Philosophy's boldest line:

"God is Dead"

Everyone on the internet misunderstands it...

A thread on what Nietzsche actually meant (and why it matters): 1/ In The Gay Science (1882), Nietzsche announces God's death as a tragedy...NOT a celebration

For Nietzsche, God wasn't a useless burden, a liability, or an irrational filter that distorted our view of reality. The metaphors Nietzsche uses for God are reverential

Let's see...

As the world gets crazier, there is one name you will hear more often: Nicolás Gómez Dávila

He wrote 1 book. Published ONLY a 100 copies...

But he's the best teacher on why societies need MYTHS to live

Without myths, collapse is inevitable

A thread👇🏻 1/ A culture that ignores its distinct DNA, and embraces homogenization, is signing its own death warrant

Dávila:

"Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference toward the unique values which created it."

It is 1928

One professor writes a best-selling parenting guide...

THEN 3 of his own kids commit suicide

Meet John Watson: the father of Behaviorism

A story of scientific arrogance, the meaning of love, and one "expert" with blood on his hands👇🏻 1/ Dr. John Watson was a man of bold claims

He believed he could turn a random infant into “any type of specialist” from doctor to artist to a thief - “regardless of his talents, tendencies, abilities”

How?

With psychological conditioning and other behaviorist tools

G.K. Chesterton's best book: Orthodoxy (1908)

Here are its 10 best ideas:

1/ Love precedes lovability: "Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her." 1/ Love precedes lovability because a "primary devotion" to a place, thing, or person is the source of the creative energy that transforms it. Begin with love, not scorn. Commitment beautifies

The most canceled woman in the world: Camille Paglia

In Sexual Personae, she attacks liberalism, feminism, and Nature-worship like no other writer before or since

On her 77th birthday today, discover her insights on why science is cope, how civilization is masculine, and more👇🏻 1/ Liberalism's great paradox

Paglia: "Liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturant mother"

Feminism wants the tyrant father to solve all grievances (mean words on twitter) while being an all-permissive mother otherwise

A big contradiction

In 1997, Hans Eysenck died the most cited psychologist in the world. THEN he was posthumously cancelled. An enquiry said his work was "unsafe"

Code for "problematic but TRUE"

Eysenck studied human intelligence and discovered 8 traits common to geniuses across history. A thread: 1/ Geniuses have big egos

Eysenck: "Your typical genius is a fighter"

Since geniuses are original, their "battle against orthodoxy is endless"

Potential geniuses with no fighting zeal feel resistance and GIVE UP. Actualized geniuses are disagreeable

They got "inner strength"

Falling birthrate explanations are laughably bad

"Household chores" chores are easier yet birthrates fall

"Poverty" people are richer yet birthrates fall!

ACTUAL explanation is the disappearance of patriarchy which used to align young women (and men) with the future The welfare-obsessed, happiness-centered, "live in the present" crowd CAN NOT create the future. Future is made via long-term thinking, understanding second order consequences, and sacrifices. But a gynocratic world only cares about optimizing present safety with present pleasure

You can ignore symbols, BUT your enemies will not

Communists did not...

After taking power, the first thing communists did was INVERT the meaning of 3 traditional symbols

Julius Evola explains in a 1928 essay: The Inversion Of Symbols

Dig in👇🏻 1/ Evola writes that modern revolutionary movements take "the principles, the forms, and the traditional symbols" of healthier societies from the past and give them a NEW spin

He digs into 3 symbols:

• The color red
• The word revolution
• The symbol of the pentagrammic star

SOURCE of modern man's weakness, stupidity, and general lack of vitality?

His leisure activities

Aldous Huxley predicted the degeneracy of modern amusements in a 103 year old essay: Pleasures (1920)

Huxley on why and how to radically rewire the way you spend your free time👇🏻 1/ Aldous Huxley writes that pleasures must not be an escape from effort

In fact, they must be unavailable *without* effort

Why? Because when preceded by effort, pleasure reinvigorates

But when preceded by nothing, pleasure retards your brain's reward systems

Julius Evola wrote in 1932 that modern science is a "fundamentally socialist" enterprise

Scientists accept "as true only what can be universally recognized, which anyone can assent to, whatever life he allows himself to live"

BUT why must truth be the property of all? A thread:
1/ “Democratic, impersonal, and collectivist presuppositions” are central to science

"Results not replicated" = a labrat somewhere could not see what you can saw

Science is hostile to people who are interested in aristocratic and personal truths - in the vision of the HEIGHTS

Ancient Rome was the world's most powerful empire for 500 years

At its height, Rome boasted of roads, public baths, and much else that was close to miraculous for the rest of the planet

Then came the Great Fall...

What happened has lessons for the world TODAY

A thread👇🏻 1/ In his book The City In History (1961), Lewis Mumford explains how Rome went from "Megalopolis to Necropolis." This great city set up its own demise in two ways: Panem et circenses. That is: "bread and circuses." Mumford: "Success underwrote a sickening parasitic failure."

Tucker Carlson: "Moscow has not been degraded by postmodern architecture that destroys your spirit"

Chris Cuomo: "You believe postmodern architecture is designed to kill your spirit?!"

Tucker: "Of course." Cuomo: "Why?"

Tucker's answer will blow your mind. A rant for the ages: Intrigued?

You need to read Chapter 16 of my book:

"Rage, Rage Against Modern Architecture"

Get your copy: jashdholani.gumroad.com/l/hitreverse

The Unabomber Manifesto🧵

Ted Kaczynski’s IQ: 167
Harvard admission: At 15
Youngest ever math prof, UCB: At 25
Money spent by FBI to find him: $50+ mil

The manifesto attacks modern civilization like nothing else before or since

13 best insights from a Philosopher-Terrorist👇🏻 1/ Kaczynski lists the 4 big problems with modern civilization:

- “Excessive density of population”
- “Isolation of man from nature”
- “Excessive rapidity of social change”
- “The breakdown of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village, the tribe”

In D.H. Lawrence’s hypnotic and powerful short story SUN (1928), Juliet, a sick woman, is prescribed sun therapy by her doctor. She starts sunbathing naked and magical changes happen in her body, psyche, and being. The “cold dark clots of her thoughts” start dissolving. A thread: 1/ Juliet’s sun-bathing sessions turn her into an aristocrat:

She develops a “contempt for human beings altogether”

Why?

Because they are “un-elemental” and “unsunned”

As if they are “graveyard worms” - always “innerly cowed” and afraid of the “natural blaze of life”

Alexander the Great won 9 battles

Julius Caesar won 16

Napoleon? THIRTY EIGHT

17 of them with impossible odds. Half a dozen EMPIRES had to join hands to stand a chance against him. Yet his wife slept with other men. The tragic love story of one of the greatest men of all time: 1/ Joséphine

An aristocrat’s daughter, a widow, mother of 2. Also 6 years older than Napoleon

On the marriage certificate she increased Napoleon’s age by 1.5 years and decreased hers by 4. Wedding was officiated by an illegitimate priest

Napoleon was just an army officer

In 1908, Marinetti survived a car crash, climbed out of the wreck, and wrote The Futurist Manifesto

116 years later, it's still the WAR-CRY of men willing to "leave good sense behind" and build the future

Here's The Futurist Manifesto on violence, beauty, and speed. A thread: 1/ Futurists are men in revolt against the world, and they are proud to stand alone

Marinetti:

"Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost..."

Reject stoicism. Reject Buddhism. Even the room lizard is "tranquil." Get ATTACHED. Everything great is downstream of (strong) desires. Latin root for desire is "de sidere," which translates to "from the stars." An intense desire is a gift from the Gods above. A gift of direction Nihilism is the number one psychological sickness of our time. And what is nihilism but the inability to desire anything? The heartbreak of desire unfulfilled is dark and vast, but better a broken heart than a frozen one. Desire is the engine of life. Without it, stagnation

H.L. Mencken hated modernity, opposed the New Deal, and was against American entry into WW-II

His productivity was legendary: he wrote more than 10 million words over his lifetime...

Mencken's most powerful idea:

Democracy is not a solution but a PROBLEM. Dig in👇🏻 1/ Early democrats didn’t care for “the democratic ideal” at all

They had “highly materialistic” demands instead: “more to eat, less work, higher wages, lower taxes”

The masses didn’t wish to “exterminate the baron” but only to make him fulfill his “baronial” duties

Issac Newton was an alchemist. Alan Turing thought telepathy is real. It's undeniable at this point that people at the upper bounds of intelligence are quasi-mystics. A material universe made of inert atoms is for midwits only Reading old books is a great cure for midwit-ism. You learn that past geniuses did not, infact, "trust the experts." William James was a parapsychology researcher. Wolfgang Pauli, who Einstein called his "spiritual heir," thought he could break lab equipment from a different city

John Fowles explains in "The Aristos" (1964) how high IQ can subvert your will to act: "High intelligence leads to multiplicity of interest and a sharpened capacity to foresee the consequences of any action. Will is lost in a labyrinth of hypothesis." Rule 1: Do not lose the will Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground is a brutal attack on overthinking. The protagonist is a "modern" man getting high on his own reason. He's a coward but thinks it's ok because he can play with abstractions well. (Plot twist: it's not, in fact, ok)

https://x.com/0437F2basilica/status/1764295809779044357?s=20

Napoleon was a master orator

But we would NOT know this without Balzac

In 1838, Balzac went through all of Napoleon speeches

And saved his best insights in a book. 10 bangers from the king👇🏻

1/ "I found the Crown of France lying in the gutter, and picked it up with my sword." 1/ Napoleon on freedom:

"If one analyses it, political freedom is an accepted myth thought up by those governing to put the governed to sleep."

Power is always concentrated at the top -

Different political systems and doctrines are merely different ways of hiding this fact