From Caribbean Rhythms, episode 150, I talk today my favorite matters, more on the Grek spirit, the ancient Grek, man of power, that many, and especially those who imagine themselves learned in history, many in philosophy or classics, many do not understand this man themselves, they misrepresent him, whether online or articles, they continue to do this I'm saying, despite Nietzsche's effort in showing the truth, they did it with Nietzsche even though he shows them. I explained to you why this matter is important for something beyond historical rectitude. It's because of what the Greek ideal and the Greek type of man represents for human kind, human race species in general. I mean actually in its biological development.

But I mean to say, I think I'll say it plainly now, I think the full Greek type of man is the man of nature. In other words, you don't find the man of nature in, let's say, a tribe of savages or even in Robinson Crusoe, although I would say Robinson Crusoe is a man of civilization and intellect who is self-sufficient, becomes so on an island by himself, is far more of a man of nature than what you'd find in, let's say, what a common run of opinion would think is someone close to nature, someone living in primitive tribe, or let's just say in most human societies historically and now of course, which is a big reason why my book has little to do with come and run reactionaries or traditionalists, and it's strange many who never read my book

don't understand this, about the view presented there, that I take my bearings by the type of men of nature as he'd exist at certain period of ancient Greeks, especially height of that culture, Archaic Greece, just before the classical age, although such types persisted even into AD times, arguably, and it's a type that recurs throughout history, yes, European history after, but only as exceptions, with Napoleon being the most recent and unarguably pure example of classical man, in other words, a man of nature. Man does not begin in nature. He returned to nature at height of certain civilizations, is what I'm saying. But this view is different not only from popular vision of antiquity, but also from that of

professors or those who think themselves learned in general, and the moralists who want to integrate Greeks and actually Greek or Roman antiquity, and they misunderstand the Romans too maybe, but they want to integrate them into a story about morality or a story about an identity. And often this is colored, yes, colored to emphasize that word, colored by the ideas of the Bible, which is an Afro-Semitic text of kinky hair, tabernacle, nasal hair, they with guttural nasal phlegmatic voice thing they carry is the rabbis in the tent with the oils and there they carry pureed tahini in the pockets and it's a text totally inappropriate to the great expanse of the earth sea in Eurasia anyway I speak with Schopenhauer wish that Tibetan Buddhism had provided the

basis of Western civilization instead in any case this debate for another time But you know when Nietzsche first book when he wrote his first book The Birth of Tragedy Which was widely anticipated in the world of the classic scholarship of the time because he would was already known for some interesting articles he had written before Such nice ones that he got professorship even without finishing his doctorate to which at the time was unheard of But he published instead this crazy book Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music a book you could say traditionally it would follow a theory of aesthetics. It's really a book about art, about what ancient Greek drama tragedy meant, challenging not only the traditional

Aristotelian view of what tragedy was, but also the view of the ancient Greeks that was common at the time in Europe and Germany, inherited from Weimar Golden Age, Weimar Germany, from the Germany of Winkelmann, who I did a previous episode on his work on the Greeks. But this presented a beautiful but rather false sunny Apollonian view of the ancient Greeks that was then institutionalized in German academy and pedagogy, in part under the name now known German Hellenism, but which I think with some changes, namely the changes Nietzsche introduced later, I mean German Hellenism could have been a great basis for a new European Renaissance, which the world was robbed of this, and I will not just blame it on the Anglo, I will also blame it on the retired Kaiser Wilhelm II who achieved what

Germany's number one goal should have been to stop, which is an alliance between Russia and France. In this case, this alliance was undertaken in 1894, I think, five years after Nietzsche's sickness incapacitated him. Or more likely, as my friend Loki Julianus shows, that even after his 1889 breakdown, She had a kind of recovery, maybe partial recovery, but was basically kept in mental asylum as a prisoner for criticizing the moron Kaiser. It was illegal to criticize him in this way at the time. On this very matter, he criticized the Kaiser, that he knew this man would bring Europe to ruin with a war through his vain militarization of Germany by provoking and antagonizing the other European powers into a reaction.

When in fact Europe was already arguably moving toward the unity, a unity that Germany could have had fall into its lap, simply because of its greater population, its wealth, its industrial and scientific superiority. And the superiority ever increasing also of its universities, its culture in general and such a case can be made for that. If it had not pursued such militarization and in particular if it hadn't pursued naval power which spooked the United Kingdom to such an extent that this is an interesting point Lutvak makes, very interesting about China too, that China and its autism is now provoking its neighbors to self-defense. And China's situation is actually not so good regarding neighboring countries, despite what you may hear from synophiles.

Many of the countries around China are nuclear powers. That's something you generally want to avoid. North Korea, India, Pakistan, Japan, Japan could be within days of some people say already covertly is nuclear but I doubt. All of them have historical hatreds of China and all of them have record of military success in resisting or actually defeating China. Vietnam has been fighting China for since forever, for centuries, they have defeated China in 1970s and the relationship between China and North Korea, their friendship is overstated both by shallow cinephiles and by haters of the Chinese who want to raise fears of North Korea and so on. North Korea isn't part of any so-called cynic sphere. That is a dumb idea from Sam Huntington, who I otherwise like.

But the Koreans don't like the Chinese. They've resisted significations for thousands of years. North Korea will now forcibly abort any fetus if the father is Chinese. And a united Korea, by the way, is something I think inevitable, but it's something that both some people in Washington, D.C., and in Peking don't want to see. I call it Peking, by the way. Beijing is the commie, insecure, ethno-nationalist name. It would be like if Egypt demand you call it not Cairo, but Al-Kahira. I speak English, thank you. But anyway, China is surrounded now by traditional enemies, which it regularly bullies, whereas when America has some dispute with Canada or Mexico, force, or even other of its immediate neighbors, force is off the table, but especially Mexico and Canada.

Because America does not want its immediate neighbors to ever feel threatened physically. You don't want them to look abroad and say maybe we should enter into an alliance with Russia or with China or some other power. Force always off the table but China cannot or does not have this, cannot do this or does not have this restraint, you know. But some of China's traditional enemies are highly armed and when put together the countries around China have a bigger economy, they have a larger population than China, and so it's actually very easy to contain China, you can let it make all the mistakes on its own, I think actually even if the United States withdrew from there, Japan would militarize and China's neighbors would reach a pact against it, and contain it maybe quite easily as it's been

done historically. But Ludwig's point is that this is similar to Germany in 1890. If China would just not militarize, China would in a way inherit at least East Asia by default, again because it's growing economy, it's the demographic might. The other side, the intellectual side, I don't know, I don't think so. It's not working out, you know, it's been decades of science imported to that region from Europe and the results are very mediocre. I mean within the Asian countries, scientific results still not very good and not good for the last few decades. Please don't mention academic journal citations. Most of those articles published there mean nothing. They are fraud articles or they are corollaries of corollaries that people publish just to get tenure. Nobody reads them.

They're of no scientific consequence. That happens in the hard sciences too, by the way. Most of what's published is irrelevant trash. But China being in some ways a latecomer, it's an old country, but in the modern scene of power politics it was much weaker until recently. So like Germany in its own time, after German unification, it's a latecomer to a crowded scene of locally powerful nations who get nervous and who historically hate it. A lot of NATO, General William Odom used to tell me the main purpose really of NATO was was to reassure the other European countries that they will not be dominated by Germany, to stop them from militarizing and to put their efforts into economic development and so on instead.

But in 1890, 1900 or so, what happened is the other euro power made pacts, and once those pacts were made out of fear of Germany, Germany was in an almost impossible situation. By analogy, same in World War II, where the German soldier was in battle performance, also technology, but battle performance, discipline, and so on. Battle performance meant several Allied soldiers per German soldier. The average German soldier was worth maybe five or ten Allied soldiers, maybe 20, and maybe worth 100 Russian soldiers. But it didn't matter because you can't defeat the Soviet Union, Allied with America and England, while your ally is Bulgaria. So it lost the war diplomatically before it started. in World War I, maybe also.

And in any case, back to the retard Kaiser before World War I, he bears responsibility, first of all because Germany's pursuit of colonies abroad was undertaken frivolously and out of vanity for no other reason than desire for international prestige. And its pursuit of a navy, especially, it spooked the English so much that throughout the 1890s, okay, England, for example, had many colonial disputes with France, their traditional rival. And on every matter, every time the United Kingdom gave way to France, it cucked, okay? And it drove English nationalists mad. You know what they said, our government is betraying us, they're weak cucks and so on. By the way, I cannot use power of voice on this show, this very long show, special edition

150 episode, and the dark powers that be have not let up on attacking my being, attacking my throat, so I need to not use power of voice or forgive me. But English nationalists, every time the United Kingdom foreign policy establishment gave in, you know what they would say? England is falling. We're being humiliated by the filthy, smelly frogs, their cucks. But the people running England had this discipline to persevere despite this public opinion and even despite public humiliation, to persevere in cucking, okay? And cucking is what it should have done because the purpose of that cucking was to entice, to make it easy, lay way for a historic alliance with France, which England knew it desperately needed to counter Germany.

And once that alliance had been made, it was over for Germany's plans in Europe and World War I was fated to be a bloody, disgusting affair. And yes, again, regarding the 1894 alliance between France and Russia, Nietzsche himself wrote some time before about how it was Germany's chief aim, it wasn't just a special insight, everyone knew this, that it was Germany's chief aim to try to avoid Alliance France-Russia from happening, even to the extent of encouraging as far as it could have the Catholic Church supremacy in France, because the Church hated Orthodox Russia, and as long as France was, as long as the Church was a powerful force in French politics, a Franco-Russian alliance wouldn't take place. But no, the Kaiser ignored all this. Bismarck was let go too. And so

yes, out of this stupidity and vanity, Kaiser Wilhelm bears much responsibility, maybe the chief responsibility for World War I. And he hated Hitler, by the way. It's funny to hear the Kaiser's words on Hitler later. Of course, it was all, he's not a real conservative. He's not a real family man and this kind of thing. Where have you heard that before? Anyway, This is long tangent, but not entirely unrelated. In World War I, at one point Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra was included in the knapsack of German soldiers on the front. And in general, for the European radical right, as well as especially for the avant-garde art scene of the time, it was all Nietzsche from 1900 to 1940 or such, with some especially author, novelist, and so on, favoring Schopenhauer at other times.

But it wouldn't be correct to say that either German political life or on the other hand German culture in general had been Nietzscheanified, or that it was even indirectly a reflection of Nietzsche's spirit, not overall anyway, just in these avant-garde pockets. It was always, in other words, minority position, maybe an influential minority, but overall the course, for example, of German Hellenism, German reading of the classics and the Greeks, it wasn't fully embracing of Nietzsche's outlook is what I'm saying. And in the beginning, when he published Birth of Tragedy, I think in 1872, it was widely attacked and this classicist, Wilamowitz, who is still a known scholar in the field of classics, he wrote Attack on Birth of Tragedy, criticism of it.

And the academic consensus of the time in Germany is what I'm saying rejected Nietzsche's view of the Greeks, very much rejected. Like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche thought was instead first embraced by artists in Paris, not by academics and still less by politicians. Paris and then Vienna in around 1890 and after or so. But anyway, Nietzsche got attacked in his own lifetime, actually with publication of this first book got attacked by nobody academic, nobody today really remembers them, even though his view of the Greeks was more correct than theirs and the result of a lifelong immersion in Greek mind. But he had this book, I suppose it was expected to be, it was a book, however really of poetry, the birth of tragedy. He didn't choose to express it in an academically

acceptable way. But this episode now where I talk brief about one aspect of the Greek spirit that is misunderstood, what do I mean? What is the general accepted view back then and now to which the Nietzschean view is the correction. And if you consider the view now and the view 19th century, they're different. But the view of Greek life and Greek character, Greek culture that was in 19th century Germany isn't, what I'm saying, the same that's held now either by classicists who are, by the way, some of the dumbest among academics, nor is it the view held by people at large or by those who, let's say, online or in books seek to represent themselves as learned in these things. But both 19th century German view and modern popular as well as some of academic views,

all these, they do share certain things. The purest, most naive, and one of beautiful statements on this matter, though not the most complete, and I'm not saying it's the one that people hold now in full is that of Winkelmann again, which, thinker of aesthetics, founder of, you could say, inspirer of artistic movement of neoclassicism, which seems to be a totally aesthetic understanding of the Greek spirit and ideal, but in fact it has strong auxiliary moral component. This moral component is the Socratic morality or philosophy. Winkelmann considers the intellectual or philosophical counterpart to the Greek principle of noble simplicity and quite grandeur in aesthetics to be the Socratic schools, maybe both in their method of expression, but also the virtues they promote.

Maybe especially this virtue, soprosune, self-restraint, or moderation. In modern times, these would be the people who think, for example, that to understand ancient Greek gentlemen on life, you should look to Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics. And many do this, both on the right and left. For example, Alistair MacIntyre is famous, so-called ex-Marxist, who turned Catholic Greek virtue ethicist or something like that, and here's chapter on, yes, he tried to focus on a Nicomachean ethic of Aristotle, and even when he looks, MacIntyre, I mean, at the Homeric ethics that preceded the Aristotelian and Greek history, I think he make big blunders. I talked this on previous episode. But the problem with all this is that the Socratic schools were schools of the decadent period of the Greeks.

civilization eventually got passed down to the Romans and later to us through, let's say, Alexandrian Hellenistic scientific Socratic civilization. But this is not what the Greeks were at their height before, let's say, the classical age. It is the thought of the Greeks during that period of decline when their energies and cultural life force were waning, and these ethics were not accurate descriptions of what the Greeks had been like up to that point and they would not even for a long time did they prescribe what the Greeks would act like since again in their own time the Socratic schools were a minority position so both now in 19th century in medieval time someone would pick up Aristotle and would think this is what ancient Greek man was like or what was

supposed to be. But actually, during Aristotle time, and for some time after, had nothing to do with it. You know, the sophists and men like Gorgias and other sophists and orators of that kind were in fact the teachers of the Greeks. Taking your stock by Socrates is like in future 2000 years, in future someone trying to understand what Western and European life was like now and they look at Foucault or they look at some other pseudo-Marxoid and I'm exaggerating this only a little. Socrates and his followers were in some way deconstructionists and reformers of Greek civilization. They were something like the Foucault of their time. I exaggerate again only a little and aesthetically to the extent the Socratic philosophy reflects any strain in Greek life and Greek thought.

In a way that Foucault and his companion doubtless also reflect or filter certain real state of Western thought, by the way. But to the extent it does, it is indeed the Apollonian ritual ideal or a filter of it. The Apollonian ritual ideal that was reflected in some of the plastic arts that have endured to history and that Winkelmann described so beautifully and in this case is what his strength is. He inspired so many to copy this Apollonian spirit. He drove German intellectual life or artistic life to emulate this. But when you look at the hostility of the Socratics, by the way, I think the Socratic schools misrepresent and distort what Apollonianism is as well. You find a much purer version of it in somebody like Parmenides.

But when you look at the hostility of the Socratic schools to poetry, and especially to tragic poetry and drama, which poetry, tragic poetry, tragic drama plays right theatre, and Homer on the other hand was the foundation of Greek life and really what made it, gave it some of its, was an expression of its deepest character. And the Greeks we remember now that are so flashy and attractive to us, they were animated by the spirit of Homer on one hand and by lyric and tragic poetry on the other. But the Socrates in the Socratic schools completely reject that, they're very hostile to it. And you can see why Nietzsche was right to focus on this element and its spiritual and psychological precursors as that missing element with which he rejected the Aristotelian Socratic

lies about the tragic arts as such. It was also the element in Greek life that the Socratic schools in general for moral fag reasons were trying to edit in some way out of history, in the same way that Plato wanted to burn the books of the philosopher Democritus. It was a kind of attempt, intellectual overturning, intellectual revaluation and revolution in Greek life, the Platonic schools. And so you are getting highly edited version of what the Greeks were from, let's say, people who follow platonic Socratic tradition alone, or only the plastic and visual arts, plus let's say lingering respect for Socratic philosophy. If you want to read more about this, you can see in the degenerate writer Euripides, he has a play, The Bacchae.

It's about a man who gets torn apart by Maynads, and because he gets too close to a Dionysian ritual and he witnesses it in the forest. This play is actually a misunderstanding of the Dionysian, and I'm using the word degenerate not in the moralistic, social conservative sense, but in the physiological Gobino sense, by the way. It has maybe quite opposite meanings than you think. But the point is this playwright, Euripides, who is an anomalous tragedian, in that he didn't really understand the purpose of tragedy, nor did he keep true to its spiritual mission, but rather he sought to inject Socratic philosophy of festering and intellectual charlatanry into this art form. It would be as if, well it's not completely the same because nobody has truly discovered

the essence of cinema today or expressed deep will of modern spiritual life through cinema, but let's say somebody captured spirit of France in cinema. And then later, another famous cinematographer or director came, but he used cinema to completely change that and to, let's say, express the thought of Foucault instead through the medium of cinema and to use that to deconstruct French culture. And that's what Euripides is. And as always in such cases, it's full with the moral faggotry of the Socratic schools. I'm saying this play, the Bacchae, you can read it quickly. It's instructive because it shows you, let's say, an anti-tragedian's tragic play from a hostile point of view of what the Dionysian means, right? And this is what I mean.

It's full of the moral faggotry of the Socratic schools. But yes, you know, I post beautiful physiques online and such. And I think many who don't know what I actually say, either on this show or a book, would lump me in with the modern popularized version of this general view of the Greeks. I mean the Apollonian slash Socratic one. I'm not saying they're the same, but they get lumped in together as a package deal by people who mistake what the Greek ideal actually was for this highly edited version that has come down through multiple distortions to modern times. Again, maybe contained in actually the beautiful phrase, noble simplicity and and quite grandeur, but focusing visually and aesthetically on, let's say, proportions

of the male form in sculpture, on the Apollonian principles of balance, order, restraint, on the attendant moral virtues that you might think naively can be associated with this. Again, self-restraint, not just aesthetic restraint, but moral self-restraint. And now moving entirely into the popularized or vulgarized versions, an air of nobility, It's not nobility itself, a pretense to nobility, a happiness maybe with the golden mean, the golden mean of poverty even as represented in... Look when the Spartans at Plataea, after their great victory over the Persians, and really the entire Greeks confederation, that was the big victory over the Persians at Plataea, and they were looking through the booty that was captured after the Persian army had retreated and been destroyed.

The booty that was captured, they saw the very expensive cooking and kitchenware of the Persian king. And the Spartan commander said to the troops, behold gentlemen, the folly of the Persian king, who having such rich wares chose to come and try to invade us with such poor wares. And they were very proud of this, this restraint, you know. Or when Herodotus tells the story of Solon at the court of Gyges, and when he repeats the tale of the Kuroi, Cleobis and Python. I talked to them in my book too. These are two youths who died at their acme, at their peak, in service of the gods and of their mother. And he was telling Gyges that this is a good life, whereas a good life that does not end well like this is not a good life.

And he gives Gyges this story about Greek restraint and moderation as opposed to Gyges' tyrannical appetites and such. So I don't mean to say that there is no evidence for the generally accepted view I've been sketching or caricaturing so far. You could call it in part the 19th century view or now the popular view today. There's even much more like what I just said to go on. This view wouldn't have been made if there hadn't been evidence for it. But none of this is material because ultimately none of it was truly real. Even in my book, I try to explain that the real attraction of that story for the Greeks of the two youths who died after transporting their mother on their backs to the religious festival, it wasn't that the two youths lived this life of filial piety and such because

that story could have been told in many different ways. It was that they died at the peak of youthful glory. So okay, don't believe me, even though they have many other stories that say the same But this image I just said which is reflected right especially in the case of those who admire Sparta today or in the most Internet like way what are called a statue avatars the anonymous posters who use images of Greek statues and try again to represent this High-minded image that I've been sketching out, but this image none of it is really true about the Greeks It's rather that they wished was true for outsiders or what they try to strive for in writing because in the reality they were actually so different. I mean in the

moral and psychological sense they were very different from this. They were in fact the opposite of restrained, moderate or just. To them justice seemed in their own lives like an impossibility and you don't need to read Nietzsche or any of the ancient Greek immoralists of whom there are few and their books didn't get preserved mostly but you don't need to read them to see this but just look at ancient Greek political history. It's not the political history of what foolishly gets called high trust online now in human biodiversity so-called or social conservative punditry circles. I've seen absurd things of people calling ancient Athenians high trust. They were not Swiss, they were not the modern Swiss, okay, they were not Chinese, they were not Kant, the Chinaman of Konigsberg.

You look at that political history with its constant cloak and dagger, tumult, revolutions, coups, political assassinations, lurid massacres. And what you see is unbridled lust for unlimited power, tyrannical power, which every noble Greek desired above all other things, despite warning stories like that of Solons, which were mostly for moral edification in writing, for foreign consumption to present a foreign image to foreigners, which wasn't probably taken seriously by those foreigners, but is today because we don't know the actual ancient Greeks as our neighbors, the way someone like Gyges or the Romans did. But it's not the image you get from actually a lot of the Greek poetry either, by the way. The lyric poetry, Theognist poetry especially, but a lot of the lyric poetry in general,

or from the tragedy or comic play. Certainly you get an entirely different image of what the Greek character and aspirations were like. It's not the statue, avatar, Apollonian, Socratic morality, Vinckelmanian aesthetic restraint and balance image, okay? There is, on one hand, Achilles' heroism and generosity, but there's also his ferocity, and then there is also Odysseus, and then there is also how the war was actually won, if you remember. The Trojan War was won through the trickery of the wooden horse. And I mean, think about just that, of a people whose main founding myth or one of their main founding myths is that of the wooden horse. It's not God splitting the sea, right? It's not God making fire burn longer than nature would allow or punishing

your enemies with pestilence or that. No, it's pride in their intellect and trickery. I don't really know other peoples with similar kind of founding myths. And it's not just Trojan horse, by the way. In similar trickery you see all over the other foundational myths too, whether it's Jason and the Argonauts or many others. Now think of what that means. Not divine intervention, but human cunning and trickery. And then even more so, the secret desire to become a god, which Plato refers to as a secret desire of man. All these conservatives blaming me for mentioning this secret desire in my book as the Bronze Age mindset. Maybe they're not aware of that reference I was making to Plato, also to fixate on dangers

of online niches in this respect, or maybe five or ten of us, when Mormonism teaches that you can become a god. I don't know, maybe focus on Mormons. Maybe they are dangerous pagans. I hear they are actually quite overrepresented in the security services and the CIA and so someone of the United States, but please talk some more about the danger of Nietzschean paganism. That's easy. But yes, the desire to become a god, which the Spartans actually especially, the self-restraint, the moderate, conformist supposedly Spartans, the homoioi they called themselves, the equals. They pursued God to be worshipped as gods as soon as they were freed from the constraints and the watchful eyes of their native state, with Lysander, a famous Spartan general, being

the first Greek to be worshipped as a god. He set up a cult to himself in conquered cities abroad. And other Spartan generals, like Brasidas and Clearchus, these are Spartan war geniuses who as soon as they were away from home, they let all their lust for power and animal ferocity loose on the world. The story of such men remains to be told. Maybe I write short history of such renegade Spartans, heart of darkness Sparta. Or then there's also the Greek fame for deception, just plainly, which yes, this too is a popular tradition, a popular stereotype regarding the Greeks, right? But it's one that contradicts the, at least it contradicts the general atmosphere of that more accepted view, the sunny view I sketched out. And the thing about popular traditions is they're often contradictory.

You have to sift through them, you have to judge them. But this reality about the Greeks, their trickiness, their deceitfulness, their love of artifice, not just deceitfulness, but their spiritual love of artifice. But yes, in the stereotypical sense, beware of Greeks bearing gifts and so on. It was famous in the ancient world as well. The neighbors of the Greeks were afraid of them for this reason, their deviousness, the fame they had for intellect and cunning. So even their gods were seen by their neighbors as more intelligent than the other gods. So you know, these Greeks gods are smarter than our gods, that kind of thing. And also, yes, more intelligent, I mean, in the tricky and cunning sense, the stories told about the Greek gods.

But Nietzsche sees in this love of artifice something quite profound as well. I'm saying it's not just simple lying or political cunning. There's a spiritual love of artifice that points to something very profound. So yes, anyway, on this episode, I will discuss this briefly in the sketch, this aspect of the Greeks, and to not completely deny the high-minded and noble and beautiful image that many who long for that time have of them, because, you know, I like to talk about that too. I put such imagery, I put the beautiful physiques on my account as well and so on, but I do not mean to deny that aspect, but more to emphasize the point that something actually can come out of its opposite. And often something beautiful, sublime, can come out of something

dark, brutal, barbaric, even ugly. And all the Greek art that is known as Apollonian, that has this beautiful, resplendent, illuminating quality, actually has, the reason it works so well is that it has, I believe, a dissonant, dark undertone which prevents it from becoming mere something wholesome kitsch, you know. But that's for the last segments of this episode. In the following, I want to talk some political matters, fights that have been going on over the last week or two. I will be right back. Before I talk politics, I wanted to mention something about the follies, a postscript to the last segment, the follies now of modern academics in regards to the ancient Greeks, because on previous segment, I tried sketch out popular

conception of ancient Greek spirit now, if you can talk about the popular conception at all, maybe you can, you see books by people like Victor Davis Hanson or occasional article in places, New York Review of Books by this or that journalist or academic and they have an offhand reference to the general view or vibe or spirit I mentioned. And somewhat also then I try to discuss 19th century German Hellenism view as coming from Winkelmann, Winkelmann again being the aesthetic writer at the end of 18th century Weimar Germany who tried to resurrect classical spirit in the arts. He was reacting against you can say Baroque or Rococo excess and encased in this one sphere noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, he wanted the arts, again, to reflect what he saw.

You could call it the Apollonian balance, order, restraint, regard for natural form as opposed to superstitious excess. So think instead Palladio, look up the buildings of Palladio and compare them to something like a gothic cathedral, which had the mysterious ornaments, and Winkelmann, someone like that, tried to resurrect, again, classical spirit as he understood it, but really I'm using that only as a shorthand, because every great 19th century German thinker was overwhelmed, dominated by image of the Greeks, and each one tried to explain it in slightly his own but Winkelmann is a shorthand for that entire push, the push for neoclassicism, the push for recovery of the Greeks and so forth. But as to the modern academic convention regarding the ancient Greeks, they actually don't deny

this image. In other words, for the most part, unless you go to someone like Camille Paglia, who does not in any way represent the modern academic convention or consensus, she's her own thing. But the general run of academics today, they don't think, in fact, that the Greeks had different ideals from what I described just now or in the previous segment. But they interpret these ideals in a cynical, political manner. So for example, the emphasis on moderation and self-control morally on restraint, someone like this would see it as a patriarchal statement of power, that it was emphasized because it It was meant to ritually exclude women, slaves and youths who were not moderate or restrained or who were seen as not moderate or restrained, who were constructed and painted as such.

Or on the other hand, the kinaidoid, that's really the word for the passive homosexuals who enjoyed passive anal sex because they were seen as or again constructed as not having this virtue of self-restraint that a citizen who participated in the power of the state was called on to have this is not my theory this is theirs that you know they assume that if it was not for the virtue of self-restraint everyone would want to be kinidos or apathic or a catamite I don't want to comment on that it's it's an odd thing actually Socrates also has this assumption in the Gorgias but that's for another time but Foucault has some word telling delusions on justice matter when he in a twisted way starts to talk about in Paglia's words how the men of the time used women and boys as sperm

spittoons because their bodies were seen as inert and lacking in the active you see you see what this goes right and first of all he completely misunderstood how pederasty worked he thought you got fucked in the ass until you became a citizen at the age of 18 at which time that stopped and he became a full citizen and participated in power and so on and that the problem of somebody like Timarkus who I talked about on this show before if you read Eskeny's speech against Timarkus it was written against an associate of Demosthenes who was accused of having been a rent boy and maybe still so being and therefore by Athenian law had to be excluded from political office or even the right to vote and Foucauldians and other modern academics I'm just using this as an

telling example, but they are so foolish, they see all kinds of significance in this, what I just said, and in the particular thing said in that speech regarding self-restraint and such, as if it was not a commonplace throughout history that yes, a male prostitute probably shouldn't be in political office and be sent as an ambassador to a foreign power and so on. I don't know, does this remind you of what happened in Senate room, not the Senate room, Not the Senate room as a place of catametry, of faggotry, not the Senate room. But anyway, I'm going on tangent again. I mean to say that the modern academic view actually accepts the, let's say, Winklemanian or Socratic, Alexandrian definition of what ancient Greek ethics and ideal was, but they

just try to poke at it in the ways you are by now familiar with, gender, class, race, essentially trying to make the case that it existed as his claim, but it was a instrument for political domination and so on and It thus covers up the truth I think in a triple way because it's ignorant both of what ancient Greek aristocrats were really like and also misses the point of what Socratic morality was meant to achieve and did achieve in their world the fact that It acted as a form of medicine that it didn't actually accurately describe the Greek aristocracy at its height, besides multiple other misunderstandings regarding relations between the genders, their fantasies about universal faggotry, how pederasty worked and many other such things. But anyway, I only wanted to briefly address this

point from previous segment in this brief post script before I talk weeks news now I talk news go please to 30 seconds musics break yes the news I've want to tell you a story some time ago at chess tables I used to hang out with lunatics I mean really street schizophrenic a great pleasure for me but it reminds me now I tell you why this fake discourse around anti-semitism I mean what is this pretense now on all sides whether it's the Palestinians or or idiots online who bring disrepute on anti-semitism by making it clownish and stupid, or on the other hand, Jewish groups themselves, or individuals who are much concerned with anti-semitism because it's their ethnic particularity and all are pretending like these arguments,

these claims have never been heard of before, like anti-semitism is something... I am aware that some of them bring up Hitler and historical precedents and that no one is actually explicitly saying any of it is new that would be insane. But after more than a decade online, I can say there's this odd feeling now when what I'm reading, a pretense that these same lines have not been trodden out again and again. And this is from people. It's not from 16 year old right who are hearing of this from the first time. I'm hearing the same lines used for decades as if no one's heard this before. When you know David Duke, he's been there for decades, right? He's been collecting names, selling lists to the SPLC and the ADL the same way the face

fags of the American far-right do now with their doxxing rallies, and all are repeating the same nonsense. We are the Palestinians now, and we are all Palestinians now, and this type of... And other usual things you hear for decades with no issue, no fruit. One of the interesting things about the online right in the mid-2010s is the way it managed actually to outflank this matter in the rather sophisticated ways. Because if taken head on, it will generally make no impression in the world. It's a predetermined fight. Alain Soral in France tried this kind of ostentatious vulgar antisemitism in a presidential campaign. It went nowhere and the French right then decided to move very much away from that because they saw. But it's not even a matter of convincing people in a campaign.

There's nothing new that you're presenting in terms of ideas to people who are interested in that. Why Jewish groups favor this kind of lurid clownish antisemitism, I believe that. The David Duke type, the Kanye type. It's candy for activist Jewish groups. If you watch the movie The Believer, right, if you see this movie with Ryan Gosling, it's not a secretly anti-semitic movie, let me put it that way. Why am I saying this? It's not an esoteric message. This is a pro-Jewish movie. Everyone knows that. Now why do I say that? At one point the Ryan Gosling character gives a speech about Jewish influence, the thing about numbers, the modern world and so on, or the guy he's talking to does, or both of them do. I don't remember. I think both of them do.

But this speech of speeches, though it seems eloquent, and though you may hear it at times from internet anti-Semites, and even the relatively better spoken ones who don't just shout slogans, you may hear it verbatim from them. But in fact, the Gosling character even goes beyond them in making the case against the Jews. It's not the filmmaker trying to be ironically or secretly anti-Semitic, right? In Persecution of the Art and the Art of Writing, Leo Strauss rightly mentions this tactic that a dissident in East Bloc might use against communist regime covertly or really any dissident under any regime that is restrictive, characteristic speech. He could engage in pages and pages of orthodox Marxist denunciations, hysterical Marxist denunciations of the West and so on.

But then at the crucial point in this fake polemic, under the pretense of explaining what the enemy's case is, he could tersely, eloquently, calmly make the case for the West or for America, maybe even better than an American might. And he can leave then those claims unchallenged. He could then even pretend to huff and puff about the injustice of that case that he just made, but then proceed to make stupid or emotional or inadequate arguments, or arguments that don't go to the substance of it, and thereby he let the Western argument be superior for attentive readers. He would make a mark in their mind with the enemy thought. Among the pages of boilerplate denunciation, that one case is what would stand out and remain in their mind.

In the same way, in the context of a drama or a play, you can put the forbidden truth in the mouth of a villain, but you can make that villain much more seductive and persuasive and so on than his opponents. And you'd still have the cover that if a censor comes to you, well, you say, well, obviously he's the villain in this play, so those aren't my views. And this is arguably why so many villains in history of literature are so seductive, although I'm not sure about this completely. You'll see that Dostoevsky makes his villains more compelling and colorful than what he believes is good and virtuous. But I don't think that it was, I don't think Dostoevsky was a secret klist, a secret member of the klisty sect trying to transmit forbidden knowledge that way.

You know, it's just that, you know, often human psychology is just jumbled up and complicated and maybe Dostoevsky was just better at presenting vivid image of compelling evil by which he was genuinely seduced and its opposite. So I'm not sure these claims necessarily hold overall, but they do hold in some cases this kind of writing, especially for movie or theater or, you know. But this is my roundabout way of telling you that the scene in The Believer, this I'm talking about where Ryan Gosling or his interlocutor or both go on this antisemitic tirade. It's precisely not what I'm just said now. It's not like some secret dog whistle to audience to persuade them of the truth of the anti-Semitic case. Now, these passages that are stupidly traded online still by gullible anti-Semites are

written by and for Jewish vanity, to massage and pamper that vanity. It's rather the image that those who support Jewish causes and Jewish unity have of what an anti-Semite is, which flatters that national vanity because it makes them out to be all-powerful manipulators and directors of world events, changes of culture, and if you're an activist on one hand with the SPLC, or if you're a Jewish activist Antifa woman from London who works for Luke Turner, this view of what an anti-Semite is not only flatters your vanity, makes it easy to fundraise, puts you in the role of protagonist in world affairs. It allows you to frame entire debate about politics and society around yourself, which Which in modern circumstances, such groups will always win.

They are also not threatened by such things being spread in culture because they know people are pre-inoculated against being persuaded by that. So they're very happy to have a minstrel show like Kanye or a faggot like David Duke go off about the Jews and Zionism for decades because that's a game where a casino house always wins. That's why the Gosling character and the other one are made to give those speeches in the movie The Believer. That's also why so many Law & Order and similar sitcom episodes have never tired of actually showing the so-called neo-Nazi case, the caricature-ish anti-Semite case, which is then faithfully copied and cartoonishly acted out by their employees and the DNC's employees in the American far-right.

Right, this is excuse, I actually think Kevin Macdonald is nice guy, he has some good ideas, But this is why most prefer, most on, let's say, the ADL, SPLC side, they prefer Kevin McDonald as an opponent. They prefer this paranoid theories as opposed to Cudahy's, where Cudahy's name is rarely ever mentioned, Lord Voldemort effect type, right? So but anyway, as to why this cartoonish antisemitism is being promoted now before 2024 election, you put two and two together. You know, Kanye was being run by GOP consulting firms, which is public knowledge, Atlas Consulting, Greg Keller, I think is his name, look it up, specializing in parlor tricks, one of the worst smear machines of Washington DC and so on. So far as I know, no one in media has ever approached

any of these people who had promoted Kanye for even so much as a comment, none of them have paid a price. To me, this whole discussion around antisemitism seems entirely fake, based on false premises, it's based – everything you see online, the arguments so-called are cartoonish slogans, deliberately bad arguments brought up, and then algorithmically boosted by Elon and so on, or people under Elon who he's not even aware of. None of this has anything to do with pressures facing America regarding migrations, stupid economic decline which have all accelerated under the disaster of Biden dementia Brezhnev administration and this only seems to me designed this fake discourse seems designed to distract from Trump's winning position

and maybe in some cases when they play on the Zionism angle to embarrass Trump so yes there was a month ago little Ben Shapiro was having a slap fight with some other influencer and this guy tells him to convert to Christianity, his third influencer I mean. I never heard of him. Let me see. I will read the exchanges, doctor, doctor in his username, doctor, Dr. Professor Taylor Marshall. Let me read his bio, husband, father to eight children, philosopher, best-selling author of history, theology, historical fiction, Christ is King, my YouTube podcast in link. Okay, so your typical social media Pharisee responding to another Pharisee, the little Ben Shapiro, whose wife and sister both cuck him with Danish bodybuilders. This is well known in the bathroom of your own home, Shapiro.

How does that make you feel? I've talked about what goes on inside home, the orgies, Danish Swinger Club and so on since 2018 or earlier. But anyway, Dr. Taylor Marshall interjects in the slap fight between Shapiro and Owens. Do you know how much this turns off readers and audience, these internet slap fights, this guy said that, that guy said this, and all such over immaterial things. But the Dr. Marshall encourages Ben to convert to Christianity, really sticks it to him, which you know, it wouldn't be unheard of. Maybe you don't know this, but the Jewish convert to Catholicism specifically is a mainstay of the American establishment conservative movement, especially the neocon wing. It's quite an old thing, this, and little Ben would be just as annoying if he was Christian

as if he was Zoroastrian. Maybe Qatar can pay him like they do pay other influencers to convert to Islam ostentatiously. Then Ben can expound on Sunni legalism, Sunni Islam being a variety of Judaism also. So in response to this demand to convert to Christianity as if that was little Ben's biggest problem and not that he's an opportunistic turncoat never Trumper with no ideas of his own, but in response to this Bethany Mandel Interjects who I believe also parades her children and her faith in her Twitter bio They all display children, you know, it's a it's a very internet Pharisee thing and she says this is anti-semitic That's anti-semitic to tell him to convert to Christianity You know, which becomes another thing, right, this post-Trump discourse, you see.

These are three kinky-haired Afro-Semites. Can you please have a break from all this? I don't want to hear more of the mythology of the land of Kush. I don't want to hear about the guttural land of Ethiopia and the religions that come out of there. If you don't believe me, look up sub-Saharan admixture in the so-called pre-Jewish Canaanites, okay? They're a bantoid people with kinky hair. What does this have to do with Operation Wetback 2.0, right? Under Eisenhower, there was something called Operation Wetback, deport millions of beaners. What does this ostentatious Afro-Semitic debate and mythologizing and rabbinic panty showing on both sides have anything to do with anything. What I just told you now is three sectarian

retards fighting each other, but it reminded me of this story. This is what I wanted to tell you. You know, I was playing chess. I think I was 18. I went to play chess at these chess tables. Lots of people gathered there, some international master level guys, occasionally even higher rank, many decent players, many bad, just also full of schizophrenics. And my favorite was the chess lady. I may have mentioned her before. She was a real lunatic. I felt bad about it sometimes because – and I wasn't doing this to mock her. I just loved her tales. I was seeing spirit – she was talking about seeing emanations of spirit bubbles and flashing and I couldn't stop laughing. It was a great pleasure for me. But she would tell me story about her life frequently. She was a saint.

She was actually a Catholic saint from medieval times in communion with angels. But her Irish Sicilian billionaire mafia family persecuted her and broadcast her thoughts on the radio for being a Catholic saint, and how in response to various pressures, though still a Catholic saint, she had converted to Islam, and now all she wanted to do was study the Quran in peace and listen to Arabic music. And she told me that her hands had been crushed three times, multiple times, by the black bus driver, gratuitously crushing her hands with the bus door, but the most humiliating and physically traumatic time was when she was sitting at the cafe and a Jewish music student came up to us she told me this a Jewish student came up to me and I was

just studying the Quran in peace and listening to headphones and he said and he told me what are you listening to let me let me see what music you're listening to and when when he was I was listening to when he saw it I was listening to Arabic music said that's anti-semitic and he crushed my hands he crushed my hands that's anti-semitic and that reminds me of this Bethany Mandel and her own message, this is anti-semitic, you know, it's all schizophrenic. And that's discourse, that's discourse online, okay, I'd rather have the chess lady thank you, at least she'd occasionally say funny things, we'd play chess sometimes and I'd feel bad so I'd let her win sometimes and she'd say things like, oh that match was a

classic, that was a classic, I feel bad now, I don't know what happened to her, she just disappeared one day. Anyway, the other fight that broke online now was this kid complaining, you see, he get into some school, I think it was Cornell, I don't know, but he had decent test scores, other such decent records that maybe he should have gotten in. Anyway, he made video that he didn't get in. I didn't watch it, but okay, let's say he could get in there or equivalent, he has qualifications, but this guy, another conservative influencer, you know, this is what set off this discussion. He posts that white kids obviously cannot get into good schools anymore and so they should become plumbers and start plumbing business.

So I read to you, white males in America need to accept the reality that trade schools is likely their best option. Running an electrical plumbing or welding company is a great way to become a millionaire and save $250,000 in tuition and four years. That's his tweet. Many have pointed out this stupid. But I've seen this line again traded on post-Trump online right for years now, really at least since 2017, since before the woke tumult, since before Floyd actually and such. So it's been a fixation of people on certain sectors of the populace to try to push this. And the most innocent explanation is, yes, the telephone game talking point retardation where somebody said this for half plausible reasons and then they dig in out of stubbornness

or out of impression that this is their original take and they must... But I'm not sure the explanation is innocent. My friend, Loki Juliano thinks it's not an innocent thing because crucially, without an undergraduate degree in America, you cannot join FBI or other federal law enforcement or parts of the security state or the Department of Justice or such. And I believe relevant parties are terrified of that possibility and are trying to drive potential right-wing sympathizers to safe or other self-defeating paths. I think this is the reason. I'll tell you why and more about this. First of all, the premise is wrong of what that guy is saying. I'm not sure any of these guys who make these claims and who encourage.

Now remember, it doesn't matter how large you think your platform is, how large you think your following is on Twitter. If you're a right-wing account, you're still technically in a ghetto, somewhat self-contained. Even someone like Ben Shapiro, who has an audience orders of magnitude larger than mine, or anyone else is on the so-called far right, not that he's far right, but even someone like Shapiro, Normicon is a minority voice reaching a minority of Americans. Charlie Kirk also. Whatever advice you give, and my people should refrain from giving blanket life advice because different people have different skills, abilities, desires, but whatever advice you give is only going to reach, in this case, young right wing men or the parents of such, people who

are in other words politically aware, who are engaged already and you're telling in other words the people on your side, supposedly your side, but let's say your side, to avoid college. It's not like you're reaching the median American or even the median voter. My own audience is quite small, I guess runs smarter. Now imagine what kind of person I would be if I convinced the smart 16 or 17-year-old guys who might listen to me if I convinced just them to avoid college. Would I be really helping this particular demographic that listens to me is the question? Or are you hobbling them as opposed to the rest of, you know, in competition with the rest of the population who will not hear you anyway? And why say hobble?

Because first of all, it's not true that you will make more money in the trades as you will lose a white-collar job or a white-collar career path. You actually may make in the first year or few years more money, assuming you can find a good trades position, but your income is going to cap. It's going to be limited and not that much, and from there on it will not go up. They say, found your own business. Not everyone will be able to have their own businesses for very many reasons. Only very few will have successful businesses. Furthermore, the work is very difficult. As I am recording this show, you may hear sounds in the background. I can see workers across the street on the roof of a building, working hard, you know.

You'll be breaking your back installing roofing, falling off the roof after inhaling wood chips with Jose. Yeah, the pay is larger again in the beginning, but the work can crush your body. A lot of people giving this advice are not working class or working in the trades themselves. This is what's annoying also about this. There's something unseemly. These are guys who did go to college. From what I hear, most of the people giving this advice are programmers in exurban locations and they're doing okay on the periphery of society. They're maybe stranded with a wife somewhere in the middle of nowhere in a white-collar programming job but they're telling others not to go to college and instead to pursue this working-class path that they know nothing about maybe they shoot

words with sometimes the guy who fixes their wall drywall or they have a beer with him they think they know what it's like they're not even friends with that guy they don't know what it's like stud was my close friend I hope he comes back he stud Carmichael many of you remember him I will not say his precise job but he was his working class. He works in a typical working class job and he made good money in what he's doing. I won't say what he does, but he complained about it all the time. He was thinking of going to college. It's difficult, hard work. And once you cap at that salary and you have years of more of the same to look forward to in an uninspiring location, usually where in the United States the girls are not pretty, they're fat or so, it's not

easy, it's not an easy life and I know others who've told me the same. One is a longshoreman at the major port. This is a close friend of mine for more than a decade, he's given me very good advices but he frequently complains about the union, the people who run it, the difficulties they've put him through as well as the physically difficult nature of that life. is a friend HVAC repairman and I'm not talking Cornelio. Cornelio, I don't want to give away Cornelio. Cornelio is doing HVAC repair as a personal statement of life hobby. I don't want to talk about, Cornelio comes from an aristocratic family, let me put it that way. I hope I'm not giving too much away here or doxing Cornelio somehow, but Cornelio does not have to worry about money, he's doing HVAC as a hobby.

But no, this is a Frog in America poster online, he says he make good money but he somewhat regrets not going to college because you're stuck in this life and it's not as easy as you think to make your own business, you know, and these are genuinely working class people, it's not a rosy picture as people are saying, okay, not everyone can have plumbing or carpentry others you need to be union job or other especially if you're a longshore man or you can't have your own business really and not everyone for all kinds of reasons faith can intervene your business won't work out you're given a picture of life by these people of life that's free rugged they're independent prosperous but when you'll actually be in that situation it won't maybe be that

way at all. You'll be again eating refried beans with Jose and breathing wood shavings and destroy your spine by the age of 35. Yes, most people in America who get degrees probably should not. That's one very true point from which this bad advice comes. Way too many people go to college. They get bullshit degrees, they get debt, then they can't find job anyway way, and maybe even then have to go to trade school or work in a service job. All of this is true. But how much of your audience is like that? So certainly the kid this guy is responding to from video is not like that. He's a prospect for good school and decent white-collar career. And I guess much of the audience, if they're young, are either like that or could be their

parents looking maybe for advice for their kids, and then they get these stupid conservative talking points that are based on idiotic political strategy, which I'll mention the so-called political strategy behind this advice in a moment, but the strategy so-called is so stupid I can't believe they take it seriously. The second true point that this advice maybe starts from is the fact that education in colleges is certainly broken, even the best colleges, and that no one really learns anything in them anyway, all of which is true. But again, it's irrelevant as it is a heavily credentialized economy and the degree the piece of paper is what people are seeking. But you know what so-called strategy these populists claim to have? It's this.

I mean, this is supposedly their ideal scenario, okay? That white kids like the one in video, instead of going to liberal college with liberals and getting them motions in their hands, will instead go to trade school, start a plumbing or welding business. course you'll have to be a plumber themselves for a while too and to play with other people's shit they don't tell you that and then after this they'll make good money like the tweet says and live in some supposed community exurban or whatever with a large family and get this this is the punchline okay they will await the collapse okay they will maintain virtuous family life pray daily have many children and they'll wait for the collapse of the system which will obviously happen okay that's the plan this imbecile what they're

trying to do actually is turn their audience into Demis look up the word Demi a servitor plumber carpenter servitor underclass who doesn't participate at all in any political processes has no prospect to in fact is as such by self selection shut out of political contest and who supposedly is engaging however in ultimate political victory, because by some vague steps the regime will eventually fall. And these communities that had been allowed somehow by this very intrusive state to prosper, and their children of these men, who also somehow did not defect to the state ideology or move to a city, and who obviously remained loyal, I love this populist line I read somewhere. I read this online, form family units to challenge the state.

Imagine the telephone game online retardation that leads to believing a line like that. So you will not challenge the state, but somehow you will direct your family unit to do so. How? Why and how will your children challenge the state if you have not? Imagine Argentina, the right-winger, 1973 Buenos Aires, talking about, no, I will not join AAA. I will go home to my wife, fuck another child into her, and somehow my child will or his This child will, okay, look, fill in the blanks, okay, this is family show, I don't understand it. I'm a man of peace, but I'm not a man of peace in the Coptic way, you know, the Christian Copts in Egypt, the Dhimmis and the other Middle Eastern Christians. They had family units and family values for a thousand years and they remained subject

to Islamic political authority and culture and social authority a thousand years with periodic pogroms and humiliations and such, there was no collapse. That's the life of a dhimmi, of a subject population, which is what all this advice for trade school essentially is. It's the term America's white population, but really more specifically, the very small right-wing audience who's likely to listen to any of this, to turn them into dhimmis, to make them a politically neutered class on the edges of society. There's absolutely no path through trade school, personal business, mere family values, working hard praying or any such things, including supposed prosperity from these businesses. None of this has anything to do with political contest.

And what's really telling for me is that these ideas are not recent. They began around 2017. I saw them traded by many of the so-called far-right facelords now. This is before the supposed awakening, okay? In other words, the excuse that it's a response to the woke craze of the last few years after Floyd does not hold. These people have been saying the same thing since Trump came, which leads to me very much like a way to corral a certain portion of right wing youth into this politically irrelevant path. In particular, to make sure they will not join or infiltrate America's security state. A second and parallel path that, and it's sometimes the same people promoting both of these, by the way, talking out of two asses.

But the other path, if you want to neuter people, is to encourage the same audience to self-docks, to drop anonymity and to attend conferences and rallies and so on, which I do not need to repeat. But the rally is the reward of political success. It's not how you get the political following. And especially when it's clear by now that our numbers are actually very small. We are tiny on the worldwide level. I'd say 70,000 worldwide is maybe an overestimation. Again, if you got all of us in a small European country with proportional representation, We could not win plurality or anything more than token representations there even. The online right, I mean, and adjacent in general, their strength is not numbers or ability to win political parties, it's something else.

But it's, by the way, not even 70,000 worldwide even. But if you get even, let's say, 10,000 to 20,000 men in one country, United States, that's not enough for parties, rallies, conferences, but it's enough for other things. It's more than enough for other things. So you know, no, above all, only these two pads are pushed, self-isolate, building a barn and picking mushroom in Alaska, or a plumbing business, or anything, or otherwise you put on a bellboy outfit uniform and pretend you're part of a movement, you have a movement, and you come show your face at the SPLC-sponsored rally, or you better come to that conference partner, you better be there at that conference, comrade. Make sure the GOP gets a good look at your face so they know to exclude you from any

possibility of changing your local GOP or being a congressional staffer and so on. The path of infiltration is obviously the appropriate one with such numbers and the talents particular to this demographic, together with keeping, let's say, strict operational OPSEC, operational security, keeping your identity online hidden. And on the other hand, through this hidden identity, simultaneously continue the important work of writing, messaging or other media to convince not necessarily normies or the masses at large, but to convince intelligent or powerful interests or otherwise to change culture in certain directions if your talents lie that way. Different strokes for different folks. Some would make good tradesmen, but it seems criminal to convince a kid, for example, who

could be a great video or movie maker or similar, to work as a plumber and destroy his body in roofing, for example. But political action, insofar as it can be done, and I'm not a politician, the political side of it has very little interest to me, but in my opinion, the numbers only allow for the work of infiltration. There's not numbers for anything else right now. And for these people to push this path of self-neutering instead when they have, the people giving this advice see the success that Rufo, for example, has in changing universities and the fact that now there are other governors beginning to give decrees against DEI and the other anti-white discrimination in the universities in particular. In other words, there's a clear path to challenge this situation.

I think actually even in the Ivies and so on can eventually be forced to go back to to some semblance of meritocracy. But before that, certainly the state schools, the state schools, they can be coerced, they can be changed to drop these anti-white policies. They can be reformed quite easily, I think. And there is this clear path that instead of adopting it, many of these pundits are still going with this demi-society fantasies of somehow communities of plumbers and carpenters dutifully serving their fat wives while the state turns their families into eunuchs. But they will change. That's how you win, you see. It's just absurd. There's this other path that they could agitate for and achieve, but instead they're

telling parents and others to give up, again, just as people like Rufo are having some success. And so then, with the degrees, what could be done? I think much could be done, although, by the way, a third parallel strategy could be to get rid of the credentialized economy. That could also be pursued. Again, something else these people haven't thought to ask for, for whatever reason, get get rid of requirement for credentials for college and so on in hiring and so on. But so long as things are the way they are now, especially with government requiring an undergrad degree, there could be encouragement to join the FBI, CIA, the ATF, other federal law enforcement, certain parts of the military as well as especially local and state bureaucracies,

local legislatures, local sheriffs, DAs and so on. I'm saying this seems common sense to me. I'm not a politician myself, but look, I see Charlie Kirk now, who I had hoped stopped being dumb, and he tells people, again, irrelevant things, that if you want to be alpha, as if that is his purview, he tells people if you want to be alpha, find a woman, that's what an alpha does, and have many children, even more than you can afford, I'm paraphrasing him. And this is the head of TP Turning Point USA, really in some ways he was intended to be Trump's college outreach, his youth outreach, and so on, or he could be that. He said some good things in the last year or two, but what's the point of this advice he's giving now, what I just told you just the other day?

Does he believe his audience is poised to engage in demographic war? Is that the purpose of it? And he's looking, what, 30 or 40 years ahead? I don't think so. Or does his advice come from, you know, old GOP faggots who are Ned Flanders and want others to be Ned Flanders and are asking him to counter the noxious influence of men like Tate and to encourage his audience to be Ned Flanders. Not that I like that. Yeah, now Tate and his social media orbiters are saying that he is the Nietzschean uber man. It's very odd, forgive me if I'm narcissistic, that feels like it's something directed at me or otherwise why would someone like Tate care about comparing himself to Nietzsche at all. But no, Mr. Tate, you are a minstrel show entertainer like all of us on social media.

Come back please when you take over a state, you know, you're just playing an actor online now. But how sad if the conflict is between Tate and Ned Flanders. What does any of that have to do with political success? Imagine if Mr. Kirk, instead of getting into slap fights with Mr. Tate and saying something stupid like you should become Ned Flanders like these GOP politicians I suck off. Imagine if he told his very large audience to join the FBI or CIA or such, or against certain branches of military, if he told his to infiltrate, you know, and change them from within. It could be phrased in safer, in legal ways, certainly, there's nothing illegal in what I'm saying. But no, it would make people freak out if he said that. You see, as soon as I say that, I turn on the rain.

But he's not telling people that. Why is it in his purview to encourage you to be Ned Flanders? What does it have to do with political questions facing America or his constituency now? Again, why not tell them State Department? Why not say FBI? You know, even when only very few of us try to infiltrate that way, or when I can turn very few in such places in American government to my side, simply with my book or the things I say even if it's very few and even in some cases even if it's none But it's known that the attempt is there they become so paranoid, you know, they don't like that They're terrified of that of us in their ranks They spend then enormous psychic energy and other energy to deal with that with the possibility They become overtaken by paranoia, which is a good thing. So why?

Isn't even inducing that in them a good thing you see but no we have to be good We have to be the good the stupid the Ned Flanders party the Demi party Anyway, I've talked some time about this now two more interesting thing I return talk Greg's ideal did the Greeks admire in Odysseus above all his capacity for lying and For cunning and terrible retribution his being equal to contingencies when need be Appearing no blur than the noblest the ability to be whatever he chose heroic perseverance, having all means at his command, possession of intellect. His intellect is the admiration of the gods, they smile when they think of it. All this is the Greek ideal. The most remarkable thing about it is that the antithesis of appearance and being is not felt at all

and is thus of no significance morally. Have there ever been such consummate actors? This passage is from Nietzsche's book Daybreak or Dawn, where he celebrates by the way the Enlightenment as he never really stopped celebrating it while he somewhat criticizes the German anti-enlightenment tendency that he sees even in men like Goethe and Schopenhauer who he otherwise much respect but that's for another episode there's so much that's striking even in this short what I read for you just now about Odysseus which is a passage that again contradicts the generally held opinion of the Greeks in Nietzsche's time by German Hellenists, by aesthetes, by academics and also I would say contradicts the popularly held opinion in our time but when you see this you say thinking of the stereotypes of the

Greeks that other nations had of them including the Romans I mean Nietzsche's right there's so much in it this in this passage the Graeculus Histrale these are Latin word for the Greek actor that's how the Romans actually saw the Greeks as the epitome of that nation at the time they were seen different differently Nietzsche draws I think on much more material than he certainly that he shows on in his aphorisms but much more materials and other people have to go on who may be gone one or two authors whereas he Understood very minute texts of ancient history, but in this case, yes the Romans they didn't have such high respect for Greek history Greek history certainly but for Greek culture in general, they saw the Greeks as a nation of actors and the great clues history

of the actor as the epitome of that nation and then their other neighbors, the Greek southern neighbors before the Romans, saw them in same way as pretenders, actors, tricksters and in some ways even through modern, I mean through AD times, the stereotypes about the the tricky, devious, treacherous Byzantines. And you see, yes, it makes some sense, but it again contradicts much of the other image of Greeks I mentioned in first segment of the episode, the high-minded Apollonian virtuous image that English schoolboys might have. Or those who take their bearings by Socrates and Aristotle, and then even Aristotle's apotheosis in Christian theology and philosophy and ethics and so on. Or I mentioned Winklemann again,

the German estate who inspired not only neoclassical movement in the arts, but the whole course then of German Hellenism in 19th century, and again based a view of Greeks as sunny Apollonian bearers of reason and balance and so on. But here is image of the true Greek ideal in a consummate actor who appears many things to many people, a shape-shifter, plays the pirate at one point, the beggar at another, the lover, the king, he lived many lives. I've always found the famous episode with the sirens from the Odyssey one of the most bewitching because it shows you, you know that drive in a man, it's very rare as such, but to see it celebrated in epic by a whole people and an ancient people, you know there's

this bewitching sound and you all stop your ears but tie me down without stopping my ears because I want to experience this divine and entrancing exotic beauty that no living man has experienced, but I want to know it, I want to experience it, and I think this lust for novelty and for the exotic and strange is part of the explanation for why this people, tiny in number, was able to count so many geniuses and in some ways to have invented genius as a type, to have invented the awakened human mind, and maybe the reason we are able to talk today at all outside of any religious or other customary national-bound conventions. Because I repeat to you, their national victory is a trick they played on their enemies and

not a divine intervention, the Trojan Horse, and similar deviousness in other myths like Jason and Argonaut or Pelops and Hippodameia, where Pelops wins the hand of Hippodameia from her father during a chariot race, and remember this, the union of Pelops and Hippodameia is the founding of many of the Greek noble or royal lines, this union, also at the right at Olympia. And the hand of this princess and the death of her father is won through trickery or the multiple tricks and actually through treachery, which then it's true a curse is visited on the progeny of Pelops and Hippodameia. They are not affected, but their future generations are. But still, one of the foundations of Greek royal lines, again, like the Trojan War, like

the other myths I mentioned of Jason and Argonauts, all through deviousness and treachery, not through divine intervention. Or again, the multiple tricks of Odysseus, fooling even the Cyclops, son of Poseidon and many such. And since I mentioned the Byzantines, I rarely know of any matters, any cases in history like the Sicilian Vespers, which I did an earlier episode on, where the Byzantine emperor uses gold and again, secrecy and treachery to form an international conspiracy that ends up destroying his rival's fleet before it takes off, his fleet that would have probably been able to conquer Constantinople if it had left Sicily, or would have had good chance of it anyway, but he basically conspired with the remnants of the house of Hohenstaufen,

the Prince of Aragon and the clans of Sicily to destroy the empire of Charles of Anjou, and it's all done again through devious scheming and conspiracy with no Byzantine blood spilled. And again, tell me when in history such things happened. I can't think right now of other examples like this, but if they are, it's exceedingly rare. But anyway, the multiple examples of trickery is not even the right word to cover a trickery because the human intellect and actually genius plays in Greek mythology the same role that divine intervention does in the national myths of other peoples. And as Nietzsche says somewhere else, where other peoples had saints, the Greeks had sages. Yes, sopoi, sopoi, the famous seven sages and not the saints but the sages, the wise

man which again is very, very different from any other nation. There are trickster characters and gods among all peoples, of course, it's an archetype but nothing like this, and it's quite a different image from popular intuition of what is Apollonian, which should not be understood as the opposite of Dionysian, but its complement. And actually, the shape-shifting Dionysian is a precondition of the Apollonian, the love of light and balance and reason, they are twin aesthetic comprehension of the world in a way that, if I can be a slight off track here again, where Nietzsche says that the The antithesis of being an appearance in Odysseus is not felt at all by the Greeks and is thus of not moral significance.

Remember this other passage by him which is so striking, why not read for you in full? This is from the Preface to the Gay Science. It's a very striking passage, important to understand many things. You know there is online, academia, absurd interpretation of Nietzsche on all sides. One of the dumbest attacks on him, by the way, that you may have heard from, but firstly Not only enough from the false religious, people who are supposed to have compassion but don't and attack him as being sick or sickly, and also then the fake self-promoters, the gorilla chest beaters who want that Nietzsche was sickly and did not live a heroic life of physical assertion, but they don't in fact know how he lived at all. He actually did conquer his sickness to a great extent through physical discipline,

but what they know of him is a few words from Wikipedia and so on. But that Nietzsche talked at times of his own sickness and indeed how the period of convalescence at times and sickness at other times, precisely these experiences of life in ascent and descent helped him understand how the mind and spirit try to revalue the world differently at different times, reflecting different physiological priorities. In any case, the gay science written in the wake of such an experience, read this preface at least. It's a short preface. I read here end of the preface. I'll read the last section of the preface in full. I'm reading now Finally that the most essential may not remain unsaid When one comes back out of such abysses out of such severe sickness and out of the sickness of strong suspicion

newborn with the skin cast More sensitive more wicked with a finer taste for joy with a more delicate tongue for all good things with a merrier disposition disposition, with a second and more dangerous innocence in joy, more childish at the same time and a hundred times more refined than ever before. Oh, how repugnant to us now is pleasure coarse, dull, drab pleasure, as the pleasure seekers of our cultured classes are rich and ruling classes usually understand it. How malignantly we now listen to the great holiday hubbub with which cultured people so-called, and city men at present, allow themselves to be forced to spiritual enjoyment by art, books, music, with the help of spiritual liquors. How the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear!

How strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and sensuous bustle which the cultured populous love become, together with their aspirations after the exalted, the elevated, and the intricate. No, if we convalescents need an art at all, it is another art, a mocking, light, volatile, divinely serene, divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear flame into a cloudless heaven. Above all, an art for artists, only for artists. We at last know better what is first of all necessary for it, namely cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness, my friends. Also as artists, I should like to prove it. We now know something too well, we men of knowledge, oh, how well we are now learning to forget and not know, as artists.

And as to our future, we are not likely to be found again in the tracks of those Egyptian youths who at night make the temples unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil, uncover, and put in clear light everything which for good reasons is kept concealed. No, we have got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth, to truth at all costs, youthful madness in the love of truth. We are now too experienced, too serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for that. We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veil is withdrawn from it. We have lived long enough to believe this. At present, we regard it as a matter of propriety, not to be anxious either to see everything naked or to be present at everything or to understand and know everything.

Is it true that the good God is everywhere present as the little girl of her mother? I think that is indecent, is her answer. A hint to philosophers. One should have more reverence for the shame-facedness with which nature has concealed herself behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons? Perhaps her name is Bobo, to speak in Greek? Oh, those Greeks, they knew how to live. For that purpose, it is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin, to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial, from profundity. Are we not coming back precisely to this point with daredevils of the Spirit, who have scaled

the highest and most dangerous peak of contemporary thought, and have looked around us from it, and have looked down from it? Are we not precisely, in this respect, Greeks worshippers of forms, of tones, and of words, and precisely on that account artists? Okay, I am reading. Is that very nice or no? And the depths, the heavy truth in part that perhaps has to be transcended or avoided or concealed and veiled, does he hint somewhere else that it is the truth of Silenus, or at least that this is one of the profound truths from which the Greeks pulled back to the surface. In other words, the knowledge the Satyr Silenus gives that it's better not to have been born and once born to die as quickly as possible, that this is the divine truth regarding the

actual worth of life as life, or the closely related reality of Homeric world before Homer put his beautiful light-filled, formed Apollonian dream-like transfiguration on it. Because without that cinematic transfiguration, it is a world of lurid sexualized violence and darkness and blood and gore, but the gore itself and the darkness is made beautiful in Homer just like the spurts of blood are in Kurosawa, you know, when the neck artery is cut by sword and blood gushes out. And that it is in response to being maybe sick in a sense, extreme sensitive in any case to the truth of the horror that is life and existence, living in extreme pain even in pleasure, experiencing constantly the extreme pleasure and pain of longing that the Greeks

ultimately reimagined the world as artists for that reason. To be able to endure it, a world of beautiful artifice, not lies in the moral sense, but a world imagined fundamentally beyond the moral sagging of other races without the antithesis of appearance and being anything of any real importance, but the world reduced to a rather divinized that surface and appearance again out of experience of the most dreadful depths. This meaning of tragedy in fact not quite a lie because again that's to put a moral word on an attempt to transfigure the world in an aesthetic sense. But when you look at artistic world around 1890 to 1910 or so and thereafter but let's say especially in that time in whether in Paris or Vienna.

This book of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy was very important for many artistic projects and circles. You may know of, otherwise, for example, painter Gustav Klimt. I don't usually recommend academic articles, but there's, I don't fully agree with it, but for information and relevant facts it's interesting. There's one article called Gustav Klimt and the President of Ancient Greece, where the writer, she makes a case that Klimt was attempting in his famous gold period certain paintings like Athena or Danae or I think most recent scandal is his portraits of Adèle Bloch-Bauer, sold in 2006 for about 130 million dollars. It was a record at the time. But many of you may have known a painting, Danae or The Kiss, or Camille Pagli actually

has very wonderful critic, criticism, appreciation rather, of paintings of Klimt. I think especially his painting of Judith and Holofernes, head of Holofernes. She very good on that. She has also, by the way, book Glittering Images. I highly recommend, again, I wish she would continue with this format. I don't know why she has not done follow-up to that. People love that, where she just takes, I think, 20 famous paintings and gives you her appreciation of them and the history of this painting. It's a wonderful format. Anyway, I recommend that book. But anyway, this article make case that Klimt paintings of this period a visual attempt to render Nietzsche's ideas I'm mentioning here from Birth of Tragedy.

And the Apollonian, what you know and vaguely feel as the Apollonian spirit, or really for most people it's just a vibe, but it develops only in response and after embrace of Dionysian. And modernity is neither of Apollonian nor Dionysian, by the way. Christianity, according to Nietzsche, is also neither. Apollonian versus Dionysian is not an absolute way of classifying the world according to two things, for example, men are Apollonian, women are Dionysian, that's stupid, it's not some metaphysical dualism in that sense, it's a particular dual aesthetic and spiritual comprehension of some aspects of artistic reality or spiritual experience from which art comes. But anyway, the misunderstanding of Greek tragedy, of Greek art and Greek spirit in

in general, extends to this other dimension of life as well that I'm talking on this episode in a much more limited way. The misunderstanding of Greek character type, Greek so-called virtues, of what was actually prized in ancient Greeks in aims of life, in the character of a man, which is again a little bit different from the very edited image of that that comes later through the Socratic schools, to modern times, through medieval ethics and so on. To what I read before regarding Odysseus, you can add this, what I'm going to read now from Plutarch. This is from Plutarch's life, the life of Marcellus, who was a great Roman soldier and politician. He was consul five times, I think, hero of wars against the Gauls and Carthaginians,

also the besieger of Syracuse, also coincidentally, according to Plutarch, the man who was one of the first to promote Greek learning in Rome. Marcus Claudius Marcellus lived in the 200s BC. So, I'm reading now. It is worth our while to notice that a Spartan lawgiver appointed his sacrifices in a manner opposite to that of the Romans. For in Sparta, a returning general who had accomplished his plans by cunning, deception or persuasion sacrificed an ox. He who had won by fighting a cock, excuse me, you know what he means, a rooster, not, okay, so, but for although they were most warlike, they thought an exploit accomplished by means of argument and sagacity greater and more becoming to a man than one achieved by violence and valor. How the case really stands, I leave an open question.

That's from Plutarch. Do you like that? And that's the Spartans. It's not what you might expect, a greater prize for victory through deviousness or diplomacy even than through open war. And since we're reading Plutarch, Marcellus, and talking about Greg's spirit, I thought why not also read to you this beautiful passage he has on Archimedes from the same text, which also revealed much, it's not directly related, but this special occasion, show 150, this beautiful passage, I must read it for you. It's Plutarch on Archimedes, okay? And prior to what I'm going to read to you now, he has very vivid images of how when And the Romans under Marcellus were trying to besiege Syracuse and the ships were coming from the sea and all kinds of strange machines came from behind the walls of Syracuse.

Some of them were even able to pick up Roman ships straight out of the sea, turn them over and many such things. Anyway, I read to you now, when therefore the Romans came up under the walls, thinking themselves unnoticed. Once more they encountered a great storm of missiles. Huge stones came tumbling down upon them almost perpendicularly, and the wall shot out arrows at them from every point. They therefore retired, and here again when they were some distance off, missiles darted forth and fell upon them as they were going away, and there was great slaughter among them. Many of their ships too were dashed together, and they could not retaliate in any way upon their foes, for Archimedes had built most of his engines close behind the wall,

and the Romans seemed to be fighting against the gods, now that countless mischiefs were pulled out upon them from an invisible source. However, Marcellus made his escape, and jesting with his own artificers and engineers, he said, Let us stop, said he, fighting against this geometrical Briareus, that's an ancient monster, who uses our ships like cups to ladle water from the sea, the sea, and has whipped and driven off in disgrace our Sambuca, that Roman engine that Archimedes' own machines destroyed. And with the many missiles which he shoots against us all at once outdoes the hundred-handed monsters of mythology. For in reality, all of the rest of the Syracusans were but a body for the designs of Archimedes, and his the one soul moving and managing everything.

For all other weapons lay idle, and his alone were then employed by the city both in offense and defense. At last the Romans became so fearful that, whenever they saw a bit of rope or a stick of timber projecting a little over the wall, there it is, they cried, Archimedes is training some engine upon us, and turned their backs and fled. Seeing this, Marcellus desisted from all fighting and assault, and thenceforth depended on a long siege. And yet Archimedes possessed such a lofty spirit, so profound a soul, and such a wealth of scientific theory, that although his inventions had won for him a name and fame for a suit superhuman sagacity, he would not consent to leave behind him any treatise on this subject,

but regarding the work of an engineer and every art that ministers to the needs of life as ignoble and vulgar, he devoted his earnest efforts only to those studies the subtlety and charm of which are not affected by the claims of necessity. These studies, he thought, are not to be compared with any others. In them the subject matter vies with the demonstration, the former supplying the grandeur in beauty, latter precision and surpassing power. For it is not possible to find in geometry more profound and difficult questions treated in simpler and purer terms. Some attribute this success to his natural endowments. Others think it due to excessive labor that everything he did seemed to have been performed without labor and with ease.

For no one could by his own efforts discover the proof and yet as soon as he learns it from him, he thinks he might have discovered it himself. So smooth and rapid is the path by which he leads one to the desired conclusion. And therefore we may not disbelieve the stories told about him, how under the lasting charm of some familiar and domestic siren, he forgot even his food and neglected the care of his person. How, when he was dragged by main force, as he often was, to the place for bathing and anointing his body, he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes, and draw lines with his finger in the oil with which his own body was anointed, being possessed by a great delight light, and in very truth a captive of the muses.

And although he made many excellent discoveries, he is said to have asked his kinsmen and friends to place over the grave where he should be buried, a cylinder enclosing a sphere, with an inscription given the proportion by which the containing solid exceeds the contained. Such then was Archimedes, and so far as he himself was concerned, he maintained himself and his city unconquered." I end reading. I like this very much. And it's big reason I say that the matter of what the Greeks were or not worth isn't just historical interest but because it represent major event in biological life of human species that it represent full the birth of human genius as such. The genius, the biological power of the mind freed for discovery and the genius as a personality

type isn't just the romantic imagining of the 19th century, many have been told this. But you see what I just read, the profile of the genius stereotypically that you may even see now in the movie, a man who neglects entirely his own life and welfare lives in his head entirely devoted to the pleasures of discovery. Similar I mentioned last episode, Tal the chess player, the magician of Riga on previous episode who needed a woman to come over, turn on the stove, he didn't know how to use gas stove. But again, it's not an affectation or an invention of European 19th century artistic imagination. It's a certain obviously definite biological type which you see here described by Plutarch in person of Archimedes, though if you were to look elsewhere in ancient Greece you'd

find Thales, the first philosopher, also fits it. He fell into a well because he was walking and looking at the stars, not at his feet. And in another slight different way there is Diogenes, the cynic, the public masturbator who lived in his tub and told Alexander the Great. Alexander asked him what he wanted, he said, get out of my way of blocking the sun, I'm tanning and in another nation these have been saints or prophets engaged in bizarre self-abnegations on behalf of God or the gods or for the sake of the people and so on but these men are entirely selfish in their pursuit of pleasure of discovery even in the Archimedes I just read for you now you see something maybe a little bit unexpected from modern point of view

because Archimedes did not disdain his mechanical and engineering inventions merely because they were, okay so let's take the Libtard case, a Libtard now from Oppenheimer point of view with the hand wringing and the moral fagging would say he didn't like them because he was a pacifist and these were weapons of war you know but obviously it's not that and it's not even necessarily is that he had a moral objection to practical applications if you read in between the lines and also look at the attitude of other thinkers and philosophers at the time, natural science was not separated from philosophy. It was more that the practical applications and the demands of life meant encumbrances. It meant duties and weights on your life, and this could have interfered with the total

freedom necessary instead to pursue the pleasure of discovery for its own sake. And this is the ancient philosophical attitude to morality as well, by the way. this thing from both the modern and the saintly or self-abnegating approaches, which is to say that from the popular point of view, the withdrawal from the world from desires for material goods or wealth or desires for distinctions, status or honor, many such things on the part of someone like Diogenes, it may seem as self-abnegation or self-restraint. But from his point of view, it's not self-restraint at all. just getting rid of everything, of unnecessary distractions that could interfere with the far greater pleasure of thinking and discovery, similar to how a junkie or a coomer will sacrifice

all other parts of his life for drugs or sex or such. Not to be recommended, by the way, in any way to most men who take no pleasure in discovery, having no ability for it anyway, and would just use such, what I'm saying now, as excuses to sink into sloth. So then sometimes such philosophers for this reason, they pay lip service to popular notions of restraint, public duty and so on for this and similar reasons, but others did not. Many other thinkers, scientists, philosophers, just had total disdain for popular morality in general, open this day. And not just the violent antinomian, you know, fascists like Critias or Calicles, who I taught before, but also politically inert epicureans and cynics and many other such often complete

complete open contempt for public morality, complete embrace of personal pleasure, which their personal pleasure was, you know, not jerking off but scientific discovery. And it's interesting to think of Jesus as someone following in footsteps of cynic philosophers by the way. I have a friend, Macrobius, who think of him this way, our daily bread, you know, as that line is a criticism of the fact that the cynics were famous for their weekly bread, where the cynic carried in a little pouch is bred for the weak, I'm not sure if this is true, but interesting to imagine possible, certainly in keeping with Nietzsche's image, very beautiful image of Christ in the book The Antichrist, which despite its name, it's a book against

maybe religion as such in the Bible as such, but not against Jesus himself, who perhaps was a man very much like the philosophers I described now, but who was willing to sacrifice everything for the salvation of his, for salvation of what Buddhists would call nirvana. But I want to read from you Nietzsche again, can I, also from his book Daybreak. This passage I will read in a moment about nobility and I'll close with this because again in popular imagination, extolling of the Greeks, they must of course also be supremely noble people. It's a package deal, right? The Apollonian image of balance, restraint, self-control, nobility, but they were not noble compared to the Romans or to the medieval Europeans, who would have chosen death in

many situations, were famous and other Greeks of noble rank did not choose death. They were actually a criminal people, am I exaggerate only slight, but they were a criminal people. I mean his entire counter to conception people have of them as, again, Socratic, reasonable, self-restraint and so forth. There is this line, what I'm about to read, where they are willing to sacrifice honor, to give up a good name, and to get a name for treachery and evil, if that means being famous and powerful. I am reminded of so many historical examples, too many to mention. My favorite, Clearchus, the trickster, right? The tricks, he played a trick. He go to Byzantium as a Spartan envoy to help the Byzantines, but as soon as he gets there, away from the eyes of the Spartan state, he goes rogue,

he puts a rope around the necks of the rich and prominent, kills them, takes their property, takes their city, and then after the Spartans send forces to dislodge him, he fights them, he ends up having to run to another city, and when he finds money, he starts to plunder the Thracians and then he joins up with the Persian king's brother who's trying to coup the Persian throne. That's what I call a life, you know, that's tricky. That's real life, you see. And here's another trick that maybe a future American general will want to study. A very famous passage from Machiavelli about another Greek trickster. I was going to read just from Nietzsche, but now 150th episode special. I read for you this other favorite passage. It's a passage about political imagination. Please, do you hear me?

It's about historical horizons. This is from The Prince, chapter eight. Concerning those who have obtained the principality by wickedness. Although a prince may rise from a private station in two ways, neither of which can be entirely attributed to fortune or genius, yet it is manifest to me that I must not be silent on them, but although one could be more copiously treated when I discuss republics. These methods are when, either by some wicked or nefarious ways, one ascends to the principality, or when the favor of his fellow citizens, a private person, by the favor of his fellow citizens, a private person, becomes the prince of his country. As speaking of the first method, wickedness, it will be illustrated by two examples, one

ancient the other modern, and without entering further into the subject I consider these two examples to suffice. Agathocles the Sicilian became king of Syracuse not only from a private but from a low and abject position. This man, the son of a potter, through all the changes in his fortunes always led an infamous life. Nevertheless he accompanied his infamies with so much ability of mind and body that having Having devoted himself to the military profession, he rose through its ranks to be praetor of Syracuse. Being established in that position, and having deliberately resolved to make himself prince and to cease by violence, without obligation to others, that which had been conceded to him by a cent, he came to an understanding for this purpose with Amilcar, the Carthaginian,

who with his army was fighting in Sicily. One morning he assembled the people in the Senate of Syracuse as if he had to discuss with them things relating to the Republic, and at a given signal the soldiers killed all the senators and the richest of the people. These dead, he seized the princedom of that city without any civil commotion, and although he was twice routed by the Carthaginians and ultimately besieged, yet not only was he able to defend his city, but leaving part of his men for its defence, with the others he attacked Africa and in a short time raised the siege of Syracuse. The Carthaginians, reduced to extreme necessity, were compelled to come to terms with Agathocles and leaving Sicily to him, had to be content with the possession of Africa. Do you like this?

Maybe you remember image video of Saddam and what he does in his parliament. Yes, you can, to American future general. Only suggestion for study, I only say study. And then Machiavelli adds, therefore, he who considers the actions and the virtue of this man will see nothing or little which can be attributed to fortune, inasmuch as he attained preeminence, as is shown above, not by the favor of any one, but by step by step in the military profession, which steps were gained with a thousand troubles and perils, and were afterwards boldly held by him with many hazardous dangers. Yet it cannot be called thereto to slay fellow-citizens, to deceive friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion. Such methods may gain empire, but not glory.

if the courage of Agathocles in entering into and extricating himself from dangers be considered, together with his greatness of mind in enduring and overcoming hardships, it cannot be seen why he should be esteemed less than the most notable captain. Nevertheless, his barbarous cruelty and inhumanity with infinite wickedness do not permit him to be celebrated among the most excellent men. What he achieved cannot be attributed either to fortune or genius." End quote, you know, how many times does Machiavelli do here on one hand on the other, at least four or five times? You can see the strange way in which Machiavelli says Agathocles rose to power by his virtu, but also that it can't be called virtu to kill your fellow citizens and so on, what he means.

But then finally he decides, well, what's the reason that Agathocles cannot be esteemed among the greatest captains of history? It's somewhat the same paradoxical thing Nietzsche will say in what I intended to read before, follows now, that they're willing to give up honor, a good name for fame, which is kleos, glory, also a good name. They are very powerful people, you see, yes, yes, you like, someone like Agathocles is more like the Greek style than the image many have in mind of Socratic toga Hollywood vision. I read now from Nietzsche, we are nobler, that's the title of passage, okay, I read. We are nobler, loyalty, magnanimity, care for one's reputation. These three united in a single disposition we call noble, and in this quality we excel the Greeks.

Let us not abandon it, as we might be tempted to do, as a result of feeling that the ancient objects of these virtues have lost in estimation, and rightly, but see to it that this precious inherited drive is applied to new objects. To grasp how, from the viewpoint of our own aristocracy, which is still chivalrous and feudal in nature. The disposition of even the noblest Greeks has to seem of a lower sort, and indeed hardly decent. One should recall the words with which Odysseus confronted himself in ignominious situations. Endure it, my dear heart, you have already endured the lowest things. And as a practical application of this mythical model, one should add the story of the Athenian officer who, threatened with a stick by another officer in the presence of the entire general

staff, shook this disgrace from himself with the words hit me, but also hear me. This was themistically that dexterous Odysseus of the classical age, who was certainly the man to send down to his dear heart those lines of consolation at some shameful a moment. The Greeks were far from making as light of life and death on account of an insult as we do under the impress of inherited chivalrous adventurousness and desire for self-sacrifice. Or from seeking out opportunities for risking boasts in a game of honour as we do in duels. Or from valuing a good name, honour, more highly than the acquisition of a bad name if the latter is compatible with fame and the feeling of power. Or from remaining loyal to their class prejudices and articles of faith if these could hinder

them from becoming tyrants. For this is the ignoble secret of every good Greek aristocrat. Out of the profoundest jealousy, he considers each of his peers to stand on an equal footing with him, but is prepared at any moment to leap like a tiger upon his prey, which is to rule over them all. What are lies, murder, treachery, selling his native city to him then? This species of man found justice extraordinarily difficult and regarded it as something nearly incredible. The just man sounded to the Greeks like the saint does among the Christians. But when Socrates went so far as to say, the virtuous man is the happiest man, they did not believe their ears and fancied they had heard something insane. For when he pictures the happiest man, every man of noble origin included in the picture

the perfect ruthlessness and devilry of the tyrant, who sacrifices everyone and everything to his arrogance and pleasure. Among people who secretly reveled in these fantasies and this kind of happiness, respect for the state could, to be sure, not be planted deeply enough. But I think that people whose lust for power no longer rages as blindly as that of those Those noble Greeks also no longer required idolization of the concept of the state with which that lust was formerly kept in check. Yes, do you like this? I hope you like. And I wish for modern men maybe to become more like this. I believe actually this is the natural man. Ancient Greek nobles were for various reasons related both to fortune, luck, and genius.

They were freed, exceedingly freed compared to other peoples from conventions and prejudices. They were driven by mad lasts, naively and without superstitious delusions, by which I mean superstitious moral delusions, freed from conventions while still maintaining a great inner animal fire and it is for this reason that within the bounds of civilization they represent for the first time and really one of only times ever the emergence of natural men. The reconstitutions of man's fullness of range of nature in the same way that the Greek Greek aristocracies represented pure races, although no races are pure in the beginning. They all begin mixed with contradictory and faultly and imbecile or crippled aspects,

whereas in very few cases like that of the Greeks they can become purified over time and with many efforts. But this is how nature and excellence can be reclaimed over time. And I wrote my book with this passage and a few others like it in mind, and with such man in mind, men driven by such desires who are few, but exist among the universal modern bistrai, lameness. Such men who can then look to the Greek standard of nature and see how to fulfill it in modern world, and to let loose a bistiri and conflagration of such men as themselves.