In the ’60s we had the “television generation,” the first generation to grow up watching TV. Today we have the “Internet generation.” The change in ways of finding out about the world ought to mean something, even though the effects are diffuse and so hard to interpret. Still, other people have theories on the subject, so why shouldn’t I? So here’s a proposal:
- Both TV and the Internet present the world as immediately present, all on a level, and capable of being taken in at a glance to whatever degree is necessary without much thought, argument or subtlety. Everything’s right in front of you, so how could you go wrong?
- The big difference between the two is that big-media TV presents the world from a single top-down point of view, while the Internet presents it as an infinitely branching web with no privileged perspective.
- Bottom line: TV turns people into socialists, because issues and solutions are obvious and determined from a single superior point of view, while the Internet turns them into lifestyle libertarians, because all points of view are equal and each can assemble whatever connections he wants to make his life what he chooses.
- Both TV and the Internet are at odds with “family values” and density of tradition, which require that people form their understanding of what’s real and how things work from a standpoint defined by particular stable personal connections more than media organizations or global electronic networks.
- Still, in modernity “all that is solid melts into air,” which means that all its components disappear and cease to matter. By extending and perfecting modernity the Internet is thus bringing about its self-dissolution. What will remain to carry on the business of life and the world, apart from force, fraud and money, are things—ethnicity, blood relationship, religion—that were always fundamentally at odds with modernity and will therefore survive its evaporation.
- So the left/liberal obsession with what it calls “hate”—recognition of non-technocratic distinctions as legitimate factors in social life—is understandable although in the end pointless. Those are the things that will win in the end, not however because they will destroy liberalism but because they will remain, in however tattered a form, when liberalism destroys itself.
But when?
At last, Jim: optimism. Enough of all this Guenon stuff with its simplistic, over-arching negativisms. Everything in society does not go in one direction, by natural law. It is an incomprehensible multiplicity of involving and evolving phenomena and noumena, clashing and changing direction and form.
By way of example, liberalism will not destroy itself wholesale. More likely it will involve, and shed most of those coarse accretions that have covered its original Tory – not Whig and certainly not progressive or marxist – form. They have, you see, made it unstable and too much altered its political trajectory so that a fatal contradiction now exists between that form and its repressive modern action.
Put another way, for the last five decades liberalism in its Constitional form and liberalism in its DP/New Labour form have spanned right and left but not been in opposition. That’s because the right has been pulled to the left. Now that process is coming to an end.
How will it go? Well, I don’t know. But it seems to me that since tradition, faith, family and nation had no lasting political expression between feudalism and monarchism and the birth of liberalism, and since we cannot return to feudalism and monarchism, a Lockean form sans tabula rasa – science killed that – would be no bad thing.
When will it go? The two obvious time-determinants are the death of cultural marxism – I reckon it has two decades left – and the dawning realisation of the reality of white minority status. Two to four decades for that one, perhaps.
Things that can go intervene and produce another, less unfavourable outcome? Too many to think about when we’re trying to be optimistic.
I agree with Guessedworker’s optimism
In erasing some clutter from my computer just now I came across an e-mail I sent someone, part of which seems à propos of this log entry in that it might serve to inject optimism into the discussion. If I may, before I erase it I’ll post it here without further comment except to add I agree with Guessedworker’s clarifications above and at Thrasy’s blog: the internet is good for our side. (The world doesn’t stay equal when all points of view are equally permitted, if one was suppressed before. It changes.)
____
Yes, it looks bleak. In the sense that the other side refuses to openly acknowledge our existence we’re not “known,” it’s true—but neither are we “anonymous”: they know full well we’re here, and what we’re about. And they know we’re growing. They’re biding their time at the moment, watching us. Once we’ll have attained a certain size, perhaps three, four, five years or so hence, you’re suddenly going to see some really fierce, dirty battles erupt as they launch massive efforts to crush us: they’ll be fighting for their lives (if one can call aspiring to the inhuman, horrific, totalitarian goals of this ghastly alliance between the neo-Marxists and Wall Street a “life”). What are taking place now are skirmishes. When the real battle comes, as come it will, there’ll be of course a vicious all-out propaganda war launched against us on every conceivable front and in particular against our freedom of internet expression, taking the form of laws prohibiting “fascist, racist, homophobic, sexist, anti-transgender, bigoted” and so on, expression. And precisely because they see us now looming on the horizon with the potential to utterly overthrow them they’re already frantically in the process as we speak of redoubling their efforts to bring to completion the neo-Marxist/Wall Street project of replacing the white-Euro race, wherever on the planet it predominates, with non-white third-worlders (Wall Street’s motivation in this being, of course, that white-Euros not only demand higher wages than non-whites but generally resist being reduced to slavery more vigorously and effectively than non-whites do, and Marxism’s motivation being the completely accurate perception that educated white-Euro Christians will henceforth, as long as they predominate anywhere, thwart Marxist ascendancy to worldwide overlordship). We who oppose this unprecedented combined leftist/neo-Marxist/Tranzi/Wall-Street horror have formed ourselves into small but significant groups, networks, and other coherent alliances that are speaking openly, developing ideas, and growing. I believe that, mainly through the medium of the internet, our side already is nibbling away little by little at the power of the other side. They’ll make a pretense of ignoring us as long as they possibly can, acknowledging that we live and breathe only when we’re literally breathing down their necks, as they won’t be able to do otherwise at that point. And then they’ll turn on us like rats whose backs are to the wall. The counterattack by us in this war they’ve launched has only just begun within these last three, four, or five years. The final chapter has not yet been written. That’s partly because we are the ones who are going to write it.
________________________
“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.
Addendum
Apologies for omitting the link to Thrasy’s discussion of this in my comment above: it’s here, with Guessedworker’s thereunder.
They’re going to veer from ignoring us to unleashing their fury
“But what it really says is: ‘Editors of America: Do not pay money to Steve Sailer. We are going to put him out of business, shut him down. We will slime you if you hire him and it won’t be worth it to you.’ “
Before, when our vanguard probed too close to their outer perimeters they never wasted ammo firing at us but just ignored us absolutely (except for the haughty smirk on their faces that said they didn’t deign to deal with mere maggots …).
Now they’re starting to lob shells in the direction of our forward posts, even using some of their bigger guns: see here and here. They must fear our main force is growing (… what was that again about a broken clock, that it’s right twice a day or something? …).
________________________
“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.
Richard Poe’s nightmare scenario
A few of Richard Poe’s concerns regarding possible future leftist muzzling of the conservative internet and blogosphere:
“I expect that the VLWC (vast leftwing conspiracy) will be turning up the heat on dissident journalists between now and Hillary’s Senate reelection bid in 2006. Look for revisions in McCain-Feingold to close the `Internet loophole.’ Down the road a bit, Internet users should expect to see major connectivity outages caused by alleged overloading of the Internet’s root servers. As the old Internet becomes increasingly unreliable due to negligent maintenance; ineffective security and destructive viruses, corporations and other well-monied interests will be advised to transfer their online operations to Internet2—an alternative broadband Internet which the Clintons, along with a consortium of universities and corporations, have been spearheading since the mid-1990s—accessible only to those who can afford the annual subscription fee (which I have heard may reach as high as $10,000 per year). Aside from being expensive, I suspect that Internet2 will be tightly regulated, on the argument that the project was government-generated and its bandwidth `public property,’ subject to the same sorts of government controls that govern the use of radio and television frequencies. That’s just a guess, but we’ll see.” (The text of this Poe’s Blog entry in the original, linked herewith above, contains lots of interesting, pertinent links.)
________________________
“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.
Internet Futurology
The Internet is dialog, which is one step towards knowledge. Socrates would no doubt agree. If there is knowledge, which I believe there is, the Internet will foster the pursuit of it. Such a bold proposition; where’s the beef? The usual suspects have stifled our dialog: liberal professors, liberal politicians, and the liberal media. The Net allows us to connect with those of like mind in a way that was impossible before; we had no means of getting together. Now we do; this is an enormous power, even if I cannot find the words to illustrate it.
The Net is the Grecian long lance, the German panzer, or the Russian T-34 tank. It is nothing short of decisive. We traditionalists, for the first time, can communicate, organize, and encourage one another; not that Big Brother won’t try to silence us as is being done worldwide. This technological device, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, might be decisive; but we must have the will to use it, as we did concerning those two cities. We must expend energy to achieve our goals; otherwise we are just sitting on our butts.
Washington never, ever, ever gave up. He and his men suffered through tortuous New England winters year after year. Jeff Daniels gave a good performance on TV as Washington this week. We have it so much easier, it seems. We need only assert ourselves with our energy and intellect. People do not enjoy fighting; therefore, if we fight relentlessly and peacefully, we should prevail, not that we will actually prevail.
Who is being blamed for the defeat of a liberal anti-American? Bloggers. Have we not kept immigration reform near the forefront? Yes. No less than Hillary Rodham Buchanan (cite Malkin) is now coming out in favor of immigration reform.
All the best,
Paul Henri
The Internet’s Effect
One premise that deserves inspection is “by extending and perfecting modernity the Internet is thus bringing about its self-dissolution.†This is vague or jargon that I am unfamiliar with. I do not know what extending or perfecting modernity means. But I’ll take a stab at the premise, which seems to be the Internet is detrimental to the modern world.
The Internet will not necessarily have a decisive detrimental effect on the modern world.
The Net, it seems, is no more than and maybe less important than the Gutenberg Bible. This Bible allowed Christians worldwide to read the word of the Father and the Son. People finally had in their hands the knowledge that the Church leaders had. The Bible enabled people to question their leaders’ interpretations. No longer did they have to rely exclusively on their parish priest. Mass printing of the Bible preceded by a mere 50-100 years the Protestant Reformation after over 1,500 years of unity. The Reformation was a disaster no doubt.
The Bible and the Internet are knowledge. Is knowledge necessarily detrimental? Of course not. Knowledge is certainly power, which also is not necessarily detrimental. We more and more reap the effect of the beneficial knowledge that science and the Church gives to us.
So we see that knowledge has deleterious effects and beneficial effects. The Internet is knowledge. No one knows what effect the Internet will have.
My guess is that since knowledge is truth, the Internet, as an agent of truth, will be no more harmful than the Gutenberg Bible and has the potential to spread truth widely, which will always overcome lies. Catholics are numerous despite Gutenberg. If the Church declines, it will be the result of Catholics not the Internet.