[…] That is, encouraged by the fact that I’ve never met a college professor I couldn’t crush intellectually like an aluminum beer can […]
Some thoughts on a few videos I saw by a YouTube user named “Aarvoll”
In a discussion with Joel Davis on nationalism and globalism, Aarvoll asked the question how nationalist states would deal with a Dr Evil scenario. He is especially concerned with it, even bringing up those who hate human life and want to destroy it.
His other highly hypothetical scenarios, namely humanity moving off of planet earth and nuking other planets, is so far off, such trite sci-fi stuff that I wasn’t even sure if Aarvoll was joking. We will never leave this planet.
Apart from the problem regarding the Van Allen Radiation Belts: Especially now that the globalist elites have made a mess of the West, have destroyed its capacity for fulfilling even the most basic tasks you’d expect in a civilization. With marriage having become a joke and rapid demographic changes having taken place, it is questionable anyway how long the West is able to function. J. D. Unwin has shown, in his Sex and Culture, that in five thousand years of history, sexual promiscuity has always been a symptom of societies in decay.
To quote Vox Day: Forget Mars. We can be thankful if we still have flush toilets after all this is over.
(Elon Musk, after all, is just a nerd who does not read much. He also has been married four or five times, showing how sex-obsessed he is. Such men never achieve anything of value. Did Siemens or Diesel live such immoral, disgusting lives?)
But this scenario he is afraid of he cannot even call “evil” in his own moral framework, given that he seems to reject a personal God who will judge every human being that ever lived. If you reject this, though, then morality is baseless. Even Schopenhauer was honest enough to admit it in his own work on ethics.
If all of humanity got wiped out, who’d care? At some point in the distant future, earth, maybe our whole solar system, would get wiped out anyway. His own subjective concerns are just his own subjective concerns. While I agree that democracy is to be rejected and the people, sad as it is, usually vote for stupid stuff, what his morality boils down to is either a) his subjective opinion or b) what the majority thinks is good. a) would apply to Plato, too, who, despite having been a genius, was a mortal man as well.
He adds that there are certain cultures that may not even care about the planet’s fate, like those with an islamic eschatology. Does he not know that Christians, too, believe that God will end history? It has been Europe’s view of history for at least a thousand years.
Aarvoll further noted that multiverses—which is very much an esoteric theory not backed up empirically at all—are being discussed by highly intelligent people. Being intelligent does not mean that one is right. Climate change is certainly a big scam pushed by scientists who sold out their soul. To quote Christopher Langan—whom he mentions as well—from an answer he gave to the questions titled “What would be your advice for highly intelligent youth who have lost academic motivation as a result of being unchallenged?”:
[…] That is, encouraged by the fact that I’ve never met a college professor I couldn’t crush intellectually like an aluminum beer can […]
I remember that in a superchat on Stefan Molyneux’ show, someone mentioned that Vox Day regularly went on about his own high IQ. Molyneux answered that he does not know why he does it and thinks it means much, given that there are smart people who are still absolutely wrong (he mentioned Paul Krugman).
He seems to take seriously what Nick Bostrom says. Why? This guy wants to have his head frozen.
Regarding the fate of the West (or just the US, I don’t know), he says in thirty or fourty years it’s over. While I appreciate his attitude here, the Spanish Reconquista took almost 800 years. Certainly, the Christian West as it was once known no longer exists. It is drowning in its sex obsession. Even on the Right.
He goes on about evolution and adaptive value or so, but evolution has not been shown to be true yet. It is, as Vox Day once wrote, only somewhat harder than the softest science, namely psychology. Of evolutionary psychology, Christopher Hallpike, in his Do We Need God to Be Good? wrote:
In the case of a social species it is particularly important to observe the relations between individuals, and modern studies of chimpanzees and gorillas are obvious examples of how this should be done. But while it is reasonable to assume that our ancestors in this remote period lived in very small groups of gatherers and scavenger/hunters, and to deduce from this that we must have been an innately sociable species for a very long time, and that some of the well-established gender differences seem to be adaptations to this way of life, it is difficult to be sure about much else. Normal science proceeds from the known to the unknown, but evolutionary psychology tries to do it the other way round.
And on what grounds would he reject suicide? Certainly, you can come up with all kinds of abstract reasons for why you should not do X. But this only makes sense and, more importantly, is persuasive when argued from inside a theological standpoint. Otherwise, it remains subjective.
Aarvoll, now, would claim that I need religion for some reason, others, like himself, don’t. Well, yes, I would certainly kill myself had I not become a Christian years ago and fear hell. Just like Pascal or Kierkegaard did, who were suffering from a melancholy condition. Kierkegaard even called himself sick in [his] mind in his journals.
Aarvoll suffered from a kind of depression himself years ago, and the YouTuber Anekantavad, he once said, helped him during those times. Though maybe he is not talking about a true endogenic depression here. As Bruce Charlton once wrote, only around .1 per cent suffer from a real depression and would die from it due to starvation. Most others diagnosed with depression will have to live with it, since it is a part of their character and temperament. He is lucky, then, because I, as well as Gary—he mentioned him—, suffer from depression and phobias which, in my case, even God, Christ, did not really take away. I still suffer from it and hate my life.
And here, Aarvoll, like many others, likes to refer to Schopenhauer, or Nietzsche, or Spengler and other thinkers who suffered through life, hated it even and had thoughts of suicide their whole lifetime. Yet, they ignore their suffering, or put it aside, as if such minds were too stupid to somehow “learn” to “appreciate” “life” (whatever that even is).
When he says that the “daddy worship”, as he calls it, of Mike (ImperiumPress) is cringe, then I’ll add that this, however, also goes for Aarvoll’s “Jedi Academy” or so, where a kind of “enlightened” “guardian class” will be educated to rule over the rest of the world. However, our animal nature—and he acknowledges at least that we do have such a nature—is too apparent for us to ever be able to worship a human being. After all, as a Christian, I believe that Jesus Christ is God, and not a mere human being.
His views are similar to those of Jordan B. Peterson’s in this case: Peterson fears atomic death and therefore supports globalism. Aarvoll fears all kinds of highly advanced technologies that may destroy our planet, even though they do not even exist yet. While he is highly intelligent, he’s not a scientist either. As a Christian, I do not fear such scenarios anyway; not only will God Himself call it quit, but death is the way to God, which is even taught in monasteries like Holy Mount Athos.
Almost worse is his claim that women have to be “won” over, because
women your—i. e. Mike’s—age are not at all interested in nationalism.
This, however, is far removed from reality. Women want good-looking
and/or high status men; there are cases where women even married
convicted serial killers because of their looks. I don’t think
that one can improve much on what F. Roger Devlin wrote in
Sexual Utopia in Power
or Andy Nowicki in his
A Final Solution to the Incel Problem,
Confessions of a Would-Be Wanker
and Notes Before Death
regarding contemporary society’s sexual degeneracy (of which Aarvoll seems
at least to be aware.)
Otherwise, Schopenhauer’s remarks on sexuality or Otto Weininger’s Sex and
Character are works that are worth considering as well. Nietzsche and
Kierkegaard were aware of the problem sexuality poses, too.
I don’t claim that Aarvoll is necessarily a psychopath; Vox Day (and many of his friends), unfortunately, is. But it does reek a bit of pride and a holier-than-thou attitude. While he does not necessarily dismiss the poor souls who drag through life, they don’t really play a role in his thinking either.
And often enough, he makes it look as if such people are at fault. This is certainly false. I would never have chosen my horrible genetics. I am a eugenicist and a Christian. Were I not a Christian, I would kill myself immediately. What benefit do I have by existing? I loathe it; I would not live alway; let me alone; for my days are vanity.
In an announcement to his Plato reading group, he also said that Jesus most likely read Plato. So he turns Plato almost into a kind of God, while saying “God Bless” at the end of one of his videos regarding nationalism. What god? An impersonal one? Or Christ? If Christ, why would it even be relevant if Christ read Plato? Why teach eternal salvation and eternal damnation?
He even used his “Jedi Academy” dystopia in a debate on libertarianism with IvanTheHeathen, asking how it would handle intergalactic politics or so … Mainstream science, too, accepts that mean IQs are dropping world-wide, even in the third world; why, then, would one think about such far off stuff in the first place? Because of Musk?!
In the same video, he claimed that we do not know if we may not, at some point, overcome sin. I, of course, side with IvanTheHeathen, though I find it hard to believe in a literal thousand year reign of Christ, if this is what he meant with … unless Christ comes back and inaugurates the Millennium.
This kind of “techno Platonism” is a horrid dystopia — who wants to live in that world? We need less technology and more restraint. The latter which he’d even agree with, as far as I see it. For not all of Aarvoll’s views are to be rejected, given that he sees our animal nature in a more negative light than most in these spheres. It is a kind of Kierkegaard vs. Hamann position, where I take the former’s stance; while finding both to be highly interesting characters.
Aarvoll cannot even define sin. It is, after all, sinful already to lust or to have other unclean thoughts, which makes sense only if a personal God exists against whose Law you are sinning. We are also living during a time of such immorality as never before, a time which would even make a decadent Roman salivate. Someone who believes that he is without sin will only fall into hubris, he will end up being a prideful, disgusting human being. He has no authority, and as long as he cannot answer with absolute certainty why suicide is sin, whatever he posits cannot be taken seriously. Morality has to have an object law giver, not a “cringe” “academy” of “Jedis” telling me what they think is morally good or evil. Philosophers have tried to come up with answers for more than a thousand years, and atheists like Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, even Sartre were at least honest in that they accepted that without God—i.e. God the Father—anything goes.
Or, to quote Vox Day (The Irrational Atheist), who calls this policy “moral parasitism” or Somerset atheism after “Somerset Maugham’s semi-rational atheism, which states ‘do what thou wilt, with due regard for the policeman around the corner.’”
He also said that there are “evolutionary incentives”, which is wrong, because, again, evolution is not at work in this world. And iff it were, you’d have to be a Genghis Khan; evolution results in a might makes right worldview, because this is what would have created us (were it true).
It is also questionable why he thinks that Plato’s thinking, on the one hand, ought to be followed, but then claims that nation states may simply have run their course, a thing of the past that due to new technology needs replacing or surpassing.
He said that most people don’t reach a higher level—in his own subjective metric—becasue they are in the thralls of the cares of life. But this is dubious nowadays, because more and more people don’t not really work that much anymore, some even living off of government benefits. They aren’t all reading Plato or learning Ancient Greek, unfortunately. Some simply wait to die, see physical pleasure as the highest.
However, I agree with Aarvoll way more than with IvanTheHeathen regarding population control. Wanting as many people to exist as possible is a disgusting viewpoint—even sick and ill children? With genetic defects? Most would live in cities anyway; where I live, houses upon houses have been built in the last decade making it hellish to go for a walk around here. No, we need less people, which is why I see myself as a traditional reactionary the way de Maistre and Gómez Dávila were. de Maistre even defended Malthus in his Du Pape. It is also wrong that China will experience a demographic catastrophe, because the old people, at some point, will be gone again; whereas here in the West, we are foreigners in our own countries now. Even more so in the future. Then there is the problem of today’s billions of people only existing because of the artificial environment we are living in today, and mass die offs will take place anyway once technology starts to fail us. Further, there is no law that we have to have X million or even billion people on the planet. So this is pretty much a train-wreck.
More importantly, how would he explain a “born-again” experience? Why does repentance lead to it, and what does this say about the nature of sin? It is inane to dismiss this, as it changed my world-view from being a suicidal atheist to being a Christian who has to accept that suicide is off the table now (though there are even monks who kill themselves, as documented recently in Nicolas Diat’s “A Time to Die: Monks on the Threshold of Eternal Life”.)
Even in a monastery sin exists, and priests are called to confession, too. Luther’s first thesis is what every human being is called to:
1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, in saying, "Repent ye, etc.," intended that the whole life of his believers on earth should be a constant penance.
There is no threat that an asteroid will hit the earth. Man would not be able to “save the planet” from it anyway, as it is technically unfeasible. The planet does not need saving, it will be destroyed at some point regardless. Aarvoll thinks that man will be able to live on other planets, but this is, as written above, unlikely. Traveling a year through empty space would lead to madness, and any planet we may be able to inhabit will always be more hostile to life than earth. It can’t be any other way, given that it was created by God, in Whom Aarvoll does not believe, and Who forces us to live in His horrible world I only want to exit as soon as possible.
No one is objective, there is no neutral standpoint, as Jay Dyer, whom I otherwise find too arrogant, correctly noted. Rather, it makes for a mediocre mind to hold to such a position. We would not read the Spenglers, Schopenhauers, Kierkegaards of the world had they been weaklings afraid to take a stance.
In a video titled Talking with Joel about Nationalism, he even claims we’d need to show why the traditional family—monogamy—is preferable; that we’d need to be able to demonstrate why it is. This is insanity. Polygamous societies do exist, but are usually horrible; further, today’s broken “families” cannot be defended, data alone shows that children growing up in such environments have, on average, more problems later in life (drug abuse, depression, suicide, “teen mothers” and so on.)
J. D. Unwin’s Sex and Culture has shown this in 1934 already.
In a video titled “Are women lower quality today??” (sic; he does use two question marks.), Aarvoll claims that while PUA is to be rejected—given how deranged and decadent it is—, where I, of course, agree, he nevertheless does not think that it is a scam to rip off gullible men; on the contrary, he indeed believes that it works!
And this is someone who apparently reads Schopenhauer. Who, as those familiar with his work, wrote extensively about women and sexuality. Where he lays out a completely different and more realistic view regarding relation of the sexes. Schopenhauer, however, had not much luck in romantic matters. During his days in Italy, his concubine—“girlfriend” in modern, vulgar times—was excited to see Lord Byron pass by on a horse. Schopenhauer, who was less attractive than Byron—both were born in 1788—, did not hand him a letter of introduction given to him by Goethe for fear of being cuckolded (cf. [visit-venice-italy.com]).
Looks were always important, simply doing some vulgar, deranged techniques would win the heart of equally vulgar, deranged women anyway — if at all and iff hearts are at play here at all. More worthwhile works regarding the filth we are drowning in are Sexual Utopia in Power by F. Roger Devlin and Confessions of a Would-Be Wanker by Andy Nowicki.
This is just another reason to end one’s life; which is why Christ threatens man with eternal damnation. He knows how horrible and awful this lousy and rotten earth is. Therefore, He needs to force men to live via lust (which is we are alive—as base and animalistic as it gets) and eternal punishment.
As Gómez Dávila remarked:
The majority of properly modern customs would be crimes in an authentically civilized society.
The majority of new customs are old behaviors that western civilization had shamefacedly confined to its lower-class neighborhoods.
In a video titled Music Makes or Breaks Civilizations, Aarvoll claims that IQ can be increased by a whole standard deviation (!) by having children learn a musical instrument before the age of twelve. This is already dubious, especially since the primitive tribes he talks about certainly did not “learn” instruments as we do today. His claim is most likely based on dubious studies I do not care about, since I reject most of science since the 1960s. (See Bruce Charlton’s book Not even trying: the corruption of real science.)
(One article I found talked about increasing IQ by “10 percent”, which is wrong and nonsense, since percentages make no sense applied to IQ. It’s about adults, too, while Aarvoll claims that it needs to be taught before the age of twelve. So this stuff can be discarded.)
That those who play instruments well are also intelligent is dubious, since in the past many people, especially in rural areas, learnt them at an early age. On stackexchange, I did not find anyhing convincing either.
But more importantly, he wanted to translate it into income, when in fact the higher your IQ is, the more problems you will have in life, as I wrote about earlier.
Or consider this quote from Christopher Langan regarding the dubious positive correlation between income and intelligence:
“Is Chris Langan correct that we ‘have no business equating wealth with intelligence’? Some of my few Republican colleagues seem to do just that, and more.”
Of course I’m right.
Granted, IQ and income are somewhat positively correlated; people with higher IQ’s tend to make more money, at least below a certain limit. However, the strength of the correlation does not support the inference of a definite causal relationship. On the other hand, the relationship between IQ and wealth is all over the place, suggesting that there is no such thing as a social-Darwinistic wealth-based meritocracy. There’s a touch of meritocracy in the distribution of income - it peters out very quickly as we go higher on the IQ scale - but not in the ownership of large mansions and fat investment portfolios. It turns out that the hereditary rich, lucky investors, etc., have nothing very special going on upstairs.
Unfortunately, this is a problem. Just as the power to affect the course of society is amplified by wealth, the ill effects of the relative moral and intellectual deficiencies of the rich are *also* amplified by wealth. In short, the rich are not in general sufficiently intelligent to properly use their wealth and influence to guide us toward a better world, especially in the presence of as many diversions and distractions as now assail us, and their wealth and power only amplify their mistakes. The common “meritocracy assumption” - that wealth correlates with intelligence and responsibility throughout the IQ scale - turns out to be so much hot air, and due to the inevitable “wealth = power” equation, systemic injustices of the real economy translate directly into socioeconomic degeneration.
In other words, it is simply not true that as the power of the wealthy to determine the evolution of society increases as a function of net worth, they are proportionally capable of manifesting the integrity and intelligence to provide society with optimum guidance and financial impetus. The meritocracy assumption is just a variant of the illusory “just world hypothesis” and the associated conception of “justice” according to which reward is always proportional to merit. We do not live in a just world, and the rich are not on top of society because God put them there.
Of course, there supposedly exists a patch for this situation. It’s called “Academia, Inc.”, from which the uber-wealthy and powerful are supposedly able to hire experts who know how to make judgments and solve problems that the rich lack the brainpower to handle on their own. But unfortunately, academia - in its own special bureaucratic way - is every bit as degenerate as the investment class; in effect, it is led around by its nose at the merest scent of money, whoring out like a drug-addicted hooker at any hint of the long green. (I’m terribly sorry if this offends anyone, but it is what it is.)
Add to this the fact that academia and its minions systematically exclude any outsider who tries to participate meaningfully in intellectual commerce - that is, anyone lacking not only wealth, but credentials and connections - and the problem becomes obvious to anyone with half a brain (which naturally excludes fat cats and acadummies ;).
Another comment by Langan:
Comment: “Truthfully, the best criteria for procreation would be a combination of intelligence and moral integrity. If we can somehow get wealth in on that sales pitch, then all the better!”
Response: Only insofar as a modicum of wealth is required for the raising of children.
The importance of wealth as a reproduction criterion is a major reason that modern society is in its current morally and intellectually debilitated state. Wealth should have nothing directly to do with procreation – even though it correlates moderately with intelligence up to a certain limit, it also correlates with many undesirable personality traits including ruthlessness, dishonesty, and sociopathy, suggesting genetic predispositions. (In a word, one needs to be either very lucky, or a vain, deceitful near-criminal to climb the rigged ladder of success these days.) Unfortunately, most people refuse to consider any indicator of “good genes” other than a fat wallet first and a TV-pretty face second, which is of course asinine and dysgenic. Where the money is controlled by a handful of lying, self-dealing nincompoops, having much of it is merely symptomatic of having been artificially selected by them, probably for being a lying, self-dealing nincompoop (or sex toy thereof) oneself. Society is now so thoroughly dominated by the wealthy that true genetic excellence is no longer of sufficient adaptive value to count for anything. Little wonder that the miscreants responsible for this situation are bent on opening the genetic floodgates and making the situation vastly worse – arguably, that’s all they’ve ever done.
Why would IQ translate to higher pay anyway? At least if you are interested in classical literature or know Latin and Greek, this will not do you much good on today’s job market. It only makes sense if you want to work as some kind of doctor, lawyer or IT guy, which I don’t.
As Nicolás Gómez Dávila wrote:
An age is civilized if it does not reserve intelligence for professional work.
In a video titled How to Save the White Race, Eric Orwoll/Aarvoll claims that the great threat coming from science and technology is its destructive capacity (for example, nano technology and a so-called grey goo scenario). Even though it is the decadence it enables that threatens man. Dixit Gómez Dávila:
Modern man fears technology’s destructive capacity, when it is its constructive capacity that threatens him.
Man’s three enemies are: the devil, the state, and technology.
Further, he admits that relations between the sexes are rough (he vulgarly calls it the “dating market”). However, women would apparently be interested in men who are accomplishing something, like building alternative communities with him in Southern Missouri or so.
I already wrote that this is not the case. It is pretty perky, even insulting to utter sentences like … the children you will have will be in the minority.
It may well be true that they’ll be in the minority and live in a country that is in even worse shape; it is false, though, that we all will have children. I am glad when my hunchback genetics is gone for good.
On the whole, I found his advice to be rather sound, though his breeder rhetoric is, as always, hard to stomach. I would not want to live in a community that lacks eugenic laws.
In a video titled The Elites are Better than You, he even said the people his age that he talks to do not have children. So why does he suppose that this is different with those who he wants to move to his place? Because they are younger? If, as he admits, the—not my vulgar choice of words—“dating market” situation is rough?
He is certainly right that focusing only on ethnicity is rather limited. It is mind-boggling, for example, that today’s sexual depravity is hardly critiqued on the so-called Dissident Right (exceptions exist, of course.)
However, to “save the world”, as he said in How to Save the White Race, I reject as a Christian, since we have to save our souls. (Matthew 24:35: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.)
This is even harder to “sell” (and as I said a million times, I would end my life if God did not force me to live by threatening with eternal damnation.)
In a comment to How to Save the White Race, someone was praising that ourguys (sic) have girlfriends (somebody wrote he cannot move, has a girlfriend.) Is this an achievement now? My father had many too, and he is a loser, a monster.
How is this behaviour befitting someone (presumably) part of the so-called Right? This is not even remotely connected with it. Either marriage or continence.
Someone else commented that he has moved to Bulgaria since home schooling is not allowed in Germany. He may move again, maybe to the US, which, he adds, has the best strategic location (or so). I would rather argue that the US is not in better shape than Western Europe; I do not see why it should be. Vox Day moved to Italy in the late nineties.
It may be alright in Southern Missouri if you own thirteen acres like Aarvoll, but then again, immigration is to be rejected for the most part. It is a major reason for why people are Bowling Alone.
Aarvoll also said that you need to have drive and a mission in life; men who know what is right and what is necessary, and to have a conviction to do it. This, apparently, is attractive to women …
What if I am more interested in intellectual pursuits? Do women care if you know Latin and Greek or like reading theoretical works, high literature and so on? I doubt it.
Further, if I do not have much in common with most women, how would that work out anyway? We no longer live in times where marriage is respected, it is no longer seen as binding, divorce rates are high. For a Christian, though, you are bound to your wife, even if you get divorced. A Christian has to marry in the Lord, which means someone who is Christian, too.
(Unrelated, he said he could buy riding mowers (!), leaf blowers and so on—is this not using way too many resources? How is this sustainable?)
Also in his video The Elites are Better than You, he said something along the lines of “[…] imagine what it would do to your tastes if you could have every wish granted, every women you wanted […].”
There we go again. I am about to think that the net attracts crazy and deranged individuals like flies. Not that Aarvoll is, but why is he bringing up women? Why not getting the best pianists to teach you to play the piano? Or learn Latin and Greek? Or get all kinds of books and editions you could dream of?
I would not even want to live such a life. After all, I am not a psychopath like Hugh Hefner (archive.is: [1], [2]). I would pay money not having to live such a life. Face it, pain is positive, as Schopenhauer knew. We need to stop putting lewdness on a pedestal because of being afraid to be called names by whoremongers.
In his video How to Save the White Race, Aarvoll said that history does not remember cowards. However, this is not even true, given that we remember, say, Hitler, who wrecked a whole nation and then most likely committed suicide. Further, we certainly do not remember all of the millions of poor men who died on the battlefields, often dying a brutal deaths.
It is this kind of boilerplate philosophy by otherwise intelligent people that I find distasteful and which makes me, as should be known by now, glad when I am dead.
In a video (around minute 47) with another arrogant know-it-all, Joseph Bronski, Aarvoll said:
“No, I do not think that souls can be fully destroyed, but I do think that eternal damnation is possible.”
Well, and how do you escape that fate? What is this here, kindergarten? Suicide exists, Hamlet asked this question from a Christian standpoint, otherwise it would be meaningless. To coolly talk about Hell is outrageous and vulgar. Even though Aarvoll is less arrogant than most he puts up with, he seems too comfortable nowadays to really live the philosophical life.
In a video titled Title: Discussing Orthodox Christianity and Platonism with @Jeem196, he discussed Orthodoxy with this Jeem character I recently wrote about.
It was quite “OK” to watch, not much that would have made me vomit as is often the case with internet philosophers. Still, Eric Orwoll/Aarvoll shows his weakness by worshipping science. To quote Nicolás Gómez Dávila:
Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question.
Around 1:10:00, he asks why did God give “us” this faculty to reason and do science, which even led to technology that works.
To which I first cite the master himself, Don Colacho, again:
God invented tools, the devil machines.
In the same way, I could ask why did God give me depression? I think aarvoll often just waffles more than he is a genuine thinker. Modern technology is more of a curse, I see it as a precursor to what we read in the Revelation of John.
What’s worse, though, is that he lumps all of science together! We don’t need evolution at all to have working airplanes. Can he not see this? What does evolution by natural selection, which Vox Day has attacked for some time now, to do with the invention of the computer?
You don’t need evolution for any of this, which is in fact an argument against it, as Vox Day stressed: there is no technology or anything else that relies on evolution. This at least would suggest that some of it has to be true. A commenter once wrote “eugenics”. Though this is false, for it would be the domain of genetics.
Even this you did not need to know, since Plato already was thinking of eugenic measures without any such knowledge. I therefore side with Vox Day here, who remarked that evolution is only somewhat harder than the softest of sciences, psychology.
He even accepts evolutionary psychology, which is fluff and to be rejected. Hallpike, in his Do We Need God to Be Good?, dismantled it masterfully. He later released Ship of Fools, which I have not read but further criticizes evolutionary psychology.
As Don Colacho wrote:
By believing that the wax figures fabricated by psychology are alive, man has been gradually losing his knowledge of man.
A modern man is a man who forgets what man knows about man.
Fools believe that humanity only now knows certain important things, when there is nothing important which humanity has not known since the beginning.
Further, science was not given to the human community. No such thing exists. As Carl Schmitt once wrote, he who says “humanity” wants to deceive. It’s mostly Europeans and then, later, the Asians from the north east that caught up. Hardly all of humanity is engaged in science. At best you have people from all continents, but the core of science and technology is still rather European/Western.
To quote Vox Day from The Irrational Atheist:
There is a school of thought that descends from Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and asserts that science is best defined as “whatever scientists do.” However, in this case, scientists might as well be bears.
If Richard Dawkins is less than forthcoming despite his volubility, we are fortunate to discover that one of his comrades in evolutionary biology, P. Z. Myers, is distinctly more helpful. In addition to his duties as a professor of biology, Dr. Myers runs one of the Internet’s more popular science blogs, Pharyngula. When I posed the question to him, “What is science?” he responded with not one, but three definitions, all of them quite useful:
1. Science is a changing and growing collection of knowledge, characterized by transparency (all methods are documented, and the lineage of ideas can be traced) and testability (prior work can be repeated or its results evaluated). It is an edifice of information that contains all of the details of its construction.
2. Science is what scientists do. We have institutions that train people and employ them in the business of generating new knowledge and we have procedures like the bestowal of degrees and ranks that certify one’s mem bership in the hallowed ranks of science.
3. Science is a process. It is a method for exploring the natural world by making observations, drawing inferences, and testing those inferences with further experimentation and observation. It isn’t so much the data generated as it is a way of thinking critically about the universe and our own interpretations of it.
What we understand as science consists of three separate and distinct aspects, a dynamic body of knowledge (scientage), a process (scientody), and a profession (scientistry). This three-in-one works together in a unified manner that should be recognizable to the sufficiently educated, wherein the body of knowledge reigns supreme, the process offers the only way to the body of knowledge, and those who blaspheme against the profession will not be forgiven. […]
Further articles by Vox Day, for example, highlighting the downsides of science worship: The Four Horsemen of Bad Science and Another Horseman in Hell.
Aarvoll also named geology among modern science, regarding which Vox Day once simply cited Dr Sheldon Cooper: “geology isn’t a real science.”
I have no idea why Aarvoll is so obsessed with science, it seems rather crude. Here, I even agree with a complete imbecile like koanic (Leo Littlebook / Leo Joseph Buchignani), who once debated him and was calling into question modern science. As far as I remember, Ryan Faulk, whom Aarvoll followed for a time, also criticized the peer review process.
However, to think that Alan Turing, John von Neumann or Konrad Zuse had a need for anything that evolutionary biology was offering to lay the foundation for modern computing is simply false.
To quote some guy who references Vox Day’s Darkstream The descent of TENS (Darkstream 290: The Descent of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection):
- The evidence doesn’t exist.
- The historical timelines that purportedly support it are constantly mutating.
- The theory is a complete failure as a predictive model.
- The theory is scientifically and technologically irrelevant. There are no evolutionary engineers.
- Theoretical epicycles are increasingly required to maintain its viability.
- The theory is a repeated failure as an explanatory model.
- There is a very long track record of scientific fraud surrounding it.
(There was another one titled Darkstream 501: The demolition of Darwin. Though they are set to private or only available on his own platform unauthorized.tv.)
It is also pretty clear that modern technology had mostly negative influence on our soul and the environment. Not to mention what it did to today’s warfare!
Gómez Dávila was rejecting most of it, too:
‘Nature’ was a pre-Romantic discovery which Romanticism propagated, and which technology is killing in our days.
A greater capacity for killing is the criterion of “progress” between two peoples’ or two epochs.
Man no longer knows how to invent anything that does not serve to kill better or to make the world a little more vulgar.
While Vox Day is indeed quite arrogant and rather crude and rough around the edges, I will end with a quote from his The Irrational Atheist:
It is not an ability to explain past events, but its predictive value that proves the value of a model. And whether one considers geopolitics, psychology, or child development, the ancient text repeatedly proves itself to be a better predictive model than those supplied by the scientific experts. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Earth is flat. But Jesus’s statement in John 8:58, “before Abraham was born, I am!” is a very strange thing for an itinerant first-century rabbi to say,[3] given the way it presages the twentieth-century concepts of multiple universes and existence outside the space-time continuum.
[3]: One could argue that “I am that I am” is an even stranger thing for a burning bush to say.
I try to make it quick, just a remark because I tuned into another video of his, this time with Joel Davis (@joeldavisx). In his introduction that I watched on 1.8-9 speed, he said we also need to take into account the gods of the heathens, and that to him, it does not make much sense that God would reveal himself only to one people and leave others in the dark. (I stopped after this, almost two hours of this stuff is too much.)
Yet, the Old Testament teaches that there were individuals from outside the Israelites that were living after God’s commandments. I would rather ask why one’s own reasoning should be the standard. Why does it matter that it does not make sense to us? We read in the Book of Job that God’s ways are beyond our understanding; the same in Corinthians (“through a glass darkly”).
The Aztecs were brutal in their sacrifices. How is this compatible with the Christian God? Further, Europe’s history has been Christian for more than a thousand years. This is a point Wilhelm Stapel made, too, in reference to the pagan Rightists during the Weimar Republic. Stapel was the only true beliving Christian of the so-called “Conservative Revolution”.
Christians of the early Church rejected emperor worship and were killed for it. A decision had to be made; I wonder how a “perennial” Christian like Aarvoll would have acted during that time. Philosophizing with the Romans trying to kill him?
It seems a bit insincere to always talk about Plato and learning from other pagan traditions when Aarvoll/Eric Orwoll does not even read Greek fluently – or Latin. You have to have bit more to show for here.
I hope I am done with this now. I am not aware of anyone talking about such matters in the first place, though the resources on the net aren’t great. Maybe in private someone like Aarvoll would be less annoying, I don’t know. I also prefer reading, but blogs are dead, and usenet is even deader.
Aarvoll surely is addicted to life. That he was a nihilist from 2008 to 2011 or so and did things he now regrets, which certainly does not include attempted suicide, is no wonder. He surely is not above a huge genius like Kierkegaard. I’d rather read Montaigne or Burckhardt, Pascal or Kierkegaard than to get my world-view from “internet thinkers”.
It’s best to just ignore the fact that one will simply die and be done for, and continue reading. I will not write any works of importance and have to deal with it.
Unlike Don Colacho, whose body of work is terrific. Fitting quotes:
Philosophies begin in philosophy and end in rhetoric.
Man’s moment of greatest lucidity is when he doubts his doubt.
Ending by quoting Nicolás Gómez Dávila:
Our soul has a future.
Humanity has none.When he is stripped of the Christian tunic and the classical toga, there is nothing left of the European but a pale-skinned barbarian.
The believer is superior to the nonbeliever because unbelief is a solution whereas faith is a problem.
Society tends to be unjust, but not in the way the conceited imagine.
There are always more masters who do not deserve their position than servants who do not deserve theirs.Even for Buddhist compassion, the individual is only a shadow that vanishes.
The dignity of the individual is a Christian cast made out of Greek clay.A just society would be lacking in interest.
The discrepancy between the individual and the position he occupies is what makes history interesting.A philosophy that avoids the problem of evil is a fairy tale for gullible children.
The ancient who denied pain, the modern who denies sin—they entangle themselves in identical sophisms.
The most notorious thing about every modern undertaking is the discrepancy between the immensity and complexity of the technical apparatus and the insignificance of the final product.
Those who prophesy more than indefinite cycles of decline and ascent are hiding some suspicious product they want to sell for cash.
The soul surpasses the world, whereas the world encompasses humanity.
The insignificance of humanity renders “philosophies of history” ridiculous, whereas the infinite price of each human soul vindicates religion.Eugenics appals those who fear its judgment.
No beneficiary of slaves is supporter of birth control.
The individual who lies to himself, just like the society that does not lie to itself, soon rots and dies.
Depopulate and reforest – first civilizing rule.
Although it grieves the angelism of the democrat: one cannot build a civilisation with miserable biological material.
The two most pressing problems of the contemporary world: demographic expansion and genetic deterioration are unsolvable.
Liberal principles prevent the solution of the first, egalitarian ones that of the second.The American is not intolerable because he believes he is important individually, but because he possesses, insofar as he is an American, the solution to every problem.
After solving a problem, humanity imagines that it finds in analogous solutions the key to all problems.
Every authentic solution brings in its wake a train of grotesque solutions.Fools believe that humanity only now knows certain important things, when there is nothing important which humanity has not known since the beginning.
Because we know that God cares about the individual, let us not forget that He seems to care little about humanity.
Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question.
The limits of science are revealed with greater clarity by the waxing light of its triumphs.
Each one of a science’s successive orthodoxies appears to be the definitive truth to the disciple.
Whoever appeals to any science in order to justify his basic convictions inspires distrust of his honesty or his intelligence.
Modern society only respects science as an inexhaustible provider of what it covets.
In every historical situation there always arises somebody to defend in the name of liberty, humanity, or justice, the stupid opinion.
The defeated reactionary always retains the option of entertaining himself with the victor’s simplistic ideas.
The “wheel of fortune” is a better analogy for history than the “evolution of humanity.”
In order not to think of the world which science describes, man gets drunk on technology.
Triviality is the price of communication.
Humanity longs to free itself from poverty, from toil, from war—from everything which few escape without degrading themselves.
Humanity fell into modern history like an animal into a trap.
Christianity does not solve “problems”; it merely obliges us to live them at a higher level.
Those who claim that it does solve them entangle it in the irony of every solution.The threat of collective death is the only argument which shakes humanity’s complacency today.
Atomic death troubles it even more than its increasing degradation.That liberation of humanity whose praises the 19th century sang ended up being nothing more than international tourism.
When it finishes its “ascent,” humanity will find tedium waiting for it, seated on the highest peak.
Humanizing humanity again will not be an easy task after this long orgy of divinity.
The progressive dreams of the scientific stabling of humanity.
An atheist is respectable as long as he does not teach that the dignity of man is the basis of ethics and that love for humanity is the true religion.
The simplistic ideas in which the unbeliever ends up believing are his punishment.
The man who invents a new machine invents for humanity a new concatenation of new forms of servitude.
No one grants humanity certain extreme liberties except someone indifferent to its destiny.
Rulers who represent only a minority have to invent civilization in order not to perish.
The delegates of a majority, on the other hand, can be vulgar, rude, cruel, with impunity.
The greater the majority that supports him, the less cautious the ruler is, the less tolerant, the less respectful of human diversity.
When rulers deem themselves governors of all humanity, terror is near.The increasing integration of humanity merely makes it easier to share the same vices.
The problem is not sexual repression, nor sexual liberation, but sex.
Man never calculates the price of any comfort he gains.
Humanity is not ungovernable: it merely happens that rarely does a man govern who deserves to govern.
During its journey, humanity gets sores on its feet from everything except its old shoes.
I would not live for even a fraction of a second if I stopped feeling the protection of God’s existence.
Sometimes the crime to be committed is so horrible that the nation is not a good enough pretext and it is necessary to invoke humanity.
Humanity is the only totally false god.