Caesar, Brutus, and the Coloured Language:

Some years ago I was acquainted with a young man who had grown up in the Urban Ghetto. He was white, and one of his associates of colour put a gun up to his head, allegedly. The Reason was: my friend called this man "coloured", not "of colour", as is common practice.

 

Now: it's not too long ago that "coloured" was the term of preference. There even is a whole organization which we learn about in school, N.A.A.C.P., the National Association for Advancing Coloured Peoples. (I have paraphrased for meter’s sake, of course.) The term's not been in common use for quite some time. We learn it purely in our studies into History.

 

I know the story. Martin Luther King, the intellectual, the pacifist, the Hegel scholar, saw it fitting that the adjective should follow up the noun and not the other way around. It's just like saying "I am not bipolar, but I HAVE bipolar." This is founded on the notion that the Public will remember that which it hears first and not that which is last.

 

The man was credible and educated, truly. But it's shit like that which leads me to believe he wasn't big on Shakespeare.

 

There's a scene I love in Shakespeare's play *Julius Caesar*. Brutus believes, by speaking first, addressing Rome about the deeds of his conspirators, that he can seal the deal for them, consolidate their power, and preserve their reputation for the new world order. This scene is ingenious politically as much as it is brilliant poetically; I don't think I have ever witnessed something which had moved me all at once to grief and to hysterical amusement quite like this. Brutus delivers his short bit; the audience is moved and now they're on Team Brutus like a herd of sheep. Then Brutus LEAVES and leaves the podium for Antony, believing it's all over. And it is, for Brutus.

 

So Mark Antony gets up, and all throughout the Speech, a rather lengthy one, he praises Brutus and his lot as "honourable men", but really he proceeds to scorn their deeds, to send off Caesar like a God, to render that repeated line of "honourable men" as so redundant it's absurd, and then, under the urging of the Romans, he cracks open Caesar's CASKET and displays the corpse with all the stab wounds. By the time that he reads Caesar's Will, by popular demand, the selfsame Romans who were praising Brutus and condemning the late Caesar have decided to burn down the former's house.

 

What's the moral lesson here? It's this: the People don't remember what they hear at FIRST, but rather that which they hear LAST.

 

Somehow, I have to wonder how this argument was buried with the Dr. King. I must imagine that an academic would have given it some due consideration. At the very least, we ought to wonder if the core presumptions underlying a reform that's forced upon the Language truly stands the test of Reason. At the very least, let's show humility before the possibility, before we shoot somebody over it for messing up the order of the words, or we might take a page from Ancient Rome, where order does not matter in a sentence so much as the conjugation, but the order of the SPEAKERS makes the difference.

 

One might always contend, as any amateur Hegelian would, that merely "Reasoned" arguments do not suffice, that they do not reach the "heart of the matter", et cetera. Yet Reason, in the case of Noble Rhetoric, is not very far removed from Affect, just as humour is not very far removed from grief, and both these couplings abound in Shakespeare's famous passage starting with "Friends, Romans, Countrymen: lend me your ears."

 

One also may contend that it's not MY place to decide, as if Our Language has no say in my own Life. To this I say: an Ethic of Minority has NOT set all men free from Kafkaesque Bureaucracy, but rather aggravated it, and if we ARE minorities at Heart, then we are ALL oppressed by this Bureaucracy. But leave it not up to the PEOPLE, whether they are Black, Roman, German, or Japanese to say what OUGHT to be regarded as "offensive". People are the Problem; they'll agree to whatever you tell them, often with great violence. You have only to be the Last to Speak.

 

**[({R.G.)}]**

G.P. LeChuck as Romantic Hero and Ideal:

https://laterlevels.com/2018/07/06/lechuck-no-villain-just-misunderstood/
The reciprocity itself does not warrant the emotion, nor does it discredit it, nor does it reflect upon the behaviour. The pursuit itself, the Sisyphean task of constant attempt and failure, alone can stand as a test of Character by which the authenticity of his passion might be judged, in the absence of any stable meritocracy on the High Seas. His adversary Guybrush, while well-meaning, does quite little to EARN Marley's Love; in fact, his first Adventure does more to impede her interests than to further a Common Goal. While LeChuck operates in independence, his Unrequited Love lives up to the Romantic Ideal of Eros: as Marie-Louise von Franz put it, doing things AGAINST THE RULES because one loves that person. Elaine's relationship to Guybrush is conventional; LeChuck is post-conventional. Any consummate Love must pass through these same ordeals, for it must be strong enough to endure in each Individual even without seeking anything in exchange, INCLUDING its reciprocation, which is at best a selfish drive. LeChuck does not need flattery or love, though Guybrush does, and in that sense he is far more truly Heroic than the latter. We must not preclude in Elaine the possibility of Grave Error, simply because the Story is told interactively through the "Good Guy's" naïve perspective, which was deliberately made to abound in shortcoming and self-deception. Finally: let us not forget that all relationships of this kind begin with "stalking", by one definition or another, for any excess of attention might be determined arbitrarily, and yet such extremes are always necessary if one wishes to know the Other, to gather sufficient information with which to undertake (no pun intended) a sensible courtship, and, on top of all of that, to BECOME known BY the Other as a candidate who might be judged without bias, with all due respect to both the Seeker's Potential and the Judgement of the Sought.

[({R.G.)}]

Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas: What Happens in Private Should Stay in Private.

One of the reasons people read Kierkegaard, as well as one of the reasons that Wittgenstein was right to call him the most profound thinker of the nineteenth century, is that he understood how Media works, to such an extent that the last hundred years have only corroborated his contributions. His legacy has not been overshadowed by his personal life nor his public image during life, since his contribution was precisely this: to expose the utter irrelevance of one to the other. While both the Individual and God must live with both the private and the Public, how one might appear in mortal media is hardly how one's legacy will be immortalized, and least of all will one's own, private life affect one's immortality in quite the way it operates in gossip which one hears about one's self. As Carl Jung would put it: what a man is and what he represents are often polar opposites of one another.

This realization is, of course, demoralizing, but for different reasons depending on the Judge. By MacIntyre's evaluation of Heroism, what a man is and what he represents ought to be One and the Same, yet this is ONLY POSSIBLE WITHIN A HEROIC *SOCIETY*. It's not that a man cannot profess a set of virtues honestly in modern Life, but rather that when he is heard he is not UNDERSTOOD, for what has since antiquity been sacred to Mankind, for which the evidence is overwhelming, though conflicted, is quite alien to modern philistines and upstarts who are all too happy to lead fruitless lives.

 

Consider Michael Jackson. Growing up, he was a meme to me; as Bart said on The Simpsons, he was like the boogeyman, invented to scare little boys and girls. The nickname "Wacko Jacko" was his calling card on VH1, and while my friends considered Thriller to be legendary, it was not without some irony each time they played it on the Stereo; they knew that what the man became was far more frightening than any zombie he portrayed back in the nineteen-eighties.

 

Be all that as it may, when Michael Jackson died, the tears came down like waterfalls. Not even J.D. Salinger enjoyed that sort of send-off; only Robin Williams came close in recent years. Girls who were not yet out of high school posted videos and covers of their favourite Michael Jackson songs. The generations came together in a sort of bitter mourning; there was even fervent speculation he was murdered.

 

No one seemed to think that he deserved to go the way he did, pedophilia notwithstanding.

 

That's how it ought to be, at any rate. It does not matter whether you were five years old or fifty when he died. A Culture Hero unifies the People and transcends their loneliness. We all waved Michael Jackson as a flag, even when we were joking. He was neither black nor white, nor man nor woman; as the joke I heard in Grade School went: Jackson was God. If his few moments of Humanity appeared perverse, we saw ourselves in his perversion. You could say the man was great without your having to read off your own biography, since there were Common Standards by which to judge Greatness, and all personal accounts were weaknesses. Nobody cared if you were five years old or fifty, black or white, a victim, target, or immune. It was not ABOUT you, nor should it be. It was about the Artist, his Work, and his Legacy. One had not even to separate the Artist from the Work, nor the Work from the Legacy, nor the Legacy from the Artist. One would never KNOW the Artist, intimately, and for that we who grew up with stories of his "intimate" relations were quite grateful. We had his Music. That was enough.

 

It ought still to be enough, and that it does not satisfy us is a far more grievous sin upon our part than anything this one man did within a tragic life cut short.

 

In recent years, though not yet ten years after Jackson died, I visited a bookstore in my neighbourhood: the same one I've been going to for more than fifteen years by now, and maybe nearly twenty. I was in the Record Section, hardly worthy of a Borders, though this Barnes and Noble stocked the basics. Somewhere close at hand some girls, most probably in high school still, perused the Classics and found one of Jackson's Records, maybe Thriller.

One girl, who reminds me now of Asuka from Evangelion, said to the other that her teacher talked about this man in class. The Teacher told her students that, regardless of the Artist's sketchy lifestyle, we must see his Art for what it is.

The girl recited this in such a mocking tone I might have skipped a beat in hearing it. Not only was this adolescent blatantly DISMISSING what a TEACHER told her, as if she knew "better", by some source most probably corrosive to her character. It also was mere years ago, not yet a decade, that the man died and I'd hear his music at this self-same bookstore.

 

No: I never cared for it as much as everybody else appeared to. I don't like the Beatles, either.

 

But how can she claim to KNOW him? Those he hurt never achieved what HE achieved. He MADE something of Life; he EARNED his rights. The triumphs of the Strong must never bow before the weaklings' tears. Did these girls not yet know it? They'd be spending all their lives attempting to come CLOSE to what he did for Our Society. Their lives were nearly utterly expendable, except that, being female, they might be protected in the hopes that they'd give birth to a Great Man.

 

Of course, I did not tell them that. I simply went my way, back to my parents' house, disturbed.

 

Each day, I wonder: "When will my Life matter? Will it ever? Will I leave behind a legacy? Or will I have regretted living?"

It's absurd to think that there are those who do not ask themselves these questions. Feeling like a failure each day is not enough to get you down; it motivates you to keep going. That which kills me is the thought that other Failures will render your Success a Joke, that, even after Death, the memes won't stop, and all because you hurt someone who really, up until he touched your hand, was of no worldly consequence.

The Real Question is: WHY? Since when do Ordinary People matter, so much so that their appeals subvert the Great Ones?

It’s important to remember that a Legacy comes First; the value of a Human Life is measured BY that Legacy, especially in Men.

That Legacy is sacred. It is not comparable to private interests, nor can accounts of private lives undo the Legacy.

The Legacy is one Man’s contribution to Society. The Power he enjoys as a result is Social Power, indistinguishable from the Common Good.

The question ought not to be, “by what authority can a Man of Power abuse the powerless?” but rather, “what purpose do the powerless fulfill for Our Society by protest?”

Both Life and Culture teach us this: that no one has the "right to fail". If you are powerless, it's your own fault.

Grow up.

[({R.G.)}]

Butterscotch, Better Understood:

I'm not going to tell you that Butterscotch Horseman was "not so bad".

I'm going to tell you that he was not bad AT ALL.

BoJack's Father devoted his entire Life to his Craft, to his Vision, to his Passion, to his Calling, and to his Honour. When all was said and done and his honour came under fire, he died a Gentleman's Death, like Alekandr Pushkin did. Perhaps his writing was not Ibsen, but it wasn't Herb Kazzazz, most probably. Butterscotch didn't write a novel on a WHIM; he LIVED it, he lived THROUGH it, and he DIED for it.

This persistence he imbibed within his son. It's not enough to try. You can't take shortcuts. You persist, even if things are difficult. By all accounts, he was an IDEAL Father, and perhaps he is the only solid Father Figure in the Series.

BoJack's Mother was another case. As wife, she failed, consistently denouncing her own husband's work, emasculating him at every corner, leaving him with nothing but his own devices to lend Meaning to Life's Struggle. This was not a Struggle SHE had ever had to feel; not only was Survival something alien to her, but she felt quite ENTITLED to it.

Butterscotch did not. He knew that Living was a Burden, and, like any Beast of Burden, he would bear it. He would not go down without a fight, nor would he get up in the morning with no Reason. Butterscotch possessed what MOST of BoJack Horseman's anti-heroes lack: a PURPOSE. Not content to live in comfort, he would rather live in poverty of body than to live in poverty of Spirit. Beatrice attempted to convert him, and the consequences were by far more damaging.

BoJack's narcissism and his nihilism stem from Beatrice. Where Butterscotch would represent hard work and suffering with good intent and valour, Beatrice was something else: Escape. She ran away from Corbin Creamerman with Butterscotch, and once the two were "hitched" she ran away into indulgence, self-entitled fantasy, and spite. She saw survival as the Point of Living since she was a raging narcissist afraid to die. She NEEDED an entire Season just to justify her bad behaviour. Why was Butterscotch never explored to such an end? Because he needed no such alibi; his Life, his Word, and Deed were One. The Dad had VIRTUE, while the Mom had mere emotion and conceit.

Beatrice failed as a mother just as surely as she failed as wife, yet Butterscotch would never blame her. This we saw within the introduction to her Eulogy in Season Five. So much was then revealed about the hero's Father, at his Mother's funeral ("allegedly") that it's logical that fans would hope to learn more on the point of Butterscotch in Season Six.

That BoJack finally would read his Father's Novel seemed a longshot, but wherefore? In retrospect, the show is not complete without it. This one Magnum Opus was his Father's Legacy, his Life, the reasons for the son's Despair, as well as, probably, the explanation. BoJack has not just the PRIVILEGE of Butterscotch's words in print; he has the OBLIGATION to attend to it, for he's the last man in the Horseman Line. The Sartrean approach of living by one's own invention has not served him well; he is still looking for that One, Big Thing that Makes It All Make Sense: his Legacy. But what if that same Legacy had BEEN there, from the very start? Who is he NOT to read his Father's Novel? The man Lived and DIED for it.

The Final Season feigns Atonement with the Father by combining Butterscotch with Secretariat. Though this is quite surreal, consistent thereby with the show's aesthetic merit, it is also not believable nor satisfying as a Near-Death Dream. Secretariat was NOT a better Father Figure. Secretariat taught BoJack not to fight, but rather how to run away. Butterscotch was fight, but Secretariat was flight. Secretariat died young, (23 years BoJack's junior, at the start of the series) and he gave up his honour long before he gave his Life. Above all: Secretariat had no real relationship with BoJack, save for that which BoJack saw THROUGH THE T.V. SCREEN. So much of BoJack's self-entitlement comes through that tube that it is not at all surprising that he has not read a book in years and, trying to compose a book, he fails.

His father did not fail. If Diane Nguyen serves as an antidote to televised toxicity by writing, so did Butterscotch. While growing up with literary genius is hard, it is a bitter pill to swallow for a reason. Did the families of Hesse, Marx, or Salinger not read their fathers' catalogues? Of course they did, and it leant meaning to that suffering which had been necessary for success and, as such, Meaningful Existence: Happiness worth Dying For.

BoJack asks, "why would I give him that?" Yet reading his Father's Novel was not a favour from Son to Father. At any rate: if Diane's own writing career fails artistically, it shows that disowning the Father's Legacy is really another way to put the Cart before the Horse.

It's a shame the show was canceled. Even out of rehab, BoJack had a long, LONG ways to go before the finish line. We were only halfway down.

[({R.G.)}]

Ten Days Later:

Though consciously, I'd forgotten the Sixth Anniversary of Our Meeting, subconsciously I still remembered.

Checking this same record, it's apparent that She came back to me. My muse co-wrote with me the Final Plot.

I thought that I'd release the Game by then. Yet I but had to finalize the Concept.

 

Kresten believes he can escape responsibility. He thinks that he can hide away into the Past.

But Six Years are a short time in the lives of Life and Death Themselves, as well as Love.

Time cannot sever Her from Me, nor wash HIM clean.

 

To think: he thought to call ME "irresponsible" when he consistently refused to make amends to Us.

To his mind, everyone falls short of the Ideal. He grapples with inferiority by holding everybody to an arbitrary standard.

Mine is not so arbitrary, and these Records serve to prove that. He was always one to pepper injury with insult.

 

What hurts more?

That he affronts my Character?

Or that he uses the affront as an excuse.

 

It matters not. My Character is unassailable. It's he that has not the Authority to judge of it.

He is the Agent of Destruction, but I am Creation and Protection. He is Crime, and I am Justice.

Time will not avail him. Time will punish him, if not through me. Time heals. Time aggravates...

 

She has not been Forgotten.

 

Those who speak from egoism can't accuse me of self-interest alone.

Those who deny what I deserve are simply party to the menace.

I will not be robbed and then accused of thievery.

I serve the Just, and I serve Justice.

If that Justice justly will return my favour,

I won't have it turned against me.

 

She and I are one.

And so are me and Justice.

 

Sleep well, Alanna.

 

[({R.G.)}]

Harry Potter Fan Theory: Which is REALLY the Most Inclusive House?

Harry Potter Fan Theory: Which is REALLY the Most Inclusive House?

 

Usually, the obvious answer appears to be “Hufflepuff”. This stereotype is clearly derived from the Sorting Hat’s Song(s), wherein House Founder Helga Hufflepuff is portrayed as an egalitarian who takes in the magical stragglers and treats them all “the same”. Hufflepuff seems to fit the bill by any modern standard of “inclusion” as a liberal principle, and its rather humble, unassuming, even uninspiring “lot” acts as the antithesis of Slytherin’s proto-Fascist prejudice and snide elitism.

That certainly would explain why Hufflepuff is Slytherin’s archrival, right? But wait, it’s not.

When Harry, Ron, and Hermione, the three central characters in the Saga, are sorted in 1991, they are almost sorted into Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw respectively. Furthermore, Harry’s forgivable power drives, Ron’s bumbling loyalty, and Hermione’s insufferably sharp wit all seem to qualify them for those Houses throughout their lives, even well into adulthood, inspiring some confusion about their identity for both themselves and for their readers. Yet what House was SO inclusive that they all could CHOOSE to defy their predispositions to enter into it? What house values CHOICE over Ability or Disposition, as embodied in star pupil Albus Dumbledore?

That House is Gryffindor.

The first clue is the fact of Choice, though we might easily presume that such a policy owes more to how the Sorting Hat works than the principles which govern the respective Houses. Be that as it may, the fact remains that Ron was ALMOST sorted into Hufflepuff, but he got INTO Gryffindor off nearly nothing, but perhaps his lineage (which probably was why he made the Choice he did). Yet what if we extrapolate, presuming that a Choice is all that matters? Most students don’t seem to WANT to be in Hufflepuff, and even when they get there they’re not PROUD about it, though they could be. It’s not JUST that Hufflepuff takes in the humble bunch; it’s also that a sorting into Hufflepuff is humbling, even embarrassing. Yet if we are ALLOWED to CHOOSE our Houses, and if nobody would CHOOSE to be a Hufflepuff, then why are there so many Hufflepuffs? Simply put: they chose the Lesser of Two Evils. What was the alternative they were so eager to evade?

Right: Gryffindor.

Next to the Slytherins, let’s face it: Hufflepuffs don’t LIKE Gryffindors all that much. While Harry and his friends date Ravenclaws and fellow Gryffindors, they never seem to shack up with a Hufflepuff (of course, the Slytherins are off the table, as we shall discuss, as though we needed to). While Harry dates Cho Chang, Ron attends the Yule Ball with Padma Patil, and all three of them, Hermione included, maintain relationships with fellow Gryffindors… nonetheless it seems that each of them would sooner go to the Ball with a Foreign Student than with a Hufflepuff.

Their friendships don’t look much better. Luna Lovegood is a weirdo, but she ends up becoming one of their most valuable allies in Dumbledore’s Army (even if their secrecy is betrayed by a Ravenclaw operating under the influence of Umbridge’s coercion). While Neville and Remus both do marry Hufflepuffs, these are both men who are routinely underestimated and marginalized, and while I do not mean to perpetuate their marginalized status nor to demean their sincerity, I think it fitting to note that they marry only after they have matured and gone beyond schoolboy drama. Throughout most of the Books, Hufflepuffs challenge Gryffindor authority (Ernie MacMillan), point a rightfully suspicious finger at Harry (Justin Finch-Fletchley), and compete for Gryffindor’s Glory (Cedric Diggory). When Ron defends his best friend, it is practically a repressed Hufflepuff using his loyalty against that House which would have rewarded it.

This brings me to my Second Point: why would Hufflepuff be less Inclusive? To answer that, let’s focus on how Gryffindor is not EXCLUSIVE in the least.

Whereas Gryffindor claims to screen students based on virtues such as Courage and Bravery, it seems to be most concerned with the courage and bravery necessary to raise its member count to begin with; beyond that initial contract, the House cares little more for Courage than it does for the remembrance of a password, and all of the “Courageous” Acts that Gryffindors are known for are extracurricular. Gryffindor doesn’t seem to care how bold you are UNTIL you prove to be a coward, and only when that cowardice hurts Gryffindor’s own interests.

To use the most glaring example: Peter Pettigrew was NEVER particularly brave NOR courageous, to the best of our knowledge, but he managed not only to get into Gryffindor but to climb the social ladder and earn the trust of Potter and his friends in TWO generations, the second time as a RAT owned by TWO of the Weasley Brothers who were Prefects, one of whom joined the Ministry of Magic and the other of whom killed about a quarter of Lord Voldemort’s Soul. (Coupled with the fact that neither of the more rebellious Weasley Brothers identified this traitor on a Magic Map, Peter’s feats as a rat are tantamount to Pickle Rick.) How is Pettigrew a Gryffindor if he’s a cheat, a coward, and a servant of the Dark Lord?

Put simply: Gryffindor was the only House that would take him. He just didn’t have what it took for Hufflepuff.

Hufflepuff’s elitism is subtle, one disguised in egalitarian good will. Yet what do we mumble in defence of Hufflepuff when asked about that “other” House there in the corner with the Badger? It is “loyalty”, perhaps “humility” as well. Pettigrew, who seeks the company of James and Sirius and prides himself in the success, is humble not by choice, and even Voldemort can see that he’s not loyal out of virtue but utility. Even the Dark Lord is betrayed by Pettigrew, and Pettigrew is punished swiftly; Voldemort had planned for this most probable contingency.

Hufflepuff’s emphasis on “loyalty”, on “humility”, and on “equality” are not merely fetishes for genuine distinction, except perhaps in the eyes of young readers and Slytherins. They actually represent a core set of Distinguishing Values that lead the Hufflepuffs to unify against all apparent danger any time that any one of them is hurt, threatened, or killed, and if they are inclusive of the Gryffindors, neither do they exclude them from their watch-list. With Gryffindor students’ penchant for bombast, for bullying, for breaking hearts without a second thought, for temper and for an ENORMOUS ego, one that is made even more narcissistic in a Group, it’s understandable that Hufflepuffs resent Gryffindors, and NOT out of envy.

If Hufflepuff is not an EASY House to get into, it follows logically that those who lacked the chops for it would get tossed in Gryffindor, unless, of course, their natural Humility (and inferiority complex) led them to cave in to the pressure of an exorbitantly large family of Gryffindors, which explains our red-haired radical. It also follows logically that, if Slytherin is the most EXCLUSIVE House, (which, as of hiring a Basilisk to kill half-bloods, is off the table for debate, barring the revelation of some “Secret” that’s somehow more Secret than the very CHAMBER of SECRETS) then their RIVAL HOUSE would be the MOST inclusive House, and at the very heart of their rivalry would be, NOT the distinction between Courage and Cunning, (for one can have both, and should, as do Hermione Granger, Cho, and Luna) nor the distinction between Abilities and Choices, (as Harry Potter has both) but RATHER the distinction between EXCLUSION and INCLUSION. 

When Godric and Salazar had their tiff, it was not over a set of virtues, but rather over WHO WAS TO BE ALLOWED TO ATTEND. When Salazar left, what did he do first? Probably, he had the House-elves pack him a lunch*, magically brushed his teeth, packed his cauldrons, and BUILT AN ENTIRE DUNGEON JUST TO KEEP PEOPLE OUT. Clearly, “Exclusion” was Slytherin’s claim to fame, and it was Gryffindor’s stubborn INCLUSION that burnt the bridge.

This tendency is also obvious in Gryffindors, both Great and Small. Pettigrew just wants to be ACCEPTED, even if it means that people might get hurt. When he betrays the Potters, they are losing and the Big Kids on the Block are the Death Eaters. Lily wants to be ACCEPTED even as a half-blood; when poor Severus calls her a “mudblood” while her friends are turning him into a spectacle for their amusement, (such a Dark Mark thing to do, ironically, as we observe the flying muggles at the Quidditch Cup) Lily’s own sense of PRIDE in her INCLUSION in the Magic World takes precedence over her LOYALTY to that one man who taught her that it was OKAY TO BE A WITCH. 

Lily was no Hufflepuff; she had the arrogance of someone who just NEEDED to be Equal, not because she cared about Equality as Such, but rather since there’s nothing worse for narcissists than to be criticized. You can practically hear the Wedding Bells tolling then and there, as well as Snape’s eternal grudge against that self-entitled arrogance. Yet even SNAPE is far more loyal than a single Gryffindor, and all because of just one Gryffindor who’s DEAD, nearly two decades later. Even Dumbledore, observing that kind of commitment, is surprised, and this surprise should not surprise us, since we see how Dumbledore, the star and champion of Gryffindor, treats Family and Tragedy. Of COURSE, then, Dumbledore must be the one to champion INCLUSION and to vanquish Voldemort. If you’re Albus, you have to hope that Heaven is as inclusive as Gryffindor House.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

*Addendum: Let us also not forget who hired slaves to cook and "treat" us "all the same". Oh, well: at least House Elves are Loyal, at least up until one of those Roaring Lions frees them.

OXYMORONLOGO:

 

LOOK:

Look, man: I’m not some sort of Fascist sympathizer or a Reaganist. I simply disagree with two old, dead French guys from the seventies who took it on themselves to end “majority” because they saw “becoming-Fascist” as the greatest threat and most “immanent” evil:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_(philosophy)

I believe that Kafka was far more than just a dislocated Jew whose writings seek a clarity that only the “majority” enjoys or dreams of. I think that being a “minority” is “good”, depending on the context, but those “contexts” are not relative, and hierarchy has its rightful place in judging what “minority opinion” (*including* Fascist sympathy in democratic culture) can be “valid”, “true”, or “good”. I believe that Kafka as an *existentialist* was seeking clarity which men like MacIntyre in the *Analytic* School have managed to restore to some extent, if only in their writings. I believe Guattari and Deleuze were wrong and typically pretentious :flag_fr: to *assume* a moral obligation to dissolve majoritarian ideals. I side with MacIntyre and with Kierkegaard before him in insisting that we all must give up part of our subjective lives in order to do Good, and even if that Good is only seen by a minority, it has the objectivity that *used* to be majoritarian. I think that Fascism is bad but not for the same reasons the postmodernists attest.

I think that academics fell in love with Gilles Deleuze in quite the same destructive, toxic fashion as the shrinks fell for the work of Sartre and De Beauvoir. I think that Social Justice Warriors are adolescents looking for a reason to rebel and thinking that they understand this stuff, naïvely. I believe that what we lost during the Continental/Analytic Split was precious, and we have to reconstruct the World now to redeem it from that tragic damage. Finally, I’m sure that what I’m saying will make sense to less than five per cent of readers on the Internet, and rather than allowing the remaining mass (itself majoritarian) to tear the World apart, I’m taking leaves from Hegel’s book and doing my due diligence to know what moral obligation REALLY is. The worst that I can do is be a new kind of minority.

I love People. If my love appears conditional, then my experience has taught me well in exercising Care.

 

**[({R.G.)}]**

PROOF: Why We Need Gender Roles.

Existence is a series of Dualities.

 

One of the most fundamental dualities is that of masculinity and femininity.

 

This duality is intrinsic to Nature, ubiquitous throughout Culture, and universal across Cultures.

 

At its core is the paradoxical relationship between Creator and Consumer, or between Sender and Receiver.

 

One cannot at once Create and Consume, though it might be argued that Creation consumes its components.

 

One cannot at once Send and Receive, though it might be argued that certain technologies offer that option.

 

On the most fundamental level, beyond the technicalities and loopholes, we draw a definite distinction:

 

- Between Giving and Receiving an Order,

 

- Between Creating and Consuming a Work,

 

- Between domination and submission, etc.

 

While modern common sense recognizes the underlying kinship between Creation and Consumption, it is always in the context of the System. While the Agent cannot both send and receive simultaneously, at least not on the most fundamental level(s), the System comprising Multiple Agents can and MUST do both simultaneously in order to function. As such, the System is a paradox: a whole that is utterly dependent upon the Balanced Synthesis of Opposites which are Mutually Exclusive on its constituent levels.

 

Society is such a System,

 

as is General Human Life.

 

It stands to reason that we are born feminine.

 

A lifetime originates within the female body whose primary function in sexuality is Receptive, though the consequence of (pro)creation is often (re)production.

 

The infant body is passively receptive, however violently the infant cries for what the infant needs.

 

By the same token, the End of Life is characterised by decrepitude and finally unrelenting passivity.

 

A third of the interim is usually spent in a state of mental activity called Dream but physical passivity called Sleep.

 

This state of Sleep and Dream also represents the Intellectual Life, which is most active when the body is passive, though physical activity informs it over time.

 

The Intellectual Life strives also to understand Life as a Whole, including Birth, Death, the Interim, and everything that follows and precedes them.

 

It stands to reason, therefore, why the Ancients said the Soul was Female. What they meant was: it was FEMININE.

 

Receiving roles is not the same as plowing one's own course. The Child RECEIVES his or her Gender.

 

This Reception is not merely childish. It is FEMININE. To DO WHAT ONE is TOLD embodies PART of the ESSENTIAL BALANCE.

 

It thus follows that Obedience can be a Virtue, granted that whichever Force one chooses to Obey is Justified and Virtuous as well.

 

Following the Reception of one's Role, one either Becomes Creative or Remains Receptive to that same extent which the Authority prescribed.

 

The prescription need not be questioned insofar as the Authority is Legitimate.

 

The Legitimacy of the Authority is contingent upon the Authority Creating within predefined Limits.

 

If one is to Become Creative, (Masculine) one receives an Authority by default which also must operate within predefined Limits in order to be Legitimate.

 

These Limits are defined in part by that Authority which imparts its Authority upon the Recipient and in part by the Society which facilitates this transfer, whose Authority always surpasses that of any Agent, for the Agent of Authority is but the constituent part of which Society is the Whole System.

 

If one is simply to Remain Receptive, (Feminine) one need not be concerned with the Question(ing) of Authority.

 

No sensible person PREFERS Masculinity to Femininity, or vice versa, since a personal preference is never guaranteed to serve the Whole System.

 

It is the Whole System (of Society) that holds the Greatest Authority over the Legitimacy of how people use what Power they Receive.

 

There is never any reason to question the Whole System. By simply surpassing its Agents in Power it prevents abuses of Power. If ever an abuse of Power occurs, it is not through a failure of the System but a failure on the part of Agents to INVOKE the System.

 

Over time, enough such failures can hurt the System.

 

The System can become sick. This threatens everyone.

 

Our Current System is sick.

 

It suffers from a deficiency.

 

The System Works so long as Masculinity and Femininity coexist in mutual respect.

 

This has not been the case for quite some time, and numerous scholars and healers have taken notice.

 

Our sickness is a deficiency of Respect for Femininity.

 

Our sickness is a lack of Fundamental Obedience among the Agents.

 

Feminism is a sickness.

 

It is a symptom of our ongoing imbalance.

 

It is also a contributing factor to it...

 

Very early in Life I intuited this imbalance.

 

Encountering feminism in my early adolescence, I saw through it.

 

I found it ironic that it espoused nothing at all "feminine".

 

Feminism is merely concerned with women seeking male power to which male power did not entitle them.

 

Feminism promotes those with a preference for power. It also engenders this preference within a gender.

 

Feminism is egocentric and anti-Systematic. As such, it threatens all of us by appealing to each of us.

 

Those who advocate for philosophies such as Feminism do not see Society as a Whole but merely as parts.

 

The parts, even in sum, are smaller than the whole. (Aristotle.) The System is the Ultimate Authority.

 

Those who defy the System defy it only out of personal contempt for Other People.

 

Those who defy Authority abuse what Power they themselves have. When this is widespread, it is grave.

 

When the constituent parts of the Whole all begin to compete for Power to which they falsely believe themselves to be entitled, what you have is not merely a sum of parts which is lesser than that Whole, but rather an Abuse of Power which surpasses anything the System can control. Even if the System could be conceived of as an Abusive Authority, the resultant Mob is, by necessity, worse.

 

Feminism is not feminine.

 

Feminism is patriarchal.

 

Feminism is rightfully "womanism", for it concerns itself with Women as Individuals instead of the Feminine as Virtue.

 

It is this underlying Individualism which produces a Mob that subverts the Society.

 

Because each member of this Mob is behaving egocentrically, all female empowerment is illegitimate, and it is all Abuse.

 

Women do not matter.

 

Femininity matters.

 

Women and Men alike derive their Meaning from THAT, not from themselves.

 

Paradoxically, it is because we are ALL feminine intrinsically that That IS Ourselves.

 

We ARE femininity.

 

Our Sickness is a Sickness which afflicts our Souls as well as our Society.

 

Thus the paradox is this: that while Femininity is superior to both Women and Men, Women and Men ARE Femininity.

 

Yet insofar as Femininity is Part of a System and insofar as Femininity is a Subsystem greater than any Man or Woman, Femininity is GREATER than the SUM OF ITS PARTS. Thus it is greater than all of us.

 

What, then, can justify her brutal assault by the Feminists?

 

Certainly: Nothing Human.

 

In saying all of this I make no subjective claims.

 

All facts are objective until proven subjective by a Higher Authority.

 

Any Higher Authority must operate from a Higher Objectivity.

 

Otherwise, we would not doubt what our own minds and thoughts produce.

 

If the immediate objectivity of direct experience can only be supplanted by a Higher Objectivity, then Objectivity is inevitable.

 

There can be no further denial of a Truth existing.

 

To date, I have seen no Higher Objectivity to discredit these claims, nor do I have reason to expect one to do so.

 

Neither do I doubt that Human Nature will reveal itself where Human Culture labours towards concealment and deceit.

 

We are what we are Born to Be, not what we Choose.

 

Our Choice is simply to acknowledge what we are...

 

That is our only task as Individuals and as Society.

 

[({R.G.)}]