Recent well liked threads
A romance between the East and West: How Schopenhauer understood the Brahman in the Upanisads - A thread
1/3 Kant's active mind and the thing-in-itself
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century created a revolution in Western Philosophy.
All of his predecessors thought of human mind as a passive observer with the sensual inputs from the external world imprinting their memory on the mind.
But Immanuel Kant turned the table and proposed that the human mind isn't a blank slate (tabula rasa) where the sense organs simply stamp the perceived external world on ghee mind. He argued that the mind is active - it pre-digests your perceptions, organizes them and presents to you. So what you think of as "merely seeing or perceiving" is actually not the external world but the perception of the external world organized and modified by the mind.
Kant argued that the mind organizes the sensual data in terms of abstract categories like object types, space, time, causation, number, etc. In other words, mind filters perception to give experience. Mathematical and abstract concept like:
1. The notion of discrete objects (this is an apple and that is a table)
2. The notion of where an object is (space)
3. The notion of when an object is (time)
4. The notion of how the object is what it is (causation)
These are all, Kant says are categories imposed by the mind on the raw perceptual data from the senses to give us a ready-made experience.
If I say that I saw two balls hitting each other and hence bouncing off each other after that, Kant says that the very notion that I see two kinds of objects called balls (categorisation into discrete objects), the very notionn that they come to same place (notion of space), and their coming together resulting in bouncing off each other (the notion of causation) - all of these are my own constructs from the mind - and aren't intrinsic to the external world itself.
Since science is based on space, time and causation and geometry, he says science itself is my mind's own construct that it imposes on my perceptions to give me what I feel as my experience.
So he says that science is just a construct of my mind and not a part of the external world in itself.
Kant says that we can never know "anything-in-itself", independent of our mind and senses because the moment we perceive something, we aren't seeing that thing-in-itself but we see a reconstructed version of that thing by my mind after it imposes its categories on the raw perception.
The external world by itself, he calls it the phenomenal world and the world as we experience it, he calls it the noumenal world. Kant says we can never know anything about the phenomenal world since the only way we have access to it is through our senses and mind and they transfer the phenomenal world into the noumenal one, when I try to experience it.
One of his quotes:
"How things may be in themselves, without regard to the representations through which they affect us, is utterly beyond the sphere of our cognition"
1/3 Kant's active mind and the thing-in-itself
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century created a revolution in Western Philosophy.
All of his predecessors thought of human mind as a passive observer with the sensual inputs from the external world imprinting their memory on the mind.
But Immanuel Kant turned the table and proposed that the human mind isn't a blank slate (tabula rasa) where the sense organs simply stamp the perceived external world on ghee mind. He argued that the mind is active - it pre-digests your perceptions, organizes them and presents to you. So what you think of as "merely seeing or perceiving" is actually not the external world but the perception of the external world organized and modified by the mind.
Kant argued that the mind organizes the sensual data in terms of abstract categories like object types, space, time, causation, number, etc. In other words, mind filters perception to give experience. Mathematical and abstract concept like:
1. The notion of discrete objects (this is an apple and that is a table)
2. The notion of where an object is (space)
3. The notion of when an object is (time)
4. The notion of how the object is what it is (causation)
These are all, Kant says are categories imposed by the mind on the raw perceptual data from the senses to give us a ready-made experience.
If I say that I saw two balls hitting each other and hence bouncing off each other after that, Kant says that the very notion that I see two kinds of objects called balls (categorisation into discrete objects), the very notionn that they come to same place (notion of space), and their coming together resulting in bouncing off each other (the notion of causation) - all of these are my own constructs from the mind - and aren't intrinsic to the external world itself.
Since science is based on space, time and causation and geometry, he says science itself is my mind's own construct that it imposes on my perceptions to give me what I feel as my experience.
So he says that science is just a construct of my mind and not a part of the external world in itself.
Kant says that we can never know "anything-in-itself", independent of our mind and senses because the moment we perceive something, we aren't seeing that thing-in-itself but we see a reconstructed version of that thing by my mind after it imposes its categories on the raw perception.
The external world by itself, he calls it the phenomenal world and the world as we experience it, he calls it the noumenal world. Kant says we can never know anything about the phenomenal world since the only way we have access to it is through our senses and mind and they transfer the phenomenal world into the noumenal one, when I try to experience it.
One of his quotes:
"How things may be in themselves, without regard to the representations through which they affect us, is utterly beyond the sphere of our cognition"
2/3 Schopenhauer connects Kantian "things-in-themselves" to the Brahman
First, the German philosopher Schopenhauer extends Kant's idea logically to its fullest. He says that Kant talks about "things-in-themselves" like "the apple in itself" and "the car in itself" - independent of our senses and the mind and that it is unknowable according to Kant.
Schopenhauer asks "Isnt the categorization of my experience into discrete objects like apple, desk, stone.. itself a part of the categories that the mind imposes to create my experience. Space (location) is a category that my mind imposes to create experience, but only if we have space, we can have notions of distinct separate objects. Since space is itself a category imposed by mind and the phenomenal world by itself is beyond space or any mental categories, we can only talk about "the universe in itself" or "everything in itself". It is beyond space, time and causation. It is only our mind that through its categories of space and discrete objects, dissects and creates a mental world made of distinct objects located in space. So there is absolutely no differentiation in the phenomenal world by itself - everything is one and undifferentiated because it is outside my mental constructs of space, time and causation.
Schopenhauer connects it to Upanishads and he says this is what the Indian sages mean when they talk about the Brahman, the ultimate and only reality. It is the phenomenal undifferentiated world where all is one and unfiltered by the categories that my mind imposes on its experience. He says "the world is my representation (of my mind)". The only reality is the unitary Brahman. Schopenhauer says that the Indian sages had arrived at this through a different path though - not though erudite logical argumentation like Kant but through meditation.
First, the German philosopher Schopenhauer extends Kant's idea logically to its fullest. He says that Kant talks about "things-in-themselves" like "the apple in itself" and "the car in itself" - independent of our senses and the mind and that it is unknowable according to Kant.
Schopenhauer asks "Isnt the categorization of my experience into discrete objects like apple, desk, stone.. itself a part of the categories that the mind imposes to create my experience. Space (location) is a category that my mind imposes to create experience, but only if we have space, we can have notions of distinct separate objects. Since space is itself a category imposed by mind and the phenomenal world by itself is beyond space or any mental categories, we can only talk about "the universe in itself" or "everything in itself". It is beyond space, time and causation. It is only our mind that through its categories of space and discrete objects, dissects and creates a mental world made of distinct objects located in space. So there is absolutely no differentiation in the phenomenal world by itself - everything is one and undifferentiated because it is outside my mental constructs of space, time and causation.
Schopenhauer connects it to Upanishads and he says this is what the Indian sages mean when they talk about the Brahman, the ultimate and only reality. It is the phenomenal undifferentiated world where all is one and unfiltered by the categories that my mind imposes on its experience. He says "the world is my representation (of my mind)". The only reality is the unitary Brahman. Schopenhauer says that the Indian sages had arrived at this through a different path though - not though erudite logical argumentation like Kant but through meditation.
3/3 Can I get a grab of the phenomenal?
Schopenhauer so far has said that what the phenomenal world of the unitary reality is not - it is beyond our perceptions. This reminds one of the "neti, neti (not this, not this)" searching for Brahman in the Upanishads.
Kant thought something like this. "People around me perceive a Kant and hence they all see Kant as they perceive. But what is the Kant in itself? What people perceive about Kant is his body and other empirical aspects that can be described by science since they are perceived by minds. Is there a Kant-in-itself whom nobody has access to?"
Kant postulated that his will, the will to do stuff was something phenomenal and that was the Kant in itself. He believes that his will and his moral realm was what is Kant-in-itself and nobody has access to it. Only a short jump here from will and moral accountability to the Atman and its karma that is all about moral accountability.
Schopenhauer postulated that since the will of a person is a part of the phenomenal world (thing in itself), he inferred two things.
1. The nature of the phenomenal world as it is, is characterized by will.
2. Since the phenomenal reality is One and Unitary, my will must be undifferentiated from the One universal Will. Does this remind you of
Atman = Brahman?
He thus concludes that the phenomenal One Reality (characterized as will) is perceived as a multiplicative noumenal world.
Schopenhauer so far has said that what the phenomenal world of the unitary reality is not - it is beyond our perceptions. This reminds one of the "neti, neti (not this, not this)" searching for Brahman in the Upanishads.
Kant thought something like this. "People around me perceive a Kant and hence they all see Kant as they perceive. But what is the Kant in itself? What people perceive about Kant is his body and other empirical aspects that can be described by science since they are perceived by minds. Is there a Kant-in-itself whom nobody has access to?"
Kant postulated that his will, the will to do stuff was something phenomenal and that was the Kant in itself. He believes that his will and his moral realm was what is Kant-in-itself and nobody has access to it. Only a short jump here from will and moral accountability to the Atman and its karma that is all about moral accountability.
Schopenhauer postulated that since the will of a person is a part of the phenomenal world (thing in itself), he inferred two things.
1. The nature of the phenomenal world as it is, is characterized by will.
2. Since the phenomenal reality is One and Unitary, my will must be undifferentiated from the One universal Will. Does this remind you of
Atman = Brahman?
He thus concludes that the phenomenal One Reality (characterized as will) is perceived as a multiplicative noumenal world.
Tweet 1/3: Shocking footage: Samidoun leader Mohammed Khatib tells a cheering crowd in Europe, "Defeating Israel means defeating the US... defeating Canada." This isn't just rhetoric—it's a direct call against Western nations. Watch and decide for yourself.
2/3 From a 2022 Brussels rally, but resurfacing now amid Belgium's 2025 decision to revoke Khatib's refugee status over alleged terror ties. He calls the US and Canada "colonial settlements" built on exploitation. Is this the face of "pro-Palestine" activism? What do you think?
3/3: Believe them when they say it out loud. Time for governments to act—deport threats like this. Repost if you agree Western countries need stronger borders and security. TL;DR: Old video, new urgency. Let's discuss below!
We’re sleepwalking towards disaster: This morning, on the eastbound lanes of Nairobi’s Southern Bypass (heading down from Kikuyu towards Mombasa Road), a fuel tanker had a mishap. Either a crash, or a mechanical breakdown that rendered it immobile.
ka-UZI
ka-UZI
Per someone who passed the scene before me, the lorry was leaking fuel in copious quantities. I got stuck in that traffic for almost an hour (getting horribly late for an important meeting while at it). Traffic inching forward, almost no one knowing what had caused the snarl up.
There was not a single traffic police officer or emergency worker trying to sort out the situation, direct traffic, or resolve the traffic jam. It would have taken just one careless smoker, or a chain dragging on the road trailing sparks, for an almighty ka-boom.
The European Union has triggered Article 122 to indefinitely immobilise the assets of the Russian Central Bank, worth a whopping €210 billion.
I explain what just happened and why this is such a big deal for Europeans.
🧵 Long thread.
I explain what just happened and why this is such a big deal for Europeans.
🧵 Long thread.
In the early days of Russia's war, the EU, in close coordination with G7 allies, agreed to immobilise the assets of the Russian Central Bank.
This was done under traditional EU sanctions, which depend on unanimity. Since then, the sanctions have been renewed every 6 months.
This was done under traditional EU sanctions, which depend on unanimity. Since then, the sanctions have been renewed every 6 months.
In the months that followed, the EU debated several ways to use those assets and "make Russia pay", as leaders repeatedly said.
In 2024, they decided to capture the windfall profits, estimated at €2.5-3 billion annually, to support Ukraine but without touching the assets.
In 2024, they decided to capture the windfall profits, estimated at €2.5-3 billion annually, to support Ukraine but without touching the assets.
This strange square 👇 is undoubtedly the most extraordinary work of literature in human history. Yet, unfortunately, barely anyone in the West has ever heard of it.
There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.
At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.
Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.
Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.
The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.
At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.
Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:
仁智懷德聖虞唐，
貞志篤終誓穹蒼，
欽所感想妄淫荒，
心憂增慕懷慘傷。
In pinyin, it is:
Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,
zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,
qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,
xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.
Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng
The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."
Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:
傷慘懷慕增憂心，
荒淫妄想感所欽，
蒼穹誓終篤志貞，
唐虞聖德懷智仁。
The pinyin:
Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,
huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,
cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,
táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.
It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén
And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."
That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!
At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:
詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."
Or reversed:
蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."
Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.
For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.
Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).
Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:
- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.
- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.
- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions
- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.
So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:
- A love letter (expressing personal longing)
- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)
- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)
- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)
- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision
And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".
Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.
The heart at the center was filled after all.
There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.
At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.
Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.
Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.
The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.
At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.
Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:
仁智懷德聖虞唐，
貞志篤終誓穹蒼，
欽所感想妄淫荒，
心憂增慕懷慘傷。
In pinyin, it is:
Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,
zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,
qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,
xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.
Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng
The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."
Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:
傷慘懷慕增憂心，
荒淫妄想感所欽，
蒼穹誓終篤志貞，
唐虞聖德懷智仁。
The pinyin:
Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,
huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,
cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,
táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.
It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén
And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."
That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!
At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:
詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."
Or reversed:
蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."
Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.
For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.
Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).
Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:
- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.
- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.
- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions
- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.
So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:
- A love letter (expressing personal longing)
- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)
- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)
- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)
- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision
And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".
Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.
The heart at the center was filled after all.
🤣
True, it's first and foremost an incredible love story!
What happens when your body is severely deficient in vitamin D?
These 11 bizarre symptoms may shock you.
You might not skip your vitamin D again after reading this:
1/ Your head starts sweating uncontrollably... 🧵
These 11 bizarre symptoms may shock you.
You might not skip your vitamin D again after reading this:
1/ Your head starts sweating uncontrollably... 🧵
This is one of the earliest and most unusual signs of vitamin D deficiency.
It is common in infants, but adults can experience it as well.
If your head sweats more than the rest of your body without heat or exertion, low vitamin D may be a potential cause.
It is common in infants, but adults can experience it as well.
If your head sweats more than the rest of your body without heat or exertion, low vitamin D may be a potential cause.
2/ Night sweats
A cool room should not leave your pillow damp.
Vitamin D plays a role in immune regulation and temperature control.
With a deficiency, the hypothalamus, the body’s temperature center, becomes dysregulated, which can trigger excess sweating.
A cool room should not leave your pillow damp.
Vitamin D plays a role in immune regulation and temperature control.
With a deficiency, the hypothalamus, the body’s temperature center, becomes dysregulated, which can trigger excess sweating.
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Remarkable how brutal the ruling against Trump on Abrego Garcia truly is: It details malicious abuses of power all throughout. Trump and Stephen Miller were testing their ability to spread lawless state terror. But the court held the line. 1/
(new piece)
newrepublic.com/article/204355…
(new piece)
newrepublic.com/article/204355…
For Trump/Miller, the Abrego Garcia case is a crucial gauge of how far they can get in disappearing undesirables/placing them beyond the law entirely.
Judge Xinis' ruling is important in that context. It calls out Trump's lawless conduct throughout. 2/
newrepublic.com/article/204355…
Judge Xinis' ruling is important in that context. It calls out Trump's lawless conduct throughout. 2/
newrepublic.com/article/204355…
For weeks, Trump officials have refused to send him to Costa Rica even though he said he'd accept that. The ruling details extensive misconduct here.
We all know what happened: Trump/Miller decided sending him there wouldn't be dehumanizing enough. 3/
newrepublic.com/article/204355…
We all know what happened: Trump/Miller decided sending him there wouldn't be dehumanizing enough. 3/
newrepublic.com/article/204355…
In 1936, Tolkien published a Christmas poem called "Noel" in the annual journal of a Catholic school near Oxford. For about 80 years the text of the poem was lost to history until Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull visited the school and found it in the archives. Here is the poem:
Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains' teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains' teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.
The lord of snows upreared his head;
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o'er hill and dale.
The world was blind, the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o'er hill and dale.
The world was blind, the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.
3 years ago, I heard a story about a man who sent a letter to 35,000 residents on the coast of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland telling them that a planned offshore wind farm would destroy their property values (which was false).
One weekend, he paid a pilot thousands of dollars to fly an aerial banner over the beach telling people the wind turbines would destroy their beautiful views.
He ran Facebook ads, wrote op-eds in newspapers, and did everything he could to tell people that Skipjack Wind would ruin life as they knew it.
Virtually all of this claims were false.
I love trawling through public documents so I started following the paper trail to learn more about this man. I learned that his nonprofit was funded by the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and part of a network of groups started by the Koch Brothers.
I tried to get in touch with him but he never answered my calls. So after a few weeks of reporting and research, I published my story to my newsletter, Distilled. Immediately it blew up and went viral, racking up millions of views. I still get calls and emails about it to this day.
This week, Canary Media published a story by Clare Fieseler profiling this man, David Stevenson. It's a beautifully written, rich, human story.
Clare told me that after reading my story she called David and he picked up. Over the next few years, she had a series of conversations with him to understand his motivations.
Reading the story this morning, I couldn't help but feel sad.
What started as a 35,000 person snail mail campaign soon blossomed into one of the most damaging disinformation campaigns in the country. Fox News ran many segments with the lies that David initially spread. Donald Trump soon took up many of his talking points. Now many blue-collar communities that were banking on offshore wind to revive their coastal economies are seeing infrastructure projects and federal funding cancelled.
David wasn't the only person responsible for the collapse of the offshore wind industry in America. But he was one of the most influential.
I highly recommend reading Clare's story linked in the comments below.
One weekend, he paid a pilot thousands of dollars to fly an aerial banner over the beach telling people the wind turbines would destroy their beautiful views.
He ran Facebook ads, wrote op-eds in newspapers, and did everything he could to tell people that Skipjack Wind would ruin life as they knew it.
Virtually all of this claims were false.
I love trawling through public documents so I started following the paper trail to learn more about this man. I learned that his nonprofit was funded by the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and part of a network of groups started by the Koch Brothers.
I tried to get in touch with him but he never answered my calls. So after a few weeks of reporting and research, I published my story to my newsletter, Distilled. Immediately it blew up and went viral, racking up millions of views. I still get calls and emails about it to this day.
This week, Canary Media published a story by Clare Fieseler profiling this man, David Stevenson. It's a beautifully written, rich, human story.
Clare told me that after reading my story she called David and he picked up. Over the next few years, she had a series of conversations with him to understand his motivations.
Reading the story this morning, I couldn't help but feel sad.
What started as a 35,000 person snail mail campaign soon blossomed into one of the most damaging disinformation campaigns in the country. Fox News ran many segments with the lies that David initially spread. Donald Trump soon took up many of his talking points. Now many blue-collar communities that were banking on offshore wind to revive their coastal economies are seeing infrastructure projects and federal funding cancelled.
David wasn't the only person responsible for the collapse of the offshore wind industry in America. But he was one of the most influential.
I highly recommend reading Clare's story linked in the comments below.
Here's the full story: canarymedia.com/articles/offsh…
“They believe in strength as morality.
The liberal view is ‘This is harsh; it’s inhuman; you’re punishing people who are weak, people who are defenseless.’
The flipside of this view morally is that those who are weak can be built up towards strength, and that is morality.”
The liberal view is ‘This is harsh; it’s inhuman; you’re punishing people who are weak, people who are defenseless.’
The flipside of this view morally is that those who are weak can be built up towards strength, and that is morality.”
This is the point the modern mass never grasps.
Morality is the standard by which a people judges conduct and character and determines what kind of man ought to be formed.
A serious moral order exists to shape mankind toward higher form. It sets demands and enforces discipline, treating self-command as a requirement rather than a preference. Its purpose is formative. It assumes that man must be trained and directed if he is to rise above impulse and drift. When morality abandons this role and concerns itself with comfort and reassurance, it ceases to order life and instead oversees decline.
We seek the restoration of a serious moral order.
Morality is the standard by which a people judges conduct and character and determines what kind of man ought to be formed.
A serious moral order exists to shape mankind toward higher form. It sets demands and enforces discipline, treating self-command as a requirement rather than a preference. Its purpose is formative. It assumes that man must be trained and directed if he is to rise above impulse and drift. When morality abandons this role and concerns itself with comfort and reassurance, it ceases to order life and instead oversees decline.
We seek the restoration of a serious moral order.