Things Hidden

Seemed to me that Roger Scruton’s analysis of Rene Girard had a major flaw AI agreed:

There are more salubrious districts of Nairobi such as Westlands, but also squalor far worse such as Kibera where hundreds of thousands live in shacks without sanitation amid open sewers.

“Cortes landed, after a preliminary brush at Tabasco, at Vera Cruz; his force amounted to 400 men, 15 horses (animals never before seen in Mexico) and 7 pieces of artillery. Before setting out into the unknown continent he sank the fleet that had brought him from Cuba. The stupendous daring of the expedition needs no comment. Its success was helped by the superstitious expectations of the people who had a tradition that an event of the kind would occur. In 1522 Cortes became Governor, Captain General and Chief Justice over the Empire which Spain held for three centuries. In 1524 the chaplains who had accompanied his army were reinforced by twelve Franciscan friars whose duty was to convert the natives; mass baptisms took place. In 1527 Juan de Zumarraga became first Archbishop of Mexico. In 1531 the work of conversion received what is held to be miraculous sanction in the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Guadalupe. Notions of independence began to appear among the governing class of the Mexicans towards the end of the eighteenth century. The independence of the English colonies in the North, the spread of Freemasonry in the garrisons, the revolution in France, the weakness of Spain in Europe, all contributed to them. The Napoleonic era in Europe and the Peninsular War confused the issues to such an extent that it was not always clear to a Spanish official overseas where his true loyalty lay. In 1810 a parish priest, Hidalgo, led a peasants’ rising which was suppressed; he was executed. In 1813 the army chiefs declared for independence. The leading general, Iturbide, became Emperor in 1822; General Santa Anna at the same time proclaimed a republic. The republicans won and Iturbide was executed. In 1823 the Monroe doctrine was proclaimed by the United States; by this the continent of America was declared closed to European irredentism. In 1825 the last loyal Spanish garrison evacuated its post. From the death of Iturbide until the French invasion of 1861, Mexico had no settled government and in the confusion lost over half her territory, permanently, to the United States.” - Robbery Under Law by Evelyn Waugh

Norman Mailer’s seminal essay ‘The White Negro’ 1957, about the “psychopathic” quest for the “apocalyptic orgasm” is a harbinger of the sexual revolution, pornification of public realm, obscenities in pop music such as routine use of ‘hos’ and ‘bitches’, and ‘manosphere’ where the pursuit of sexual gratification is an aspirational lifestyle option. dissentmagazine.org/online_a…

“Now this is what some great men are very slow to allow; they insist that Education should be confined to some particular and narrow end, and should issue in some definite work, which can be weighed and measured. They argue as if every thing, as well as every person, had its price; and that where there has been a great outlay, they have a right to expect a return in kind. This they call making Education and Instruction 'useful,' and Utility' becomes their watchword. With a fundamental principle of this nature, they very naturally go on to ask, what there is to show for the expense of a University; what is the real worth in the market of the article called 'a Liberal Education,' the supposition that it does not teach us definitely how to advance our manufactures, or to improve our lands, or to better our civil economy; or again, It does not at once make this man a lawyer, that an engineer, and that a surgeon; or at least if it does not lead to discoveries in chemistry, astronomy, geology, magnetism, and science of every kind.” - The Idea of a University by St John Henry Newman

“But that perceiving directs itself toward a perceived or, speaking formally and generally, relates itself to it, is surely too self-evident for such a thing to need to receive special notice. Kant indeed says the same thing when he talks about the thing, the perceived, entering into relation with the cognitive faculty, with perceiving, when he talks about a subjective synthesis. Moreover, this expressly noticed relation of perceiving to the perceived also belongs to other modes of comportment: to mere representing, which relates to the represented, to thinking, which thinks the thought, to judgment, which determines something judged, to love, which relates to a beloved. These, one might think, are unsurpassable trivialities which one ought to shrink from pronouncing. Nevertheless, we shall not deny ourselves the explicit formulation of this discovery. Comportments relate to something: they are directed toward this whereto; or, in formal terms, they are related or referred to it. But what are we to make of this statement of the relation of the comportments to that to which they comport? Is this still philosophy at all? Whether it is or is not philosophy we may leave undecided. We may even admit that it is not or is not yet philosophy. Also, we are not really concerned as to what we are to make of the identification of the alleged trivialities, whether with them we shall or shall not be penetrating into the mysteries of the world and of the Dasein. The only thing we care about here is that this trivial identification and what is intended in it should not escape us—that we should perhaps bring it closer to us. Perhaps then the alleged triviality will turn into a total enigma. Perhaps this insignificance will become one of the most exciting problems for him who can philosophize, who has come to understand that what is taken for granted as being self-evident is the true and sole theme of philosophy.” - Basic Problems of Phenomenology by Martin Heidegger