Episodes
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History is dead.
Or, so I was told.
For a long time, I believed it.
Not because I wanted to, but I could see the world around me. It was plain as day that I did not live in the world of my heroes.
Myth and legend had ended, history had marched to its lackluster end, and we were all fated to live out our days in a lethargic, decaying, neo-liberal hellscape.
Consume product. Work for corporation. Vote. Die.
The banal reality of the modern west seems almost designed to crush the very souls of its populace.
We grew up in a world where nothing ever happens and there is nothing left to discover. - The Saxon Cross
Link: https://thesaxoncross.substack.com/p/mythologizing-modernity
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Today on the show, ruminations on Irish poets, winters-bane, and mythic tales that lead to heavenly truth.
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When, because of their fear, they do away secretly with such men, who is left for them to use save the unjust, the incontinent, and the slavish? The unjust are trusted because they are afraid, just as the tyrants are, that someday the cities, becoming free, will become their masters. The incontinent are trusted because they are at liberty for the present, and the slavish because not even they deem themselves worthy to be free. This affliction, then, seems harsh to me: to think some are good men, and yet to be compelled to make use of the others. - Xenophon, Tyrannicus part 5
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Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. - George Carlin
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"Humanity had thought itself sufficient, and even now we think we can escape our destiny by our own efforts. Escape!--that is our only thought. To escape from the insanity, the hell of modern life is all we wish. But we cannot escape!!! We must go through this hell, and accept it, knowing it is the love of God that causes our suffering. What terrible anguish!--to suffer so, not knowing why, indeed thinking there is no reason. The reason is God's love--do we see it blazing in the darkness? -- we are blind." Fr. Seraphim Rose
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So what will we do? Will we remain on the shore, dipping our toes in the water now and then, or will we plunge in, fully, recklessly, trusting that this river will carry us where we need to go? That is what true love is—it is a surrender, a letting go of our need to control, to manage, to predict. It is a wild rumpus, a leap into the unknown, a cry that travels through forests and over fields, and shakes the very earth beneath our feet. And in this love, we will find that indifference has no place. It cannot survive in the rushing waters of a soul that is fully alive, fully attuned to the presence of Love, the Christ-Savior - Donavon L Riley
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You may remember the Green Knight arriving at Camelot after fifteen days straight of feasting. King Arthur has asked for a story so that the tribe could remember itself but none of the assembled have the gumption to respond. A deeper story was required. Perfectly on time, the Green Knight bursts through the door. In the act of being beheaded but then continuing to live, the Green Knight brings a terrible but familiar, biblical question:
“Who will lose their life to find it?”
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I go on a walkabout through life and death, saying what needs to be said, taking our human condition seriously, and being thoughtful about the big picture.
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The basic question in this vortex is whether man can be liberated from fear. This is far more important than arming or supplying him with medicines—for power and health are prerogatives of the unafraid. In contrast, the fear besets even those armed to the teeth— indeed, them above all. The same may be said for those on whom abundance has been rained. The threat cannot be exorcized by weapons or fortunes—these are no more than means. - Ernst Junger, The Forest Passage
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"To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; he is carried along in the current, and can at no time take a respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect. There is never any awareness -- of himself, of his condition, of his society -- for the man who lives by current events. Such a man never stops to investigate any one point, any more than he will tie together a series of news events.
We already have mentioned man's inability to consider several facts or events simultaneously and to make a synthesis of them in order to face or to oppose them. One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones. Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but be does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man's capacity to forget is unlimited.
This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandist, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks. Moreover, there is a spontaneous defensive reaction in the individual against an excess of information and -- to the extent that he clings (unconsciously) to the unity of his own person -- against inconsistencies. The best defense here is to forget the preceding event. In so doing, man denies his own continuity; to the same extent that he lives on the surface of events and makes today's events his life by obliterating yesterday's news, he refuses to see the contradictions in his own life and condemns himself to a life of successive moments, discontinuous and fragmented." - Jacques Ellul, Propaganda
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Propaganda is made, first of all, because of a will to action, for the purpose of effectively arming policy and giving irresistible power to its decisions.* Whoever handles this instrument can be concerned solely with effectiveness This is the supreme law. which must never be forgotten when the phenomenon of propaganda is analyzed. Ineffective propaganda is no propaganda. This instrument belongs to the technological universe, shares its characteristics. and is indissolubly linked to it. - Jaques Ellul, Propaganda
Link: https://ia801202.us.archive.org/11/items/Propaganda_201512/Propaganda.pdf
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No pressure, no diamond. You don’t become a good captain by never meeting a storm. And so, at the end of your life – many years from now God willing – there is but one tree, vines threaded gloriously and ramshackley together – holy in its way – offering you a place to sit down and rest awhile, its branches sagging under the weight of timeless fruit produced to settle your restless stomach.
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No matter how much we love the city, or our home, or the land, they will never love us back. They do not give birth to hope. They destroy us in the pursuit of it. And so, to survive you must learn to recognize those who don’t hope, who aren’t really alive, and be wary of their doomed decisions. They are to be avoided at all costs because their fear is tragedy's closest cousin, and tragedy is contagious. And then, just like that, death steps from the shadows, and hope is strangled. Life is extinguished. Freedom is chained up.
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The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Nothing is impossible.” No-longer-being-able-to-be-able leads to destructive self-reproach and auto-aggression. The achievement-subject finds itself fighting with itself. The depressive has been wounded by internalized war. Depression is the sickness of a society that suffers from excessive positivity. It reflects a humanity waging war on itself. - Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society
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Like is the digital Amen. When we click Like, we are bowing down to the order to domination. The smartphone is not just an effective surveillance apparatus; it is also a mobile confessional. - Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics
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“That kindness is invincible, provided it's sincere- not ironic or an act. What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight”
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― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations -
We are mud people with a holy breath sweeping through us. That is a comfort, Jesus says. Not tree people so much, or zebra people, or pomegranate people, but mud people. There is a primality in it. It is an image we can get behind. It is not nice. It is not a florid Renaissance sketch, but something we can imagine seeing daubed on a cave wall before someone blows the wick out.
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“What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.”
Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence
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