Philistines, Philistines Everywhere

Ian W: ‘I have no idea why some people want to be a bunch of murderous fucking chimpanzees, where the strong rule of the weak, and everything but power and money is denigrated.’

Sure you do, Ian. It’s because they *are* essentially murderous fucking chimps, who only have money and the power this gives, and wouldn’t be on top otherwise.

It’s that simple. More clinically, these people are easily diagnosed as psychopaths or malign narcissists.

The question then becomes: When the fact that a minority of human individuals with psychopathic, predatory traits seeks power over others and has throughout recorded human history generally constituted the ruling class of most human societies is something tacitly recognized but publicly repressed by the human race, what kind of species are we?

I have somewhat mixed feelings about all this.

Somewhere along the line, good intentions got hijacked by virtue-signalling morons (and their private-equity partners) and institutions bled out their integrity.

I personally encounter the homeless every day and wonder at the human wreckage that no one in the governing class of my society seems to accept any responsibility for. I personally know nothing about the no doubt august United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. Will I miss their “good work”? Will anyone?

Trump and his philistines are repulsive to me in so many ways, but I cannot overlook how institutions have been hollowed out. I had lunch with a friend, an educated man, who still gets the New York Times delivered (in Los Angeles!) That habit was virtue-signaling in my day, something I indulged in as late as the 1990s. But, jeebus. That paper’s news and opinion rots faster than any fish I could wrap in it.

We all watched the pandemic incompetence of the CDC. Who thought all the lies and stupidity would just work out?

“Effective altruism” — remember that? “Abundance” something is a buzzword I am told.

I cannot help but reflect that Trump is retribution for false pretense.

Trump is a Philistine, and so are most of his supporters.
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Western society is a philistine society period. When doing your own research is considered a sign of stupidity it’s a sign of a shallow anti-intellectual society. We’re browbeaten to ignore the evidence because only the “experts” can tell us the truth. Our education system conditions children to consider learning something an authority tells them rather than a process were they use their brain to discover, discuss and learn.
What epitomizes a philistine society more than demanding censorship, hurling thought-terminating clichés, and insults because they very thought of engaging intellectually in a topic is to painful to even allow?

An off topic question: if an American buys a product over the internet from a French company located in France that was made in Morocco are the tariffs those imposed on France or on Morocco or on some combinations n of the two? I apologize for not hitting s distraction.

Oakchair calls it most clearly, yes, “Western society is a philistine society period.” When a culture elevates 2 things, Money & Power, above all others, it can be none other than Philistine.

Now I love Ian’s use of “Philistine” & assume that there is some ironic effect being used there. In early Christian lore, an anti-Semitic trope against the Philistines is taken up. In fact, the Philistines were hated by the pre-Christian Jews for their sensuality, cosmopolitanism, and cultural interests including Greek plays, etc. It would be similar to Christian Fundamentalists today hating “secular” people who enjoy sex, movies, etc. Some time back in their “Findings” section, Harper’s shared that the Philistines liked to eat shellfish, & introduced lobsters to the area. But the Torah is very clear: locusts are “good” food, Shellfish are “unclean” & foul.

Now Chuck Schumer once shared with an AIPAC crowd that the Palestinians needed to be eliminated (not sure he used that exact word, but from context it was clear) because “They don’t believe in the Torah.” Interestingly, to insult Schumer, President Trump calls him a “weak Palestinian”, in other words a Philistine!! (Not that Trump understands any of these connections.)

So Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder. Now even as a retired Librarian, I am going to agree with Sorodemos (on narrow grounds) that art and culture, etc. don’t “justify” human existence. Given all the violence and environmental carnage of us “naked apes”, I am not sure anything beyond pure biology could “justify” human beings. And that begs the question, justifying humanity to whom?

I certainly seek Self-Actualization more than most, but it is evanescent and not a permanent state. It’s nice that if you don’t die instantly, in your last moments your neurons deliver a big hit of DMT to your consciousness, and perhaps this is a bridge to . . . whatever is on the other side, which we cannot know.

How do we determine what is Philistine, or selfish, or unworthy, whatever level of “badness” one attributes to a given entity. We can go with the simple rubric, “You know what a thing is by what it does.” What about symbols? Fundamentalists who imagine we can live without Narratives, symbols or eidola (I think I got the plural of Greek eidolon, the basis for English “idol” there correct.)

Which leads us to the Philistine known as Tallifer. What does Tallifer value? Ukrainian Banderist fascism and militarism, that wonderful Yaroslav Hunka was applauded twice in the Canadian Parliament because he “fought the Russians in the 1940s” as a member of the Waffen-SS. What are modern, post-Ukraine’s 2 most valorized national symbols: 1. The “Tryzub”, or “Trident,” actually a symbol of a bird of prey swooping down onto its dinner prey. Okay, this symbol originated with the Czars, but it has been credibly linked to both Racist ethno-nationalism and even demonology in modern times. And it’s our wonderful “ally” the Brits (who I’m sure Tallifer approves of) who banned the Tryzub as an extremist symbol–

https://euromaidanpress.com/2020/01/21/why-the-uk-should-remove-ukrainian-trident-from-list-of-extremist-symbols/

Just because literal Nazis wear it doesn’t mean . . .? Oh, and Zelensky wore it to his meeting with Pope Francis on the little track suit he was wearing that day. He wasn’t refused entry. Of course the Catholic Church is noted for nearly a century’s support for Nazi ideology, at least they “rightly” hated the Russians for being “godless” under Communism.

2. The Azov Battalion Flag is the other of the most respected Banderite ideology symbols– see here: https://www.deviantart.com/timilodeondeviantart/art/Azov-Battalion-flag-924702892 Yes, this certainly qualifies as “Deviant Art” though not the type the Reich would’ve thrown in a bonfire. One could also call it Philistine– Surveying it, we see the 3 main colors used are blue, yellow and BLACK. A modified Black Swastika (one bar of the 4 removed, but it stands upright, almost humanoid in shape) is the centerpiece, fronting what I interpret as a blue mountainscape signifying “Earth” and Lebensraum for the Master race. That jagged yellow and white “Wheel” behind it is a depiction of the Nazi Black Sun (linked to the Thule far-North cult) but with the black removed. (You can see this is a popular neo-N@zi symbol on a level with the swastika, etc. at the first link I shared above.) The white Tryzub flies downward toward its prey, the “subhuman” Slavs, crafty Asiatic types.

As one major prophet noted, “By their fruits shall you know them.” Those who want eternal war against “the Other”, well, we know what they are. (Interesting that I have never seen “Tallifer” print one word of condemnation of the Israeli genocide in Palestine on this site. I expect I never will.) I just saw the video of the Israelis tracking down 9 Palestinian ambulance/ firetruck drivers en route to try to save someone and systematically murdering all 14, one by one. Then they buried them and their vehicles and hoped the truth would never come out. But I guess that’s only marginally worse than bombing the 3rd oldest Christian Church extant, in Palestine? Or bombing every University, most schools, bakeries, refugee tents, etc. But Philistinism does say that to make an omelette we need to break some eggs. So it’s all good in the Philistine view.

(Oh, and to partially answer Hvd’s query and move back to the main thread– Yes, Trump did babble that he would Tariff exchanges between Russia and ALL other countries worldwide. Now, as to how he could seize any proceeds from exchanges that the US has no part in, I am as mystified as anyone else. Joe Biden didn’t have the ability to deliver that endlessly promised “Ukrainian victory” or even pretend to try to raise the minimum wage, so I guess as Philistine as they may be, “The Most Powerful Philistine in the World” lacks the ability to Create His Own Reality, as the wise counselor Karl Rove once promised. Even Philistines have “feet of clay,” I guess!)

Soredemos: I have a personal saying, which grew out of my long-abandoned studies of ecology: “The basal endures.”

In the end- after the end, really- when time has eroded away the society, the culture, the language, the very peoples of a nation, art remains. Whether plastic or literary, it is treasured and perpetuated by aftercomers, much as by those who labored to create it in the first place. It still evokes, though the context in which it is experienced may be totally different.

Seems to me that, far from being a frivolity, art must be quite basic to human nature. Akin to Aboriginal song-lines, it is orientational. The only further thing I would add is that periodic orgies of noetic destruction are also part of the historical pattern: values dissolve, institutions weaken and are plundered. As the great sage Nintendo said: “Everything not saved will be lost.”

Alexandria anyone?
I was a lifelong patron of libraries, museums and art galleries when I lived in the urban world. Theater, too. Literary readings, performance art and concerts—all dear and uplifting to the human heart and mind.
In some traditional Eastern cultures music, literature, art and performance were portals to and reflections of sacred world.
That’s lost on the mercantile mentality, which values the bottom line over all. Within my lifetime I’ve witnessed the degeneration of movies, literature, music and theater. Although of course there’s still quality to be found, but not in the mainstream.
So this crude and sorry attack on the arts is perhaps just a quickening of an already extant trend.
We see the rise of crypto fascism and Christian fundamentalists. These trends ooze from the ferment and rot of cultural cesspit.
Slipping into darkness.
The pendulum swings and we’re caught in the arc.
Gotta hit the light sometime somewhere. . .

Moralizing gets us nowhere. The Trump base doesn’t give a shit for culture, perhaps because it is something only inner city people can enjoy. So why should they pay for it?

But! The sheer nastiness of this administration should really be more exposed. Including the Musk remark that empathy is an illness, if it is true. The personal angle.

Hey Mark Pontin– you evidently haven’t read too many of my posts. When I was 23 in 1983, I took a 6 month trip from Texas across Mexico and Central America, incl. Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, where I stayed and volunteered picking coffee with many locals in the CST (Sandanista Union) as well as other Internationalists from Europe, New Zealand, and elsewhere. I also traveled briefly to Costa Rica to renew my Nicaraguan visa. When I went home in March 1984 I went back to College and got a degree in Spanish, including a summer school semester taking Mexican history and literature courses at the University of Guadalajara in ’85. I returned to Mexico most summers from Northern California (where I taught High School Students ESL, mainly Hispanic immigrants but also Chinese, Central American, Vietnamese, Palestinian, Afghan, etc.) and used my Spanish (that was my Undergrad Major, history my minor.)

Then I spent the summer of 2004, 11 weeks with in Spain. Also, most summers between the late 80s to roughly the mid-90s I returned to Mexico for a month or more, where I passed as a local (my mom was Sardinian and Spanish, and dark-skinned, like my grandmother and myself) and spent time in the DF (Distrito Federal, Mexico City) and the Atlantic coast resort of Puerto Angel.

“So say Mark Level and and Oakchair, two Americans who probably have neither lived nor even visited anywhere else, and who consequently remain so ignorant and brainwashed by American exceptionalism that they imagine the US is representative of ‘Western society’ — whatever that is — or, indeed, of anything other than the US.”– Wow, what willful ignorance and prejudice!!

I also spent 2 visits to Thailand in 2009, and a day trip to Montreal with friends from Vermont c. 2006. I’m pretty well traveled and moving to New Mexico before moving to Mexico Viejo later this year.

Prattle on, display your judgmental ignorance, throw stones while living in a glass house. There aren’t many jerks on this site, but you just joined the list in my book. I will not take much of what you say seriously in the future given that you remorselessly judge and attack others without basic facts. You should be ashamed if you are capable.