Windswept Podcast: Forgiveness as a Form of Knowledge
KT is hardly an online pulpit, yet in this podcast we won’t be able to avoid coming dangerously close to moralizing. But, no worries … we analyze the peculiar nature of forgiveness of trespasses of others as a way of acquiring knowledge and inability to perform it as a sure slippery slope into delusion of knowledge – something that happens all too often to people embracing the postmodern societies and their politics of dissolution by rejecting their own roots and, consequently, their own finite existence.
(If for some reason the Mixcloud presents you with problems, the podcasts are available on Kali Tribune’s Youtube channel. Podcasts can be downloaded via this link )
Branko Malić
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I like how you put forth the problem of forgiveness as knowledge.
This constitutes quite a good response or at least the ground for a more detailed future response to the question posed by Coco in that other podcast.
I would only specify this: that the way I have come to see it, the correct question should not be posed in terms of knowledge, but being.
Namely, not “how can I acquire this knowledge”, but “what kind of person can have this knowledge? What kind of person do I have to BE?”.
Also, you pointed out quite well the nature of this kind of “intelligence”, which is measured by the stupidity of others.
I see it all so often and the usual profile is that of a young, urban, usually western-oriented, corporate or NGO professional- sometimes hipster etc.
They just can’t stop laughing at the degenerate remnants of what was once rural Romania or purely and simply those who cling to some of the old ways in some way or another.
Luckily, just like the typical schoolyard bully, these type of people end up running into someone stronger/smarter and meaner than them, who will make them feel stupid at some point.
I live in the postmodern reality of the West and to me it appears to be losing its grip on the minds of its citizens because it offers nothing but illusions without substance. I think it will collapse like the Soviet Empire collapsed once enough people especially the middle classes begin to feel disenfranchised and chained to a meaningless debt based existence of hedonism. Common sense is constantly outraged by the postmodern rhetoric coming from our establishment and will eventually reassert itself like a survival instinct. One can’t go against reality indefinitely the energy required to sustain the illusion isn’t available.
I think that it is – if not demonstrably true – then at least profitable to observe things from the point of view that reaction can be a natural growth of alternatives, and not some kind of break down or catastrophe.
I have in mind Slavoj Zizek’s remark about Communism beginning to fall when some leader cracked a joke about it. The sort of ridicule that was previously confined to the disillusioned proletariat and was not approved of. So then people started to reflect : if we don’t believe it and our politicians don’t believe it why are we still going along with it?
That is the situation in England at least but the politicians and media haven’t yet let the cat out of the bag. They are still chanting the mantras of egalitarianism but becoming more intolerant of the reality that contradicts them. It won’t be a graceful acceptance of defeat but I don’t think it will be catastrophic. America might be a different matter.
It sounds to me like you probably read some of Orlov’s material, if not, then probably would find some interesting research on collapse of the Soviet Union and/or so-called West.
However, i don’t think it is fully accurate to say the collapse is due “West appears to be losing its grip on the minds of its citizens because it offers nothing but illusions without substance “.
Namely, the issue with “reality” and “substance” is that everyone sees it differently and in different directions.
But the problem with reality and substance of it goes deeper than “West” and “postmodern” – it goes right down to the core questions of Truth and cognition, i.e. to epistemological core.
I never heard of Orlov but he seems to focus on the economic and social collapse from a quick google search. I was thinking more in terms of the psychological fixation on sport celebrity television etc . This deliberate avoidance of ‘core questions’ and the fascination with images and emotions to displace reality.
I’ve been reading Spengler so my frame of mind is coloured by images of decline.
Insightful as always. However I feel that this message would be completely lost to a Western reader, especially the kind that this website seeks to reach out to. This is because it can be easily observed how morality in the West is always brought up in a certain, I should say “astroturfed” context backed by decades of social engineering and research into behavioral psychology, essentially to serve as a means of mass manipulation. This method would be best served by an example – the ongoing media frenzy over the family separation in the American southern border. The media instigates moral outrage over a rather trivial issue without really going so far as to look at the details surrounding it. It always amuses me to watch the fake and often poor acting on the faces of TV news anchors as they try to evince moral outrage over the government’s position on this issue, but it’s even more baffling as to how this farcical performance seems to seize the people like a blazing tempest. The same goes for guns, police “racism” and other matters completely and utterly irrelevant to the genuine outrages and injustices (oh boy there are a few) that go on in Western societies, of which public temperament rises to zilch.
I begin to fearfully suspect that people feed in to these narratives precisely because they want to feel good about themselves without coming to any actual awareness of how their own behavior contributes to social or even existential problems, or any understanding of the need to follow a principled code of behavior. This is also the case with the alt-right, and certain black supremacist movements in the US (like BLM) who just see “morals” as paper thin justification for the furtherance of certain vested goals. I suppose this kind of hypocrisy led to works like “Genealogy of Morals” to be composed, because by then it was almost inconceivable for any other kind of morality to exist. In any case I think an elaboration of these ideas for the Western viewer, especially someone who sees everything in terms of power and self interest, would be much helpful.
Astroturfed, yes. And very well astroturfed for that matter. What never ceases to fascinate me is the ability of people to accept being branded as rebels through compliant conformism, especially young people. Also, breaking away from this kind of conditioning must be some kind of “born again” experience. The delusion of oneself as being non-conforming while in fact conforming to everything served to you by most mundane sources, is very difficult to break. You should see Eastern Europe specimens – usually teenagers in their late thirties/early forties dying to embrace what their counterparts in the further West are already trying to shake off.