Moveable Feast Cafe 2016/05/24 … Open Thread

In the latter half of the just closed Cafe Lady in Satin I posted the first half of Carroll Quigley’s thesis on the ancient, tribal, asiatic undertones operative in societies of the “Pakistan-Peru Axis” concluding with this short paragraph:

“As might be expected in such a society, Arabic boys grow up egocentric, self-indulgent, undisciplined, immature, spoiled, subject to waves of emotionalism, whims, passion, and pettiness. The consequence of this for the whole Pakistani-Peruvian axis will be seen in a moment.” this is that comment: /moveable-feast-cafe-2016-05-21/comment-page-1/#comment-239522

Today, I’d like to post the concluding half of Quigley’s thesis, which seeks to point to a solution to the deepest, most intractable ancient roots of mind control, and social injustice still gripping a large portion of the western hemisphere, the southern hemisphere, and, of course extending back to its roots in west Asia. Those of us pulling for a multi-polar world need to be concerned about these areas, as they can tip the balance for or against Empire. Also, I believe that the lessons of the limits of the benefits of comparatively recently introduced religion in the face of deeply stubborn ancient roots underlying such newer appearances in societies, apply everywhere else, as well, north of and even east of the “Pakistan/Peru Axis” Quigley examines in Tragedy and Hope.

He concludes:

“Another aspect of Arabic society is its scorn of honest, steady manual work, especially agricultural work. This is a consequence of the fusion of at least three ancient influences. First, the archaic bureaucratic structure of Asiatic despotism, in which peasants supported warriors and scribes, regarded manual workers, especially tillers of the soil, as the lowest layer of society, and regarded the acquisition of literacy and military prowess as the chief roads to escape from physical drudgery. Second, the fact that Classical Antiquity, whose influence on the subsequent Islamic Civilization was very great, was based on slavery, and came to regard agricultural (or other manual) work as fit for slaves, also contributed to this idea. Third, the Bedouin tradition of pastoral, war-like nomads scorned tillers of the soil as weak and routine persons of no real spirit or character, fit to be conquered or walked on but not to be respected. The combination of these three formed the lack of respect for manual work that is so characteristic of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis.

Somewhat similar to this lack of respect for manual work are a number of other characteristics of traditional Arab life that have also spread the length of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis. The chief source of many of these is the Bedouin outlook, which originally reflected the attitudes of a relatively small group of the Islamic culture but which, because they were a superior, conquering group, came to be copied by others in the society, even by the despised agricultural workers. These attitudes include lack of respect for the soil, for vegetation, for most animals, and for outsiders. These attitudes, which are singularly ill-fitted for the geographic and climatic conditions of the whole Pakistani-Peruvian area, are to be seen constantly in the everyday life of that area as erosion, destruction of vegetation and wild life, personal cruelty and callousness to most living things, including ones fellow men, and a general harshness and indifference to God’s creation. This final attitude, which well reflects the geographic conditions of the area which seem as harsh and indifferent as man himself, is met by those men who must face it in their daily life as a resigned submission to fate and to the inhumanity of man to man.

Interestingly enough, these attitudes have successfully survived the efforts of three great religions of ethical monotheism, native to the area, to change these attitudes. The ethical sides of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam sought to counteract harshness, egocentricity, tribalism, cruelty, scorn of work and of one’s fellow creatures but these efforts, on the whole, have met with little success throughout the length of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis. Of the three Christianity, possibly because it set the highest standards of the three, has fallen farthest from achieving its aims. Love, humility, brotherhood, cooperation, the sanctity of work, the fellowship of the community, the image of man as a fellow creature made in the image of God, respect for women as personalities and partners of men, mutual helpmates on the road to spiritual salvation, and the vision of our universe, with all its diversity, complexity, and multitude of creatures, as a reflection of the power and goodness of God- these basic aspects of Christ’s teaching are almost totally lacking throughout the Pakistani-Peruvian axis and most notably absent on the “Christian” portion of that axis from Sicily or even the Aegean Sea, westward to Baja California and Tierra del Fuego. Throughout the whole axis, human actions are not motivated by these ”Christian virtues” but by the more ancient Arabic personality traits, which became vices and sins in the Christian outlook: harshness, envy, lust, greed, selfishness, cruelty, and hatred.

Islam, the third in historical sequence of the ethical monotheistic religions of the Near East, was very successful in establishing its monotheism, but had only very moderate success in spreading its version of Jewish and Christian ethics to the Arabs. These moderate successes were counterbalanced by other incidental consequences of Muhammad’s personal life and of the way in which Islam spread to make the Muslim religion more rigid, absolute, uncompromising, self-centered and dogmatic.

The failure of Christianity in the areas west from Sicily was even greater, and was increased by the spread of Arab outlooks and influence to that area, and especially to Spain. The old French proverb which says that “Africa begins at the Pyrenees” does not, of course mean by “Africa” that Black Africa which exists south of the deserts, but means the world of the Arabs which spread, in the eighth century, across Africa from Sinai to Morocco.

To this day the Arab influence is evident in Southern Italy, northern Africa, and above all, in Spain. It appears in the obvious things such as architecture, music, the dance, and literature, but most prominently it appears in outlook, attitudes, motivations, and value systems. Spain and Latin America, despite centuries of nominal Christianity, are Arabic areas.

No statement is more hateful to Spaniards and Latin Americans than that. But once it is made, and once the evidence on which it was based is examined in an objective way, it becomes almost irrefutable. In Spain, the Arab conquest of 711, which was not finally ejected until 1492, served to spread Arab personality traits, in spite of the obvious antagonism between Muslim and Christian. In fact, the antagonism helped to build up those very traits that I have called Arabic: intolerance, self-esteem, hatred, militarization, cruelty, dogmatism, rigidity, harshness, suspicion of outsiders, and the rest of it. The Arab traits that were not engendered by this antagonism were built up by emulation-the tendency of a conquered people to copy their conquerors, no matter how much they profess to hate them, simply because they are a superior social class. From this emulation came the Spanish and Latin American attitudes toward sex, family structure, and child-rearing that are the distinctive features of Spanish-speaking life today and that make Spanish-speaking areas so ambiguously part of Western Civilization in spite of their nominal allegiance to such an essential Western trait as Christianity. For the West, even as it nominally ceases to be Christian, and most obviously in those areas which have, at least nominally, drifted furthest from Christianity, still has many of the basic Christian traits of love, humility, social concern, humanitarianism, brotherly care, and future preference, however detached these traits may have become from the Christian idea of deity or of individual salvation in a spiritual eternity.

In Latin America the Mediterranean version of Arabized life again found its traits preserved, and sometimes reinforced, by the historical process. In Latin American-Spanish influences, chiefly Indian, Negro, and North American, can be observed in such things as music, dances, superstitions, agricultural crops and diet (largely Indian), or in transportation, communications, and weapons (largely European); but the basic structures of family and social life, of ideological patterns and values are, to this day, largely those of the Arabic end of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis.

The Iberian conquest of Latin America, not as an area of settlement but as an area of exploitation, and the Spanish attitude toward the Indians and Negro slaves as instruments in that exploitative process, the development of plantation colonialism, and of mineral extraction, intensified the exploitative, ransacking, extensive attitude towards resources and peoples which the Mediterranean area had obtained from the Romans and the Saracens. None of these activities became permanent community traits for those involved in them, even for the underlings who operated as part of the exploitative way of life, but remained temporary, get-rich quick methods of mercenary gain for the persons who regarded themselves as strangers whose roots were elsewhere, or nowhere. The Spanish oligarchy in the colonial period saw its roots in Spain itself, and this attitude, widened somewhat to include Paris, London, the Riviera, or New York, has remained the attitude of the ruling oligarchy after the wars of liberation broke the formal links with Spain or Portugal. In the same way, and for these reasons, the colonial economy, and continued after it ceased in the narrowly political sphere. To this day the characteristics we have listed as Arabic dominate Latin America: no real concern for the soil, the area, for workers, one’s fellow men, or the community as a whole; the dominance of family connection and of masculine dominance with its dual standard of sexual morality, its cult of virility, its selfishness, self indulgence, lack of self-discipline or of concern for others, and the whole Mediterranean view of politics as a system of exploitative, personal relationships of an arbitrary and corrupt character combining extortion, bribery, tax evasion, and total divorce from community spirit or personal responsibility for the welfare of others or of the nation.

This picture of Latin America and its problems will be resented and criticized by many as exaggerated, one sided, or even as mistaken. Naturally, in view of its brevity, it is oversimplified, as all brief expositions must be. And equally naturally all its statements do not apply to all groups, all areas, all classes, or all individuals. There are numerous exceptions to large portions of this picture, but they are exceptions and are explicable as such. And there are obviously different degrees of emphasis among various groups, backgrounds, and periods. These again are explicable. Those Latin Americans who are close to the Negro traditions of Africa and of slavery put more emphasis on present preference and sociability, than they do on domination, harshness, and cruelty. Again those Latin Americans who are close to the Indian tradition put more emphasis on resignation to fate and indigenous superstitions than they do on male dominance and proving their sexual virility (called machismo), a key concept in Latin American outlook and behavior). Above all, the scores of millions of Latin Americans who are on a poverty level at, or even below subsistence have many of the characteristics of social and psychological disintegration that we associate with extreme poverty everywhere, even in the United States, and are to that degree unable to carry on the traditions of Latin American life—or any traditions. As such, they emphasize, interestingly enough, the traits of male dominance and egocentric selfishness rather than the companion traits, in the Arab tradition, of female chastity or family solidarity.

In general we might say that the Latin American tradition we have identified as a modified Arabic tradition with Asiatic despotic overtones is more typical of the oligarchic, Spanish upper classes than it is of the Negro, Indian, or poverty-racked urban poor. And this is of the greatest significance. For this shows that the means and the method for the reform of Latin American society rest in the same group of that society. Such reform can come about only can come about only when the surpluses that accumulate in the hands of the Latin American oligarchy are used to establish more progressive utilization of Latin American resources. By the word “reform” we mean that the power pattern, the economic and social pattern, and the ideological pattern be reorganized in more constructive configurations rather than on the destructive patterns in which they now exist. And of these three, the patterns of ideology—that is of outlook and value systems—are most in need of change. Of course, in any society it is precisely this pattern of outlook and values that is most difficult to modify. In most societies this remains unchanged- repeated in slogans, war cries, and religious incantations long after the behavioral and structural patterns have changed completely. But in Latin America there is this ray of hope. A more constructive ideological pattern is already familiar, at least in words, to Latin America: Christianity.

The whole system is full of paradox and contradiction. The real obstacle to progress and hope rests in the oligarchy, not so much because it controls the levers of power and wealth but because it is absorbed in the destructive Latin American Ideology. But the real hope in the area rests in the same oligarchy, because it controls wealth and power and also because there is no hope at all unless it changes its ideology. The ideology it could adopt is one that places emphasis on self-discipline, service to others, love, equality, but these virtues, almost wholly lacking in practice in Latin America, are the very ones that are, in words, embodied in the Christian religion to which the oligarchy of Latin America nominally belongs. In a word, Latin America would be on the road to reform if it practiced what it preached, that is, if it tried to be Christian. Of course, we cannot really say that the solution lies in practice of what one preaches, the Christian virtues, because Latin American religion, like everything else, is largely corrupt, and as a consequence, no longer preaches the Christian virtues. The upper clergy have been generally allied to the oligarchy; the lower clergy are as poverty –stricken and almost as ignorant as their fellow poor in lay society. Moreover, both levels of clergy have come to accept the outlook and values of the society in which they live. The message of Christ itself, a positive message of action, has been lost in the negative messages of the Catholic clergy reacting within a corrupt society drenched in the non-Christian outlook that dominates the oligarchy as a whole.”

Of course there have been changes since these paragraphs were written 50 years ago, but it seems to me they still retain much relevance.

05/24/2016
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Scandal over election Austria: Facebook takes Anonymous.Kollektiv from network
Markus Mähler

Is Facebook now the censored Opinion petting zoo, the Justice Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) long calls? On Sunday Anonymous.Kollektiv called the social network: Austrians, please go to the polls. Choosing your President will have consequences for all of Europe. Unfortunately, the group drummed it for the wrong, because politically incorrect candidates: EU critic Norbert Hofer (FPÖ). Not two minutes later, the page disappeared on Facebook. Here reported a hacktivist what happened behind the scenes.

More: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Finfo.kopp-verlag.de%2Fhintergruende%2Fdeutschland%2Fmarkus-maehler%2Fskandal-wegen-oesterreich-wahl-facebook-nimmt-hackergruppe-anonymous-vom-netz.html&edit-text=

I am troubled by the conflict over Quigley. But perhaps that was its unintended consequence. To surface the tensions in such a gentle cafe, holding up a mirror to the terrors of the day.

I seek a common ground but as soon as any idea raises its head, ten other hydras appear. Such is the nature of war; and of knowledge itself. Always seeking certainty and forced to settle for an enforced inanity.

What then is the center that holds? Well, I’m still checking that out. I don’t like mentioning the word because it’s not the word that holds. Ever since the tower of babel babble of Babylon diaspora, we’ve been fighting a losing battle over ideology.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If you believe that, you are in the world of words. Jesus tried to break that logjam and get the water flowing again but busy beavers like logjams.

In the unbeginning was Love, and Love was with the Lover, and Love was the Lover. If you believe that, you are in the world of love.

Currently, we live in a world that is 99% words and 1% lovers. The love army is here to make it at least a 50-50 playing field.

Bro Anon, bless his heart, and Elsi, double bless hers, have doubled down on the main stake in this game: the broad brush of culture and its discontents. I have my own stake in this but I can’t show my hand or I fall into the wrong world. I need to conceal my trump in word play lest I rue the day and ruin the play.

But I do believe what the bible say: about the day when all will be revealed. Come what may, I love you all. What more can I say?

Elsi,
As a thought experiment, had this article referred to Jews instead of Arabs I’m sure posting it would have met with major difficulties. In fact, it easily could have done so. I was amused that Quigley states various traits such as “harshness, egocentricity, tribalism, cruelty, scorn of (manual) work (farming particularly) and of one’s fellow creatures” as somehow definitive of Arabs. Jews have been accused of all of these. Moreover, we were there during the same period as the Arabs, so why are the Arabs singled out?

now this is utterly disgusting!!
where is Martin from occupied Berlin?
please comment, be as pessimistic as you can…Ich bin empoert! Und BRICS?!

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/05/27/backstabbing-multipolar-world-india-prime-minister-narendra-modi-treads-path-sultan-erdogan.html

To the deideologizators.

“Russian General Bastrykin: Russia needs a new national ideology”

http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/05/russian-general-bastrykin-russia-needs.html

(…) “Ideology plays an extremely important role in the formation and functioning of the state and law,” Bastrykin said, after which he formulated the main aspects of what, in his opinion, should guide such an ideology’s development.

Firstly, the national idea should reflect the public interest of “strategic order or the long-term perspective,” he noted. Secondly, such should take into account historical traditions, the mentality of the people, the geopolitical position of the country, and its economy, demography, and ecology. In addition, such an ideology should cover all spheres of public life: the socio-political, economic, and spiritual, the head of the committee concluded.