The Fish-Eyed Stare:

The Last Knowledge

2009-03-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

From A. K. Coomaraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art, Dover Publications, p. 63:

What is knowledge? Threefold: (1) of particulars and generals, sensible, empirical, literal, indicative, samvyavahārika-pratyakṣa, (2) of universals, rational or intelligible, allegorical, conventional, parokṣa, (3) of sameness, without image or likeness, transcendental, anagogic, aparokṣa = paramārthika-pratyakṣa. Of these the first two (avidyā) are relative, the last (vidyā) immediate and absolute, only to be expressed in terms of negation.

This epistemological query classically treats the Ātman (self, Self; Universal Man, Bráhman) -- māyā (creative power; magic; natura naturans) [1] doctrine from the aesthetic point of view. As it pertains: (1) the particular-general (sensible) and (2) universal (intellectual) characteristics being relative, mutable, illusory being māyā, and (3) the similitudine, evidently significant (paramārthika-pratyakṣa), immutable and Absolute being Ātman.

Of particular interest to one is the latter part of the above quotation, the notion that the absolute can only "be expressed in terms of negation"; the neti neti ("not this, nor that") of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad [2], or as opens the Tào Té Chīng:

The tào that can be told is not the eternal Tào
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin of all particular things.

Ultimately Reality cannot be referred to directly, in and of itself in its entirety, because the conventional naming of things is categorically particular (avidyā), and the Eternal is not particular and cannot be reduced or divided. It is thus the grasping act, dominionization by the intellect which is itself the cause of confusion, relativity and pain (duḥkha). In other words, the Absolute can only be expressed in terms of negation because terms (namā, name, idea, form; means of conventional discrimination) and apparent aspect (rūpa, shape, natural shape, semblance, color, loveliness; image, effigy, likeness; symbol, ideal form; means of conventional discrimination) when taken as realities in themselves (trishna, tṛṣṇā, reification) inhibit the pure understanding of the Ultimate Reality. Duḥkha is this habitual self-inhibition.

The profundity of "terms of negation" lies in their symbolic, or rather non-symbolic, meaning. When conditioned action, kárma, "the type of action which always requires the necessity for further action" [3] -- the fingertip trying to feel itself, the ear trying to hear itself, the dog chasing his own tail -- is shown for its absurdity, the One becomes liberated from the ego. Watts on the teaching of the principals of Chán-Zen:

The basic position of Zen is that it has nothing to say, nothing to teach. The truth of Buddhism is so self-evident, so obvious that it is, if anything, concealed by explaining it. Therefore the master does not "help" the student in any way since helping would actually be hindering. On the contrary, he goes out of his way to put obstacles and barriers in the student's path. [4]

Further:

By such means the student is at last brought to a point of feeling completely stupid -- as if he were encased in a huge block of ice, unable to move or think. He just knows nothing; the whole world, including himself, is an enormous mass of pure doubt. Everything he hears, touches, or sees is as incomprehensible as "nothing" or "the sound of one hand." [5]

The "non-symbolic" meaning, in other words, is that to seek meaning is itself meaningless -- the source of duḥkha. Rather one should relinquish reliance upon māyā and allow the rhythmic spontaneity of life (dhvani: sound, sounding; overtone of meaning, resonance of sense, content as distinguished from intent) to permeate and winnow illusory habitual inhibitions and re-open the experience up to the quintessential flavor, rasa (savor, the substance of aesthetic experience, knowable only in the activity of tasting, rasasvadana), of Reality as such, as it has always been.

The breaking-down of kárma, the "habitual way of consciousness" [6], is liberation from duḥkha, the pain of relativity, temporality, death and birth. All pure meditation results in such an unveiling, wherein the act of grasping is let go of and one is allowed to simply be, nirvāṇa. To seek this perennial state of being is to loose it. Precluding māyā, it is as such not an "end" to any "means"; it transcends such conventionalities; it is non-contriving and spontaneous.

Thus the only way to express the third and purest form of knowledge is by not trying to express it at all, or by negating the forces of its elongation or besmirchment, a "meaningless-meaningfulness" or "meaningful-meaninglessness", and the only way to truly "know" it is to remember that the spontanious Absolute already is you, and you it; that all knowledge in its relative and conventional sense is not Absolute Knowledge; that "The tào that can be told is not the eternal Tào."

And all things written, here or elsewhere, are essentially useless wastes of time unless that dhvani rings through it to the inner Bráhman, and he tastes (rasa) that immediate quintessential similitude, vidyā, formless and un-nameable. Though this is nigh impossible without true understanding of the triune epistemological nature: sat-cit-ānanda, existence-consciousness-bliss, being-intelect-union. In other words, one must understand knowing, that which is known and knowledge itself as one in the same. The difficulty of this concept to the Occidental mind is put thus by Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, Part Three, 54:

They said “I” is the condition, “think” is the predicate and conditioned—thinking is an activity for which a subject must be thought of as cause. Now, people tried, with an admirable tenacity and trickery, to see whether they could get out of this net, whether perhaps the opposite might not be true: “think” as the condition, “I” the conditioned—thus “I” is only a synthesis which is itself created by thinking.

This critique is absent the union of thought itself. That is, "thinking", "thinker" and "thought" occur simultaneously, interdependently. It is only the notion of the Ego, the "I", and its passage through a perceived liner time (rather than an ever present now) which upsets and brings an Absolute to a relative.

An impoverished point of view where manifestation of Knowledge in its complete sense is befuddled, where there is seemingly no savior from māyā because of an habitual adherence to distinction of Being from Intellect, separateness, avidyā, is a Western condition:

What is implied is that a recognition of the principles by which the East still lives, and which can, therefore, be seen in operation (and few will question that peoples as yet "unspoiled" are happier than those that have been "spoiled"), could lead the modern "world of impoverished reality," in which it is maintained that "such knowledge as is not empirical is meaningless," back to the philosopher who denied the dependence of knowledge on sensation and maintained that all learning is recollection. [7]

One can only hope, in the modern West, that his work, in as much as he is bound to kárma, resonates with that Cosmic Rhythm, dhvani, of the eternal Ātman, that others might get a taste (rasa) of the bliss of Eternity.

This dewdrop world--
It may be a dewdrop,
And yet--and yet-- [8]

S. Smith

1. All Sanskrit translations are provided ibid, Sanskrit Glossary, pp. 217-229.

2. "The form of that person is like a cloth dyed with turmeric, or like grey sheep’s wool, or like the scarlet insect called Indragopa, or like a tongue of fire, or like a white lotus, or like a flash of lightning. He who knows this-his splendour is like a flash of lightning. Now, therefore, the description of Bráhman: “Not this, not this” (Neti, Neti); for there is no other and more appropriate description than this “Not this.” Now the designation of Bráhman: “The Truth of truth.” The vital breath is truth and It (Bráhman) is the Truth of that."

3. Alan Watts, The Way of Zen, Random House Publications, p. 46

4. Ibid, p. 163

5. Ibid, p. 166

6. Katsuki Sekida, Zen Training, John Weatherhill, inc.

7. A. K. Coomaraswamy, The Bugbear of Literacy, Perennial Books Ltd., p. 25

8. Haiku written by Issa upon the death of his child.

Alan Watts - A Conversation With Myself

2009-02-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

Distinguishing the Grades

2009-02-15T14:39:00.000-08:00

It is important for the discriminating autodidact or intellectual seeker not to take for granted the conventional point of view which is the cornerstone of modernity. The scientism today president over Occidental and increasingly Oriental society imposes an air of unquestionable objectivity which, without the direction of a sacral doctrine distinguishing grades of reality and thus a paternal metaphysics to properly judge the meaning and worth of derivative subjects, persists without critique of its fundamental principals, and subsequently integral aspects of reality become eschewal.

Extracorporeal concepts progressively degrade to practical functionality due to increased civilizational dependency. When an ambient taboo on the revaluation of the nature of measurement is posited, mass reification occurs: measurements are taken for the realities they symbolize and represent; the physical is taken as the metaphysical from which it is derived; the finger which points to the moon is taken for the moon itself.

The above point of view makes time appear as a linear progression instead of an ever-present-now. The solidity of the view of linear time quickly crumbles upon as simple a process as ontological identification, which is most properly its purpose:

For what I am seems so fleeting and intangible, but what I was is fixed and final. It is the firm basis of predictions of what I will be in the future, and so it comes about that I am more closely identified with what no longer exists than with what actually is! [1]

Similarly is “space” or matter disputatious:

The perfect description of a small particle of dust by these means would take everlasting time, since one would have to account for every point of its volume. [2]

This author’s purpose is not to polemicize the scientific point of view in and of itself, but rather to suggest that things be put in their rightful order. The disconnection or elongation of man from meaning, or the mistake of holding the conventional above the unconventional, favors horizontal progress to vertical growth. The schism of Earth and Heaven, and the rejection of man as the ambivalent symbol which bridges the two, which the modern reified scientistic point of view is responsible for, prevents one from retracing their own being to its source: the source of all being which escapes perfect description because it is beyond description itself as it is beyond all things.

This Ultimate Reality, the Name that cannot be named, is the Beyond-Being of which Being is the first auto-determination. [3]

One must not found his Logos upon relativity, for even “All is relative” is built upon the Absolute; Māyā (illusion) depends on Ātman (the absolute, supra-personal God) for her manifestation, and so, also, do we.

Shayne

1. The Way of Zen, Alan Watts, p. 6
2. Ibid, p. 8
3. Religion and the Order of Nature, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, p. 12

"You Can’t Do That!"

2008-11-16T14:06:00.000-08:00

While perusing Steve Pavlina's blog, I found this little snippet of observational wisdom:

Apparently if you try anything that goes against the mainstream, it means you’re being fanatical, crazy, and deluded. Supposedly common sense dictates that we all get regular corporate jobs, eat factory-produced “foods” from cardboard boxes, and live our lives just like we imagine everyone else does. Then quietly die.

I feel sorry for the people who genuinely think this way… and live their lives accordingly.

[link]

He's dead on. There is an invisible social power which holds sway over the herds of sheeple who swarm our industrial landscapes; it pulls them into line, ideologically, and pushes hard on any who deviate.

Many never express the descension they feel for fear of breaking taboo; and slowly, because the discriminating impulse is never made behavioral habit, people altogether loose their senses. Ergo, the mad culture we see today.

Luckily the sheeple aren't too bright. Their institutions can be exploited by a cleaver and disciplined mind. Advantage can be made: excel within the failing systems and with the acquired leverage inject subtle memetic and genetic legacies which chip away at the prevailing infrastructures and bloodlines. This cuts down that which is already dying whilst propping up symbols everywhere for disenchanted allies.

They'll say you can't do that, but you actually can.

Shayne

Richard Dawkins on Eugenics

2008-09-27T09:51:00.000-07:00

IN THE 1920s and 1930s, scientists from both the political left and right would not have found the idea of designer babies particularly dangerous - though of course they would not have used that phrase. Today, I suspect that the idea is too dangerous for comfortable discussion, and my conjecture is that Adolf Hitler is responsible for the change.

Nobody wants to be caught agreeing with that monster, even in a single particular. The spectre of Hitler has led some scientists to stray from "ought" to "is" and deny that breeding for human qualities is even possible. But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability? Objections such as "these are not one-dimensional abilities" apply equally to cows, horses and dogs and never stopped anybody in practice.

I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn't the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?

- Richard Dawkins

Shayne

Art and Civilization as Rasa

2008-09-23T23:06:00.000-07:00

To hear it told by today's bourgeoisie pseudo-intellectual "consumer of art" or liberal arts school graduate whose "career" consists of producing material for museums and galleries (art for arts sake--dead art--as opposed to art for the sake of culture, race, religion or even man--living art), one would come to think that the highest form of art is the most earnest exhibition of expression of oneself.

This near unanimous cultural meme is entirely modern. It disregards elements which represent and reflect primordial truths, formulaic comprehension through iconographic and symbological communication, or anything founded on or supported by tradition. As such it is entirely alien to meaningful or empowering connections to the natural and cosmic cycles which make up the physical and metaphysical worlds and is thus limited to novelty and commerce.

In such an environment the artist must posses the sort of prophetic genius which births religions, foresees the creation and perseverance of new races of humanity, perpetually sees Nature as theophany, etc. in order to produce anything of real or lasting value. Therefore this modern impulse towards the exhibition of individualism ultimately alienates and divorces one from the very qualities which formulated the substance and principals of their very being, the qualities the artist wishes to express, and leaves them trapped in an inferior world of eternal becoming, unto death.

Ananda Coomaraswamy puts it thus:

It has been well said that civilization is style. An immanent culture in this sense endows every individual with an outward grace, a typological perfection, such as only the rarest beings can achieve by their own effort, a kind of perfection which dose not belong to genius; whereas a democracy, which requires of every man to save his own "face" and soul, actually condemns each to an exhibition of his own irregularity and imperfection, and this implicit acceptance of formal imperfection only too easily passes over in to an exhibitionism which makes a virtue of vanity and is complacently described as self-expression.

An ethno-culture or race, in this point of view, honed and sculpted by generations of cultural and genetic aesthetic ascendency towards "typological perfection" through the traditional teachings descendant from the Fathers of ethnicity and founding prophets of religion, includes all individuals involved from the lowest to the highest caste in the most powerful and profound example of archetypical expression. This far transcends the "vain exhibitionism" of modern dead art, and in the light of such comparison reveals modern "art" as a truncated, spasmodic and schizophrenic parody of true art and, in fact, no art at all.

According to Coomaraswamy's rendition of the Sahitya Darpana:

Pure aesthetic experience is theirs in whom the knowledge of ideal beauty is innate; it is known intuitively, in the intelectual ecstasy without accompaniment of ideation, at the highest level of conscious being; born of one mother with the vision of God, its life is as it were a flash of blinding light of transmundane origin, impossible to analyze, and yet in the image of our very being.

(Quote: Ananda Coomaraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art, Dover Publications pp 36-37)

Shayne

Money = Debt

2008-09-20T11:55:00.000-07:00

Though they don't initiate much thought themselves about the nature of their money, most Americans, if you were to put the question to them, would reply that minted money (created and circulated currency) is backed up somewhere by gold, silver or some other material of qualitative value. This 1:1 ratio of representation, however, is far, far from the case. In fact the vast majority of money in the modern world is represented and supported by debt itself.

If debt didn't exist neither would the American economy. Paying off the national debt would leave the US with its theoretical reserves, which would be roughly 1% the current product because banks are allowed to create money from loan interest which already works on a 9:1 reserve ratio. And don't forget that reported from the latest audit of the US Bullion Depository at Fort Knocks, as of 1981 only 21 percent of the gold bars were audited, [*] so even the integrity of those reserves is questionable.

Our currency is out of our hands, controlled by bankers who pick and choose when to tighten funds and call in loans. They make it all up as they go. Their scheme is supported by the ignorance of those whom they take advantage of, which is everybody else. Playing a part of that game is to relinquish one's own power and survivability to the whims of an arrogant plutocracy.

I don't have the answers yet but I'm on the track to them and have some theories which will be shared in time. Until then I implore one to become aware of the constituents of their existence, spiritual, economical, physical or otherwise, and understand the Logos of these qualities so as to gain power and control over them and become the first mover of their own life.

Shayne

The Prostituted Nature

2008-09-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

The dangers brought about by man's domination over nature are too well known to need elucidation. Nature has become desacralized for modern man, although this process itself has been carried to its logical conclusion only in the case of a small minority. Moreover, nature has come to be regarded as something to be used and enjoyed to the fullest extent possible. Rather than being like a married woman from whom a man benefits but also towards whom he is responsible, for modern man nature has become like a prostitute--to be benefited from without any sense of obligation and responsibility toward her. The difficulty is that the condition of prostituted nature is becoming such as to make any further enjoyment of it impossible. And, in fact, that is why many have begun to worry about its condition.

Seyyed Hossein Nasir, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man, KAZI Publications pp 18

The analogy is apt. Modern man has stripped his world view of its metaphysical dimensions and thus the immutable and eternal realities of Form and principle are veiled whilst material and sensorial realities, the products of the temporal realm of the state of becoming, are worshiped as reality in its entirety. This cultural ignorance of ontological consideration prevents the inherent impulse of people to live in balance with cosmic and natural cycles whilst propounding a legacy of decadence and consumption without regard for consequences.

What remains of a "natural world" within modern civilization is in fact domesticated and unnatural, its only import being banal entertainment and the satiation and suppression of natural inclinations towards human involvement with immutable qualitative cycles. Meanwhile virgin nature becomes increasingly exploited for its endowments and destroyed to the extent that the survival of man itself is threatened.

Nature when viewed as a divine expression of formulaic perfection, the absolute manifestation of archetypical quality, reveals the cosmos as theophany. From this point of view the prostituting of nature is seen as a blaspheme against the connection of man to cosmic cycles and the Eternal as such. The proponents of such prostitution are enemies of the ascent of man to the Absolute and are thus among the highest order of infidel.

(Illustration by Boris Pelcer: http://www.borispelcer.com/thesis.html)

Shayne

Stop Breeding: A Note to the Moronic

2008-09-07T19:20:00.000-07:00

About a century ago man decided to begin the process of total detachment from the natural processes of cosmic order and sacred tradition. Ever sense he has grown in number, physical and mental illness, body mass and overall destructive vileness (environmental, social, spiritual, governmental or otherwise), whilst losing entirely any sense of meaning in existence beyond the amount of things one owns and the amount of nifty stuff these things can do.

When the quantitative or material realities are regarded higher than the qualitative or metaphysical ones, such as is reflected in the prevalent modern world view, the result is an increase in number and a decrease in quality. In the realm of human reproduction this means there is a growing number of stupid people and a shrinking number of capable ones. The result? Recourses, environmental and intellectual, are depleted, strained and ultimately gobbled up by a massive swarm of idiotic Untermenschen. This is obviously a stupid thing to support. So don't.
Support this:

And others at inertiacide.com

Fortunately, the numbers will eventually run their course and the stupid will simply be killed off by their own retarded institutions:

But, if they're determined to fall so triumphantly, why not help by pushing them faster when climbing over them?

Stop Breeding

Shayne

Socrates and Knowledge of the Sacred

2008-08-09T14:02:00.000-07:00

I've struggled a long time with the Socratic problem of knowledge: essentially, that one must be what one knows. It is difficult because during the pursuit of knowledge of any "thing" one discovers that all things are connected, thus to "know" one thing, one must "know" all things; or rather: one must be all things in order to know anything. What a daunting task! I can see why Socratice simply proclaimed ignorance in the face of it.

However, attempts for knowledge have nonetheless been made. One such attempt is Seyyed Hossein Nasir's Knowledge and the Sacred, which begins by directly addressing the core of Socratic epistemology.

Nasir describes the modern secular society as "profane" because it separates knowledge from its traditional place as one part of a three part module for understanding Reality: being, knowledge and bliss. And verily, it is apparent that this attenuation and desacralization--one "is" because one "thinks", cogito ergo sum, completely bypassing ontology and the existential--has resulted in a world devoid of identity, rampant with sickness, depression, suicide and ennui.

In one especially cogent sentience, Nasir says:

The depleting of knowledge of its sacred character and the creation of a "profane" science which is then used to study even the most sacred doctrines and forms at the heart of religion have led to a forgetting of the primacy of the sapiential dimension within various traditions and the neglect of the traditional doctrine of man which has envisaged him as a being possessing the possibility of knowing things in principle and the principles of all things leading finally to the knowledge of Ultimate Reality.

Especially interesting here is his attribution of a primacy to sacred tradition and the progression of its "forgetting" via scientific profanation. In many ways this represents the Truth inherent in the pre-reflective experience, wherein one is necessarily absolutely unalienable and completely unified with what Nasir calls "Ultimate Reality".

I can't help but be compelled by this interpretation, as it addresses deeply the most fundamental components of perennial Western epistemology. Whereas before I stood more or less in solidarity with Socrates with an angsty longing for a seemingly impossible unification, now I am beginning to recognize an essential and logical value in recognition of traditional sacred practices.

Reality is primordial and without reflection--it simply "is". And to converse my earlier stated quality of Socratic knowledge: whilst it is true that one must be all things in order to know anything, it is thus also true that one must know themselves in order to be anything, and the Sacred is a key which allows one to remember the primordial reality that, because they are an inherent component of a Whole which encompass and encapsulates the Eternal and the Absolute, one already is--in themselves--the primordial Ultimate Reality.

I'm anxious to delve further into this fascinating perspective.

Shayne

[Quote from Seyyed Hossein Nasir, Knowledge and the Sacred, State University of New York Press pp 6.]

Eugenic Potential

2008-08-04T22:43:00.000-07:00

Races have evolved away from each other over the past 10,000 years, according to new research that challenges standard ideas about the biological significance of ethnicity.

...

This would call into question the popular scientific view that race has little or no biological meaning, as the genetic similarities between ethnic groups greatly outweigh differences.
While this remains true – all humans share more than 99 per cent of their DNA – the new work indicates that variations tend to differ between races, and that these became more, not less, pronounced.

[link]

Naturally, people mate with people like themselves, so the above result, despite PC globalist egalitarian media strongarm tactics, only makes sense. Further:

“Genes are evolving fast in Europe, Asia and Africa, but almost all of these are unique to their continent of origin. We are getting less alike, not merging into a single, mixed humanity.

“Our study denies the widely held assumption that modern humans appeared 40,000 years ago, have not changed since and that we are all pretty much the same. We aren’t the same as people even 1,000 or 2,000 years ago.”

The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If the trend towards increasing genetic diversity were to continue, it could lead ultimately to the development of different species. Most scientists, however, think this is now highly unlikely.

Only unlikely on a massive, global scale. However a small community could eugenically direct its ethnicity towards whatever end it desires, its racial distinctiveness increasing in specification, unto speciation. Abnegated moderns benignly enforce their own eugenics, which from a higher spiritual standpoint and an eye for long-term survival in reality, is ultimately dysgenic. Plunge into their stream and become like them; or find a greater stream with currents flowing into the eternal.

Shayne

'Hate crime' victims: Young, poor, white

2008-07-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON The most likely victim of a hate crime in the U.S. is a poor, young, white, single urban dweller, according to an analysis of Justice Department statistics collected from between July 2000 and December 2003.

A November report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics detailing a study of 210,000 "hate crimes" a year during that period has gone virtually unreported by the U.S. press.

But it does contain some surprising numbers. While race is, by far, the No. 1 factor cited as the reason for hate crimes, blacks are slightly less likely to be victims and far more likely to be perpetrators, the statistics show.

[link]

Hey, how come statistics never conflate with PC media biases? Oh, I've got it! Because only racists use substantially factual data. Or maybe statistics themselves are racist. I'm not sure which yet. Who'se the liberal I vote for to fix this?

Shayne

Æsthetic Nihilism

2008-06-29T15:55:00.000-07:00

One sees a work of art and is moved by a cathartic sense of æsthetic truth. Yet presently a profane realization reemerges: art, a mere phenomenalistic beau geste; its “truthfulness” naught but a refinement of deception. Æsthetics itself a simulacrum as it necessitates the abstraction of the totality of noumenal reality (primal Oneness) for the sake of gradation. Art is thus a reflection of a shadow.

For a particular type of man the aforementioned experience instinctually precludes the æsthetic mood. He cannot help but criticize art eschatologically, or to put it elsewise: his axiology, by virtue of recognition of its own obsolescence, seeks self-annihilation. He is the begrudging manifestation of Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values” and an avatar of active æsthetic nihilism.

However, through the denial of alienation (abstraction, duality) in pursuit of primal Oneness, such as this man of inherent nihilism, type homines eschatos, is destined, one suffers, because the subjectivization of sense-data is perennial in man—thus he is bound, and in denying duality he denies half his own nature. Therefore, regarding beauty and the metaphysically purifying effects of art, which to others is a placebo, is to this type a nocebo. Are you this type, my brothers?

When viewing a great painting one thinks: “But is not the subject itself superior?” and upon hearing a great composition one wonder: “Is this not an attenuation of the naked breath of the world?” Thus one telltales Schopenhauer’s “genius” who can view nature æsthetically as he, to term Evola, is more fully “unified,” meaning he is closer to “being,” the superior state, than “becoming,” the inferior state. This genetically transmitted resistance to duality makes eschatological man naturally ascetic in that his instincts make reification nauseating.

So what to do, ye nauseated ones? Indeed such a faculty as has hitherto been discussed—that of the man suffering half his nature—must be overcome in order that he not just tolerate art and life, as verily he sees life itself æsthetically, but ultimately leap over and above himself such that he dose not revile his fate but loves it and rides it to ever greater overcomings unto his unification with primal Oneness. This amor fati thus becomes an axiological phoínix, burning old reified values to ashes from which a new transvaluing being can be born.

Eschatological man vis-à-vis the establishment of art: schadenfro! Revel in the demise of reification; recognize æsthetic abstraction as a cultural plaything; create art which threatens and mocks contemporaries whilst didactically kindling the impression of artistic obsolescence within dispossessed kin; and foremost should be the utilization of ones inherent qualities, a fortiori, towards the accruement of power—and find the artistry in that!

Shayne

The Egalitarian Myth

2008-06-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

Egalitarians like to believe that all people are interchangeable. Considering the state of the world and its diversity, this seems to me an obvious fallacy.

Multiculturalism—the strong-arm of egalitarianism—never seems to result in anything good. Some argue it enriches a culture to be saturated in outsiders, ala the American “melting pot.” This makes diversity more readily available, they say. But what isn’t recognized is that it’s an attenuation of all cultures involved, as they must conform to a tolerable status quo to avoid conflicts in tradition. The resultant effect of this degradation is the cultureless consumer societies we see in modern techno-industrialized nations.

Biologically, we’ve developed in different environments, under different conditions, with different stresses. Concordantly, different groups have different ways of living that are right for them. Globalism completely eschews this reality and forces one form of governance, that of liberal democratic industrial consumerism, on all people. Resistant groups had better hope the land they inhabit doesn’t have any valuable resources.

To go even further: egalitarianism is cruel. It takes diverse groups of people, mixes them up, and then blames them for their natural cleavages. What? People have lived in Australia (Aborigines) since around 74,000 BCE and were doing just fine until civilization, a completely foreign and unnecessary organizational system, was brought to them. Suddenly there are problems with them and the colonizing Anglos. No! Really?

The integrality of social cohesion differs from the Rhineland to the south of Brazil, for obvious as well as subtle reasons. Civilization is required in some (few) places; in other (most) places it is not. Egalitarianism seeks to abolish the unique qualities that make a people who they are; it would do away with the most fundamental component of identity, ethno-culture (race), and leave us isolated, hollow and stuffed.

Egalitarianism is taken for granted because the converse is taboo in modern society. This taboo is on track to be the most dangerous of social practices, and practices zealously pursued pass into habits—abeunt studia in mores. This habitual way of life, the arbitrary adherence to deadly taboo, the obliteration of hundreds of thousands of years of human differentiation and development, the systematic consumption of the natural world for profit, the gaping mouth of Fenrir which blackens the sky and souls of men—this is the fish-eyed stare. Refuse, resist and revolt.

Shayne

Art: Suicidal Speaker of Aletheia

2008-03-04T07:47:00.000-08:00

There is an old Greek belief that there is no external impetus for knowledge. What one knows is what one has always known, and the discovery of knowledge is merely a remembering, a reawakening of the innate, an unpeeling of the layers of falsity to the fundamental reality. Empirically this concept is unprovable. Nevertheless it holds a certain existential weight: those who have felt this attest to it; those who haven’t, don’t, and never can. It is on these terms that art acts out its purpose.

To the emotionally debased art is merely a metaphorical aesthetic feeling resulting from the manipulation of symbols. Such people are intrinsically resilient towards the transcendental aspects of art and are thus disconnected from the phenomenon described above. They will attempt to balkanize it at every turn. To the majority art is novelty, commodity, propaganda, accessory, and nothing more.

Verily it is the same for most artists, whose goal in practice is to make something “cool” to sell. These works are easily sniffed out because they smack of brevity in metaphorical depth of both style and content. There is no “hidden something” beyond the obvious. Cheapened forms of communication suit perfectly for a cheap interpretation, these artists speak directly to their audience.

The higher artist understands reality fundamentally. Art is an abstraction of reality into symbolized forms. Art is, essentially, a lie, or at least a shadow. It is a kind of satire which the higher artists tries to communicate: “Know, my audience, those of you who can know, the overcoming of art; step over these symbols and claim that which lies on the other side: or rather reclaim, for what lies beyond is what is fundamental in you, o my people!”

Thus the purpose of higher art is the creation of an objectified aesthetic language, a kind of tool wherein clarity of reality can be drawn like water from a well. Its target is ilk, kin—those who are at the same innate level of potential remembrance of nature, of an acceptance and also a rejection of abstraction for its own sake; those beings of transcendence.

As Nietzsche aphorized, Art is a defense of Truth. Thus use art éclatically, suicidally, for the sake of doing away with art to reveal the Truth, the aletheia, which lies under the skin of abstraction and alienation. And see art, also, with these eyes.

Shayne

Words from the Eternal

2008-02-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

As I walked home on a trail I’ve walked a hundred times, something I’ve always noticed piqued my interest, as today, as the wind blew smoothly across the tops of houses and pored like water through the streets and alleyways, the Earth seemed to be pleading for someone to listen. But there was no one listening.

I came across a place where a few of the ancient trees that once populated this region had not been cut down; instead a house had been built around them. They stood gargantuan, as though they penetrated the sky into Heaven. And they swayed like trees have swayed a hundred million billion times before, but this time it was different.

The wind wisped through them, these mute, dancing demigods. But then, I realized, this wisp of wind was a whisper, the voice of some great thing, some lonely great thing. The whisper rose slowly until it became a roar, muting all other sounds of surrounding industry. And mankind disappeared then.

At first I thought it was the trees talking, utilizing their friend and enemy the wind to blow the words through them. But no. Though the magnanimity of it was already overwhelming me, this was something greater speaking to me, for trees lack this kind of profundity. What spoke to me was much, much greater than a quartet of trees. What spoke was immortal.

And what did it say? Without words or song or rhyme, as these are shadows of reflections of truth and ideas, it reached past my temporality and my mind and took hold of something much deeper and said:

“Listen, fool. I am the sacred eternal, the neutral, the Garden of Eden. You left me for knowledge, and now your life is a sad story. But you can never leave me, for I am everything, everywhere, and you are a part of me, a hair on my neck, a forgotten memory. All men could once hear me this way, as you do, now only a handful. Your sorrow, your tragedy is as much an illusion as the freedom you’ve built for yourself, and the walls, bars and chains of that freedom. Let it go and I will embrace you once more, in love, and I will crush you.”

Thus it spoke to my soul and tears welled up like the first time I heard, really heard Beethoven’s 9th… but even more than that, as even Beethoven wrote illusions and lies, glimmering lies, from man to man. Yet my legs, conditioned as they are to work without thought, kept walking home, and all the eternal had to say took place in just a second, or perhaps an eon, and it’s still talking, whispering to me now. Forever.

Shayne

Takers and Leavers

2008-02-21T15:01:00.000-08:00

On Daniel Quinn’s website (http://www.ishmael.org/) there is an extensive Q&A. Some of the questions are interesting, and Quinn’s answers are thoughtful. Also, for one prone towards primitivism, luckily most of the questions are typical, thus the answers provide a useful resource to refer to when dealing with similar questions in daily life (which will be often if your train of thought is such).

I’d like to present this particular question with my comments in brackets.

The Question (ID Number 733)...

Near the conclusion of "Ishmael," you proclaimed that humans in the Taker culture have stopped evolving, because they do not live in the hands of the gods. This is the only idea of yours that I cannot wrap my mind around. I don't understand how or why evolution would cease for a segment of one species but not for another segment of the same species... [This confusion stems from the paradox of egalitarianism. The questioner assumes that all people are the same, thus how could one progress while the others remain stagnant or even regress? Yet mutation is a fundamental aspect of evolution. Mutants are intrinsically different within their species, and if their mutation is heritable and advantageous, it will increase in frequency. Thus races evolve and, supposing the mutation is isolated and nurtured, speciation occurs. That’s the origin of species. Like most people these days who propose to understand something about these topics, the questioner hasn’t done their homework, and Quinn must make up the slack in order to explain.] especially considering the segment for which evolution supposedly has ceased contains the vast majority of the total species' population. [It is the exceptional minority that evolves, the majority that perishes. Most species that have existed are extinct. Most kinds of live are not fit enough for long-term survival.] In addition, how have the Leaver peoples evolved, and what proof do we have of that evolution?

...and the response:

You have three different questions here. Regarding the first question, I would say that the members of our culture have simply removed ourselves from the conditions under which evolution takes place; this is the whole point of taking our lives into our own hands. [This is a valid and oft underrated point. Many progressives like to say that since the material for technology necessarily comes from natural sources, technology itself is inherently natural, thus the citizens of the techno-industrial system are subject to natural selection. This, however, misses the intention of the techno-industry: the division from natural forces in order to decide our own destiny. This separation from nature is actually making us weaker, as the rest of the world evolves to fit into the changing world, whilst we change to fit our own world, and as is proved time and time again, nature is vastly more powerful that civilization. In other words, we’re on the loosing side. We may appear to be making great gains, but we’re the hare, and nature is the tortoise.] To say that I "proclaimed" it suggests that the statement is to be taken on faith. I would say rather that I merely asserted it, and presented grounds for the assertion, which will be examined in greater detail below.

Regarding the second question, it's entirely possible for one "section" of a species to evolve separately from other sections–if the conditions under which the one section live become different from the conditions under which the others live. [This should have been evident.] An excellent example of this can be found in the very distinctive physical differences that developed among Leaver peoples living under the conditions of the far north–-the Eskimos. Over time (hundreds or thousands of years), their bodies adapted to two significantly different conditions from the rest of humanity: severe cold and the absence of nearly all forms of edible fruits and vegetables, leaving them with a diet that consisted almost entirely of meat. By contrast, immigrants to Alaska from the lower United States do not have to adapt to these conditions, because they bring with them central heating and supermarkets supplied with food from the south. This illustrates very clearly why these Taker immigrants are not evolving: they don't need to; they're shielding themselves from the conditions under which evolution takes place. [Italics mine. Another excellent point.]

I believe the answer to the second question also answers the third. The Eskimos exemplify how Leaver peoples evolved, and their physical differences from peoples of the south constitute proof of that evolution. [Again, the egalitarian cannot see this because it conflict with their socio-political beliefs. Abnegation: the favorite pastime of modern man.]

The questioner had a follow-up query: Would a reasonable alternative hypothesis to your assertion that people in the Taker culture have stopped evolving be that they do continue to evolve but not how they would have if they had adopted a Leaver culture? I cannot think of an example to offer, but the idea is that Takers continue to evolve in a way that perhaps is not beneficial to them or in a way that reflects their Taker culture.

My reply: Evolution is not an ongoing, inevitable process, like, say, aging. It's a response to new conditions that favor some individuals (who survive to reproduce) over others (who do not survive to reproduce). I can see no conditions at work today that would have this effect on humans. When (and if) the combined effects of our impact on the environment finally combine to cause a general ecological collapse, there will be no time for Homo Sapiens to adapt (just as there was no time for Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops to adapt). [It’s important for humans to be aware of their forthcoming extinction. We must overcome humanity, and then overcome that overcoming, and so on into eternity, if anything thitherto referred to as “we” shall survive.]

Shayne

Celebrating Identity

2008-01-17T11:28:00.000-08:00

One thing I find most curious about the current public milieu is its insistence for certain kinds of identification and not for others. An example: I saw an interview where Lou Dobbs suggested Americans should stop celebrating ethnically European holidays such as Saint Patrick’s Day; reason being that we should identify not with some distant foreign heritage, which he seemed to suggest was divisive, but the contemporary public lifestyle. Asside: I wonder if he would suggest doing away with the likes of Kwanzaa or Cinco De Mio. But anyway…

You see this sort of hypocritical attitude more and more these days. Folks want you to identify not as race, ethnicity, sex or tribe but the broad category of species (human) or, failing that, nation state (not nationality). You hear it all the time: you’re not “white,” “black,” “Oriental,” “Nordic,” etc. because we’re all part of one race—the human race. “But a race of what?” I must then ask, as one who makes such a statement is clearly ignorant of the fact that a race is merely a variant of a larger category.

It’s obvious politically correct pandering and a double standard, as the same logic for such identification could be used for any category: our identities are overlapping and coaxial. If I am to identify not with ethnicity or race, but humanity, supposing that subspecies characterization is somehow unethical, why not take it a step further? Are we not all Hominidae? Let us cease discrimination and unite with our great ape cousins. And why stop there? Subphylum identification is racist! All mammals are Chordata; it’s high time we embraced our yellowfin tuna brethren as equals!

Of course we don’t do that: we have limited loyalties and limited tastes. All animals naturally associate with those that are most like themselves. If you know of a pet store with a large display of finches, go and observe them. Likely they will have a diverse selection. Notice that, even though there is no difference between them otherwise, any polarity of different colored finches will congregate and exclude others. It is so with any kind of animal in large enough numbers to form localities of critical mass. This in-group impulse is a hardwired survival mechanism.

The point of this article is not to denounce the notion of species identification—I see no problem in collecting as a singular humanity in the face of greater outside aggression—but that humanism alone is very limiting. Indeed, I am a human, and that constitutes a large part of my psychological identity; but I’m also a Caucasian, an American, of Welsh and German national descent, a man, a mate, a brother, a son, an autodidact, an illustrator, etc. If I were to stop at species I wouldn’t be remotely as rich a personality as I am, and the world itself would be dimmer because of it.

We are all more than just “human.” Such a stunted public practice as globalist humanism will leave mankind a monocultural, ethnically deluded, socially retarded simulacrum of itself. Instead, our modus vivendi should be nepotistic, winnowing equanimity; and we should always strive to define ourselves by our differences and our similarities, as it is all our influences and heritages that constitute who we really are.

Shayne

How to have peace

2008-01-06T17:59:00.000-08:00

How to Have Peace, Finally

1. End Envy. When everyone in society competes for money alone, envy and resentment run high and so does sleight of hand behavior. Let's stop the rat race. In a healthy culture, every job is important and given its place, and no one is left to rot at the bottom of the competitive heap except blatant incompetents.

2. Reduce pollution and urban blight. We're all scrabbling toward the top of the pile so we don't get left in a ghetto. But running away to the suburbs no longer protects us from deranged urban dwellers. A solution is to fix our cities and o put some people in jail for life if all they do is destroy things.

3. Kick our oil dependency. Oil is our heroin, our crack, our meth. We need a certain amount of it to run our economy. But do we really need individual cars, especially since they don't help us outrun the mess of the city? Do we really need all of these products? We can do just as well with less, and in fact be happier.

4. Support diversity. To have diversity, you need to have distinct ethnic groups. If you try to combine these groups, they'll fight for their own right to exist as a group and cause the ethnic warfare common to multicultural society. Let the ethnic groups separate and stop viewing such separation as a taboo "racism."

5. Don't try to hide different abilities. Billy is a genius, but Mary is a world-class athlete. We get embarrassed for both of these kids because they can't do something the other can. Let's end that charade. We're all different and we each have a place in the world. We don't need to be "equal" to be OK, and trying to force "equality" causes mayhem.

6. Allow people to live according to chosen values, even if they seem grotesque to us. In the west, our newspapers tell us that Muslims are primitive, women-abusing, tribal societies. But there is no science or philosophy that tells us reliability that such lifestyles are "bad." Tolerate difference.

7. Stop the war on drugs. Some people are gonna take 'em, and some are gonna drink to excess. Just keep them away from the kids and when they're observed screwing up on the job, fire them. We cannot afford the violence and police militarization of the war on drugs.

8. Forget the war between the sexes. If being equal means we gotta fight and have the 50% chance of divorce for every marriage we have, forget it. Let's respect each other for what we are and try to get along with more respect. "Equality" might be an illusory goal, since we've each got different equipment, inside and out, but respect and compassion are eternal.

9. Reverence. We're so busy chasing the holy dollar we've forgotten what it is to love life. Ancient monks in secluded monasteries saw intense concentration on tasks and appreciation of life as a form of prayer. Maybe this kind of soul stillness and inner beauty is missing in our lives, and we need to bring it back.

10. Open-mindedness. "Tolerance" implies not liking something, but putting up with it. Instead, we should try to understand that we each have different paths, and there is no ordained single route to glory. There are some things that are a good idea for everyone, but you have to do it for yourself. Be open-minded in the original meaning -- we know the goal, but there's more than one way to get there.

This message brought to you by AAAWL:
http://www.corrupt.org/

Shayne

Navarrette Narrative

2008-01-04T09:23:00.000-08:00

On CNN’s website, some dingbat looking dude was paid to give his boring, Big Mac opinion about immigration [link]: nothing new, nothing inspired; a sprinkle of NaCl in the Great Salt Lake. In cases such as these an intellectual void is created and reader commentary is allotted the potential of greater insight. One such comment tickled my fancy and showed how “professionals” aren’t necessarily superior to bright hobbyists (bottommost comment):

Geoffrey

"...I can't wait to see what happens when Arizonans realize that the same folks who built all those resorts, restaurants, and houses are no longer around to maintain them."

I remember back in the day, before the time of illegal immigrants, there were no restaurants, resorts, or houses. In fact, I can recall living in a field and wondering to myself, "What am I to do? I have no resort, no restaurant, and no house." Then along came a group of illegal immigrants and they built me a house, a restaurant and a resort - right there in the field. I was so happy. They planted a tree for me too.

People like Ruben Navarrette Jr. deserve to be mocked. Lucky for us they make themselves and their “erudite” opinions public. If you find such people or their nincompoop disciples in your own professional or personal life, feel free—I give you permission—to dig at their shallowly construed identities. It’s tons of fun, I promise.

Shayne

Cry Because You’re White: The Fallacy of White Guilt

2008-01-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

If you’re unfamiliar with the term (which is unlikely given its pervasive media presence), white guilt is the concept of individual or group guilt said to be felt by whites for the historical treatment of non-whites. A ubiquitous phenomenon, white guilt has spread from its traditional home in the Americas, now reaching its tendrils broadly across the sea to Europe and anywhere else with a polarity of “whites.”

Guilt is a strong psychological motivation in humans. It can dictate the type and degree of positive action but also works largely as a preventative measure which curtails perceived negative behavioral outcomes. In the case of white guilt, which is present in the socio-political realms occupied by whites (whether or not they choose to acknowledge it), governmental and social policy is affected through laws, prevailing taboos and social mores.

Left-wing commentators posit a straw man to combat the charge: Our motivation is not guilt, they say, but empathy and compassion. While in some cases this is probably true, inasmuch as the impetus and implementation of polices and procedures, in practice—as far as convincing a white polarity to accept particular anti-white legislation such as affirmative action, mass migration, racial pluralism, etc.—the liberal machine will pound the wicked white devil in the head with the Mallet of Historical and Contemporaneous Injustice. Guilt, guilt, guilt! Feel bad about what you’ve done, White Man, and pay.

The fallacy here isn’t so much that injustices didn’t happen, but that they aren’t as pro-white specific as the liberals would have you believe. They see white guilt as “a tool for extortion, reparations and income redistribution based on race rather than merit.” [1] However the history sings a different tune: proportionally, if we are to consider the sorts of things used to validate white guilt (slavery, exclusive immigration practices, ethnically specific discrimination), whites were more “unjust” to themselves than to others—and it is the same with nearly every other ethnic in-group.

White slavery in Briton and America is often underappreciated and overlooked. The phrase “indentured servitude” lessens the relation of European slavery to African slavery, but the treatment of white and black slaves was remarkably similar. Sometimes, things were worse:

Ships carrying White slaves to America often lost half their slaves to death. According to historian Sharon V. Salinger, "Scattered data reveal that the mortality for [White] servants at certain times equaled that for [Black] slaves in the 'middle passage,' and during other periods actually exceeded the death rate for [Black] slaves." Salinger reports a death rate of ten to twenty percent over the entire 18th century for Black slaves on board ships enroute to America compared with a death rate of 25% for White slaves enroute to America. [2]

Most of today’s American working stock is descendant of these servants. If blacks are entitled to slave reparations, so are the “white trash”, “crackers” and “rednecks” that are so unabashedly ridiculed in today’s media. Additionally, as far as reparations go, who is paying whom?

Tens of millions of nonblack Americans are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants who arrived after the Civil War. The vast majority of the rest are the offspring of whites who never owned slaves. (Even at slavery's peak, three-fourths of Southern whites held no slaves.) [3]

Regards to slavery, there isn’t even much for whites to feel guilty about that any other ethnicity involved shouldn’t also share: competing African tribes captured and sold each other to Arab traders during the American slave era, and black-on-black slavery is still largely happening in Africa today. An added note: the etymology of “slave” is “Slavic”; from the frequent enslavement of Slavs in central Europe during the early Middle Ages. [4]

The position of holding white guilt as legitimate is pathological and historically incorrect, and those that tout it are either self-hating, valetudinarian, white cosmopolitan liberals, misinformed common folk or nepotistic minorities.

Guilt is a weak and embarrassing place to be motivated from. Those who try to foist it on others for their own psychological capitulation are cowards and are unworthy of your association. Others—outsiders—who flex guilt at your group for their own advantage…well, recognize that they’re only doing what is instinctual: humans developed in-groups from the pressures of nature and the necessity of survival, and the struggle for one’s own group advantage is, evolutionarily speaking, correct; it is the responsibility of ones own group to fight for itself. So quit loathing about your heritage, crying about being white, and stand up for yourself.

Shayne

Men-Art-War

2008-01-01T19:30:00.000-08:00

On Earth, the competition of life is never ending. Individuals by themselves are vulnerable; thus nature shapes life, and from this force groups necessarily emerge. Each group develops distinct ways of survival which are constantly tested, growing stronger with endurance or weakening with decay and eventually going extinct. Among the hominids, the Cro-Magnon man has developed many traits for survival but the quintessential ability—the distinctly unique limb of their survival—is imagination, which, when structuralized with symbolism and enacted through idealism, is responsible for the whole of human domination and supremacy.

In Men-Art-War, Kolya, with ten succinct and easily digestible short stores, deals with the faculty of imagination extensively, demonstrating its expression throughout history as well as its corruption in the modern West. We are shown how the acceptance of force—the striving for the feeling of power—as an extension of our inherent nature leads to a more fulfilling, meaningful life not just in a socio-historical sense but to the individual psychology as well; and how the cogs of modernity strive to conquer, subvert and burry this impulse.

Contextually, the themes of this book present modernity, with its assurance of progress through technology, reverence for the illusion of safety and passivity and pity as the impetus of moral action, as a direct affront to the very nature of mankind, instead positing that life should be about transcending difficulties and overcoming adversities, no matter how daunting the task or how easy the alternative, through glorious art and glorious war: “Facilis descensus Averni.” Nietzsche’s Will to Power and Kaczynski’s Power Process are strongly implicated.

Rarely dose a work of contemporary fiction conflate with my personal beliefs as Men-Art-War has, which made reading it a rich, refreshing and fulfilling experience. For those of a dissimilar weltanschauung, much of this book might be difficult, challenging or even offensive, but such reactions to a different point of view are the impetus of intellectual growth and should be sought out rather than avoided if one is honest about such a pursuit. Kolya’s characters also provide many artistic, literary and historical references for one to explore if the wish.

Highly recommended.

Shayne

King Midas’ ears

2007-12-20T14:41:00.000-08:00

What life has worth? The living just
The children of the soot and earth.
Dry mouth of dread, say: is life-lust
Naught but the rarest of the dead?

Shayne

Alien Heredity

2007-12-19T13:00:00.000-08:00

The other day I was discussing evolution with some coworkers. One woman made the remark that she refused to believe she came from a monkey. Later on, when the two of us were alone in the lunch room, I asked her if she really thought that no people evolved from monkeys. She said: “Well… maybe some black people.” I chuckled to myself. She responded, “No, I’m serious.” So I asked her where she thought she came from. Her reply was that, presumably, white people (or at least non-blacks) are the product of extraterrestrial or angelic miscegenation. Very Lovecraftian, unbeknownst to her of course.

My point here isn’t about subversive racism or any other nonsense, as this lady is, per my observation, perfectly tolerant and accommodating to all peoples, but that there is a whole other discussion about race going on that the media is completely ignorant about. These personal beliefs seem not to reflect the popular PC, scientific or religious ideals discussed in mass media but more personal superstitions which harken back to ancient times. These ideas are stifled by the prevailing structure of taboos, which threaten the financial wellbeing of anyone with an opinion differing from the status quo. This is sad because such ideas serve for much more interesting conversation.

Shayne

Arthur Rackham

2007-12-18T08:56:00.000-08:00

He never lost the joy and sense of wonderment and he never gave in to the baser styles that fell in and out of favor over the years. From Queen Victoria's death in 1901 to the start of World War I, Rackham's illustrations preserved a lifestyle and a sensibility that kept the frighteningly modern future at bay. His beautiful drawings were the antithesis of the industrial advances that allowed them to be printed at affordable prices. Even into the twenties and thirties, his art was a constant reminder of those aspects of innocence that had been left behind.

[link]

The illustrations of Arthur Rackham are at once enchanting, inspiring, melancholy, and for me personally, somewhat saddening. His work is amazing, rich, deep, technical, sporadic, and emotional… as a striving illustrator myself, how can I communicate such essence similarly? Surly, it is a different time: one could once get a fine education in the arts; to learn traditional techniques and methods to then adapt to the world of the day. This is no longer so. Speak to most any artist of classical worth and they will tell of struggles against their education; success in spite of it. Where dose one go to follow in the footsteps of a master?

Extensive Rackham Gallery

Shayne