The Primal Existential Crisis

[Self-Lightening]

And for you, isn’t respect for your parents sacred?
After all, for atheists too, respect for parents is sacred, for the time being.
After all, a scoundrel, by definition, is someone for whom nothing is sacred.

The community of esoteric political philosophers (across time) can certainly be called a community—though not a gang—of robbers, if not of scoundrels, and has indeed been called that by Judah Halevi (cf. Laurence Lampert, The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss, pp. 59-66). Their "commandments", the minimum of any community, are two and two only: "honor your parents" ("fathers"—intellectual superiors, advisers, teachers) and "do not deceive" (your (potential) fellow community members):

"[T]he language of morality, a language of obedience, does not fit the community of questioners. Instead, the two items of this 'moral' minimum must be construed not as obligatory or prescriptive but as descriptive; they state what its members do, not obediently, but out of the wellspring of eros that drives them, love that to say the least includes self-love." (op.cit., p. 64. Cf. Seth Benardete, The Bow and the Lyre, p. 88.)

[promethean75]

I have a question. Why are, or must, parents be sacred? Honor the parents, u owe your parents, etc. It's one of those thoughtless repetitions i hear all the time.

What if your parents are a couple of clowns? Or worse, what if one or both are the most contemptible people you've ever known?

I mean yeah if your moms and pops are cool, u can call em sacred and thank them and honor them and all that. But this can't be some kind of universal rule becuz believe it or not, some parents are incompetent assholes.

I think people spiritualize a relationship that simply isn't significant in the way they think. You share some genes with your folks. That's it. You also share genes with house flies, but u don't honor them, do u?

[Self-Lightening]

Honor the parents, u owe your parents, etc. It's one of those thoughtless repetitions i hear all the time.

"Proper instincts are acquired through millennia of brutal, tyrannic imposition of a morality which then becomes self-evident to those so educated: 'Everything good is inherited: what is not inherited is imperfect, is a mere beginning.' The main human problem is to attain 'the perfected automatism of instinct—this presupposition of every mastery, of every kind of perfection in the art of life.' Nietzsche prized the Jewish instinct as a more developed form of this mastery than that possessed by other European nations. Characteristically Nietzsche finds this illiberal instinct's most revealing aspect in unconditional obedience to parents: 'To honor father and mother and even in the depths of the soul to be obedient to their will.'" (Harry Neumann, "The Case Against Liberalism", citing six different books by Nietzsche in his notes to this passage.)

[promethean75]

That's not entirely true, Saully. Actually that's not even sorta true. Not in the way it presupposes, anyway. What passes to the child from the parent, what is inherited, is physical constitution (memes and culture are not). But what becomes of that constitution, whether it lies dormant, is squandered, or used to increase strength, depends entirely on the epidemiology of the individual's experience. Instinct here is only the degree of vitality that is present in the face of such experiences... not some genetic script followed in the form of culture. Not a tendency to respond as one's forefathers responded to circumstance x. All that is passed on and given is fortitude for facing unique experiences that, quite possibly, one's forefathers had never known.

Consider this. If nobility is inherited, why do we always see the stock prince character in the movie acting like a total fag, prancing around the castle ordering servants about? Ten generations of aristocracy, only to end up here as a useless little worm. Meanwhile, the slave, born of peasant stock, becomes the hero who defies all the odds, etc.

Nothing about any of this is inherited but physical health. It's the line of experiences that makes the man and the character of the man. Family, ancestry and culture are utterly irrelevent.

[Walker]

I have a question?

That is a great question.

I have an answer.

If you dishonor your dishonorable parents:
In that case, because you were weaned on dishonoring, it’s in your bones, you’re very good at it, and you cannot distinguish intentional dishonor, from unintentional dishonor. As a cross-cultural universal cause and effect, this does not benefit your chances for long-term survival inasmuch as future karma for you could be disproportionate rather than equitable, and dishonor has debiltating social effects, and it even affects perception of causation, forever condemning one to ignorance and suffering. The solution: intend no dishonor.

If you dishonor your honorable parents:
In that case, that is an irrevocable sin that you cannot repair, so that when you awaken to that truth, you will suffer for all the rest of your days, and nights, because you have excluded yourself from the good people, and it’s as plain as day to all those who can perceive. The solution: intend no dishonor.

[Self-Lightening]

That's not entirely true, Saully. Actually that's not even sorta true. Not in the way it presupposes, anyway.

Well, if you said "the way it seems to presuppose", I'd agree. But there's a back-and-forth between nature and nurture/culture as between genes and environment. Also, Neumann speaks only of millennia here, and Nietzsche also said "a couple of millennia mean little!" (WP 1043.) Thus I believe that, for example, traditional gender roles as we know or knew them are only about 5,000 years old. There's also such a thing as epigenetics.

Consider this. If nobility is inherited, why do we always see the stock prince character in the movie acting like a total fag, prancing around the castle ordering servants about? Ten generations of aristocracy, only to end up here as a useless little worm. Meanwhile, the slave, born of peasant stock, becomes the hero who defies all the odds, etc.

Well, those are respectively caricatures and idealizations, of course. Still, Nietzsche does say something similar, in essence, in the drafted sequel to BGE 257:

"The 'humanization' of such barbarians [...] is essentially a process of weakening and mildening, and takes place precisely at the expense of those drives to which they owed their victory and their possessions; and while they acquire the 'more humane' virtues in this way, [...] a reverse process takes place equally gradually on the part of the oppressed and enslaved. To the extent that these are kept milder, more humane, and consequently thrive more richly physically, the barbarian develops in them, the strengthened human being, the semi-animal with the cravings of the wilderness:—the barbarian who one day senses he is strong enough to resist his humanized, that is to say effeminate, masters. The game commences anew: the beginnings of a higher culture are once again in place."

Ah, but I don't want that; not yet, not for a couple of millennia, at least...

[promethean75]

Yeah, epigenetics. Even more to the point. Essentially what i mean with the phrase 'epidemiology of experience'. Nurturing by environment that can cause interference with how genes are expressed; both our prince and our slave are healthy, but our aristocrat ends up acting like a pansy and our slave, like a badass. In other words:

"Proper instincts are acquired through millennia of brutal, tyrannic imposition of a morality"

Impose all u want, but that won't guarantee any success in what u are attempting to build/breed through such stringent culturing. At an epigenetic level, controlling the circumstances and factors that cause genes to turn on or off (while the DNA stays the same) would be practically impossible. Moreover, it's not entirely accurate to say that 'memes' are the causal agents in effecting and changing gene expression... simply becuz ideas don't, can't, effect physical properties. Indirectly, however, this may happen tho. Say u have a cultural behavior (a meme) that, by being practiced, exposes the individual to environmental factors that effect him epigenetically; smoking cigarettes is cool in culture x, and doing so results in gene expression changes that bring about cancer. Okay... but the meme didn't cause the cancer. It was the chemicals in the cigarettes that caused the cancer... and this is a factor of the environment (the tobacco), not the culture of smoking.

And this is not a minor technical difference. It means everything concerning the veracity of memes. Add to this the immense complexity and unpredictability of gene activity in their interactions with environments - which genes get turned on and off, and why - and memes become even more ambiguous.

"Ah, but I don't want that; not yet, not for a couple of millennia, at least..."

Why on earth would u say such a thing?! Do it right here and now. It means everything...

[Self-Lightening]

I forgot that it's not just traditional gender roles, but also the difference in average height between men and women, for example. These are still "epi-genetic" changes in a loose yet literal sense: they are still relatively superficial (compare "epidermis"—although we should probably rather think of tattoos). Now I deliberately didn't elaborate on my last comment. Did I mean I didn't want the current masters to be successfully resisted yet? Or did I mean I didn't want the game to commence anew yet? And aren't these two sides of the same coin?
(The word "tattoos" links to Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell, "Your Tattoo is INSIDE Your Immune System. Literally".)
https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.p ... 0#p2919890
Al Andaluz Project, "El Rey de Francia":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rga6CMt02Ug

[Age]

I have a question?

That is a great question.

I have an answer.

If you dishonor your dishonorable parents:
In that case, because you were weaned on dishonoring, it’s in your bones, you’re very good at it, and you cannot distinguish intentional dishonor, from unintentional dishonor. As a cross-cultural universal cause and effect, this does not benefit your chances for long-term survival inasmuch as future karma for you could be disproportionate rather than equitable, and dishonor has debiltating social effects, and it even affects perception of causation, forever condemning one to ignorance and suffering. The solution: intend no dishonor.

If you dishonor your honorable parents:
In that case, that is an irrevocable sin that you cannot repair, so that when you awaken to that truth, you will suffer for all the rest of your days, and nights, because you have excluded yourself from the good people, and it’s as plain as day to all those who can perceive. The solution: intend no dishonor.

If a parent is a True 'honorable parent', then no child of that parent would even want to begin to dishonor them. This is just a plain old simple fact.

Just like if a parent Truly does love a child, then that child is just not going to choose to not love them back.

Any talk about suffering for the rest of days also deflects away from what is actually True.

[Veritas Aequitas]

But for you personally, is there anything sacred?

Nope, None.
You?

At least the Ten Commandments are sacred to me.
And for you, isn’t respect for your parents sacred?
After all, for atheists too, respect for parents is sacred, for the time being.
After all, a scoundrel, by definition, is someone for whom nothing is sacred.
'You know, we're really re-examining one of Plato’s famous problems, in the Euthephro. Are certain acts impious because the gods say they are, or do the gods say those acts are impious because they are so to begin with? If it's the latter, then we have some concept of the sacred and the impious independently of the gods, and we can make secular sense of impiety, and some things can be sacred anymore.'

Sacred?

• Sacred = connected with God or a god or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration.

Re secular,
respect for parents is a virtue a natural evolving spontaneous impulse for the good of the [human] individual, individuals and humanity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue

While virtue is inherently good, you have to be specific with 'sacred'.
Certain religions [sacred] do not place parents with any priority, e.g. in Islam, one can kill one's parents, siblings, kin, e.g. being non-Muslim or if they are a threat [fasadin] to Islam in the slightest way.

[promethean75]

That's pretty wild tho... how the skin works. If u think about it, your skin is not unlike Hamas becuz it uses human body shields by hiding behind other cells.

Speaking of tattoos, my tattoo - which I lied about and told everybody i did myself becuz i was tryna be cool - was made from the burnt residue of grease from the prison canteen and applied with the straightened, sharpened spring of a ball point pen smuggled from the GED teacher's office.

A wick of tightly wound toilet paper would be put in the tin of the grease which it would slowly burn to ash. The ash is then collected, mixed with water, and put in an eye dropper. The tip of the dropper is cut off so the makeshift needle can be dipped in it when doing the tattoo. The gun itself was a rigged up beard clipper motor.

The tattoo itself was an improv; i had nothing in mind and told homeboy to just do some random tribal design over the old tattoo (which i got from eric in 1990 after we stole five rifles and shotguns from my old man). The new tattoo ended up looking like an evil menacing eye surrounded by these flame-like swirls or something. I decided to christen it as the eye of the jinn - becuz the design was kinda arabic lookin - which would watch over me and protect me from holy spirits. It's done pretty damn good so far.

[Self-Lightening]

Good to hear, and great story. So you already knew Eric in 1990?

[promethean75]

No not that Erik from ILP. Lol.

[Janoah]

Nope, None.
You?

At least the Ten Commandments are sacred to me.
And for you, isn’t respect for your parents sacred?
After all, for atheists too, respect for parents is sacred, for the time being.
After all, a scoundrel, by definition, is someone for whom nothing is sacred.
'You know, we're really re-examining one of Plato’s famous problems, in the Euthephro. Are certain acts impious because the gods say they are, or do the gods say those acts are impious because they are so to begin with? If it's the latter, then we have some concept of the sacred and the impious independently of the gods, and we can make secular sense of impiety, and some things can be sacred anymore.'

Sacred?

• Sacred = connected with God or a god or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration.

Re secular,
respect for parents is a virtue a natural evolving spontaneous impulse for the good of the [human] individual, individuals and humanity.

Not only "connected with God",
"considered too important to be changed:
His daily routine is absolutely sacred to him."

Virtue is a bonus, you can do it or you can not do it.
The sacred is something that cannot be violated. This is also relevant for atheists.

That is, respect for parents, not because you logically proved it here, on the contrary, if respect is for obtaining some benefits, then this is already morally defective.

[Self-Lightening]

The sacred is something that cannot be violated. This is also relevant for atheists.

That is, respect for parents, not because you logically proved it here, on the contrary, if respect is for obtaining some benefits, then this is already morally defective.

"The world of moral man, the world which sees the human good in its subordination to the laws of nature or of God—the world Liberalism would abolish—is the world the Jew characterizes, when he says that 'the reward for the fulfillment of the commandment is the commandment.'" (Harry V. Jaffa, Foreword to Harry Neumann's Liberalism.)

"Some Christian or post-Christian form of monotheism, and with it the death of serious politics, has triumphed everywhere during the last two millennia. If isolated pockets of warrior piety exist today they are pitied as 'backward' or 'underdeveloped' peoples, that is, people whose 'sexist', 'chauvinist' or 'racist' prejudices require replacement by Christian-liberal ideals. The Jews, and only the Jews, never were reconciled to this replacement. They remained aware of the terrifying emptiness of apolitical, cosmopolitan solutions." (Neumann, Liberalism, "The Case Against Liberalism".)