably contributed to re purposing the mental kin concept increasingly outwards to people you are only distantly related to. The state got bigger and better at monopolizing violence, leaving the less violent, more prudent to out breed the rest. The whole thing is a virtuous cycle, enabling much greater levels of social trust.

I think you are heavily overestimating the role of genetics in altruism, or even the nature of altruism itself.  "Outbreeding" is a relative term, and only in the last maybe 80 years would it ever have been applied as broadly as it is today.  Even as recently as in the 1930's families were fiercely ethnically aware - if you were of breeding and class, you wouldn't want your kids marrying some greasy dago that just got off the boat, etc.  Anyway, universal feeling of pacification is not a trait that is particularly beneficial to populations, especially since the advances in weaponry in the last 500 or so years allowed for any household to potentially afford an arsenal.  Even in medieval days the peasantry was often the most hurt during wars.  When you invaded land you couldn't keep, you would burn the outlying settlements, as agriculture was the lifeblood of a nation.  Hell, in impoverished white areas even today altruism is not a guarantee - shootings between extended family in poor rural areas are surprisingly common (although admittedly confined to the more degenerate types).

Generally, the only periods in history where altruism was the norm was when it was strictly enforced by overwhelming central authoritarian power (like Japan during its feudal era), or magnanimous prosperity allowing for a "rising tide" phenomenon (aka the 60's to 2000's).  Much more commonly is it limited to very small sections of society, typically through a few truly devout figures who have a markedly different set of attitudes than John and Jane Six-Pack.  In both cases they are rare and (historically speaking) fleeting moments.

PLEASUREMAN said:

I think the problem facing the West is less universalism than that expansionist cultures (Rome, Europe) inevitably face a problem with feeding their own growth, and the growth itself impairs cohesion.  Rome, as Tainter notes, was entirely funded by expansion, which is why they faced the same problems we are now facing with expansionist overreach and crumbling from within.  Expansionism doesn't necessarily equate to or require a universalist outlook, although expansionism may give rise to universalist beliefs as it incorporates larger areas already occupied by other peoples--conquering vs. settling.

Free exchange of ideas across borders necessarily affects the dominant country's views, even if it may not be to the same effect as the conquered empire  The only way to minimize that phenomenon is to tightly control the ideas that make it back from abroad, which obv means controlling the media and continually reinforcing nationalism, aka the Soviet Union post WWII, and we all know how fragile that grip is.  Soldiers come back changed, and it likely doesn't help the home team that their overseas experiences tend to be more exotic, vivid, and reinforced by rushes of emotion than the mindless trudges they face when they get back home.  It is exactly the same set of problems Rome had during their imperial years - the populace are increasingly overtaxed and micromanaged by a bored elite whose main cares have become degeneracy and infighting, cultural tradition has been subsumed by entertainment and the grind of keeping the status quo going, and invaders from the countries we've been pillaging are now starting to eye us not unlike a fox eyes a fat hen, knowing we don't have the spine to resist.
Community members had accused him of talking to animals and using an invisible penis to sleep with women in the informal settlement.

They also accused his wife of turning into a snail and terrorising the community.

#70 PLEASUREMAN

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Posted 08 June 2013 - 11:59 AM

Speaking of outbreeding, opposition to that seems to have mostly declined as populations became more unstable--that is, formed of families who did not have generations-long history with each other.  Once you remove that sense of permanence and history, of course it seems silly to tell your daughter she can't marry a greasy dago.  Probably even his immediate family is a mystery, let alone the generations of dagos that came before.  Controlling outbreeding is a way to control both the local gene pool and to guard against the effects of low trust (which were intuitively known thousands of years before Robert Putnam researched them).

In other words, it wasn't an idea or intellectual movement that decreased opposition to outbreeding, it was the changing circumstances of people's lives, which removed the most crucial element in stable societies:  history.
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#71 Horrendous Thinspiration

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Posted 08 June 2013 - 08:29 PM

Jewish digressions and vague aspersions cast on MM's character aside, it might be wise to go back to what the Cathedral actually is as a formally defined power structure:

1. The schools and the professoriate, which make decisions.
2. Journalism, which manufactures consent.
3. The government, which enforces the outcome.

In all three cases, words from these sources can be taken as a form of civil religion, a default social morality and ready authority for those who have none.

In all three cases, they can be staffed by ordinary people, who have no greater responsibilities above enforcing and promulgating pre-written laws, curricula, writing style guides, and 'precedents'.  A system developed to be 'foolproof' thus lends itself well to being staffed and enforced by fools, or worse.

In all three cases, we can find good reactionary teachers, good reactionary professors, good reactionary journalists, and good reactionary government agents,all with a well-carved niche, but they're all heavily marginalized or practically independent, and easily capable of being overruled in any of their decisions by the democratic consensus of their peers.

And all three cases tend to be 'careers', not 'jobs,' so all three tend to be vulnerable to the artificiality that comes from having your identity completely tied up in your work.  (Use of the word "contracting" in connection to any of these jobs would invariably draw hisses of displeasure.  What they do is a tradition, dammit!)

You have to admit that the architecture of the buildings that these agencies inhabit tends toward the more distinctive and grand, at least as compared to any of the other architecture in the places you find them, despite the fact that the work that goes on inside them is the destruction of distinctions and the contempt of the grand.

So I conclude that "Cathedral" is an entirely apt phrase for these institutions, for all of their functions could have been previously discovered in a church, and are instead pulled apart and housed in superstructures that blight the landscape, where the visions of heaven were a shining city on a hill, the actuality of universalism is a hodgepodge of ever-expanding ruins that slowly eat away the life of the city it was imposed on.  A church has limits dictated by its practical function, a Cathedral exists precisely to be as big and grand as possible no matter what functionaries are serving within.

I consider it no slur against Christianity to say that it was derived from it, for something derived from a false religion would not have been nearly as successful.  An unholy trinity of school, press, and bureaucrat created and sustained the universalist morality of the modern world.  Call it "The Cathedral" and keep your kids away from them as best as you're able.
And if they should find us in our last stand girt with such strange swords and following unfamiliar ensigns, and ask us for what we fight in so singular a company, we shall know what to reply: "We fight for the trust and for the tryst; for fixed memories and the possible meeting of men; for all that makes life anything but an uncontrollable nightmare. We fight for the long arm of honour and remembrance; for all that can lift a man above the quicksands of his moods, and give him the mastery of time."

#72 PLEASUREMAN

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Posted 08 June 2013 - 10:54 PM

"Cathedral" is a ridiculously inapt term.  It evokes a formal hierarchy where there is none.  It evokes some kind of religious belief system where there is none.  It evokes pomp and circumstance where instead there is bureaucratic process.  It assumes a set of dogma that is defended, but on closer examination this is not really the case.

Then there are the things this term does not evoke which are central to elite behavior--managerialism, secular consensus, the replacement of the old conservative institutions.  This process of replacement was seen across the political spectrum at the beginning of the 20th century, with fascism, communism, and liberal democracies, but in the last the process of replacement was slowest--liberal democracies were the most conservative about their institutions.

No matter which way you look at it--as a sardonic expression, as a metaphor for the elite, as key to history--it's a complete failure.

I'm not sure about your list of power players, either.  Universities are not a significant part of any "power structure" in the West.  The main detriment of the university system is that it burdens young people with debt, keeps them in a state of delayed maturity, and makes them solipsistic.  It doesn't make any decisions that matter about anything.

Journalists don't really seem to belong in the list, either; most of the messaging in the media is via media pundits, not journalists, but they don't seem to be a power so much as they are an echo chamber of elite consensus.  Their views aren't decided in university, they're decided by their generational peers (elite views cluster by generation).  It's very class conscious--that's why violating the bounds of mainstream discourse is considered so shameful.  It's why violations require extravagent apologies.

Multinational corporations and very large national corporations are power players.  I would say rather than the government the major political parties are power players.

None of this springs from Christianity in any way.  Moldbug isn't being very clever here.
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#73 Bumbling American

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Posted 09 June 2013 - 05:59 AM

To my mind, "Cathedral" fails for the same reason concepts like Philip K. Dick's "Black Iron Prison" and Ken Kesey's "Combine" fail. The obvious problem is that you're drawing arrows of causation and cooperation between everybody you don't like and assuming they're all working toward the same goal for the same reasons. Lumping them together that way also ignores whatever virtues your enemies may have and, as PM points out, neglects to consider the broad context for their actions: a rapidly complexifying society, the competition for resources, what have you.

Finally, the idea of a widespread cabal that brings misery to whatever it touches leaves out the most crucial consideration of all: you. Whatever circumstances gave rise to the Cathedral or the Black Iron Prison or the Combine also helped make you what you are; to some extent, its failings are your failings. Ascribing malice or destructiveness to everybody you don't like and not examining the beam in your own eye is stupidity of the highest order.

Likewise, coming up with a concept like "Dark Enlightenment" to rationalize living your life on six blogs that tell you what you want to hear

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#74 George Obsolete Peppard (GOP)

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Posted 09 June 2013 - 12:45 PM

View PostBumbling American, on 09 June 2013 - 05:59 AM, said:

To my mind, "Cathedral" fails for the same reason concepts like Philip K. Dick's "Black Iron Prison" and Ken Kesey's "Combine" fail. The obvious problem is that you're drawing arrows of causation and cooperation between everybody you don't like and assuming they're all working toward the same goal for the same reasons. Lumping them together that way also ignores whatever virtues your enemies may have and, as PM points out, neglects to consider the broad context for their actions: a rapidly complexifying society, the competition for resources, what have you.

Finally, the idea of a widespread cabal that brings misery to whatever it touches leaves out the most crucial consideration of all: you. Whatever circumstances gave rise to the Cathedral or the Black Iron Prison or the Combine also helped make you what you are; to some extent, its failings are your failings.

It fails in the intellectual circles, yes, but like anything else it depends on your audience.  Look at all the successes liberals and Jews in the academic, populist, and faux intellectual circles have had with a message that does little more than demonize their enemies with an amalgam of misleading statistics, blatant propaganda, and purposefully dishonest phrasings ("War on women" etc).  Admittedly they're mostly collecting the groups most concerned with pomp and image for whom critical thought might as well be nuclear physics, but hey, there are just as many below average people as above average people.  And the failures of the public school and even many private collegiate programs are increasing the receptiveness of such messages.

Is it an inferior objective analysis?  Quite obviously.  Will it stand up to even the most superficial formal debate rigor?  No.  But then again neither does unlimited government funding for illegals, stifling small business for short term Wall Street profits, or the posits for affirmative action.  We laugh at Moldbug's assertions that are obviously coming from his outsider Jewish angle, but your average person isn't interested in a critical analysis of the situation, and his simplistic "they are possessed with the Devil!" is much more satisfying, at least for riding the initial wave of emotion after the first few shockwaves of the actual collapse.

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Ascribing malice or destructiveness to everybody you don't like and not examining the beam in your own eye is stupidity of the highest order.

This is absolutely the biggest difference, and sets apart the American Revolution from the Communist Revolutions that took place in the first 2/3 of the 20th century.  Or even the Wall Street confidence games in the 2000's.  When you bow to the strongman and drink your own Kool Aid is when you become the enemy.
Community members had accused him of talking to animals and using an invisible penis to sleep with women in the informal settlement.

They also accused his wife of turning into a snail and terrorising the community.

#75 Supreme Gentleman

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Posted 09 June 2013 - 07:58 PM

View PostMyrmecobot, on 08 June 2013 - 08:29 PM, said:


You're deeply confused about your history. Most of the architectural trends notorious for exaggerated proportions and flat, imposing surfaces are unambiguously, even proudly modern, such as Deco, the strains influenced heavily by Corbusier, and later on Brutalism: these schools are essentially modern phenomena brokered by money and arts moving to the cities, and their historical lineage can be penned back to the deep artistic and urban crises experienced during WWI and the pre-war period. In any case, it remains: why did it take so long for the journos to begin erecting their fiendish Cathedrals? How did this astonishingly tight-knit and cohesive force manage to carry itself all the way through two turbulent global wars and a century of drastic social change and upheaval? More damning is trying to wed the notion of the European cathedral vis a vis Brutalist civic buildings, because, well, both are big and stuff. This is architectural and social history as understood by a teenager.

The worst offenders for grandiose, Caligulan architecture tend to be art houses themselves, because modern art is an unhealthy marriage of wealthy, status-signalling indulgence and libertine excess. And by any metric, the tallest and largest buildings are commercial in nature, with a few campuses of scientific purpose thrown in. In the seldom cases where a "Cathedral" metaphor of sorts may sloppily apply, such as to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, liberals and nannyish do-gooders turn out as some of its harshest critics. Essentially, good writing and criticism can be done on the weirdness of government and corporate office space, but the Cathedral is not it.

How did not a single writer or historian notice this Quaker lineage until the rise of the blogger pundit? Why are there no real Unitarian figures or families seated in the halls of power? Where are the presidential Unitarians (I would accept even a member of a lukewarm Protestant church)? I ask this not out of glibness but as an earnest, serious question, one which poses immense factual problems for Moldbug's baby. Pman has often noted how chauvinist groups achieve a successful material bounty, their members are usually mounted at the upper heights of society's organs. As Enrico Fermi said of the fruitless search for extraterrestrial aliens (who should otherwise leave a decent trace), "Where are they"?

Of course Moldbug isn't really interested in any of these questions or incongruencies. Journos as the new priestly class makes for nice rhetoric, but both Moldbug and yourself stretch it too far. It's just incoherent on pretty much every level.

These are simply not fertile grounds for a Quaker conspiracy. Most buildings aren't solid obsidian slabs of government oppression, and the world is not ruled by a pacifistic order imposed on from above. Where poor architecture exists, there's often a complicated history: an intersection of money, power and circumstance. In the case of Brutalism, this is mostly an architectural term applied after the fact: Moldbug would have difficulty explaining why two separate situations where Brutalist buildings flourished (the rise of the federal government in late 50s America and the post-war depression in urban Britain of the same period) were really united by an American Unitarian interest. When we see world pacifism today, this is often cherry-picked: white liberal democracies are pacifistic between themselves, but this was not always so, even up until historically recent times. On a global scale of course, the notion that pacifism prevails is an absurd one. War, war never changes, as the goon adage goes.

Bumbling American made a very acute comment here: phrases like "the Cathedral" and "Black Iron Prison" dispense in handy capsule form a cartoonish sketch of a simple world reality that exists only in the mind of the artist (God knows it's true for PKD, rest in peace sweet soul). Airbrushed and smoothed away are all the contingencies, the facts and nagging histories that pose any problem for this vision's veracity; left intact is a shot of a dark foreboding tower where the mindless drudge unknowingly under the service of a duplicious, cackling elite. As George elaborated above, this is a masturbatory tool, a Dutch angle painted because it appeals to our emotional, irrational hindbrain. Moldbug is a fairly intelligent sort and in a better world he'd be far above this kind of thing, but he simply cannot help himself.

The reason I expressed my interest in Moldbug's ethnic background is because a predilection towards intellectual novelty (and boy do bloggers wear this shirt like an A&F model) is a strong hallmark of the Jew. Against a serious history, which can often be tiresome, ill-paid, obscure or just plain dull, the Jewish writer pens a rather lurid tale of colorful characters and exciting ideas. Now the man of phenomenal talent (say, a Chesterton) can push blood through the pages to make a trustworthy history come to life, but even at the upper bounds of skill a writer will sacrifice some truth as he inches closer towards art, because truth is simply boring. Jewish historical theory tends to be all art, as it exists to shock and titillate our senses, hence the saturation of comic book language and conspiratorial ideas (in tapestries like Marxism for example). In this vein I file Moldbug under the same heading as a well-executed TED talk.
The truth is that we do not enjoy masterless freedom; we are continually threatened by psychic factors which, in the guise of "natural phenomena", may take possession of us at any moment. The withdrawal of metaphysical projections leaves us almost defenceless in the face of this happening, for we immediately identify with every impulse instead of giving it the name of the other, which would at least hold it at arm's length and prevent it from storming the citadel of the ego.

#76 Alan Clark

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Posted 24 July 2013 - 09:34 PM

Yo I know this thread is old but imma say a couple things.

First, like fjord said, r/h/e has done a lot of posts exposing Moldbug and his Talmudic lies. It's not even worth debating Moldbug's worldview on an intellectual/philosophical level because it's empirically false. Read up, my niggas: http://racehist.blog...earch?q=moldbug

Second, I'm down with this 100%:

View PostBumbling American, on 09 June 2013 - 05:59 AM, said:

To my mind, "Cathedral" fails for the same reason concepts like Philip K. Dick's "Black Iron Prison" and Ken Kesey's "Combine" fail. The obvious problem is that you're drawing arrows of causation and cooperation between everybody you don't like and assuming they're all working toward the same goal for the same reasons.

Think of the alt-right, or whatever you want to call us. Some of us are Xtian bigots, some are atheists, some are cultural conservatives, some are hipsters. We all agree on what we h8, but there are wide-ranging disagreements about the ideal political system.

Poz supporters are the same. They all h8 bourgeois white society but that's where the similarity ends. Some of them want to milk whites for gimmedats (muds, public unions), some want to vitiate white culture (Jews, fags), some are just f**ked in the head. Calling them "Tha Cathedral" makes it sound like they're some weird hierarchical group instead of the loose coalition of pozzers that they are. It's at once too fanciful and too simplistic.

#77 Horrendous Thinspiration

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Posted 25 July 2013 - 12:21 AM

Quote

To my mind, "Cathedral" fails for the same reason concepts like Philip K. Dick's "Black Iron Prison" and Ken Kesey's "Combine" fail. The obvious problem is that you're drawing arrows of causation and cooperation between everybody you don't like and assuming they're all working toward the same goal for the same reasons. Lumping them together that way also ignores whatever virtues your enemies may have and, as PM points out, neglects to consider the broad context for their actions: a rapidly complexifying society, the competition for resources, what have you.

"Cathedral" accurately describes the respect your standard progressive would have concerning these institutions.  Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay or black stone is, and there are many Western marvels constructed in it.

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Finally, the idea of a widespread cabal that brings misery to whatever it touches leaves out the most crucial consideration of all: you. Whatever circumstances gave rise to our Jew overlords or the Black Iron Prison or the Combine also helped make you what you are; to some extent, its failings are your failings. Ascribing malice or destructiveness to everybody you don't like and not examining the beam in your own eye is stupidity of the highest order.

You've got it all wrong.  As a child of this American tradition, whose extreme version is currently infecting all religious institutions of sufficient size (including yours) it is my duty to excise and limit its mental influence, which I have most certainly gotten caught up in before, and would most certainly not wish myself or anyone else caught up in again.  In all fairness, both the Catholics and Protestants have been rather light on any official church pronouncements on how to handle recalcitrant and degenerate human races, but that's what the Old Testament is for.

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Likewise, coming up with a concept like "Dark Enlightenment" to rationalize living your life on six blogs that tell you what you want to hear

Getting too far away from the original 66 books does run the  danger of oversimplifying things, I'll admit.  But both are far better still than reading 666 pages of 888 daily studies, editorials and grants written in the exact same haze of collegiate verbal ambition, casual plagirism, and deliberate misunderstanding that infects anyone who's taken their particular corner of our Jew overlords as their known world, their chosen college field as their final limitation, and their present employment condition as their divinely circumscribed fate.  Speak nothing outside of your field, all ye wretched nerds who enter here!  Moldbug's detractors have not impressed me in either their criticisms or their predictions, and the most vocal tend to adopt the same professorial attitude that was so immortally de-faggoted way back in 2009!

The broad human delusions are quite well-documented; I would not see another GS laboring under the delusions of Joe Romm, nor see another grad student listening attentively to Tim Wise, nor another journalist pushing pixels for Paul Krugman.  Nor would I make strawmen of their sillier commenters while following my own Darwinian alternate history dreams that...ignore details of religion to the point of absurdity, fetishize IQ testing, and breathlessly recite eugenic statistics with all the common humanity and civic-mindedness of a horse race or a football game!

But whatever, I guess all blogs, and their authors, are created equal, and there is no change in human quality that comes with greater experience of, love for, and attention to the truth.  And further that we have learned nothing about the difference between substantive criticism and pedantic nitpicking, or how to separate fact from fashion.

Edited by Myrmecodog, 25 July 2013 - 12:22 AM.

And if they should find us in our last stand girt with such strange swords and following unfamiliar ensigns, and ask us for what we fight in so singular a company, we shall know what to reply: "We fight for the trust and for the tryst; for fixed memories and the possible meeting of men; for all that makes life anything but an uncontrollable nightmare. We fight for the long arm of honour and remembrance; for all that can lift a man above the quicksands of his moods, and give him the mastery of time."

#78 Alan Clark

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Posted 25 July 2013 - 12:54 AM

View PostMyrmecodog, on 25 July 2013 - 12:21 AM, said:

Getting too far away from the original 66 books does run the  danger of oversimplifying things, I'll admit.  But both are far better still than reading 666 pages of 888 daily studies, editorials and grants written in the exact same haze of collegiate verbal ambition, casual plagirism, and deliberate misunderstanding that infects anyone who's taken their particular corner of our Jew overlords as their known world, their chosen college field as their final limitation, and their present employment condition as their divinely circumscribed fate.  Speak nothing outside of your field, all ye wretched nerds who enter here!  Moldbug's detractors have not impressed me in either their criticisms or their predictions, and the most vocal tend to adopt the same professorial attitude that was so immortally de-faggoted way back in 2009!

The broad human delusions are quite well-documented; I would not see another GS laboring under the delusions of Joe Romm, nor see another grad student listening attentively to Tim Wise, nor another journalist pushing pixels for Paul Krugman.  Nor would I make strawmen of their sillier commenters while following my own Darwinian alternate history dreams that...ignore details of religion to the point of absurdity, fetishize IQ testing, and breathlessly recite eugenic statistics with all the common humanity and civic-mindedness of a horse race or a football game!

But whatever, I guess all blogs, and their authors, are created equal, and there is no change in human quality that comes with greater experience of, love for, and attention to the truth.  And further that we have learned nothing about the difference between substantive criticism and pedantic nitpicking, or how to separate fact from fashion.

wait what? nigga you need an editor like an ethiopian needs food

#79 Chuck U. Farley

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Posted 25 July 2013 - 06:48 AM

Moldbug is a crypto Jew and full of s**t.  Cathedral, as a term for the poz cabal destroying western society, sucks on every level.  To all f****ts who like to think in pretzels, let me break it down for you in one word that encapsulates the inversion of good values, the promotion if perversion, the oppressive dehumanization, the disorienting atomization,the relentless war on innocence: Satanism.

#80 PLEASUREMAN

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Posted 25 July 2013 - 07:59 AM

View PostAlan Clark, on 24 July 2013 - 09:34 PM, said:

Think of the alt-right, or whatever you want to call us. Some of us are Xtian bigots, some are atheists, some are cultural conservatives, some are hipsters. We all agree on what we h8, but there are wide-ranging disagreements about the ideal political system.

Poz supporters are the same. They all h8 bourgeois white society but that's where the similarity ends. Some of them want to milk whites for gimmedats (muds, public unions), some want to vitiate white culture (Jews, fags), some are just f**ked in the head. Calling them "Tha Cathedral" makes it sound like they're some weird hierarchical group instead of the loose coalition of pozzers that they are. It's at once too fanciful and too simplistic.

You can go further and simply dismiss most of the stated motives of any of these people.  "The Cathedral" assumes an intentional direction when the larger forces are unconscious and not clearly understood (or understood at all) by the participants.  Moldbug is an intellectual so he thinks the source of conflict will be found in ideas expressed in book form.  But all that is rationalization and mind games.  Moldbug is obsessed with nominal intellectual pedigrees in a very old womanish way.  He seems to totally ignore sociological changes.  Of course he is reluctant to criticize his tribe for anything, but can't make the connection between that and actual political motive.
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