Recreating the Eurasian Steppe

Steppe

This post is really the same topic as an older one: The Divine Cow, but focuses more on the practical aspects of the concept that there's a deep ancestral urge in western people to recreate the Eurasian Steppe grasslands. Parallel to this urge is a hostility to the forest, or perhaps the wilderness in general, and to other predators.

Western civilization seems to be a machine for realizing this ancestral urge, that is mowing down forests and killing all the predators in a region. This can either be seen as the fulfillment of the wish of the pastoral lifestyle, or a complete inversion and corruption of it, as the civilization machine drains life and wealth via bureaucracy and usury where the dead things feast on the living.

People like Henry David Thoreau or Dick Proenneke seem to be the exception rather than the rule. That is, these are men who seek refuge in the wilderness, literally among the trees and in Proenneke's case, where there are other predators like wolves and bears making a living. However, that these men existed, and that this urge, to live a life contrary to the steppe making machine, seems like a strong urge so it seems unlikely that the urge to create the steppe is genetic.

So the question is where does it come from? Where does the will to create the steppe reside? That's one to mull over until next time.

An Ode to Richard Proenneke

Dick Proenneke is famous for retreating to an isolated cabin in the Alaskan wilderness and living there for decades. He documented his experience in journals and on film, which is on DVD and on YouTube in the series "Alone in the Wilderness". He built a cabin from scratch with hand tools over the course of a month or so in the summer of 1968 and lived there into his 80's, hunting and fishing and making what was needed to survive and enjoy life. Living thoughtfully and carefully is probably an individual affair, although maybe, just maybe the Amish are an example of a group that does so..

The wilderness provides an escape from parasitic bureaucracy and the false world, and a life in harmony with nature and the cycles of nature. In Proenneke's case, his time was truly his own. He worked toward his own ends and built a relationship with the land and the animals that lived nearby.

Salting the Fields of Imagination

According to legend, when the Romans defeated Carthage in the Punic Wars, they salted their fields, which I think is a poetic way of saying they utterly erased the city from existence. (To me, it's pretty unlikely that the Romans literally salted the fields.)

If you wanted to salt the fields of imagination, it would be a much easier, more straightforward task: Give the curious some inane puzzles to solve, for example turn the geometry of the Earth into an issue of debate, rather than one of measurement. Create complex and convoluted ideologies, whether it's a door stop tome on Communism, or Anarchism, or some other "ism", the effect will be the same. Or, the all time success: create a religion with complicated rituals, multiple prayer sessions per day, or severe food, clothing or sexual restrictions.

The acolyte will carefully study seeking an escape from their mental straight jacket and fail to understand that their very act of struggle cinches the straps ever tighter. They'll never use their mind for their own purposes. They'll expire deep in the labyrinth engaged in futile, fruitless tasks.

The World's Really Not Made of Math

An Outdoor Masonic Lodge

The image at the right shows an outdoor masonic lodge. The two pillars (probably) represent the summer and winter solstices, and the alternating colors of the pavement establish a means of measuring the shadow cast by the sun, either as a sundial or a calendar (I'm not really sure about the context in this photo). I believe quite a bit of the masonic imagery is about the world of reason that's implicit in the natural world, that is, the world can be measured and understood. Indeed, in an earlier post, I pointed out that the stars taught men math.

An idea like the Grand Unified Theory is the ultimate expression of this idea, really that the mathematics which describes the world is, in a very real sense, the world. That is, the formal language of mathematics which expresses the laws of nature is nature, or maybe nature's operating system. If there were a Grand Unified Theory, one could conceivably build another universe within a computer.

What if the world's not made of math, though? This idea is really the gist of this blog--that where physics ends, poetry, analogy, and subjectivity takes over. Is this merely a limitation of the human mind, or is it a feature of the universe?

Social Justice Warriors and the Savior

Popular in My College Days

When I was in college, political correctness was just starting to make the rounds of campuses in the United States. On my campus it was barely noticeable, and the "activism" of the time seemed forced or maybe anachronistic, sort of a 60's revival which was taking place during the Reagan/Bush/Clinton years where the dominant theme of the day was revitalization of the United States economy through tech.

Today's iteration of student activism on campus seems to be PC version 2. The social justice warriors are energized by the string of shootings and beatings by police that took place in recent years. The SJW's are making noise all over the country.

One aspect of the SJW movement that's interesting to me is how it seems to be imbued with an outsider/savior concept, that is, anyone who might want to advance the SJW cause can imagine themselves to be a savior, and the SJW cause seems to be about raising the status of outsiders, usually defined in the most basic, crass racist terms, that is by counting how many people of a specific race or gender are in whatever category. The SJW validates himself or herself by becoming the supposed champion of people who they perceive to be weaker than himself. Another interpretation is the SJW completes himself through wandering in the wilderness.

Mediating the Sun

Pro-Nazi/Anti-Commie Propaganda Poster
from Norway

The poster at the left from artist Harald Damsleth is a WW2 pro-Nazi anti Communist propaganda poster that relies on solar imagery for its effect. The summer sun at the left and the naked family is contrasted with the death-scape underworld of the duat and the crummy, commie winter sun.

Every government, though, is firmly in the duat and at best a 40 Watt light bulb imitation of the summer sun.

The Summer Ceded to Caesar?

In an earlier post I wondered why the Winter Sun God, e.g. Jesus or Osiris, doesn't have a summer counterpart in the western world. I wondered if, perhaps, the summer sun gods had been replaced with the state and its rulers.

Indeed, in the US holiday calendar, the summer holidays, Memorial Day, The 4th of July, and Labor Day are all civic holidays. The autumn holiday, Thanksgiving, is a blend. Christmas is an almost totally religious holiday, except for the commercial aspects of it, then Easter is so religious it's mostly celebrated only by religious people and just as Jesus dies on the cross, the religious calendar terminates.

George Lucas's White Slavers Comment

George Lucas publicly compared Disney to "White Slavers", then withdrew the comment.

White Slavery, of course, refers to the practice of abducting white women and children generally to use as sex slaves. That phrase is a pretty interesting choice for a description of Hollywood or the Disney conglomerate by someone who is, presumably, pretty knowledgeable about its inner workings.

The conspiracy minded might immediately leap to the conclusion that Disney actually traffics in women and children, however, I'm thinking Lucas was actually using the term in a figurative sense and is bitter about selling the rights to Star Wars for funny money.

Parochial Became Universal

One remarkable and odd aspect of western history is the parochial myths, folk tales, and fables of the Jewish tribes recorded in the Bible displaced traditions of the peoples of Europe and became the universal story of mankind. Well, for many western people, anyway.

The Destruction of Irminsul by Charlemagne

This is remarkable because for all of human history, there were as many origin stories as there were tribes. There were as many navels of the world, and as many axis mundi as there were tribes. The Bible was just one edition of this genre. If you imagine a theatrical stage where all the competing legendary patriarchs and founders of the past competed for the attention of the audience, it'd be bristling with dozens of characters like Romulus and Remus, Achilles, Odysseus, or Paris and Priam or a Celeus or Demophon or Brutus of Britain.

It's strange that the Bible's desert wandering, donkey riding cast of characters got promoted to the front and center of the stage of European religion while the rest of the characters of Northern European mythology were demoted to, at best, fictional character status or were even forgotten. Very few people today would think Odin or Zeus were historical figures, yet many people in the western world readily conflate Exodus with history and imagine that story is our, that is, Western people's patrimony rather than an alien invasive fable.

At various times and in various places,  authorities introduced new gods or created new religions to bring people of diverse backgrounds together. For example, the Ptolomies created the cult and god Serapis to unite Egyptian and Greek citizens. Christianity was similarly imposed on European people through a mix of violent coercion, cross-cultural curiosity, education, and genuine fervor for new religious ideas.

It seems that Christianity adopted features of the Roman Empire as a universal religion that could be aggressively imposed. While nobody really knows how or why the feudal lords of post-Roman Europe adopted Christianity as their creed, perhaps some clues are provided by Charlemagne's reign.

Migration Period Europe

A main problem of the feudal lords of Europe was uniting heterogeneous tribes within rather arbitrary territorial boundaries. The tribe as an extended family was an ancient institution with roots going back into the mists of time. (See this post about the Zombie Apocalypse and de-tribing Europe) A feature of tribal life was tribal religion, which connected the people with their ancient ancestors, their rulers, and their gods. These connections had the side effect of forming political boundaries. That is the people of a region answered to their own chieftains and had their own unique opinions about what was important and what could motivate them.

Serf's Up Brah! Mow this Field with a Knife!

Christianity, perhaps, was an obvious reagent that could dissolve those bonds and could be used to separate people from their ancient institutions and beliefs and draft them into new parasitic systems.

(I should note here that I am not nostalgic for, nor advocating a return to the tribal systems of more ancient times. There's really no reason to believe those arrangements were more rational, more just, or less oppressive than modern systems or even feudal systems.)

Hence, while many people imagine Christianity was successful in Europe owing to some specific features of the religion that made it a tonic for the people, an alternate explanation is that its success is a historic accident and its unique features were the Caesar-like ambitions and corresponding universalism of the church fathers, and Christianity's utility as a psy-op for feudal warlords.

January 1 -- The False World Wins Every Time

It is very interesting that the new year starts on January 1, rather than the Vernal Equinox or the Winter Solstice. It's an accident of history that I'm still researching, but it shows the power of Bureaucracy/The World of Man versus the natural world.

UPDATE:
The earth reaches perihelion (closest approach to the sun) around January 3 every year.