THE REGRESSIVE CULTURE
American education is in my opinion largely fraudulent, as anyone who knows me well has heard me say often enough. Indeed, I even spoke directly to this cultural lobotomization in the preface to Genes, Giants, Monsters, and Men:
"Pretty much anyone with half a brain, and who has not been lobotomized by the American "education" system or subjected to the psychedelic drugs and mind-numbing electro-shock of its dull university curricula, even duller professors, and to its "textbooks" that contain no primary texts, are agreed that something is wrong with our standard model of history, particularly the further back one goes. Only a university academic, for example, could believe that humanity was around for about 150,000 years (if one is to believe the geneticists), and doing nothing but "hunting and gathering," and then all of a sudden, and for no explicable reason, decided to invent civilizations such as Sumer(and all its Mesopotamian offshoots) and Egypt whole cloth, undertake monumental ziggurat or pyramid construction, invent calendars, agriculture, wheels, writing, mathematics, music, astronomy, banking, and maybe even electricity, as evidenced by the Baghdad Battery.
"Consequently, when it comes right down to it, we have a choice between fairy tales, or, if one prefer, between mythologies or dogmas.
"We can believe the hypnotic incantations of biology, history and anthropology professors waving their wands, and producing cute animated videos of the primordial soup gradually evolving into complex organic life (fish), whose fins gradually morph into limbs as they crawl out of the soup onto the sand (reptiles) and, as the computer-generated animation proceeds, gradually morphing into a veritable cornucopia of evolutionary progress over "billions of years" (insert Carl Sagan voice here)." (Genes, Giants, Monsters, and Men, p. iii.)
Well, I may have been far too optimistic when I composed those paragraphs, for indeed, choosing between various fairy tales requires a certain amount of literacy to begin with, and our American "culture," if indeed it can be qualified as a culture, has little time for real reading of real books, much less for critical thought and discourse, if the mumbling boobery of some of the Occupiers whom I've seen on TV are any indicator. One California lady blamed all the country's woes on the old scapegoat, "Zionist Jews", forgetting that not all Jews are Zionists, and forgetting equally that there are as many non-Jewish banksters in the elite as "Zionists". Don't get me wrong here, I am no friend of any movement that makes any group of people a privileged people by some divine right, be it the Yahwish covenant of the Old Testament or the Hegelian covenant of the Marxists and Nazis. How can one have an intelligent discussion with people who view other people in such a fashion?
Well, as I was pondering my cultural Angst, and the deterioration of the average American's level of knowledge of his own (or any other) history, the galloping errors of grammar, the somersaulting leaps of "logic", and the ever-present use of the word "like" in a stream of non-similes, someone shared this article by Fred Reed at Lew Rockwell's site, and it is one that I found so compelling I had to pass it along as it was passed along to me:
Reed is, I suspect, correct: the new ruling class's collective head is empty; it doesn't know what to preserve because it isn't even aware of the idea of "history" or "literature" or even of "culture." Mindless "musicians" subject us to a stready jungle drumbeat of unrelenting iambic pentameter pumped out over subwoofers in cars and claim the label of "artist" or "musician", never once thinking that other people might not want to hear their "music." Schools are places where the intelligent suffer hours of tedium and boredom, dumbing themselves down to a complacent edu-class of incompetence and nitwittery parading behind that quintessential signal of mediocrity, "Ed.D."
"The country is too far gone. But you needn't be cowed into regarding cretins as other than cretins," writes Reed toward the end of his piece. I fear he is correct here as well. I've advocated in some interviews that individuals try to retain beauty in their own lives, to redeem the ugliness of our current culture with a bit of beauty, and gradually to reclaim as much of the culture as possible. The reason, I think, is clear enough from Reed's article, for the elite itself is empty, has no culture; it's heads are empty, its slogans old, its techniques of manipulation all too transparent. We expect no skilled oratory from our politicians and leaders, for they are no longer capable of it, and even if they were, the vast majority wouldn't appreciate it anyway. We're entering a dark age, so it is up to us to use this marvelous tool, the internet, to keep some flames of beauty and intellectual discourse alive.
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Wow I couldn’t agree more when I think of my pursuit of a biology degree we had to buy these text books! Most of my instructors rarely if ever referenced them! But we had to have or buy them for what reason? Really these guys had their own way of teaching their course! Though I did scan and read the books, rarely did it matter or match any of the curriculum of the instructor ever. I took a course in Parasitology and I would guess the book was almost as old as I was and black and white pictures as I recall. And a vague as possible and expounding on the use of “out dated” very harmful chemical treatments similar to cancer chemo thereapy if not worse. And really this was a very obscure type course when It probably should have been a “root course” as I have often felt! How many diseases actually have a parasitic root? Including various types of cancers? Many an autopsy has found cancer patients bodies riddled with many and varied types of parasitic infections. And how can you teach a course without the working diagnostic equipment necessary! Many times it was well this is what it is supposed to look like! Like a course I took in spectroscopy which I dropped I guess sort of a weed out course I just didn’t have the imagination of the other students who needed the course to get their degree in Chemistry. Maybe University level but that would have really killed me and I did in fact take a shot but it was too much engineering type stuff for me to handle.
And how many frivolous wasted courses! You know liberal arts majors are the majority these days that is probably the most shocking thing as I recall! Why seek a science degree that I had to work my but off when the easy way would have been English or Literature or art. Or history but I will be honest I thought long and hard about history and or archeology or anthropology.
But it looks more and more like history is indeed repeating itself even if at first you don’t care to see it or want to believe it! Something tells me we are not the same country we used to be and getting worse and worse by the day.
I went back to a large church under new management and I had a eery feeling! I notices it was much harder for me then usual to bring on the presence of God! And maybe because I haven’t been quite as zealous as I used to be but it could be something else to and increase in the presence of evil. And the new switchover to this HD type system in their church! I still have the power and despite what people think I am still serving God and I can still release the power of God pretty much on demand! Maybe I will try it in several different churches that are not mandated into having camera’s and recording equipment. I know they can steal it from me on their recording systems and put it on say sermon tapes as a ploy obviously to sell more tapes or CD’s or whatever!
Most of them do not like us coming into their little brainwash belief sessions! They don’t want God or the Holy Spirit involved in their church business! Somebody might actually receive the Holy Spirit and like me begin to see what is really going on! They lose control over being able to tell what to do!
Boy do I know how out of it our elites are just witness the rogue gallery of canidates the Republican party has running for the presidency. The ones that seem to have a brain are crooks like Newt Gingrich,corporations are people Mitt Romnie or don’t have a chance Jon Houslman or Ron Paul the rest are a bunch of clowns Perry and Bacmann what a pathic choice. As one of the motto’s of Oceania states ignorence is strength
I couldn’t agree more with Dr Farrell on the state of the education system or pacification system as i call it. Unfortunately it is not just an american phenomenon, i am from australia and see the same things here. I notice. with i suppose an increasing sense of horror, that as each generation is churned out of these institutions of mass hypnosis they seem to be getting dumber and dumber. These institutions seem to only produce sheeple as i suppose they are intended to if we all remember what rockeffellor said about producing workers.
I no longer read newspapers or watch tv because it is all c##p. I am just glad that there are sites like this where i can get my morning dose of reality and sanity. Thanks all
JUST LEAVE THEM BEHIND, NATURE WILL SORT IT OUT
Frustrating is an understatement to describe conversations with people that watch and believe FOX news. I can’t watch anything anymore, it’s all either lying to me or telling me I’m anxious and need “medication”.
These people have a similar look in their eyes to the religious, that glazed over look of being half asleep. If you see that look, don’t bother. Move on. The truth is that if a wave of understanding really came forth, they would jump on that bandwagon like everything else. So for the moment, just let them go. Concentrate on the ones who can be saved.
There are those of us who have been retarded and hurt by American education and need the help of people like Dr. Farrell. Education is the worst, TV is second bringing us interpersonal relationships that suffer drama like the “Real Bickering Hags of Orange County”. We have been attacked for decades (successfully), and we are retarded.
To the casualties of TV, to the guy who constantly comments on the GizaDeathStar website, screaming, “I am IMPORTANT!!” I am dysfunctional and alone, please hear my thoughts so I can matter! -(and I don’t care that they bore the shit out of you)”
Just let go and don’t waste any energy on them.
I am acquainted with two young people who entered college several years ago with their wits about them, ambitious and intellectually curious. After several years of American University and its nitwit curriculum, its status quo propaganda and a diet of junk food, junk tv and junk drugs, they have been turned into brain dead hedonists. Its really sad and shocking. One of them may actually graduate from a fairly reputable school without ever having read a book due to the fact that all reading assignments are on the computer.
College has really become not just a place for your daughter to have an inter racial sexual experience or your son to develop a drug and alcohol problem, but it has become a re-education camp and with the help of Israeli and CIA made synthetic designer drugs, it is producing complete good for nothing zombies. Add to this the fascistic police presence in the dormitories with the drug sniffing dogs and you have a generation of people who think a police state is normal. The only good thing is that they will make terrible soldiers or will be total incapable of monitoring surveillance cameras for Homeland Security with any competency when they are out of college.
As far as being in the dark ages, as hard as it is to believe, we are actually out of the dark ages. The Kali Yuga ended over 300 years ago. The positive, life affirming cosmic energy from the Gallactic center is not longer being obstructed by the Dark Sun. The Lords of the Kali Yuga, the worshippers of the Dark Sun, the Ugly Ones, are now on the wrong side of time and will have to work extra hard to maintain what they have. But they are now exposed to the light of the Galactic Sun and their machinations are now there for all to see. They have run their course and will now have to disappear back into the cracks for another 10,000 years while mankind attempts once again to make permanent a Golden Age..
yes, i recall a book i think, a few years ago titled along the lines of Denaissance in contrast to renaissance of course
I was going to add my interpretations of a Regressive Culture that I think parallels what Farrell wrote about but does anyone have a couple of months to kill?
I’ll just keep it simple stupid and cite what Herman Hesse said about his early elementary education in some of the biographical novels he written —- “SOUL MURDER.”
I aint stupid and I aint simple. I am just a FOOL!
To prove it I present this prose poem by Baudelaire called
VEMUS AND THE MOTLEY FOOL
What a wonderful day! The vast park lies swooning under the
sun’s burning eye, like youth under Love’s dominion.
Not a sound gives voice to the universal ecstacy of things;
even the waters seem to be asleep. Quite unlike human holidays,
this is an orgy of silence.
It is as though an ever more luminous light kept making
each object glitter with an ever more dazzling splendor; as
though the frenzied flowers were trying to rival the azure of the
sky by the intensity of their colors, as though the heat, mak-
ing the perfumes visible, were drawing them up to the sun
like smoke.
Yet, in the midst of all this universal joy I caught sight of a
grief-stricken soul.
At the feet of a colossal Venus, all of a heap against the
pedestal, one of those so-called fools, those voluntary buffoons
who, with cap and bells and tricked out in a ridiculous and
gaudy costume, are called upon to make kings laugh when they
are beset by Boredom or Remorse, raises his tear-filled eyes
toward the immortal Goddess.
And his eyes say: “I am the least and the loneliest of men,
deprived of love and friendship, wherein I am inferior even to
the lowest animals. Yet I, too am made to understand and to
feel immortal Beauty!” Ah! Goddess! take pity on my fever
and my pain!”
But the implacable Goddess with her marble eyes continues
to gaze into the distance, at I know not what.
———————————————————————-
Have a lovely Sunday Afternoon Stroll – Today.
Me having had four automotive automatic transmissions go out on me in my life, one of them in a truck that I presently own, I am taking a class in automatic transmissions at a local junior college. For added personal edification, I am studying the historical development of the automatic transmission and I constructed a database of over sixty different types.
Upon offering free copies of this database to my classmates, all of which are studying to be auto mechanics, I find that none of them are interested. One classmate even asked me with mild scorn in his voice, “What are you doing THAT for?”
After a little inquiry I find out that to a man (although two of them are actually women), the point of them taking this course is to be able to show a prospective employer a piece of paper with a record of having completed a mechanic’s curriculum. NONE of them are actually interested in how automatic transmissions actually work or the physics of how planetary gears explode…er…operate, or the historical development of the automatic transmission.
It’s NOT about actually learning anything or acquiring any knowledge. It’s about just getting a stamp on a piece of paper.
I once ridden in a car that broke down (I was hitch-hiking) and the guy pulled out a doctor’s steno-scope and listened to the engine. Then he proceeded to take – extensively whatever, apart, and fixed it ( it took an hour or so) After which we continued down THE ROAD for a few more hundred miles.
I guess he was a mechanic’s doctor, ha, ha!
Was there any MEXICAN’S in your Class! They seem to know their stuff when it comes to cars. ( It figures when your poor you make due with what you got especially when all you can afford are clunkers)
Good mechanics use stethoscopes, though a rod or dowel can also work. In fact a mechanic’s stethoscope has a rod at the end not a drum. Sears carries these stethoscopes.
No. Only black’s& whites.
Citizen Quasar:
Not surprised no one in the class wanted actual automatic transmission information, and not surprised that a trade school like setting is full of those uninterested in the course of study.
Most people interested in cars, take them apart and put them together, and tweak things for their own edification. Same goes for the study of many things.
However given your repeated problems with automatic transmissions, why not get a car with a manual gear box? They’re better than automatics and last longer.
“One California lady blamed all the country’s woes on the old scapegoat, ‘Zionist Jews’, forgetting that not all Jews are Zionists…”
She did not ‘forget that not all Jews are Zionists…’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksnXNmjzMsU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXJGuQDXi60
DARKMOON UPON AMERICA, BY ISRAEL SHAMIR: Response, Pictures and Captions by Lasha Darkmoon
http://www.darkmoon.me/2011/darkmoon-upon-america-by-israel-shamir-response-pictures-and-captions-by-lasha-darkmoon/
Note: Very interesting comments and links for further reading provided in the comments section accessed by the link above. – sc
“…and forgetting equally that there are as many non-Jewish banksters in the elite as ‘Zionists’.”
Joseph, I think the facts will prove that the pinnacle of the banking elite are indeed Jews.
I couldn’t agree more.
http://www.DeliberateDumbingDown.com
Gosh, I hope I spelled that right
“George Orwell once remarked that some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them.
‘No ordinary man could be such a fool,’ Orwell said.”
Here’s a Noam Chomsky quote.
After mentioning a bit about how the leaders of the axis powers and the Soviet Union probably believed that they were acting from the highest possible motives, he says:
“It is remarkably easy to believe what it is convenient to believe. That’s the secret of being a “responsible intellectual,” someone who serves power abjectly while believing oneself to be an independent thinker.”
God (the Creator) Bless you Joseph Farrell. Yourself, like Dr Judy Wood and some others, are truly the only flickering flames of hope left in this country and world.
Life is getting very scary indeed!
Hear, Hear.
Well said, Joseph P. Farrell.
Well said, Fred Reed
I thoroughly appreciate the clear, articulate words (and the thoughtful feelings behind them) on this site.
This is one of the sites which is actually giving me hope during this dark night of the planet’s soul.
I say this from my heart: please don’t stop writing, Joseph.
Warm regards,
Pamela
Joseph,
On the Byte show, Georganne mentioned that you are a composer. Is your music recorded?
I was wondering the same myself. I am primarily interested in your “Giza” series of books. But since you are a musician too, and George Ann always mentions this, I am curious to hear some of your compositions.
oooo
I’ve written songs,
but I don’t think of ‘me’ as a “composer.”
I just write ANYTHING !
And I happen to take music;
such a long time ago.
Ooops !
Did I but in?
Sorry Naomi.
I’ll ask Joseph again.
Have you written music, Joseph?
NEAT !
For the most part Dr. Farrell is on the mark in his analysis. The global corporations and the punishing state are now the dominate story tellers and influence in children’s lives and in shaping their futures according to the interests of the market. The rise of this ‘economics’ may be due to the fall of ‘politics’, the free market is fundamentally an argument against politics. Under market sovereignty a culture of critical thinking/learning and engagement is replaced by a culture of disengagement, discontinuity, and forgetting.
Higher education as a whole continues to drift fitfully toward the narrow mission of job training and away from more complex democratic mission of empowering critical citizenship.
Today in Amerika there is no Higher Learning.
There is Higher Training.
http://www.presstv.ir/program/209706.html
This is a 23 minute video explaining economic capital capturing political capital
College has been about job training since WW2, though it has become increasingly inept to that end. College does little to prepare you for any job anymore. By making degrees mandatory for pretty much every job out there, it has made them become worthless. Plus the ever increasing requirements, whay once needed a BS now needs an MS, etc. There is no where left to go. Degree programs are full of irrelevant courses that waste student time and money, electives have all but disappeared, pre reqs have nothing to do with the courses they preempt. Its a mess.
A mess for those in Amerika, as the industries and their support systems(including research & development) tend to centralize around the main hub, which today is increasingly in China. Still, the trend is that the ‘robotics/software programing’ is moving inexorably up the ‘jobs’ specialized food chain, in almost all industrial sectors, including what some regard as ‘untouchable’ sectors. Lawyers being one example/’they’ want to take human out of the equation, too expensive. In fact, the military, in digitizing the battlefield with the aforementioned parabola of specialization, is finding the ‘human’ a BIG problem in their sacred kill-chain. Too human/too slow.
The economy should not be geared to the profit god; but instead, to a better world for all, including other living beings.
Otherwise, the kill-chain may indeed find that moving us out of the equation = the solution.
Lew Rockwell is the guy that published a bunch of lies about Objectivism a few weeks ago, or at least that’s when somebody linked those lies to one of my comments. While the exerts that you post from this article are witty and fun to read, I have a very bad taste in my mouth from Lew Rockwell LYING about Objectivism. (When ARE they going to put that word into spell checkers along with Existentialism and Logical Positivism, names that were considered for Objectivism that were passed up in favor of Objectivism as they were already in use.)
Further, there is a gagging in my throat, much like that letter in the Arabic alphabet which is so difficult for English speakers to comfortably pronounce, due to Lew’s lies.
Uh…lies, yes LIES. I am sorry (note the sarcasm here), Joseph. Once I encounter someone who is willing to lie thru their teeth to make their point, especially about something as obvious and demonstrable as Objectivism, I no longer bother to read anything they say.
As for most American “culture,” There is none. Used to be. But not anymore. The dumb masses have taken over and RARE is anyone who can read or carry on a basic conversation to be found, much less anyone of any intellect.
Objectivism is patently false on the face of it. If all is mind, there is no objective anything to k ow. Even if there was an objective reality, we, being creatures of perception and interpretation are wholly incapable of experiencing it as it is. All knowledge is subjective approximation. I haven’t seen Lew lie about Rand. I am disturbed by your worship of her though.
“‘There is no such thing as existence'” she said, blanking out the fact that she must exist in order to have made that statement.”
—Ayn Rand
I am glad that you have posted that my thoughts “disturb” you as this proves beyond the shadow of any doubt that you are indeed a disturbed individual; or a web bot.
Seek help. Perhaps “Jay” will help you. Reach for the ropes and tag him in.
So you quote an illogical inconsistency to bolster my case about her/your fundamentalism? What disturbs me about you is your mindless devotion to a person made into a god figure. How can you take anyone seriously who claims smoking is a moral imperative?
I notice that ENTIRE criticism section on Wiki’s Objectivist page has been removed. The minions must be active.
1st: There is zero reason or rationale for you to be “disturbed” by anything that I think. This shows either a serious neurosis on your part or a flaw in your programming.
2nd: My devotion is to objectivism (note the lower case ‘o’) and NOT to a person. So I am certainly NOT elevating any person to any “god figure.” My devotion to objectivism is well thought-out and logically reasoned, based on the axioms of Existence, Consciousness, and Identity; the underpinnings of objective reality. So your use of the phrase “mindless” to describe my thought process is ridiculous; look in a mirror and you will see a “mindless” “person.”
3rd: Ayn Rand NEVER described her cigarette smoking as a “moral imperative.” You are proffering a blatant lie in saying as much.
4th: “I notice that ENTIRE criticism section on Wiki’s Objectivist page has been removed. The minions must be active.” Oh well.
You’re not listening, I didn’t say I was disturbed by what you have to say, I am disturbed by your zealot like attitude and your near worship of Rand.
Devotion to ideology is a dead end because it means you cannot grow or see other points of view. It is the willful decision to stop learning. If you had thought long enough about it you should have seen that logic is a very limited tool and can only take you so far.
Not Rand but her followers.
Censorship is only practiced by those who are in the wrong. Truth needs no editor.
Response to “Spirit Splice says:
November 13, 2011 at 3:04 pm”
If I just substitute the word “concerned” for the word “disturbed,” which is implicit in your use of the word “disturbed” anyway, then your responses are identical to any government anywhere; ESPECIALLY that of the Fascist States of Amerika (Jesse Ventura’s term) who pretend to be so concerned about people but that is just their ruse.
So it is obvious that if you are not a web bot then you ARE a government agent of some type similar to the same disturbed people who grab men’s, women’s, and children’s crotches at the airports because they are so “concerned” when in reality they are nothing but a bunch of pedophiles and sex perverts.
Since, according to Ayn Rand, the arbitrary is NOT to be allowed into one’s knowledge base, I am going to assign a value of FALSE to you being a real person and TRUE to you being a computer program (web bot).
Take your Turing test and go elsewhere.
Hey Quasar:
Are you aware of David Harrriman’s series of lectures called “The Philosophic Corruption of Physics”? The title pretty much explains what he talks about.
Available from the Ayn Rand Institute.
5 hours that will blow (some people’s) your mind!
Worth every penny.
I am aware that ARI doesn’t think very highly of quantum physics but I have never heard of this. I will check it out. Thanks.
I worry about all this superiority outlook in this room. It seems like an INTELLECTUAL’s occupational habit/hazard! [(kind of like a neo-aristicratic nietszche(ism—-yeah, I fell for that delusion too!)] Do it too often and find yourself in a dilly of a fix! I don’t need to worry for I just look at my non-existent bank-book and I get some idea?
I use to sit at a bar stool with others and we use to solve all the problems in the world til one of us fell off the stool, ha, ha!
It’s not about what you know but WHO YOU ARE!
If we are who we are everything else that comes out of our mouths will be JUST RIGHT!
I don’t know whether to take it as a hint or it’s some computer glitch on this web site. (MY POST DISAPPEARED) If my comments were somewhat off the mark then I imagine they were.
I feel Farrell doesn’t want his web site to be an ARENA of personality TIT-FOR-TAT games even if I feel I can BEST a CHEEZY opponent going by the name CHUCKY. (notice who attacked who and I am sure you have —I am in my RIGHTS but this is your site and I am not offended if the disappearing post was intentional))
aim at SUPERIOR FORCES!!!! (isn’t that what Neitzsche proclaimed a worthy opponent or is this just more delusion. He died in a considerable permanent mental-state which I would never want TO FOLLOW or EXPERIENCE!)
BE KINDER but ISAY IT?
Should tell,
Kind of reminds me of a famous Western Photographer of the 19th century who framed some very beautiful works for posterity. He suffered because of his brand-new inventive-occupation.
Just imagine many novice psychological alchemists,
NOT-KNOWING BAD VAPORS ARISE IN EXPERIMENTATION.