TIDBIT: JON RAPPAPORT COMMENTS ON COLLECTIVISM, THE “LESSER OF ...

This I had to share, because it is the sort of cultural critique and analysis that I think is timely. Regardless of where one stands on Ayn Rand and her two masterpieces (and I freely confess, I've long been a Rand fan, though certainly wouldn't endorse everything in her philosoohy), The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. What is being snuffed out in our stinking sinking garbage barge, our strip mall of a culture (and my thanks to my friend Rick Dubov's friend Ron Spencer for those apt descriptions), is artistic vision and creativity, whether that of the scientist, the engineer, the painter, the poet, the composer, is individuality. Rappaport, I think, speaks to something profoundly wrong in our society:

AYN RAND AND BARACK OBAMA

I was moved to share this, because when the President made his remarks, I thought, "wait a minute..." Yes, I had my mentors, my influential teachers - Dennis Joel Hochhalter, my master in pipe organ, Dr. Theodore Martin Williams in theology, Bishop Kallistos Ware of Oxford, Fr. John Meyendorff of St Vladimir's Seminary, Dr Andrew Bowling in biblical studies - and many masters whose works I read or who inspired me, many friends who forged views and debated views with me through many conversations, like my friend Dr. Scott de Hart, or Daniel Jones, or ... well, you get the idea. And I am grateful to all of them and indebted beyond words. But none of them are responsible for my views, my research, or my books. I may be wrong in many of those things and probably am, that is the great thing about creating and researching, because inevitably onewill be proved wrong in this or that point or even a whole cluster of details. That's what it is about: creating, individuality, the absolutely irreducible uniqueness of every person.

This is what Rand saw so clearly; Rappaport is right.

See you on the flip side.

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Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

34 Comments

  1. Daniel Jones on July 29, 2012 at 5:34 pm

    Thanks for the reference Joseph and the friendship that we’ve shared for many years now. I probably have enough socratic dialogue between the two of us to form a book someday.



  2. Joey Kundalini on July 25, 2012 at 6:58 pm

    Rappaport’s idea of the powerful individual is the modern day hipster who prides himself on being one step ahead of Madison avenue and the starter of trends. Shaping the collective but not really being free of the collective.

    “Parasites want you to believe you’re just a drop of water in the great ocean, and once you attain “higher consciousness” you’ll give in and float in the sea, and you’ll offload that oh-so primitive concept of yourself as Self. You’ll be One with all the other undifferentiated drops of water.”

    Spoken like a man who has never stepped outside his own ego. A sad philosophy. This type of “individual” lays in bed at night fearing his impending death. Now that is what I call givng into the collective. Achieving higher consciousness is the sole means to liberating oneself from the collective, including the collective of planetary and stellar energy. Higher Consciousness is the Great Liberator and the source of all real power. It is Infinite understanding which leads to Infinite power.

    I have seen men like this and what happens to them when they die. Just go visit a large scale poultry processing warehouse like Tyson’s.



    • HAL838 on July 26, 2012 at 12:59 am

      Not gotten around to Ayn Rand
      but I have placed ‘her’ on my book shelf
      and you, Kundalini, ‘right’ here



  3. Hal Hichler on July 25, 2012 at 10:56 am

    Timely article as I just watched a BBC documentary about North Korea the other day called “State of Mind (you can see it on youtube)” and was starting to contemplate the ultimate revisionist leap that maybe North Korea has got it right– the near perfected collective where all the people are happy, healthy, industrious and busy and not slothful and schizophrenic like those living in the Bankster realm. Instead of institutional religion, they worship the Leader along with the Sacred Mountain. I’d say that beats worshipping Yahweh any day. They emphasize the family unit above all compared to to our twisted collective where the family unit has been obliterated (by design). The educational sytem channels them into those careers they seem to have the aptitude for– a street sweeper’s daughter can be a physics professor or musician, if they are so inclined without hurdles such as lack of funds to pursue higher education or a host of social plagues like video games,legal and illegal drugs, lame brain tv programming, violent neighborhoods etc. , to stymie their aspirations.

    They are forced to listen to government radio propaganda for several hours a day but that is not much different than the US where most Americans have bankster propaganda blaring from their televisions the entire time they are awake. In the case of the North Koreans they are being kept abreast of the “Imperialist” dogs who killed 4 million of them in a 3 year’s time and have actively tried to undermine their brave society ever since with embargos, weather manipulation, designer crop plagues, and much more. I’d say their giant acrobatic extravaganzas on national holidays where thousands of volunteers participate blow the doors off our ridiculous super bowl half time shows and whatever else stand for our national culture nowadays.

    Funny, watching the documentary I realized how our anti-North Korea propaganda is even more ridiculous than their anti-imperialist propaganda. At least their propaganda is based in some fact. I remember watching a tv report years ago where it was reported that North Koreans had numerous markets where human flesh was sold as food due to rampant starvation.
    The sneers and condescension of the BBC filmmakers also drove this point home to me. The purpose of the documentary was to point out how absurd the North Korean collective was. But it only made me realize how pathetic our engineered collective is. As far as I can tell, the North Koreans just want to have a society free of the influence of Babylon banksters. So do I. And if you don’t believe we live in a collective of sinister design where we are manipulated down to the level of our DNA, then you are sadly deluded. There are Russian scientists who can turn a frog embryo into a salamander just by bombarding its DNA with the right frequencies. I suspect the same is being done to us.

    Please, no one suggest with their conditioned by the collective patriotic response that I go to North Korea as I don’t find the women attractive.



  4. Jedi on July 24, 2012 at 3:31 pm

    gifted, beautiful and intelligent and the desire too be left alone too pursue lifes pleasures…. the philosophy of little orphan Annie



  5. Thomas on July 24, 2012 at 12:51 pm

    What If FOX News Covered Abraham Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address?

    LINCOLN SHOWS CONTEMPT FOR OUR SOLDIERS, SNUBS THE HONORABLE EDWARD EVERETT AND HIS AUDIENCE, AND CALLS FOR MORE BLOODSHED AT GETTYSBURG CEREMONY

    Thursday, November 19, 1863
    By Liegen Schriftsteller
    Gettysburg, Pennsylvania – In an appalling display of contempt and disrespect, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a short, sneering lecture to a crowd gathered to dedicate the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg Pennsylvania. In a stark and arid contrast to the 2-hour oration of the Honorable Edward Everett, former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and United States Secretary of State; Lincoln shredded the honor bestowed by Mr. Everett on the fallen and the proceedings, dismissed the events of the battle fought there four months earlier, called for more blood – all this in less than two minutes! Where Mr. Everett honored the sacred dead and the solemn occasion by preparing a thoughtful and moving oration, Lincoln could not be bothered to prepare something lasting even 1/60 the time of Mr. Everett’s speech. (Our sources report that after hurriedly boarding the train back to Washington, Lincoln complained of a headache and of feeling ill. No doubt repulsed by the crowd and his duties)

    The Honorable Mr. Everett began with humility and respect, acknowledging the awesome setting: “it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature.” Mr. Everett linked today’s solemn events to the centuries old traditions of the Greeks of honoring the dead. Lincoln offered no such acknowledgement. Instead, he belittled the occasion with the statement that “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.”

    In fact Lincoln went so far as to state that “We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives…” and that “It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” But instead of doing so, he contemptuously refuses, declaring, “we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground.” A citizen would be challenged indeed to find a clearer, more blatant slap in the faces of the heroes who died, their surviving loved ones, Mr. Everett, and Our Lord.

    Deeply grateful to our soldiers, Mr. Everett asks, “Who that hears me has forgotten the thrill of joy that ran through the country on the 4th of July…” when news of the Union victory was spread. He proudly asserted that “in every loyal bosom a throb of tender and sorrowful gratitude to the martyrs who had fallen on the sternly contested field. Let a nation’s fervent thanks make some amends for the toils and sufferings of those who survive. Would that the heartfelt tribute could penetrate these honored graves!” No so for Lincoln. What has this bitter sullen president have to say about our fallen heroes? That “they who fought here” left us with “unfinished work.” Work that can only be accomplished with the slaughter of more Americans and that can only result in a bigger more intrusive and controlling federal government.



  6. wdon on July 24, 2012 at 8:39 am

    Not one of Rappaport’s better rants. Muddled thinking abounds.



  7. Greg on July 24, 2012 at 3:38 am

    Caught in the Charybdis of collectivism and radical individualism. True freedom requires one to be ordered to the Principle or in the words of St. Theophan the Recluse. to have one’s “heart turned towards God.” Individualism is the negation of any principle higher than individuality: humanism in a word. It is consequently a deviation and part of the disorder of the descending, current cycle. Collectivism is a negation of quality (essence), which reduces the individual to a unit, a quantity, a clump of materia secunda without its form. Both are symptoms of the modern project which originates, historically, in univocity and nominalism.

    One could do alot worse than revisit works of Kallistos Ware and John Meyendorff!



    • Jay on July 24, 2012 at 5:58 am

      That’s right, Rand is a totalitarian mind intent on inflicting her vision upon the world.



    • HPrice on July 24, 2012 at 3:04 pm

      wot you said lol. Its that hideous notion like you said of thinking of individual human beings as units, as numbers, as cogs in a machine controlled by some one who sits at the top and lords their power over the masses below. Its frankly inhuman, and I believe extremely evil. Its such a shame that some people think Rand was so important and was a deep thinking individual. She most certainly was not.



      • Joseph P. Farrell on July 24, 2012 at 3:11 pm

        HPrice, while I admire Rand’s setting out of the case for the individual and creativity, you’re right on another hidden “meme” in her work here, and that is the idea – persistent in Atlas Shrugged – that one is dealing in effect with two dehumanizing machines, run by two elites, as it were, out for world domination. This has always been the main problem for me with her work: her characters – her heroines and heroes – are themselves machines running in rigorous pursuit of a program or philosophy, and the reduction of the rest of the world TO machines is clearly evident at the end of Atlas Shrugged.



  8. dunc on July 23, 2012 at 7:30 pm

    right on dr. farrell like minded indeed.despite the war of definition the sovereignty of the individual is what freedom is all about unless you don’t believe in free will.thanks!



  9. Carro Armato on July 23, 2012 at 5:32 pm

    It seems that Libertarianism is the true American personality. Is it beyond the Right/Left divide?



    • HPrice on July 24, 2012 at 3:07 pm

      No its just another part of it, I believe. Its still “Right wing”, and not separated from the dialectic as some people would like to believe. I think if you call yourself anything, you immediately fall into the left/right paradigm. One should not call oneself anything. Using labels and putting oneself into a box limits oneself in so many ways, and jusr plays into the artificial left-right divide as you so rightly call it.



    • HPrice on July 24, 2012 at 3:13 pm

      What actually baffles me about the US is that some people believe that looking after the ones who cannot look after themselves amounts to some form of communism or socialism. I have seen people look at the British National Health System with horror, and think that bringing that kind of scheme to the US would mean the end of everything that makes American great. How can a system that was ostensibly brought in to CARE for people (ALL PEOPLE) and those who cannot look after themselves be in anyway linked to a totalitarian form of government absolutely baffles me.

      If anyone in the US who can inform me of how something like the NHS could be the end of freedom in the US (I suppose it may be something to do with taxes or money … or something lol), please let me know because I find the whole idea of not having “free” healthcare callous in the extreme.



      • Maxim K. Rice on July 24, 2012 at 8:33 pm

        Right on HPrice!



      • Robert Barricklow on July 24, 2012 at 10:18 pm

        I second that.
        Right on HPrice!



        • Harvey Price on July 25, 2012 at 4:40 pm

          Thanks a lot guys. Still haven’t figured out the answer to my question though. Why does looking after those who are vulnerable correlate with Communism, Socialism etc? Very strange.

          As a sort of run on from this. I live in New Zealand, and I heard something yesterday which was fascinating in a sort of horrible way. The MPs in the NZ parliament are debating whether workers should have a public holiday on a Monday morning if the previous Sunday falls on the national public day, Waitangi Day people (it was the day an agreement was signed between the “indigenous” (they actually weren’t … they wiped out the race that lived here before them, the Maoriri! … and a huge amount of fauna and flora into the bargain lol), the Maori and the White European settlers in the 19th century.

          Anyway, the usual arguments were thrown about. The right wing National party (akin to the British Conservatives) were calling the Labour opposition lazy, wanting another holiday, and the Labour lot were calling the National party, callous, not wanting people to have a day to spend with their families … yadda yadda yadda …

          Anyway, one of the Labour MPs got up and quoted one of the National Party Cabinet members from a debate they had about bringing in a 4-weeks-a-year holiday bill some time ago. Her name is Judith Collins, and she is now Minister of Justice in the National led coalition government down here in NZ.

          She was quoted as saying (and I paraphrase her) that she “did not feel any sympathy for those of a generous disposition” (!!!!)

          I find that so incredibly scary, horrifying and sad in so many ways. I wonder what happened to her to be such a cold unfeeling person.

          There is another MP in the current government who it is rumoured wants to start sterilising people who shouldn’t in her mind have children in the first place. She started off as a single mother etc etc but now is in a position of power and seems to want to put the foot down on those who are in a similar position as when she started out.

          There are some very strange and cold people out there. Their thought processes are so alien to mine, I often think if I am truly living on the same planet as them. No wonder the world is in such a mess. With a bit of compassion, maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.

          [Oh and to finish off, Mitt Romney is visiting Poland and Israel soon … hmmm …]



  10. Robert Barricklow on July 23, 2012 at 1:04 pm

    Just a comment on the cliche, Lesser of Two Evils.”
    You still have the lesser.
    And you still have the evil.
    It’s a ‘No choice’ cliche.



    • HPrice on July 23, 2012 at 3:41 pm

      And what I have heard of Ayn Rand … well that girl was one of the two … and I’m still not certain which …



      • Robert Barricklow on July 23, 2012 at 6:29 pm

        It’s not what you’ve heard that is the ‘real’ juicy part, but what has been purposely kept below the “public” radar.



        • HPrice on July 24, 2012 at 2:56 pm

          Now I’m all ears!!! lol. So what are they real juicy bits … ??? 😀



          • Robert Barricklow on July 24, 2012 at 4:01 pm

            There are several.
            The sex stories(too many to count).
            Two, google: Ayn Rand Conspiracy Theory.



          • Harvey Price on July 25, 2012 at 4:21 pm

            Thanks for your reply, Robert Barricklow. I shall indeed those stories out. I’m a sucker for a good juicy sex scandal lol. You can actually understand people more when you read about such stuff. You can also see if there are any other agendas going on regarding people who are wandering around on the edges of a story such as those (does that make sense?? lol).

            Anyway many thanks.



          • Robert Barricklow on July 25, 2012 at 5:35 pm

            Yes.
            In fact, one of(too damn many) “their” strengths begins in recruiting at a young age. There, around the edges, are assets orchestrating and setting up the “stage” for further developements, such as blackmail, ect., ect.



  11. Walter Bosley on July 23, 2012 at 1:02 pm

    I’m with Joseph



  12. Thomas on July 23, 2012 at 11:44 am

    The Out-of-context sound bite demon strikes again!
    Please see “Obama: If you’ve been successful you didn’t get there on your own http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=192oEC5TX_Q&feature=related.”
    Wasn’t President Obama pointing out that a single person’s success is actually dependant on the contributions of others? Check the time slots on the video:
    • 00:58: “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own…”
    • 01:27: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help…”
    • 01:39: “Somebody invested in roads and bridges…If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that…”
    In the last, it seems to me that the president was referring to the infrastructure that others build that allowed a business to succeed. But even if he was not, a successful business, or undertaking of just about any kind involves the work of other people to make it happen, not just the “owner” or the “innovator.”
    President Obama was clearly referring to the importance of others in a person’s success and that “you didn’t get there on your own.”
    If anybody is guilty of “intentional obfuscation,” it is Mr Rapaport. He would have us think that Mr Obama is a communist.



    • Maxim K. Rice on July 23, 2012 at 6:32 pm

      TY Thomas.



      • Thomas on July 23, 2012 at 9:02 pm

        What is TY?



        • Maxim K. Rice on July 24, 2012 at 1:28 pm

          Sorry Thomas — It’s a lazy way of saying “thank you”.



          • Thomas on July 24, 2012 at 3:46 pm

            Thank YOU, Maxim! I don’t have a cell phone (by choice) and don’t know the texting short-cuts. So I guess TY is like IMO, IMHO, BTW, WTF, PBUH, ETC (er etc.).



    • Jay on July 24, 2012 at 5:53 am

      Thomas:

      Thank you, this Rappaport guy is blinkered Fox News quoting fool. Who couldn’t think his way out of a empty warehouse with a giant open door.

      As for Rand, she collected Social Security and enrolled in Medicare in her later years.

      She falls into the trap that her perception of herself is the entirety of the world and worlds. It’s a Nietzchean abuse of logic that others have used as an excuse for domination of others. Hitler and Stalin come immediately to mind, but it aint limited to them.

      Ironic what her disciple, Alan Greenspan, did at the Federal Reserve for over 20 years; that is massively redirected the Fed in further aide of criminal “banking” policies.

      No wonder those defending banksters are so often fond of quoting Rand as justification for criminal behavior.



      • Joseph P. Farrell on July 24, 2012 at 9:52 am

        I have to agree with you there Jay…this is the aspect that has always BOTHERED me as well about Rand, admire her defense of individualism though I do. Any reading of the very end of Atlas Shrugged will show the slide into HER own version of authoritarianism.



      • Thomas on July 24, 2012 at 3:49 pm

        “No wonder those defending banksters are so often fond of quoting Rand as justification for criminal behavior.”

        Cite chapter and verse. The book use use depends on the audience.



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