Things are gunna be slow around here for a while. You can keep up with my musings at:
http://twitter.com/genruk
or check some movie reviews at:
http://evileyereviews.com/
Merci.
You are currently browsing Genruk’s articles.
Tags: Philosophy
Somewhere I read a blurb that intimated that people should turn their attention away from their favorite blogs and towards their favorite authors. While such advice seemed a genuinely positive gesture, something felt awkward. Maybe it was that I am a blogger and this notion threatened me somehow. For a day it was left at that. Then it came to me. Blogging’s insane gravity is not merely a dumbing down of the public. It is also drawing out the written creativity in those that have their own blogs. When I look out at the sea of blogs out there, what I am looking at is a sea of humanity looking to the written word to express themselves, to create, to share, and to write. In this way, the English language is getting a refresher course by way of society, and nothing could be a greater boon to the written word than to have a wave of home-based publishers daily revealing their worded wares. Merci.
Genruk
Tags: Civilization, Social, The Written Word
Much of what I have been saying intimates that much of what ails mankind is the result of the limitations put upon him by his civilization by way of cultural inculcation. The question we have to ask ourselves is which should come first, man or his society? This is a difficult, maybe even impossible, question to answer. In fact, even initiating such a contemplation is a difficult endeavor, for where are we to begin? Humans are egocentric by nature, and this is expressed in our want of freedom and independence. On the other hand, we are wickedly social and are driven to seek the company, or should I say the attention, of others. But if we are to accept that there is an unacceptable constraint on human nature by cultural inculcation then we must come to a conclusion as to which agency we should make divine, individuality or nationality. In part, this decision must be made after a painfully pragmatic take on the issue- is man even able to glory over the individual while forcing society to take a back seat. Would such an endeavor lead to social chaos? If man is to truly face up to the social ills that are the champions of discontent then this discussion must be somehow come to fruition and thereby finds its way into the social limelight of intelligentsia today.
Genruk
Tags: Civilization, cultural inculcation, Discontent, Human Nature, Perception, Philosophy, Social, Truth
When I first appreciated the onslaught of social media, the first thing that came to mind was that it was nothing less than a catalyst for the further degradation of a decadent culture. Of course, that is my typical knee slap response to anything in its incipience, before it has had time to grow past its ugly duckling period. Blogs, I thought, were online soapboxes for the general public to clamor upon about this thing and that. To a large degree I was initially correct. But what I did not calculate was the fact that such egocentricity would soon peter out, only to be followed by people with something worth listening to. My initial responses to Myspace and Facebook were pretty much the same, if not even more scornfully so. Though Myspace is really not my deal, Facebook has come to be a huge part of social sharing that I could not have imagined possible. Again, time let the field of social weeds cull themselves, and now we are left mainly with a scent full field of Facebook flowers. Now with Twitter I was initially aghast. To me it was the stupidest thing on the interweb. Again, how more wrong I could have been is impossible to conceptualize.
So what’s the verdict? Was there even a verdict to be decided upon? I would have to say that social media is no longer in my cross hairs of cultural evil, no longer the fomenting agent of our civilization’s ruin. Instead, the onslaught of social media, for those up to date, has become a way to remain connected with people, to add remarkable ideas for their community to ponder, and to level the playing field for the commoner. This last attribute might be the greatest of all, for it is threatening to change the whole of our advertising industry, from the interruption-based industry of commercial campaigns to becoming a league of transparent companies that attracts its customers by its good deeds, by its offering of free and useful information, and by good old fashion hard work. Online social media has become the champion , the freighter even , of industrial transparency. Not only does corporate malfeasance easily come bubbling to the surface of the online community, ingenuous characters are quickly sniffed out and scoffed. Simply put, one’s online reputation is made good with continued, determined, and honest effort but turned sour with frightening ease. This is one of the first positive cultural movements that our civilization has seen in a while, a movement which just might be the turning point for reverting our culture’s immanent decadence into a movement where the West is back on track as an almost living phenomenon.
Genruk
Tags: Civilization, culture, Human Nature, Social
When a casual “How are you doing” is offered, and the reply is “OK,” what are the implications? Most likely the implications intimate that the individual’s life is currently nowhere near optimal and they are likely unhappy. Let’s examine an example from. We’ll call her Eve. Eve says she is OK. But I know the scoop. Eve is an alcoholic. Eve is cheating on her husband. Eve has a socially disreputably disease that is compounded by her drinking. AND, Eve is driving without a license. So when Eve says that she is OK, she is really miserable.
Though Eve’s problems are of her own making, there is another element that of Eve’s predicament that is constipating any and all effort to remedy her situation. She has come to appreciate the unstated sympathy that her friends and acquaintances impart upon her and has manifested into her own private perpetual pity party. She is addicted to sympathy. Eve’s problems are further compounded in that she likely has a psychological disorder that will impede any serious efforts to better her situation.
The problem is that “Eve” symbolic is our culture. The West, racing towards an age of decadence, emanates the radiation of the pity party upon all of its citizens as a sort of heroin to dampen the pain. Real life TV is a prime example of pathetic people that have found the ultimate bullhorn to pronounce their woes on a national scale, underhandedly propagating the notion of normalcy for the masses in a world replete with rampant moral as well as tangible corruption. The individual pity party has expanded into the realms of near ubiquity. Just as heroin makes life better for those suffering from pain, such a social demise offers the narcosis of sympathy. It sells because it works, but only in the short term and with a miserable denouement when the dose of the “drug” becomes toxic. Demise is the result, be it an actual heroin overdose or a fracture of the psyche too deep from mending. This begs the question: How are individuals to become party poopers of pity parties when our culture is sending invitations to the biggest bash of all?
Genruk
Tags: Apostasy, culture, Discontent, Inculcation, Philosophy, Truth
The good news is that we are moving onto some snappy new servers. The bad, of course, is that chaos will likely reveal its full fury. No good venture should go unpunished. But order will triumph in the end. Sorry for that, and for any inconveniences this change shall wrought. Merci.
Genruk
From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.
Arthur Ashe
Tags: Quote
America is the champion of democracy, and the immediate results seem to indicate that this wonderful institution might be the next best thing to white bread. But is white bread a good thing? Do voters actually go to the booth with their country’s best interests in mind, or might the glamorous voter actually have a more insidious motivation? In other words, might a voter’s punch of the e-card be shadowed by their vested interests, steering them away from choices that might better the community to the single-minded benefit of those registered few? The truth is that most will likely vote for candidates whose prevarications intimate that they are on our side, the good side, as opposed to that other nefarious faction whose intents are an invidious exertion to wholesale as many souls as possible to Lucifer? Does the democratic machine that has led to the seething factional rivalry as seen today really the divine light of humanity, or might it instead foment the darker side of humanity that Western Civilization has for so long kept in the closet?
reblogged from Idle Truth
The persistent problem with the human condition is that after man has instituted some revolutionary change for the collective better, these same men typically backslide towards self-centered, avaricious and occasionally nefarious tendencies. This merely drives the cycle of discontent. In order to combat this inclination man must first learn how to be self-aware and vigilant of his own programmed instincts and behaviors such that he may recognize these nasty little tendencies for what they are, tendencies that are to the benefit of the individual and maybe his immediate community but that can be destructive or even anti-social for the greater whole. Man simply needs to levy a campaign of self-realized truth.
For example, as per the Rule of 150 and its cousin hypothesis the Rule of Familiarity, man is xenophobic by nature. When a man is confronted by a strange man of which he might exploit, were he to consider his situation as a creature that is pre-programmed to be wary to aggressive towards the stranger, then he might be able to combat any shifty designs that he might have contemplated through an honest evaluation of the animal nature, his animal nature, in regards to the whole affair. In doing so, the truth of his nature is acknowledged, embraced, and hence is not vilified into the shadowy realms of Stygian iniquity. Man can be compelled to do the right thing not because the bible tells him so, but because it furthers a social existence that eschews discontent and catapults mankind into the machinations of honest glory. This acceptance of veritable human nature is the only compound that will accelerate humanity and society into an exemplary existence, one of which each of us can wake each day, look into the mirror, and be honestly proud of what we see. Now that is a life worth looking towards.
Tags: Discontent, Human Nature, Perception, Philosophy, Rule of 150, Truth
The sentiment of Bad Natured is geared towards discovering the off ramp from the platitudinous philosophic contentions that serve to perpetuate and honor themselves as opposed to, and at the expense of, the humans that created them. It is time to set aside, leave behind, and move beyond these tired philosophies of yesteryear and embrace pragmatic, living and breathing contentions whose purpose is to serve mankind instead of promoting the highfalutin notion of intelligentsia safely ensconced in its ivory towers of thundering self-importance. It is time to reverse the subjugation that philosophies past have held over man, theories whose self-serving import spin unnecessary answers to issues that exist in some sidereal realm of which the everyman is not only made aloof, but unknowingly is driven to counterfeit cosmic actors and actresses whose only role is to play out a global tragedy, as if no other means of existence could possibly make sense. Instead of the canonic role-playing applied to man and his purpose in life, Bad Natured merely approaches the truths of the human creature in order to facilitate an existence based upon the veritable nature of man instead of the highly romantic and supposedly divine role of men and the ludicrous fashion of existence that has only led human beings to beat themselves silly upon a insuperable wall of discontent. As such, the goals of Bad Natured are:
1. Help humanity see the veritable creature that man is as opposed to the mythical creature that culture has concocted for mankind to believe itself to be
2. To reduce and eliminate the shame that culture has infused man with when the inner animal of humanity comes seeping in the surface
3. To help man be at one with the animal that he is. This is not to say that men should attempt to satisfy their every carnal whim, but to understand that these emotions are part of the collective that is human nature and not the whims of some nefarious entity
4. To use these truths of human nature in the creation of judicious and insightful communities and feasible legislative policies that take into account the veritable nature of man
If man is to have a goal, a purpose in life, it should be to get off the high horse of hubris that threatens the tenuous infrastructure of society and instead turn that blind eye back upon ourselves, see ourselves as we really are, and then institute a society based on what we are and not that we wish to be.
Tags: Apostasy, Discontent, Human Nature, Philosophy, Truth
Your Say