There comes, so 'they say', an opportune moment in the history of individuals, which, when seized/taken 'at flood-time' (as per the legendary Robin Williams' 'carpe diem' motto - in his inimitable role in the late, great Dead Poets Society), 'leads on to victory' (or success) in one's particular venture (or undertaking).
Sadly - for me, anyhow - that, or more aptly those, moment/s, have rarely been grasped in time...
Nevertheless, as per the equally classic hit, 'What a Wonderful World' (I believe it's called),
though I might not know much about [the duplicitous ways of the world, and so-called relationships and the like]...
one thing I do know...
...is my own mind. And though that might not strike anyone as especially profound, 'know thyself' is a dictum with credentials going way back (into times of antiquity, such as the days when Greek and Roman philosophers expounded their mental wares - as the Apostle Paul so aptly depicted when engaging with such upon Mars Hill in Athens as he crisscrossed ancient Europe - and 'Asia' - to share the gospel of Christ Jesus with an unbelieving world he and associates were accused of having "turned upside down").
A truism which has well and truly not only survived but even come down to our own day and age in the equivalent notion that 'the unstudied life is not worth living'. Moreover, ever believing that one needs 'to one's own [true] self be true'...
I must, without further ado...upon this my 418th blogpost across my two blogsites - 341st on this site, alongside my 77 already posted upon
http://Nuff Said:Consideryourself-frombothsidesnow.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com)
i.e. 4 +1+8 (=13), or 3+4+1[8] + 7+7[14] (=22), or 8+1+4 (=13)...for this biblical numerology buff (and one-time would-be numerologist cum professional astrologer (of either the 'western' zodiacal or Chinese animal variety)), an interesting if not especially 'lucky' (as in propitious) numeral...
- and no, I don't believe Jesus' betrayer, Judas, has been given the bad or 'bum' rap that some biblical revisionists have been all too eager to bestow upon him -
(I must, I say) declare the following...
When I look around me these days, in as objective a fashion as I am able...at the various fads and fashions of our political life and times...
I can unashamedly and unequivocally state that it is not the likes of Mao Tse-Tung, Josef Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky et al whose political theorems and dictums captivate and win me over...
but the lonely band of once were fellow travellers...such as Eric Blair (better known as George Orwell of Animal Farm and 1984 fame)...Malcolm Muggeridge, a contemporary of Blair's...the peoples of the old Eastern Bloc nations and former Soviet Union (or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)...New Zealand's own John A Lee...among whose ranks I've little doubt 'the hero of our nation', 'Big Norm' Kirk, would be found today...even Australia's Mark Latham, now evidently a federal senator for One Nation in the Australian Parliament...and America's own Robert Kennedy, I've more than an inkling...
For when I look - as objectively as I am able - 'around about me' these days...
...and cannot but help seeing legions of ropable, almost possessed groups of (especially) youth - and well-educated, professional, middle-class 'warriors' (wo)manning the barricades across the Western front...with the kind of zeal and yea, fanaticism, once reserved for and ever and always exclusively associated with 'religious fundamentalists' and their fellow-travellers...
...when I hear the incessant calls and catchcries to shut down legitimate debate and discussion - and even, moreover, upon that longtime bastion of free speech, the college/university campus; of the nonstop entitlement-fuelled-demands for 'rights, rights, rights' - with nary a whisper or murmur for equivalent or commensurate responsibilities; of the depiction of opponents of such as hatemongers and 'phobes' (of various distasteful varieties) simply for having the audacity, the nerve, the sheer, unadulterated gall to utter an unpopular opinion or express a genuine, heartfelt conviction...
I simply cannot help but be inexorably reminded of the two aforementioned classic tomes...
which, alongside the equally classic, if altogether different (but philosophically akin) scholarly lifework of a certain psychologist by the name of Dr James Dobson, Dare to Discipline,
pretty well sum up the disastrous Western social experiment which is (not so much the early 20th Century's socialist/communist surge (even in the West), but) the 'new' (ideologically-saturated, revisionist, 'postmodern', yes, even culturally ('Gramscian') Marxist) 'morality' of the 1960s and beyond...
But 'those who learn nothing from history are doomed to repeat it'...that is, if they get the chance to.
No, my beef is not with those clamouring, no doubt justly and honestly, for urgent action worldwide upon climate change - to provide one salient illustration of my aforementioned remarks; it is indeed an honourable thing to have a passion for life and the living, for ecological survival, or, as it's now termed, (an ethic of) 'extinction rebellion'...
But when you caricaturize your opponents as subhuman, when you not only belittle them as people and deny them the right to put an alternative perspective but you insist that your view is the only legitimate one and it's your way or the highway, when you begin to shout them down and hound them from the public square (or its equivalent in the digital era), when you characterize them as evildoers and inveterate, incorrigible despisers of the so-called 'progressive, enlightened' values you so assiduously champion and vehemently, even vociferously propound and propagate...
...when you distort and misrepresent, then mock and ridicule (your mischaracterization of) their deeply held convictions, then hold them out as some sort of public pariah -
(as one salient example thereof, but far from the only one by a very long shot): no, not only hateful white supremacists but also 1080 opponents, 'anti-vaccers', and - believe it or otherwise - even (generally quite) thoughtful anti-fluoridationists...among those now excluded, evidently, from Facebook et al...i.e. from legitimately engaging in legitimate public debate...
'scuse me for saying so, but your own authoritarian, totalitarian, yea, even fascist, tendencies
are starting to show...and no, it ain't a pretty picture, folks, it most definitely is nothing of the kind!
Epilogue/Disclaimer/Postscript...See other blogsite (as above)...-you won't be disappointed!
Sadly - for me, anyhow - that, or more aptly those, moment/s, have rarely been grasped in time...
Nevertheless, as per the equally classic hit, 'What a Wonderful World' (I believe it's called),
though I might not know much about [the duplicitous ways of the world, and so-called relationships and the like]...
one thing I do know...
...is my own mind. And though that might not strike anyone as especially profound, 'know thyself' is a dictum with credentials going way back (into times of antiquity, such as the days when Greek and Roman philosophers expounded their mental wares - as the Apostle Paul so aptly depicted when engaging with such upon Mars Hill in Athens as he crisscrossed ancient Europe - and 'Asia' - to share the gospel of Christ Jesus with an unbelieving world he and associates were accused of having "turned upside down").
A truism which has well and truly not only survived but even come down to our own day and age in the equivalent notion that 'the unstudied life is not worth living'. Moreover, ever believing that one needs 'to one's own [true] self be true'...
I must, without further ado...upon this my 418th blogpost across my two blogsites - 341st on this site, alongside my 77 already posted upon
http://Nuff Said:Consideryourself-frombothsidesnow.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com)
i.e. 4 +1+8 (=13), or 3+4+1[8] + 7+7[14] (=22), or 8+1+4 (=13)...for this biblical numerology buff (and one-time would-be numerologist cum professional astrologer (of either the 'western' zodiacal or Chinese animal variety)), an interesting if not especially 'lucky' (as in propitious) numeral...
- and no, I don't believe Jesus' betrayer, Judas, has been given the bad or 'bum' rap that some biblical revisionists have been all too eager to bestow upon him -
(I must, I say) declare the following...
When I look around me these days, in as objective a fashion as I am able...at the various fads and fashions of our political life and times...
I can unashamedly and unequivocally state that it is not the likes of Mao Tse-Tung, Josef Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky et al whose political theorems and dictums captivate and win me over...
but the lonely band of once were fellow travellers...such as Eric Blair (better known as George Orwell of Animal Farm and 1984 fame)...Malcolm Muggeridge, a contemporary of Blair's...the peoples of the old Eastern Bloc nations and former Soviet Union (or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)...New Zealand's own John A Lee...among whose ranks I've little doubt 'the hero of our nation', 'Big Norm' Kirk, would be found today...even Australia's Mark Latham, now evidently a federal senator for One Nation in the Australian Parliament...and America's own Robert Kennedy, I've more than an inkling...
For when I look - as objectively as I am able - 'around about me' these days...
...and cannot but help seeing legions of ropable, almost possessed groups of (especially) youth - and well-educated, professional, middle-class 'warriors' (wo)manning the barricades across the Western front...with the kind of zeal and yea, fanaticism, once reserved for and ever and always exclusively associated with 'religious fundamentalists' and their fellow-travellers...
...when I hear the incessant calls and catchcries to shut down legitimate debate and discussion - and even, moreover, upon that longtime bastion of free speech, the college/university campus; of the nonstop entitlement-fuelled-demands for 'rights, rights, rights' - with nary a whisper or murmur for equivalent or commensurate responsibilities; of the depiction of opponents of such as hatemongers and 'phobes' (of various distasteful varieties) simply for having the audacity, the nerve, the sheer, unadulterated gall to utter an unpopular opinion or express a genuine, heartfelt conviction...
I simply cannot help but be inexorably reminded of the two aforementioned classic tomes...
which, alongside the equally classic, if altogether different (but philosophically akin) scholarly lifework of a certain psychologist by the name of Dr James Dobson, Dare to Discipline,
pretty well sum up the disastrous Western social experiment which is (not so much the early 20th Century's socialist/communist surge (even in the West), but) the 'new' (ideologically-saturated, revisionist, 'postmodern', yes, even culturally ('Gramscian') Marxist) 'morality' of the 1960s and beyond...
But 'those who learn nothing from history are doomed to repeat it'...that is, if they get the chance to.
No, my beef is not with those clamouring, no doubt justly and honestly, for urgent action worldwide upon climate change - to provide one salient illustration of my aforementioned remarks; it is indeed an honourable thing to have a passion for life and the living, for ecological survival, or, as it's now termed, (an ethic of) 'extinction rebellion'...
But when you caricaturize your opponents as subhuman, when you not only belittle them as people and deny them the right to put an alternative perspective but you insist that your view is the only legitimate one and it's your way or the highway, when you begin to shout them down and hound them from the public square (or its equivalent in the digital era), when you characterize them as evildoers and inveterate, incorrigible despisers of the so-called 'progressive, enlightened' values you so assiduously champion and vehemently, even vociferously propound and propagate...
...when you distort and misrepresent, then mock and ridicule (your mischaracterization of) their deeply held convictions, then hold them out as some sort of public pariah -
(as one salient example thereof, but far from the only one by a very long shot): no, not only hateful white supremacists but also 1080 opponents, 'anti-vaccers', and - believe it or otherwise - even (generally quite) thoughtful anti-fluoridationists...among those now excluded, evidently, from Facebook et al...i.e. from legitimately engaging in legitimate public debate...
'scuse me for saying so, but your own authoritarian, totalitarian, yea, even fascist, tendencies
are starting to show...and no, it ain't a pretty picture, folks, it most definitely is nothing of the kind!
Epilogue/Disclaimer/Postscript...See other blogsite (as above)...-you won't be disappointed!
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