Category Archives: philosophy

philosophy, politics, quotes

>Is world peace possible?

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>Oswald Spengler answered that with the following text, originally published in Cosmopolitan 1936:

“The question whether world peace will ever be possible can only be answered by someone familiar with world history. To be familiar with world history means, however, to know human beings as they have been and always will be. There is a vast difference, which most people will never comprehend, between viewing future history as it will be and viewing it as one might like it to be. Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.

Life is a struggle involving plants, animals, and humans. It is a struggle between individuals, social classes, peoples, and nations, and it can take the form of economic, social, political, and military competition. It is a struggle for the power to make one’s will prevail, to exploit one’s advantage, or to advance one’s opinion of what is just or expedient. When other means fail, recourse will be taken time and again to the ultimate means: violence. An individual who uses violence can be branded a criminal, a class can be called revolutionary or traitorous, a people bloodthirsty. But that does not alter the facts. Modern world-communism calls its wars “uprisings,” imperialist nations describe theirs as “pacification of foreign peoples.” And if the world existed as a unified state, wars would likewise be referred to as “uprisings.” The distinctions here are purely verbal.

Talk of world peace is heard today only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous colored races. This is a perilous state of affairs. When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, the effect is always negligible. But when whole peoples become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility. Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a static, terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence.

As long as man continues to evolve there will be wars. Should the white peoples ever become so tired of war that their governments can no longer incite them to wage it, the earth will inevitably fall a victim to the colored men, just as the Roman Empire succumbed to the Teutons. Pacifism means yielding power to the inveterate nonpacifists. Among the latter there will always be white men — adventurers, conquerors, leader-types — whose following increases with every success. If a revolt against the whites were to occur today in Asia, countless whites would join the rebels simply because they are tired of peaceful living.

Pacifism will remain an ideal, war a fact. If the white races are resolved never to wage war again, the colored will act differently and be rulers of the world.”

…THE COUNTERATTACK ON WORLD SUPREMACY…THE COUNTERATTACK ON WORLD SUPREMACY…

philosophy, quotes, religion

>Nietzsche – Morality as anti-nature

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>
All passions have a phase when they are merely disastrous, when they drag down their victim with the weight of stupidity — and a later, very much later phase when they wed the spirit, when they “spiritualize” themselves. Formerly, in view of the element of stupidity in passion, war was declared on passion itself, its destruction was plotted; all the old moral monsters are agreed on this: il faut tuer les passions (“One must kill the passions”). The most famous formula for this is to be found in the New Testament, in that Sermon on the Mount, where, incidentally, things are by no means looked at from a height. There it is said, for example, with particular reference to sexuality: “If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out.” Fortunately, no Christian acts in accordance with this precept. Destroying the passions and cravings, merely as a preventive measure against their stupidity and the unpleasant consequences of this stupidity — today this itself strikes us as merely another acute form of stupidity. We no longer admire dentists who “pluck out” teeth so that they will not hurt any more.
To be fair, it should be admitted, however, that on the ground out of which Christianity grew, the concept of the “spiritualization of passion” could never have been formed. After all, the first church, as is well known, fought against the “intelligent” in favor of the “poor in spirit.” How could one expect from it an intelligent war against passion? The church fights passion with excision in every sense: its practice, its “cure,” is castratism. It never asks: “How can one spiritualize, beautify, deify a craving?” It has at all times laid the stress of discipline on extirpation (of sensuality, of pride, of the lust to rule, of avarice, of vengefulness). But an attack on the roots of passion means an attack on the roots of life: the practice of the church is hostile to life.

From Twilight of The Idols (1889).

philosophy, quotes

>Situationism, Part 3

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>

Isou believed that the engine of all human evolution was not the survival instinct but the will to create.
Mankind, he said, does not live by bread alone, but also by poetry.
…the situationists attempted to introduce poetry into everyday life understood as something beyond work and economy.
The real revolution would take place beyond need, somewhere closer to desire.

From Guy Debord – Revolution In The Service of Poetry by Vincent Kaufmann (2006)

Click for Part 1 and Part 2.

philosophy, politics

>Society’s sickness

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>Originally posted November 13, 2007.


On April 17th 2007 I wrote the Tool and Die-post about the Virginia Tech Massacre, a school shooting in the USA. I quote myself:
30+ killed this time. And still people ask the same stupid question: Why does this always happen in the United States of America – the land of the free, the biggest and best democracy in the world?

And now the madness has arrived in good old Europe. Actually, school shootings have happened outside the US of A before, for example in Scotland, Canada, Germany… But let’s take a look at a time line of recent world wide school shootings (there’s even a term for this shit, how disgusting…):
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html

Since 1996 there’s been over 50 school shootings, most of them in the USA, and since the reasons for these shootings are embedded in the sick society we live in, is it safe to say that USA breeds the sickest society of them all? Maybe so. Over there you have metal detectors at the school door, surveillance cameras, bookbag searches and bar-coded ID badges. Instead of gun control they’re talking about gun rights. Is this what the future holds in its bloody hands for Europe?


Pekka-Eric Auvinen got one thing right, quoted from his Natural Selector’s Manifesto:

Of course there is a final solution too: death of the entire human race. It would solve every problem of humanity. The faster the human race is wiped out from this planet, the better… no one should be left alive. I have no mercy for the scum of earth, the pathetic human race.

So far, so good.
I agree one hundred percent – in theory. But the way he went out together with the people that died is not something I honour at all. Not the least bit. To me the whole thing was just pointless and nothing but a tragedy for those closely related to what happened.

The following text is quoted from Pekka-Erics “Attack Information”-document, which I believe was available on the Internet along with his YouTube-videos long before the actual action began:

—
ATTACK INFORMATION
Event: Jokela High School Massacre.
Targets: Jokelan Lukio (High School Of Jokela), students and faculty, society, humanity, human race.
Date: 11/7/2007.
Attack Type: Mass murder, political terrorism (altough I choosed the school as target, my motives for the attack are political and much much deeper and therefore I don’t want this to be called only as “school shooting”).
Location: Jokela, Tuusula, Finland.
Perpetrator’s name: Pekka-Eric Auvinen (aka NaturalSelector89, Natural Selector, Sturmgeist89 and Sturmgeist). I also use pseydonym Eric von Auffoin internationally.
Weapons: Semi-automatic .22 Sig Sauer Mosquito pistol.
—

Information travels with great speed on the Internet, so I believe quite a lot of folks knew what he was up to. No one seemed to care then. Now there’s a whole different story.
How many thrive on these sickening and sad mass murders – especially during the time it was broadcasted live all over the world – without even reflecting on what’s actually causing these killings and breeding these murderers and their convictions? By browsing the Internet reading various discussions and articles in mass media and alternative forums I’d say there’s a lot of people out there doing just that – thriving on society’s sickness without any reflection whatsoever.
Is this the new ethics? The new moral?


To me it’s quite obvious that Auvinen was a product of a society that once again failed miserably. He was the victim, not the hero.
Weblog Oskorei writes that an intelligent choice for Auvinen would’ve been to engage in politics. I totally agree. I believe in the power of the small man using his mind, spirit and words to make a change. Killing a bunch of people – including yourself – is to surrender to their sickness. “But hey, you think writing a blog and joining a cause on Facebook will make a change?”, I hear you moan. I sure as hell do. I believe in understanding the big picture via alternative media, small scale activism, awareness, resistance and articulating visions. That’s my way of escaping indoctrination. Internet is a great place for this. Use it wisely.

I’d like to end this post by quoting the great mind of Nikanor Teratologen who wrote this as a comment to the Virginia Tech Massacre in Tidningen Kulturen:

Det är förstås möjligt att Cho Seung-Hui hade blivit ”galen”, han var av allt att döma mycket depressiv och kanske led av någon autistisk störning: men är inte också det samhälle han levde i grundläggande sinnesrubbat, ett ormgropskved för utspottandet av gravt störda men smart marknadsanpassade individer? Den sociala struktur, mentalitet och livskultur han desperat men förgäves försökte anpassa sig till är inte frisk och inte människovärdig – civilisationen måste förändras för att händelser likt den på Virginia Tech inte ska äga rum.
…
Det går inte att genom någon sorts överhetskampanjer eller mer omfattande kontroll-, övervaknings-, angivar- och stigmatiseringssystem heltäckande skydda skolor, arbetsplatser, offentliga platser överhuvudtaget mot enskildas planlagda och sedan lössläppta mordiska hämndraseri. Förändringarna måste inledas på individplanet, i människors beteende och attityder mot varandra. Man bör helt enkelt inte kränka och bete sig illa mot andra varelser på jorden. Allt är ett, sammanvävt, förgängligt.
…
Den grandiost sadomasochistiska och Kristusyrande självbilden som tröstande och upplyftande suggererar existensen av en andligt besläktad krets att höra hemma i och betyda något avgörande för har, imaginärt, förintat den invalidiserande känslan av att inte duga, inte räknas, inte vara älskad och inte tillåtas hysa känslor, inte finnas till, – någon kurskamrat har berättat att när studenterna skulle introducera sig själva i klassen genom att skriva sina namn på lappar var Chos reaktion att rita ett stort frågetecken. Fler människor borde kanske försöka förstå det frågetecknets djupare innebörd och ställa sig frågan om inte deras egna liv också är förtvivlat meningslösa frågetecken skrivna i Intet.

movies, philosophy, politics

>Planet Earth and misanthropy

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>Originally posted November 01, 2007.


The BBC series Planet Eart is truly amazing. I got it on Blu-ray the other day and wow… 550 minutes of pure brilliance. I’ve seen a lot of these programs before, and the first twenty minutes didn’t quite cut it for me, but then these jaw dropping scenes of fantastic footage, time lapsed stuff and brilliant slow motion sequences began to appear and I was on my knees worshipping.




But since I’m a dystopic kind of guy holding a deep pessisism for the future (which has been nurtured for so many years), I ask you: how can you not be misanthropic after watching this series? How can you not loathe the human race? What better way to save the planet than to end all human life? What better way to end all suffering than to end our profane existence?
We’ve been destroying the earth and ourselves for so long and there is no change up front as far as I see it.






If I could I definitely would.
art, philosophy, politics

>Situationism, Part 2

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>Originally posted September 18, 2007.


Part one of the Situationism series can be found here.
In addition to this you may want to read about Oswald Spengler as well, here (English) and here (Swedish).
—

I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires.
(Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968)

People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.
Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution Of Everyday Life

The situationist movement was at its peak in the late sixties, but kind of folded after the riots and shit that were trendy at the time. Their ideas live on, though. And mind you, I’m not that much into their art – or anti-art – since most of the times it just sucks. It’s their ideas that I like.

Having concluded that the art and culture of bourgeois society was intellectually fucked, doomed to repetition and soulless, meaningless activities, the situationists referred to art as something that truly could change peoples lives and their way of thinking.
Art to them was not just something to feed the senses for a while, making you feel good and momentarily happy. That way of looking at art is shallow. In the eyes and mind of Guy Debord, art was revolution. Art was war. War against the everyday madness, the everyday slaughter of the soul. Most of all, art was real and goddamn important, and the situationists were determined to see through the lies, myths and bullshit that is being thrown at us every single second of our lives.
“It was about the radiation of art into pure existence, into social life, into urbanism, into action and into thinking which was regarded as the important thing”, as stated in the book Situationister i konsten (1966). Art wasn’t supposed to be a useless medium.


So what do you get when you mix art with politics?
Street art, of course. It’s available for free for everyone to see, and the creator is most of the times totally anonymous. We cannot judge the art and the message by who the creator is, but rather by what the message constitutes and how it is executed. True art. True politics. No names, no games. Well, names in a way, since there’s usually a tag attached somewhere, but close to nobody knows the person behind the tag, and that’s what’s fascinating about graffiti. It’s the deed and action that counts, not who’s done it.
No gods, no masters.

Must erase…all signs of…life by Hop Louie
Banksy at the separation wall in Israel/Palestina

Banksy at the separation wall in Israel/Palestina

Art of Destruction Sweden (AODS)

However, street art to me is not about reclaiming the streets. Well, it is in a way, but since Reclaim The Streets today seem to equal mindless destruction executed by degenerated fuck ups with nothing better to do, I strongly reject that kind of “reclaiming”. And I bet most of the serious situationists of the 60’s would’ve done so too. Such behaviour is nothing but fake and I spit blood on their useless corpses.

The moment of revolt is childhood rediscovered, time put to everyone’s use, the dissolution of the market and the beginning of generalised self-management.
The long revolution is creating small federated microsocieties, true guerilla cells practising and fighting for this self-management. Effective radicality authorises all variations and guarantees every freedom. That’s why the Situationists don’t confront the world with: “Here’s your ideal organisation, on your knees!” They simply show by fighting for themselves and with the clearest awareness of this fight, why people really fight each other and why they must acquire an awareness of the battle.
Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution Of Everyday Life
Mindless scribbling on walls is not about reclaiming the streets,
it’s about mindless scribbling on walls.

On a sidenote:
Scribbling is for children (and adults!), and we should strongly encourage them here. Marvin Bartel has written an essay entitled “Working with children who scribble on walls” here. You should read it! And when reading, try to relate to graffiti…


Debord et al argued that the great Spectacle, the world’s greatest soap opera, is so influental that not only does it superficially bomb us with commercials, but it possesses such power that it shapes almost all human life (this Spectacle being a small ruling minority dominating the masses, forcing the individual only to consume and participate in society as an alienated, passive idiot).

In this consumer’s society, everything is always “getting better and better”. There’s no end to perfection. Just think about it; how will Gillette’s razor blades look in a year or two? Like a rocket ready to be sent into outer space? It seems like they’re inventing a new revolutionary shaving system every year.


When will this madness end? Not until we say so. And that’s where the passive idiot thing enters the scene. The Spectacle is by no means a dialogue. It is in fact the exact opposite – a monologue, talking to itself, about itself. And as we all know, opposition (for example, in the form of street art) is not looked upon with keen eyes. This artificial “evolution” of Gillette’s shaving systems is a lethal blow to our own evolution. We’re trapped and cannot evolve at all. The situationists labelled this forced existence “a colonization of our everyday lives”.

In a future post I’ll probably write something about the situationist critique against urbanism, which in some ways touches upon what Spengler had to say about cities and such.

philosophy, politics

>Situationism, Part 1

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>Originally posted August 13, 2007.


Looking at political critique today, the usual opinion is that it’s an attack against the state, and debating sacred subjects is looked upon as something suspicious, odd and even dangerous. In my sinister and pure way of looking at things, it definitely should be dangerous! I love it when independent thinking is considered a threat, for to combat blindness and stupidity one has to think for himself.
Independent thinking all comes down to one thing: trying to understand your situation.

Irreverence, blasphemous thoughts, depriving something of its sacred character… That’s disgusting! You should go to work, consume and obey, and that’s it. Shut up. Do not speak your mind. Preferably, do not think at all. Because if you do, you might want to change things. And change is dangerous!

Shallow thinking means you’re subject to lies – or for the sake of it, let’s just call it “illusions”. Sounds less… dangerous.
I’m talking about everyday illusions, like meaningless “any friend of yours is a friend of mine”-clichés, or commercials, where happiness is the latest mobile phone. They soothe your mind. They are there so you won’t have to think for yourself, because if you did chances are you might go berserk with a loaded gun.


There’s an old saying:
“When faced with two options, choose the third”, meaning you should look for new perspectives instead of having to choose between two forced options.

We live in a world so dominated by consumer goods that even our social relations are “commodified”. We relate to others through cars, stereos, mass-produced music, TV shows and vacation packages.


Guy Debord and the situationists had some great ideas, mainly regarding consumer society and the human condition therein.

“The situationists see modern consumer society as a society of the spectacle where our selves are absorbed into the mass entertainments provided by film, TV, music, advertising, and consumer goods. The spectacle breeds isolation, and alienates us from meaningful work, play and communities. We are caught up in false choices between spectacles in a society which offers us spectacular abundance, yet at the same time separates us from each other and from active resistance to the cultural alienation this society represents.”

But then again, commercials and buying stuff can be damn fun! I’m a big fat sucker for records, books, movies and everything Adidas, but still; some awareness might be good if you want to make a change.
Independent thinking is revolutionary thinking.

The great band Counterblast put it this way in their song Independence:
There’s no point in life, but a big point in living.