Eso’s Chronicles 308 / 7
A Suicidal Civilization
© Eso A.B.
All comments appearing within brackets [ ] are editorial in origin. This series begins with 288.
I include this bird’s eye account of personal family history, to illustrate how within a hundred years following the beginning of the Industrial and Liberal age, a society of communities, having been done their will with by West and East Eropean nobility, was not able to shake off that nobility, which (transformed and hid behind the mask of liberal capitalism) continues to diminish the dignity of the hominid species to our day.
A Suicidal Civilization
© Eso A.B.
All comments appearing within brackets [ ] are editorial in origin. This series begins with 288.
A PILE OF WOOD
As I pointed out in the previous blog, the
word ‘fasces’ or a bundle of hazel rods is actually a pile of wood http://prints.encore-editions.com/500/0/arthur-garfield-dove-wood-pile-approximate-original-size-10x14--2.jpg
that certain political interests have turned into a burning bush http://www.artexpertswebsite.com/pages/artists/artists_a-k/dove/1.dove.jpg
and worse http://image.invaluable.com/housePhotos/sothebys/51/105351/H0046-L00668003.jpg
.
From a certain perspective, such a pile of
wood, can be seen as Europe http://mheckel.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/europe-map-new.jpg
. It may also look as a burning bush http://thegatewayonline.ca/images/article_images/Opinion-Europe-Burning.jpg
. And it may also look as if it were Death https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs16T_muufq2U-1UKMH_hUpbmbcgIcfHH8nkuYkN4Qs7HP4Goh0p8w3K6ePmsb3HVnZgKdFwzOxb-7moFce0c1yomPShRnE8k_vmvYjefa7vsW4RQCy2xEyl2qKIGJkBnDR9r0jz7HcjKA/s1600/86-wwi-cavalry-with-martini-henry.jpg
.
The reason for looking at fasces and Europe through the above images is, hopefully, to break
the stereotype that thinks of fascism as necessarily leading to a Nazi concentration
and extermination camp—either dead or alive. We have seen plenty of images of
Nazi death camps through the deeds of Hitler’s Nazi government; but we are told
that fascism multiplied into a federated Europe
does not result in FLDE (Federated Living Dead Eropeans), though we have before
us the federation of living dead Amricans. As if Eropeans are better made.
If the reader thinks that I am kidding, let
me reassure him-her, that I am an eye witness to the Latvan government (I am a
Latvian, an Amrican, and, consequently, an Eropean citizen) having turned, with
the help of an unelected gvernment in Brusels a country of two million People
into a pile of two million deads (about half of them exiled as a labor force for
capital)—without giving the People any choice in the matter.
Those who question my veracity and believe
that I exaggerate should ask anyone living today old enough to remember the
country as it was before WW2—whether there is any resemblance between the
Latvans of today and the Latvians of their grandparents’ day? The answer is NO!
Minimal (whatever that may mean).
What is worse is that according to my genes
my forebears come from the area of Slovenia Moravia
What was unique about the Herrnhuters,
descendants of a remnant of the followers of Jan Hus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite
, executed by burning at the stake in 1415, was that they believed not only in
educating the common man (the People), did not accept an intermediary
priesthood, but believed in integrating themselves among the people and doing
their work from within the fabric of the survivors.
The Herrnhuters reconstructed what had been
the Livonian society with great success. The dead Livs were replaced by
Latgalians, who moving west (fleeing from Catholic Polish occupied territories
in eastern territories), settled the area of (what is now) northern and
northeastern Latvia France Livonia
The Herrnhuters, largely oriented toward
the German culture as their name indicates, led the ‘survivors’ of the war (in
Estonia and Latvia) toward identifying with the land and their language. While
the separations were not always clean and neat, for the most part, the Livs,
who had formerly lived in Latvia, migrated north to Estonia or even went with
the Swedes across the Baltic to Sweden; whereas the Latvians tended to align
themselves with the descendants of their ethnic brethren, who [following the
incursions of the Crusaders of the Holy Roman Empire (Germany)] had moved south
and into Lithuania. It is interesting that the intra-ethnic frictions that
developed were far less among the people of the newly emerging nations, but the
emerging ethnic identity and between the Herrnhuters, who had been the very
ones who had rebuilt the spirit of the native people. This was partly due to
the fact that the Brethren’s identity continued to be influenced by their experience
in Germanic lands, not least, because they aid had been solicited by German
landlords of Livonia who formed the ruling class
of Livonia
As national identities began to emerge, the
more assertive elements of the emergent Latvians wished to see the Germanic
influence replaced by that of native Latvians. The lines of friction that
developed were not among the people,
but along the emergent elites, who rather than go over to the Herrhuter
(Hussite) view of things and cultural matters, adopted the Lutheran point of
view, because the Lutherans retained the Catholic perspective that when
speaking with God, the people needed as a go-between, i.e., a Lutheran minister
as a mediator. The Lutheran Church was, therefore, active in diminishing (and
as much as possible in dismissing) the work done in rebuilding the new ‘Latvian
ethnic society’, and for political reasons identified with the emergent
nationalist movement (then centered in St. Petersburg, Russia), not least that
it could join forces and push aside, both, former German Lutheran ministry and
the Herrnhuters.
My grandfather, a fourth generation
Herrnhuter, born in 1860, grew up nurtured by the Herrnhuter church (his mother
prepared the inn owned by her husband for Sunday services), but by the time he
completed his education (Cimze Seminary), the political movements within
Latvian society had muddied the collective view to the future, not least in
that it had lessened his personal career prospects, which were reduced to a
career of drudgery, self-discipline, and endurance of life on Earth in a manner
that would earn him a life in Heaven. With the wind definitely blowing against
him and, no doubt, feeling their ‘capitalist’ drift, my grandfather is reported
to have told his friends that he would “someday become a millionaire”.
Antons’ Benjamins’ ‘drudge’ career lasted
about twenty years, from roughly the early 1880s until 1904. During that time,
he had concluded a successful teacher’s career in a number of small Latvian
countryside towns from Rujiena, Vecogre, Platere, the latter where most of his
family grew up. He had also been choir director for all the choirs in the
region of Vidzeme, married one of the choir girls, my grandmother Made (b.
Yuryahns), raised with her a family of five children (my father Yahnis was born
1892), started two hardware stores, both of which went bankrupt, then in 1904
abandoned the family, moved to Riga, started working as a newspaper editor, met
a younger woman, took up living with her, and by 1911 established his own
newspaper “The Latest News” (Jaunākās Ziņas). Because of his earlier
bankrupcies, the publisher of the newspaper became his common-in-law wife,
Emiliya. Antons and Emiliya married in 1922, after Anton’s first wife Made
relented, and after making sure that her former husband did not leave their
children without an inheritance (Made forced the rewriting of an earlier Will
that had left the children with little or no inheritance), and gave the couple
her permission to marry.
I include this bird’s eye account of personal family history, to illustrate how within a hundred years following the beginning of the Industrial and Liberal age, a society of communities, having been done their will with by West and East Eropean nobility, was not able to shake off that nobility, which (transformed and hid behind the mask of liberal capitalism) continues to diminish the dignity of the hominid species to our day.
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