Best products from r/DarkEnlightenment

We found 24 comments on r/DarkEnlightenment discussing the most recommended products. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 80 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

Top comments mentioning products on r/DarkEnlightenment:

u/excarcini · 1 pointr/DarkEnlightenment

Disclaimer: As a representative of the nascent Carcini Institute I am not speaking for any Neoreactionary Individual or Ideology and I am using the commons present at the subreddit as I would any commons.


Is it self-evident that every stable government turns into a bureaucracy? It certainly does not appear to be that the equilibrium state of governance is exemplified in bureaucracy. Unlike what kalvinski seems to be saying you can certainly have bureaucracies in a corporation.

I am not sure exactly what sort of question you are trying to ask or territory you are trying to explore but it appears to be something around the lines of 'examining the form of bureaucracy and seeing if there are better alternatives - esp from a decentralized angle.' This is actually a topic I've been interested in research once my work on Fourth Generation Warfare and Political Theology have been cleared up. The answer in this comments thread appears to be signalling NRx/DE ideology instead of substantively dealing with the problem and given the style of your question I dont really blame them that much. So where do we start if nothing is stable to stand upon?

Caveat: I do not think its productive to speak about political structures from this level of resolution. Especially if you are attempting to make ideological recommendations. It causes confusion around what is and what should be. I will continue to talk about the general nature of the post but there will be no implementable instructions provided or condoned during the course of this comment.

You have to start with the right questions:

  • What is a bureaucracy?
  • is it a "Specialized administrative staff set up to do something"
  • Is it "The Administrative attempt to enforce legal pronouncements"?
  • How is it formed?
  • What role is it supposed to fill?
  • Are all types of administration for an organization bureaucratic?
  • Are there alternatives to bureaucratic organization?
  • What are the usual consequences (both good and bad) of implementing a bureaucracy?
  • What is "Weber's ideal of bureaucracy?"
  • Are there complaints about bureaucracy that are not based in fact?
  • How is a bureaucracy funded and how is it supposed to use those funds?
  • Do all bureaucracies rely on the same moral standards?
  • How is failure discovered, judged, and fixed in a bureaucracy?
  • What are the personal incentives involved with taking responsibility in a bureaucracy?
  • Does a bureaucracy do useful work or useless work?
  • What is bureaucracies relationship with "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion."?
  • Do bureaucracies attempt to establish stability to the degree that generates stagnation?
  • Does the "Personnel > Protocol > Prescription" dynamic prove to be more true than the bureaucratic one?
  • Is the dynamic of the bureaucrat to be a rent seeker?
  • Do bureaucracies produce individuals who serve the public or who seek for the public to serve them?
  • Can a bureaucracy ever function in a society where "Skin in the Game" is a necessary component of public life?
  • How do modern states use (or are used by) bureaucracies?
  • Can Bureaucracy be equivocated with a Centrally Planned Economic scheme?
  • Are bureaucracies inherently "scientific?"
  • Who collects taxes and administers government edicts then?
  • Does applying corporate metaphors to the structure of governance alleviate the supposed problems of bureaucracy?
  • How do Men organize?
  • What role is hierarchy supposed to play in an organization?
  • What does it mean to decentralize an organization?
  • What is decentralization supposed to solve in regards to problems generated by hierarchic and/or bureaucracy?
  • What are the organizational incentives to function during a long term time frame?
  • Is the Sytgian Starfish bureaucratic in its instantiation?
  • Do democratic forms of Government Legitimization rely upon bureaucracies?
  • Are orwellian descriptions of bureaucracy (esp in govt) accurate?
  • Is decentralized governance inherently open to leftist control?
  • Are individuals of with great potential fostered or expelled in bureaucratic organizations.
  • What does bureaucracy do to leaders?

    I am sure we could go on with these questions for quite a while. Given how vague your question was I would use these questions to determine what territories you should explore. It appears that the 2 major paths to explore are:

    1 Determining what exactly a bureaucracy is.
    2 Examining alternative schemes that do not have the same problems associated with bureaucracy.

    I am certain that merely defining bureaucracy as 'the administrative section of a sufficiently large institution' is a waste of time. Bureaucracies all have very similar forms and consequences and do not appear to be the only way to control an organization as it is the archetype of Protocol Governance.

    Here is something from the Freisian School that really goes into detail on the topic:

    http://www.friesian.com/bureau.htm

    If you end up developing a relatively concrete & abstract definition that can take into account most of whats considered bureaucratic in a non-trivial manner you have already done a great service but its all preamble to your post. Presuming that every stable gov is a bureaucracy makes it impossible to consider stable alternatives so once you clear up this mess in your presumptions you can consider what alternatives lie beyond.

    Since most of the alternatives that exist appear to be just variants of Anarchy and Chaos it may be better of on understanding organizations. There are 2 fields that exist today that deal with the micro-level and macro-level of organizational incentives and forms respectivley with an over-arching series of comparitive frameworks:

  • Game Theory
  • Operations Research
  • Organizational theory

    >Game theory is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers."

    >Operations research is a discipline that deals with the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.Further, the term 'operational analysis' is used in the British (and some British Commonwealth) military, as an intrinsic part of capability development, management and assurance.

    >Organizational theory is a loosely knit family of many approaches to organizational analysis. Its themes, questions, methods, and explanatory modes are extremely diverse.

    as you may notice the above definitions make assumptions about the rational capacity of the actors in question as well as relying upon over abstract non-specific systems of judgement. At this level of question framing and attempting to orient yourself in your new territory this sort of over-simplification is necessary. It is important to review the operating assumptions of whatever tools you use to devise these supposed alternatives to bureaurcacy when you seek to actually instatiate your work.

    I agree with your observation that Neoreaction as a whole has not noted the problems that by having such a limited conception of organization and when they have noted it they have implemented a rather simplistic understanding of left and right in order to justify their views and demonize opposition.

    I do not see this as exactly that surprising as your domains demand fairly extreme analytic competence as well as open-mindedness in terms of comparisons for hierarchical organizations. It is additionally quite predictable that using capitalism like an ideological cudgel as well as general pointing to moldbug were going to be the answers to your question. Do not fear though. These lads are quite capable of dealing with your domain as long as you can get your questions specific enough. They are just stuck in a clouded mirror so it takes a bit more effort to get them to see things directly.

    Like I said I'm interested in this domain but I'm not going to pretend its going to even be on my plate for another 6 months. I would recommend keeping up with http://www.ribbonfarm.com if you want to see people directly dealing with this problem as well as reading this book here: https://www.amazon.com/Images-Organization-Gareth-Morgan/dp/1412939798?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
u/kantbot · 2 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

Shakespeare is a bad analog, because very little is known about Shakespeare, Shakespeare's life isn't documented in the same way that Goethe's is. Goethe's entire life was a work of art:

>After he moved to Weimar the daily chronicle of his doings, now being put together for the first time in seven large volumes by Robert Steiger, is practically continuous, especially once he began to keep a regular diary in 1796. Accounts of conversations with him, excluding Eckermann's famous collection, run to some 4,000 printed pages, over 12,000 letters from him are extant and about 20,000 letters addressed to him. His official papers run to four volumes, and Wilhelm Bode filled another three with contemporary gossip about him, extracted from the correspondence and diaries of third parties. There may be parallels to this flood of documentation for an individual life, though few surely can be sustained over so long a period -- Voltaire or Gladstone perhaps? certainly not Napoleon. What makes Goethe's case manifestly unique is the quantity, quality, and nature of the literary and scientific writing which caused this interest in him and which expands indefinitely our potential knowledge of his inner life through its unceasing stream of reflection on the events and projects of his outward career."

>-Introduction to Volume One of Boyle's "Goethe"

Goethe's career is difficult to pin down, which is why attempts to summarize it (wikipedia) always fail to really convey the true spirit of his accomplishment, he is the modern thinker par excellence, and he was much much more than just a writer.

He was an artist for one, a fairly good one at that, who studied in Rome and taught drawing at the Weimar academy. This is really nice little work he did that I especially like, from 1810, a collection of twenty two drawings of landscapes around Jena. Besides painting and drawing Goethe was also involved in a wide array of engineering, architecture, and design projects. He designed the theater in Weimar (which burned down in 1825), the Roman house, he oversaw the reconstruction of the Ducal Palace, he toured mines across Germany, made mechanical sketches of the first steam engines, and headed the opening of silver mines in Ilmenau. He was also an insatiable collector and connoisseur of mineralogical specimens, incised gems, coins, and artistic prints and drawings, and was the Weimar librarian to boot.

He lived a hearty, active, and masculine life, he climbed an active Mount Vesuvius, he accompanied the Duke during the War of the First Coalition. He loved ice skating, and would throw outdoor masquerade balls on the frozen Ilm river during the winter, where he would wear a devil mask and skate around with roman candles taped to each of the horns. Every year he would throw an Easter egg hunt for the children of Weimar in his garden home. He was a loving husband and father of four children (only one of whom survived infancy sadly). When in Jena his son August would play with Schiller's son beneath his window, and he would tease them by dangling treats over their heads on lengths of string.

He sat on the war and highway commissions as Privy Councilor, he acted in the capacity of diplomat and mentor to the Grand Duke. He served as managing director of the Weimar theater for more than twenty years, staging everything from Shakespeare to Schiller to the Magic Flute. As administrator of the University of Jena he was the one responsible for bringing people like Schiller and Fichte there as professors, he "collected" them, he collected friends and colleagues like he collected works of art, he was a connoisseur of contemporary intellectuals.

And all that's not even counting his writing. In the English speaking world most readers have little idea of who Goethe was or what his actual literary accomplishments were, besides Faust I that is, but make no mistake, Goethe was a master of every genre and style of literary writing known to man. Besides Faust he wrote several other Shakespearean-level classics, "Egmont", "Iphigenia in Tauris", "Tasso", and "The Natural Daughter". His real genius was for the novel however, Goethe is probably the greatest novelist, aesthetically speaking, who ever lived. His three mature novels, "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship", "Elective Affinities", and "Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years" are absolutely astonishing works of creative brilliance. The Journeyman Years especially is experimental and forward-thinking beyond the novel-writing of our own day even...

As a lyric poet his verses are the cornerstone of an entire genre of classical music, the "lied", the 19th century art-song. Schubert especially is renowned above all else for his settings of Goethe.

Sorry, there's just too much to say about him, you can't even begin to do him justice in a wikipedia article or reddit post.

u/HyperboreanNRx · 1 pointr/DarkEnlightenment

>No, it's that modern people score ~120 on older tests. We can test living people with older tests, we can't test dead people with new tests.

No, the implication is also that older people score lower on modern tests. In the Dumfries and Des Moines tests this was shown to be the case when comparing similar population groups across generations when testing on the new full-form tests like the WAIS-IV but the Raven's Progressive Matrices tests showed very little or negative gains in crystallized IQ and slight gains in both in fluid intelligence.

Re-norming of tests is designed with this in mind because they are re-normed on a culturally-adapted basis.

>How would that work? The flynn effect has been observed in people taking THE OLDER TESTS.

You're misunderstanding how tests are normed. When I started administering IQ tests in 2006 we had fewer sections and a greater focus on actual IQ, which is to say arithmetic and verbal ability.

You have obviously not read enough data regarding the Flynn Effect if you don't understand how it work. The Flynn Effect heavily uses g as a basis for comparison in the absence of actual testing.


>Flynn found that the highest gains are not on subtests that measure vocab and arithmetic, but rather on culturally-loaded subtests with questions like “How are dogs and rabbits similar?” that can illicit different answers depending on one’s everyday life experience.

>Flynn says our modern lives are more cognitively demanding and so we’ve acquired something he calls, “scientific spectacles.” Today, we are more likely to answer using abstract categories, like, dogs and rabbits are mammals, rather than the more concrete, like, dogs and rabbits are pets.

Culturally adapted tests provide these new and differing results thanks to their innate cultural bias.

Strict IQ tests do not favor the new generation or show a great increase except in theory and with test comparisons and not in result comparisons.

>Good to know you are an old person. Because one thing hunting another something does make them similar.

The point is to note they are both animals used in a sport or that they're pets of some sort and not that they are both the abstract, "animal," as such.

>That study you gave at the bottom is full of it. IQ cannot be determined by reaction time only. I have a fairly low reaction time, but above average IQ.

Did you read it? People had worse scores on digit spanning tests. Digit spanning is a direct test still used today to test memory. The abstract only seems to note the basic psychometric measure they use to derive g differences and not where they get the actual IQ differences but the average differences in abstracts in their place.

g is an abstract form of crystallized IQ measure that is best suited in giving averages and curves and is not necessarily indicative of your exact IQ.

I recommend reading the whole thing and the rest of The Flynn Effect Re-Evaluated in it's entirety.



You've entirely missed the point in how these tests are created, what they are based upon, or how they are developed and how that development has changed in recent years.
-----------------------------
I didn't want to wholly offend you with how I stated it but that is how I saw it so I've decided to link some excellent books on the matter.

Here are...

The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability by Arthur Jensen

What is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect by James Flynn

A Negative Flynn Effect in Finland by Edward Dutton and edited by Richard Lynn

A Beautiful Theory, Killed by a Nasty, Ugly
Little Fact
by Alan Kaufman, Thomas Dillon, and Jeffrey Kirsch

IQ and Global Inequality by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen

Ethnic Conflicts: Their Biological Roots in Ethnic Nepotism by Tatu Vanhanen

IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen and Ron Unz' critiques, Lynn's responses.

u/Nemester · 1 pointr/DarkEnlightenment

You just need to evaluate the market and make sure that whatever major you pick gives you good job security and high enough income. A rule of thumb I have heard is make sure the salary you are likely to get will pay off your student loans in ten years assuming you divert 10% of your income to that. If you want to be a very wealthy man, I suggest you pick petroleum engineering. Easily the best cost/benefit of just a Bachelors.

This book might also be useful to you in helping you pick which majors to avoid.

Now perhaps you have an interest in 17th century french literature or some such thing. That is fine, read to your hearts content as a hobby. Audit some classes being paid for by morons at your university. But don't waste your time getting certified in something useless.

u/Atavisionary · 2 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

Men and women aren't equal for mostly biological reasons. It may be more subtle than racial differences but it is there and knowable. Feminists have campaigned for and gotten laws which privilege women in ways that are socially, culturally, economically and demographically destructive. It is far more destructive than you are giving it credit for. Yes they can and should be held to account for this, and this is why there is substantial overlap between the red pill and DE, with the main difference being a desire on our part to restore more traditional and healthy gender relations while the red pill more usually supports exploiting the new environment maximally for personal benefit. Even if the goals are different, it is clear that that community has put in a lot of work sussing out the realities underpinning sex differences to a significant degree and any factual information should be used regardless of the source.

There is not much if any risk of theredpill users coming here en masse. Hasn't happened yet and there is no good reason why that would change.

u/soapjackal · 2 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

DE comes from the assumption that the enlightenment tradition got all the fundamentals wrong and as such assumes devils advocate stances and comes to new discoveries.

So this includes:
Manosphere
Christian Traditionalism
HBD
Post-Libertarianism
Nationalism
Monarchism
Anti-democarcy

And many more unnamed and undiscovered.

It's a general classification and not a movement. Same with NRx. They represent the intellectual discourse of different alternative right groups. Basically focused on not-Euclidean right with analysis (I have a 90% article on the topic I have to beef up and edit) but is not a movement in any useful sense of the word.

I wrote a comment on outside in discussing to topic:
http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkEnlightenment/comments/21vb2b/soapjackal_discusses_the_nrx_within_to/

DE is really just HBD, American white nationalists, and post libertarian thinkers who got together to talk out of a rejecting of modernity. They have deep roots in enlightenment thought, even if they don't like it.

Archeofuturism is the creation of Guillame Faye, European new-right writer, after he saw the failures of the European new right movements and decided to take a hiatus and after a few years came out with an idea for the future. It was translated into English from french recently:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1907166106?pc_redir=1396424751&robot_redir=1

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Archeofuturism

It is basically the combination of the nominally progressive masturbation that is futurism and archaic governing structures.

The book mainly deals with the faults of the new right, the failure of modernity, the benefit of archaic governance, the use of technology, the imminent crisis, and a shorty scifi story at the end.

It's not very specific on what an archeofuturist regime formally does or how it will come about but the book is mainly designed to promote imagination of a new future.

The primary differnce between DE and Archeofuturism is one is a truth movement from the right with varying factions and archeofuturism is an idealistic call for something beyond pure atavism and reaction (as the new right and NRx are both prone todo)

I see the fact that atavism is the main draw. We don't like the world now, so we should go back to a better governance (or social engineer one) is basically the concept.

It will be the main draw and differentiation between the different factions. Americans will want republics the Germans will want kingdoms etc etc.

However this 'reaction' is only good at calling bs on modernity. It isn't prescriptive or capable of tilling the soil for a new phyle. Th-is why I'm personnaly interested in getting as many intelligent minds into non-Euclidean structured discourse and forming fraternal associations with like minded k type males to go beyond reaction and neoreaction.

The Europeans already have some atavistic phyles forming so if there isn't a German phyle that you like go forth and find those with your world view and hang with them. Begin the rough process of developing a phyle.

u/LarParWar · 4 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

>Shouldn't a hierarchy be established according to intelligence?

Absolutely not.

Why? Because it's what we've had since the 60s, it's what we have now, and it doesn't work.

In fact, more than anything else, it's the defining characteristic of the post-1960s liberal elite. Do you like what the post-60s liberal elite has done to the Western World? Of course not; that's why you're here.

You're here because of the stupendously stupid—or just plain malicious—actions of your rulers. Well let me tell you something, this is what happens when you draw your elite exclusively from the very smart, with little regard for their other qualities: one great, big, exceedingly sophisticated echo-chamber-monstrosity of epic proportions. You get the peculiar dysfunction of academia metastasized across the whole of society. It grows like a virus and absolutely guts all your other institutions.

When you select your elite on intelligence alone, what you get is a hybrid jew-white version of MacDonald's jewish revolutionary spirit, and the effect is absolutely devastating. Your society no longer cares about its pedigree—its history, its ancestry, its blood. Your society no longer cares about "passing something on" to its posterity. Your society becomes rootless, vagrant, "white flight-y", and your countryside, small towns, and even your non-capital-cities are robbed of their intelligence as it is all sent away to concentrate in the ivy-adorned ivory towers in which it rockets off into its own little fanciful utopian dreams, unmoored from the practical consciousness of the less-smart. Your less-smart citizens degenerate, no smart citizens still around to uphold their social institutions.

When you select your elite based on intelligence and nothing but intelligence, what you do indeed get is an elite with intelligence—not good breeding nor social graces, not honesty nor virtue, not manliness nor bravery, not resilience nor aristocratic values, but intelligence and only intelligence.

I want the old WASP elite back, not this jew-white neurotic-smart cesspool.

https://archive.is/1rt2H

http://www.amazon.com/America-Lite-Imperial-Academia-Dismantled-Obamacrats/dp/1594037086

u/un_passant · 0 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

I do agree that calling someone a racist is often used as an ad hominen. But history [0] tells us that credibility of the (sometimes legitimate [1]) (post-)faciscts. The pretend to have French workers best interests at heart while they get their money from foreign banks[2] ‽ o.O

If immigration is of interest to you, the best reference is the work of G.Noiriel[3].

[0] http://editionslibertalia.com/daniel-guerin-fascisme-et-grand-capital
[1] http://blog.mondediplo.net/2013-07-08-Ce-que-l-extreme-droite-ne-nous-prendra-pas
[2] http://www.lesinrocks.com/2014/11/27/actualite/mysterieux-financement-russe-du-front-national-en-cinq-points-11538041/
[3] http://www.amazon.com/The-French-Melting-Pot-Contradictions/dp/0816624208

u/felis-parenthesis · 2 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

This seems to be an attempt to re-invent the celebrity fluff piece. We ignore the directions of the Main Stream Media and we chose our own celebrities. So she picks an entertainment grade alt-right celebrity called Bronze Age Pervert, BAP, and produces fairly typical, "knock him off his pedestal", guff.

She eventually gets to Jordan Peterson, but by then I'd lost interest.

Whats the actual business model here? I see the subscribe button at $48 a year, and I can imagine dozens of people in the USA paying to read this stuff, perhaps enough to pay server costs, but who pays Tara Isabella Burton's wages?

She does have a novel out https://www.amazon.com/Social-Creature-Tara-Isabella-Burton/dp/0385543522 . Viewed as a writing sample, the piece in The American Interest is going to damage sales of her novel, so it would be against her interest to write it for free.

u/CaptainAngloAmerica · 2 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

According to many traditionalist conservatives, the central tenet of liberalism is autonomy. Happiness doesn't really factor in so much because the highest good for the modern liberal, according to the traditionalist view, is the pursuit of individual preferences and desires insofar as one's pursuit does not infringe upon that of other autonomous individuals. Which explains why liberals are waging a secular jihad against all the received tradition, particular loyalties, and identities that are not freely chosen or are otherwise in conflict with the goal of equal satisfaction of desires.

This is clearly not the way to order a society. The logic behind liberalism doesn't distinguish the value between pursuing a lifestyle that leads to a happy outcome versus one that does not, as long as those outcomes are the result of autonomous decisions. If my choice is to cut my self off from all the meaningful social attachments that have traditionally been understood to lead to happiness and pursue a life of atomized hedonism, what liberal argument can stop me? I'd be miserable, but who are you to tell me what to do, shitlord? Unfortunately millions of people are doing just that and the consequences are plain to see. As James Kalb in his essay The Tyranny of Liberalism writes, "in the name of giving us what we want liberalism denies us everything worth having."

I found these books helpful in improving my understanding of liberalism:

The Tyranny of Liberalism by James Kalb

Against Liberalism by John Kekes

u/Trumpspired · 2 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

This is the core critique that most reactionary thought is based on.
Reactionary future has a good article here about exactly this issue. The solution according to reactionary thought is to replace the entire structure with a leader who uses human judgement as opposed to protocol. Most of his thought originates in Moldbug's original writings. Fundamentally it is the difference between order and chaos or the spiritual and the mundane (form and matter).

All reactionary thought (like most good Western Philosophy) is simply a restatement of Plato's Republic. So you might as well skip the modern stuff and read it directly from the greatest book ever written. This is no bad thing however as it is the truth. (I recommend this version)

u/theshadowonthewall · 2 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

There has never been a collapse everywhere at once. So when one region collapses, another is in a rebirth.

Naill Ferguson simplifies things with his "Six killer apps of Civilization". When this article was written, China had 5 out of 6 of the apps. They are now getting the 6th.

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/02/141942357/how-the-west-beat-the-rest-six-killer-apps

"Why the west rules for now" this author is interesting in that he divides humans into 7 major groups. But the then goes PC correct and says geography determines things.

But he again shows there is a similar pattern.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-West-Rules-Now-Patterns/dp/0312611692

The speed of rebirth is a lot quicker. Mao drove China into the stone age, less then 40 years later they are building projects like these.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/business/international/in-china-projects-to-make-great-wall-feel-small-.html?_r=0

Snide comments like that where made about the Empire state building, Hoover dam etc 80 years ago. What the critics failed to reason is that the project itself might be useless, but it is what is learned in the process.

In the book "Why the west rules for now" is people forget the amount of ideas that where transfered from India/China to Britain. A civil service is an Indian/Chinese invention. The Brits go ahold of the idea and improved on it. By the same token, China is getting western ideas that work, fusing them to their own culture and improving on them.

Later the "west" when it rebirths, will take the new and improved Chinese ideas and improve on them.

u/washort · 3 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

I'd recommend Burnham's The Machiavellians but I don't know of an ebook source for that. (Also, nearly all of the fiction of Gene Wolfe.)

and if you just want some NRx escapist fantasy... Tom Kratman's Carrera series is a lot of fun. First one's free. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B5HJOFY/

u/scribble_child · 3 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

I'm reading 'Inventing Freedom' by Daniel Hannan and I get a different impression. Maybe there are hairs to split, but, he says that Anglo-Saxons were different from all other Europeans, in at least choosing their kings (kingship not being automatically hereditary), their councils having power, that they didn't do serfdom. He specifically says that, contra Marx, all /other/ European countries went through the serfdom phase, but England never did. His evidence - that there are records of them (freemen, perhaps) buying and selling land freely. I don't know how to reconcile the views. That there /were/ freemen, perhaps?

u/TheDividualist · 3 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

>they are being taught that Western Civilization itself is evil

As a quick empirical test, there is this: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/find-by-topic/#cat=humanities&subcat=history&spec=europeanhistory

How many of these could be categorized as hostile, neutral, or friendly?

For example, "European Imperialism in the 19th and 20th Centuries" and "Nazi Germany and the Holocaust" obviously count as hostile.

"European Thought and Culture", based on Eugen Weber's http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0669394432 looks like something between neutral to friendly.

Of course, neutral to friendly means a book that paints a positive picture of the West because the west was generally more "progressive" in the rest! But of course this is the only positivity imaginable, I mean, praising the West for something reactionary is something that you could not find in popular books even 100-150 years ago. The only way it could be realistically expected to not tell kids to hate their ancestors is by telling them how "progressive" their ancestors used to be. This sucks, but this are the realities.

Similarly, "Victorian Literature and Culture" http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/literature/21l-481-victorian-literature-and-culture-spring-2003/ has an unmistakeably leftie smell, but does not come across as profoundly hostile.

"The Royal Family" http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/history/21h-342-the-royal-family-fall-2003/ sounds very hostile, basically focusing on their failures only.

"Medieval Economic History In Comparative Perspective" http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/history/21h-134j-medieval-economic-history-in-comparative-perspective-spring-2012/ sounds like something positively friendly, it suggests at doing things better than competing civilizations.

Then there are a lot of obvious ones. Praising post-Franco Spain etc.

In short, my quick experiment finds about 50-60% of hostility to our ancestors in a contemporary syllabus.

I don't think they could get away with 100%. Yet.

u/sir_wankalot_here · 1 pointr/DarkEnlightenment

Not sure if the author is really from Oz, but if he is it explains a lot.

> Mad Max is an Australian uni student hiding out in his mother's basement waiting for the singularity to arrive.

This explains his socialist view of things. Socialist meaning trying to force his own values onto a group as a whole.

According to the sidebar, darkenlightenment envisions a series of city states. Each city state would have its own rules and culture. So inevitably this would lead to competiton among city states to have the best culture. People who fail to follow the rules of that city state for most offenses would just be thrown out of the city state. The reason is that it is expensive to jail people.

What is interesting is this City State type structure is envisoned by other people like Fareed Zakaria. His book "The Post American World" explains how the re-emergence of India and China as economic powers is effecting the rest of the world. The author questions whether or not India and China will become super powers in the conventional sense.

The city state type structure is already starting to happen in both India and China. The problem is that in a rapidly changing world it is impossible to effectively run a federation.

www.amazon.com/The-Post-American-World-Fareed-Zakaria/dp/0393334805

u/last_useful_man · 2 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

On a similar theme there's a nice book on the problems of being smart, Why Smart People Hurt (<- that's an Amazon link - this subs' CSS hides links!), by Eric Maisel. Not being quite good enough for the intellectual problem(s) you've chosen to solve, problems with being understimulated, so you turn to drugs + alcohol. The book is quite unique, I haven't seen what it says anywhere else.

u/Keystone_Heavy1 · 4 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

Evola can be pretty dense. I would probably suggest reading A handbook of Traditional Living for a nice summation of what you're getting into. Then I would go ahead and dive into Revolt Against the Modern World by Evola himself for his own, very much more detailed explanation of his worldview. Most his other books a very singular-topic oriented, so I wouldn't start there.