Eso’s Chronicles 318 / 5
It’s Not Over Until It’s Over
© Eso A.B.
All comments appearing within brackets [ ] are editorial in origin.

SO-CALLED ‘SUICIDE’ AS MECHANISM TO ESCAPE THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE CONSENSUS STATE (1)

While looking through the books on my hopelessly chaotic bookshelves, I came across a copy of “Empire”, Harvard, 2000, by Michael Hardt and Antonia Negri, and started flipping some of the pages read years ago http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674006713 .

I came across a highlighted phrase that reminded me of my interest in what it states: “….The first task of Empire, then is to enlarge the realm of the consensuses that support its own power.”

As I now live in Latvia, the country of my birth, where the social fabric, (originally based on life in the wood) has over a period of about a thousand years been torn to shreds by many would be Empires (Germany, Holy Roman Empire, Russia, Poland, Sweden, the Soviet Union), and where, not surprisingly, a good portion of nationalist rhetoric edges close to being fascistic (along Italian and German paradigms), even while giving ground to the Empire of EU and US, I decided to pull the phrase and take another look at it.

This follows a brief confrontation via email with a Latvian NGO, Politika.lv . The following is a free English translation from Latvian:

“I cite the author’s (of the article) response to the respondeNd (Ieva)”

‘....To say that the Latvian delegates (to the EU) cannot have influence on EU legislation is to fail to understand that the EU legislature functions on the basis of compromise and consensual orientation..."

“I (this writer) wish to point out that it is precisely in this word ‘concensus’ that hides the stasis of Latvian politics: censorship of thought and dictatorship of the media [and an alienated public]. What the author of the article fails to comprehend is that ‘concensus’ is an academic perspective, and has nothing to do with a freely thinking public.  The fact that the State did not permit a referendum on the question of what currency the Latvians wish to use was ‘overmanship’ over the subalterned People by State administration, which, to cite Antonio Negri (Empire, p106) on the concept of the nation:  "...the concept of nation promotes stasis and restoration in the hands of the dominant, it is a weapon for change and revolution in the hands of the subordinated." ("Empire", p.106).

“While not denying that there are occasions when concensus occurs, such events are rare, but more often, as in Latvia ever since1991, power was restored to the dominant group (the Senate—Saeima—and the State bureaucracy). The schism between the State and the People is not simply virtual. It has been created by the State and represents a repressive reality, which is evidently supported by the author of the article and the NGO 'Politika'.”

The tone with which the State, its agents, and the media address the Latvian people is notably authoritarian, with a uni-polar tendency as to subject matter, the latter expressed as ‘silent treatment’, which impresses on the majority of the public the idea that no other subjects exist. Such ‘treatment’ leads to increased levels of frustration among the public, though it has to be added that it has succeeded (by subjecting the nation to the European Central Bank) in ridding Latvia of about 900,000 (about 45%) of its people by forcing them to emigrate abroad. The number of immigrants is, by the way, this writer’s subjective guestimate, which subjective evaluation has no standing with the ‘objective’ and authoritarian (power-over) Consensus State.

The above is, of course, only a miniature of what the Empire (sometimes the U.S. alone, at other times, the US, EU, Russia, China in combination) confronts the hominids (to be differentiated from human beings) with. The revelation of the extent of spying done by the NSA (National Security Agency), proves the point of Hardt and Negri that: “The means of the private and individual apprehension of values are dissolved with the appearance of Empire… with a concrete universal itself. (p19)”

In the Big Empire (generally presumed to be theU.S.) itself, this confrontation between the Empire and the individual’s subjective apprehension of values was clearly represented through the MIT student-activist Aaron Schwartz https://www.truthdig.com/report/item/aaron_swartz_the_life_we_lost_and_the_day_we_fight_back_20140122 ,who downloaded too many JSTOR articles to government’s liking, so-called suicide due to the Empire’s prosecution (intimidation) of his efforts.

Since I object to the very word ‘suicide’, because of my belief that it is a deliberate attempt by the Empire to dismiss any and all self-sacrificial acts of its opponents, I certainly believe that Aaron Schwart’s ‘suicide’ was a sacrifice aimed against the Empire on behalf of subjective intelligence, which the internet functions to restore, but which the government is attempting to repress and censor. Hopefully, the alternate media, which made Aaron its hero, will not let him down by dismissing his self-sacrifice by continuing to call it ‘suicide’.

Eso’s Chronicles 302 / 1  
A Suicidal Civilization
© Eso A.B.
All comments appearing within brackets [ ] are editorial in origin.

IS FASCISM RECOVERABLE?

A lady who I have known for many years recently surprised me by being endorsed on a network by one who works for a ‘suicide prevention’ group. Since the lady is a practicing Buddhist, one may say that from a conventional point of view this is a match made in heaven. Both work for ‘healing from within.’

My objection to the mutual endorsements is because whenever I hear talk of suicide prevention without hearing an explanation that extreme dedication to suicide prevention denies a would-be ‘suicide’ the right to argue on behalf of self-sacrifice of life, I hear an argument on behalf of an  of evasion of life. Indeed, I hear in the advocate of suicide prevention a voice denying self-sacrifice of life and arguing that self-sacrifice (and Revolution) is not necessary whatever the circumstances may be that makes one think of them. Indeed, a radical, i.e., violent defense of a right to be sovereign when it comes to a decision about one’s life is summarily dismissed on behalf of an ‘inner’ and presumably ‘spiritual’ decision of a religious nature and conviction.

My readers know that I have long endorsed and argued on behalf of self-sacrifice as essential to the existence and maintenance of the human community. If it were not so, we would not be walking upright and would be still be squatting high in a tree chattering rather than talking. When all is said, self-sacrifice is an act that, though it may begin as a small favor, may end up with the ultimate sacrifice of giving one’s life. Yet ever since before the Age of ‘Enlightenment’ and the arrival of Catholic Christianity (God is only of the Plus side) there have been people who have argued that suicide is an act of violence and a major transgression against one’s self and, therefore, needs to be preached against and condemned.

Or is it that the argument in support of fear (and avoidance) of Death comes from those who raised themselves to material wealth by repressing and killing those who stood in the way of such self-improvement? The medieval poet Dante expressed this fear (revealed in official forgiveness of sins) in his poetry http://www.stpeterslist.com/8214/forest-of-suicides-6-comments-on-dantes-punishment-for-the-self-violent/  and, like it or not, condemned the creator of Death to the lower ring of Hell, which he imagined to be like Antarctica. Who is this Creator of Death—

Satan or God?  

I argue that Death is the creation of God; while, for all I know, you may say it is a creation of Satan.  Yet if Satan is a separate creation from God, he is not necessarily either more or less than God.

A way around this is to argue that both God and Satan are only middling Creator gods, and that there is yet a Higher God who created them both. This is easily illustrated by successive digital divisions, re < into < <, and so on. The Engish poet Robert Blake called this God Urizen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urizen , God of Reason and Logic

To simplify my argument, I will stay with the idea that whether there is a God (call him the Big Other or Urizen) or not, matter brought to life was created by God to die for his own good reasons. If this is only a half a truth or in no way true, my presumption, nevertheless, justifies the argument that death is/was either created (or evolved) for a purpose. What purpose?

Here we need to look back to the old tradition of repentance and fasting—despite the fact that there are many writers who believe that “…we no longer have the luxury of tradition” (either repentance or fasting). What was the reasoning that brought fasting about?

Does it mean that fasting or lent needs a ‘tradition’ for us to give it a try? I do not quite understand, why I need ‘a tradition’ to put up with a tradition of never hearing Bill Gates, whoever he is, reprimanding himself for hanging tooth and claw to an acquisitive character, from which our culture mines the deserts of its cities.

Needless to say, I have no idea of who this Bill Gates is, except that the press keeps touting such a name as the world’s wealthiest man or oligarch, and he has been seen on a number of ‘platforms’ advocating fascism as he sees it http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/535577/20140123/bill-gates-melinda-foundation-jimmy-fallon-show.htm . When it all gets boiled to syrup, the brew differs only slightly from Mussolini’s famed definition, which I will quote following Gates three definitions:

1. Everything in the oligarchy;
2. Nothing outside the oligarchy;
3. Nothing against the oligarchy.

http://the-classic-liberal.com/everything-for-the-state-nothing-outside-the-state-nothing-against-the-state/

These definitions (of course, Gates may not even know the word ‘fascist’) do indeed deny the ‘traditional’ definition of ‘fascism’ by Mussolini, who proposed it on behalf of the ‘State’ rather than ‘oligarchy’ as in the following http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fascism :

“1.’Everything in the state’. The Government is supreme and the country is all-encompasing, and all within it must conform to the ruling body, often a dictator.

2.’Nothing outside the state’. The country must grow and the implied goal of any fascist nation is to rule the world, and have every human submit to the government.

3.’Nothing against the state’. Any type of questioning the government is not to be tolerated. If you do not see things our way, you are wrong. If you do not agree with the government, you cannot be allowed to live and taint the minds of the rest of the good citizens.

The use of militarism was implied only as a means to accomplish one of the three above principles, mainly to keep the people and rest of the world in line. Fascist countries are known for their harmony and lack of internal strife. There are no conflicting parties or elections in fascist countries.”].

Still, if we think of it, ‘fascism’ speaks not only on behalf of oligarchy’, but also of monarchy. And as in the last words of 3., it also speaks of ‘good citizens’. So, what gives?

We may begin to start unraveling the riddle by, first, identifying appropriate synonyms for 1., 2, and 3.

A: is dictator as well as pope, president, or King.

B: is government not as in A. but as in Bureaucracy.
C: good citizens constitute the community, the city, the society.
D: militarism is outwardly turned armament. The needles of a porcupine are an excellent example.
E: fascism is a State with an outwardly violent face.
F: sometimes a nation is called a fascist State.

G: Is it possible that a fascist nation does not always project violence outwardly, but replaces it with atonement, lent, and self-sacrifice?

Copyright Eso Benjamins, aka Jaņdžs

NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
29 Not-Violent Populism (I)

The urban slum dwellers are over a billion people or 1/6th of the population. Another billion people, who overlap with the slum dwellers, are the informal working class. The latter is composed of the so-called “denizens” of the neocolonial city, the rag pickers, hawkers, child laborers, prostitutes, sweatshop workers, and like. Together these two peoples make for two billion people or roughly 1/3rd of the total human population of Earth.

Add to the aforementioned two billion unfortunates another billion of subsistence level rural workers, and we see that fully a half of the human population on Earth lives outside of the formal economy. As the word “denizen” indicates, these outsiders are not “citizens” in the sense of being among the politically accounted. Denizens are a people of no account. Many denizens live in dens, spaces below the ground level. If they also find their way to the above ground, they are found at such unlivable places as near-city swamps, desert dunes, decrepit lower-end housing projects, and railroad tracks.

As current global financial and economic difficulties prove, denizenship is not the affair of some third world republic trying to raise ostriches in the northern climate of Northern Europe. The problem is the result of a global systemic failure (think of an electric grid) at a time when things cannot be fixed as per usual—not even by a large country such as the United States of America or America, Europe, Japan, China, India, Russia put together. As the words “system failure” indicate, the fault is in the system, and it is reasonable to believe that the fault is part of the system from its inception. However, whereas the fault could perhaps have been corrected in the early days of the system, today the fault dominates and has become the system’s destroying angel.

No doubt, we are shocked, because we have an idea of what it means. If we do not believe that it means doom or The End, we suspect that we will die in great numbers, indeed in such great numbers till humankinds early death driven creativity returns. It is only then—after the great dying of those inside and outside the moneyed circles—that the dead will succeed in winning Utopia for those who remain. The dead will then reinstate a death that is again worthy of the starving Buddhist monk in sculptures in public places in far away lands in bygone times. (http://tinyurl.com/n6dwmv )

If one seeks to discover intelligence from another planet, one ought to begin with searching out one’s own. Even so, it is not possible to look and see one’s self when half the populations lives in mega cities that surround their habitat in a cocoon of virtual reality. It puts the populations of cities completely out of touch with the worm that airs root and soil.

An unwritten law of the mega city is a prohibition to discuss or encourage death. For example, death was not allowed as a subject matter between patient and doctor in Belgium before 1998. Because the law was changed at that time, an increase in requested euthanasia cases has been noted, though no great rush of them either. However, the numbers of deaths resulting from high doses of pain killing drugs have increased more significantly, because at the time of changes in the euthanasia law, restrictions against pain killing drugs, especially morphine, were also reduced. The latter, while easing pain also slows breathing. Be this as it may, what is important is that when it comes to determining one’s hour of death, the state presumes to have a greater right over you than you yourself. It is this very presumption that lies at the root of the system’s collapse and the anger of the destroying angel.

This series has argued that the Russian mathematician Anatoly Fomenko is quite right to say that history is chronologically accurate only since the 16th century. It was at that time that a historian named Scaligeri created the history of before the 16th century from fragments of uncertain chronology. Scaligeri glued the fragments together in such a way as to provide Roman Catholic ecclesiastics (who authorized Scaligeri’s chronology) with an antiquity they and their church otherwise had no right to. The one thousand years or so that the church gained because of Scaligeri’s manipulations increased its authority greatly. This is why the Catholic Church could present itself as time tested and the only religious authority worth taking seriously. With nothing more than force of bias (when needed enforced by the military, the arm of secularism that hid the mailed fist of neoChristendom), the neo-Christians could and did present archChristianity as a pseudo religion, pagan, and, thus, irrelevant.

Since Jesus replaced John (a native healer who healed with water), who was also the prototypical man wandering the Earth looking for Truth, Jesus (whoever he was) was made God and put in charge over the human species dumbed down by violence. As a result, John (sourced in Everyman) no longer had the psychological supports necessary to live the life of a self-sacrificial warrior saint and keep his followers from being turned into nobodies.

At this time, the people of “developed nations” are unaware that they, too, are the dumbed down ones. A reliance on the nuclear bomb has propped up for them the illusion of power and control for too long. Nevertheless, the people of the developed countries are becoming aware of the denial of death by their governments, and they have taken the first steps to check them. The manner of resistance may seem shocking, but on consideration, maybe it ought not to be. These steps of resistance take shape as assisted “suicides”. http://tinyurl.com/nasgtl


*The word “God” is in itself meaningless, but depends on its charisma by a collective subjective self, which is imposed on the collective from an outside, supposedly objective authority. The imposition of one subjective God over another is reflected in the words of Psalm 67: “Rise up O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face”. The “enemy” of God are the Johns of archChristendom, who have their own God Yan, one who is Everything within and outside of All in the now and the past.

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