06.02.10
Issues of equality
Comment on Luther and Nietzsche
James said,
05.02.10 at 6:11 pm ·
“In the nonce, Nietzsche, as charged in this book, whether fairly or not, is accused of calling for the destruction of Judaism/Jews along the lines of his eugenical project to defeat the ‘last men’. The Nazis took him seriously there, and also took Darwin seriously.”Welcome to life. Some idiots will always come along to transmogrify the message of a “select few” and “inequality” to justify power over others. Why? Because it is obvious that the idea that “all human beings are equal” is an unjustified and empirically false dogma (Don’t misunderstand me…I agree that it is an absolutely necessary dogma for any civil society and I would defend it with my life, but I don’t believe it).
You surprise me. You are apparently a closet conservative. I would warn you that those most concerned with inequality are those who too frequently are unequal! Look at the racists who suppressed blacks in the name of inequality. Poor white trash of the lowest level. And so it goes.
Women were thought inferior for millennia. And yet in one generation they are reaching equality with men.
Those who preach inequality are incapable of defining their terms, or mediating their wish. They cannot get straight who is superior and who is inferior. Look at the record. The Jews were charged with inferiority as a race as recently as the twenties of the last century. Look at the facts: in almost every case we see the fraudulent establishment of inequality against the ‘categorical imperative’ of equality.
Capitalism mixed with liberalism is especially potent as a theatre of this dynamic.
Part of the confusion arises from forgetting that equality is really a timeless term that is referring to a temporal term, e.g. equalization. It is not that people are perfectly equal, but that inequality perceived leads to the temporal adjustment of inequalities.
That is the trend of civilization over the long term, against the trends, if any, toward inequality in the short term. And thus we cannot judge in the short term.
Nietzsche is a puzzling fellow, an intelligent man who became unintelligent in his attack on liberalism, modernity, equality, etc…
His thinking, if you scratch the surface, is the same old crap about the pre-Christian Aryan culture of supposed superior men. Bullshit.
Same in India: the establishment of caste and inequality in the name of spirituality is seen now to be a great fraud. The Aryans were incapable of superior spirituality and ripped out the more ancient tradition. And so it goes.
The issue is relevant here because Gurdjieff was an extreme reactionary, like Nietzsche, trying to destroy modern gains of freedom and equality.
In the name of a fraudulent spirituality.
Jim Buck said,
07.02.10 at 5:36 am
Interesting titbit about Luther:
‘Martin Luther used the Rose, Cross and Ring (Sufic halka group) in his emblem. This must have been supplied to him by an initiate Sufi.’ (Idries Shah: The Sufis 1982 edition; p 390)
nemo said,
07.02.10 at 8:16 am
Shah made a lot of statements like that, and I find them dubious.
In broad strokes he has a point, one that conventional scholarship has not examined properly. For instance, the influence of Moslem culture, and its Sufis, via the Provencal poets, et al, injects a strain into developing European cultures. We see it in Chaucer. But Shah’s almost chauvinistic sufism has falsified the claim, and we would have to start from scratch trying to understand the issue.
Meanwhile, the sufis have monopoly on these issues. They are just as much the influenced (by unknown sources) as the influencers.
Jim Buck said,
07.02.10 at 8:40 am
I find it interesting that some accuse Shah of “chauvinistic sufism”; and others accuse him of: producing a secularised travesty stripped of all trace of Islam.
I found interesting corroboration of Shah’s claim, that “sufism” predated the rise of historic Islam, in a book by a Jewish scholar. The book is The Essene Oddysey: http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/rev_schonfield_essene.htm
Jim Buck said,
07.02.10 at 10:22 am
‘They are just as much the influenced (by unknown sources) as the influencers.’
Reminds me of Engels’ dictum (much quoted by Zizek):
The secrets of the Egyptians were also secrets for the Egyptians.
The Gurdjieff Con » More on Shah and proto-sufism said,
07.02.10 at 1:50 pm
[...] Comment sequence on Issues of equality Jim Buck said, 07.02.10 at 5:36 am Interesting titbit about Luther: [...]