When Monarchs Think Better.

IF WE PAY ATTENTION, WE CAN EVEN LEARN FROM INSECTS!

Abstract: Bad thinking is not just erroneous. It’s immoral. It can be deadly on the grandest scale.

An example that is pretty much in evidence, and in the news, is the Afghanistan war, which is coming to the fruition of its basic contradiction.

That war was started, by Western agents and direct Western intervention, with a viciously underhanded instrumentalization of Islam, in the 1970s (contrarily to what is repeated, ad nauseam, by the ignorant, or plutocratic servants with vested interest).

There are patterns of bad thinking. By avoiding those patterns, one could get to better thinking. One could write commandments, bible style, about patterns of bad thinking that should be avoided by the Believers In Higher Reason.

1) Just because it feels right, it does not mean that it is right.

2) As long as all imaginable details have not been checked thoroughly, it’s wrong, not right.

3) Politically Correct, does not mean it is right. It could be completely wrong. Per its very nature, the Politically Correct is often incorrect.

4) Individuals express  mental systems of thoughts and emotions entangled. What’s right, or wrong, about those individuals, is more about those systems than about their personalities.

I give examples below:

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS VERSUS ULTIMATE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS:

a) The notion of Political Correctness, a form of hypocrisy, started with early Christianity. Hordes of ignorant monks (“men in black“) were interested by senseless reasoning, because their aim was to destroy civilization (it was supposed to bring back Christ, their male fantasy).

b) The replacement of the Roman empire by the empire of the Franks was greatly the win of a higher civilization over a lower one. That’s completely counter-intuitive, as many of the objective signs of civilization collapsed for all to see.

Yet, what matters to evaluate higher civilization is not as much GDP, Gross Domestic Product, as UPB, Ultimate Philosophical Basis. The UPB of the Franks in 800 CE was vastly superior to that of the Romans. The notion of UPB is not PC. Just the opposite.

And especially to the UPB of the late Roman empire (which was so disastrous that it led to many military defeats to Goths, Vandals, Huns, Sassanians, Muslims, etc.). The Ultimate Philosophical Basis of the late empire was plutocratic superstition. The Franks simply tended to favor better ideas over plutocratic superstition.

That was demonstrated by the joint action of both in the destruction of “Gothia” the empire of the Goths (definitively a lower sort of civilization). The Franks did most of the work first, and won, because many of their ideas were antipodal to Gothic principles.

c) Political Correctness in ecology can increase devastation. An example: the relationship between eucalyptuses and endangered Monarch butterflies. And a question: if Monarchs, just an insect species, can adapt to changed circumstances, how come we cannot? And why do we dare contradict superior thinking? From an insect! Are we too clever by half? Does culture get in the way of intelligence?

In a second part of this essay, I will address the vile violation of the separation of church and state in the USA by the Vice President of the USA, who made a religious show of the fact he “abhors” himself, by covering his forehead with ash. This is the sort of spectacle one expects from fanatics in the streets of Teheran, you know, those who beat themselves with chains, because they “abhor” themselves so much. But, of course, they are not vice president.

WHEN MONARCH BUTTERFLIES THINK FASTER AND BETTER THAN HUMANS:

[Monarch Butterfly; there are two species in North America, the Western and Eastern one; the former hibernate in California, the latter, in Mexico.]

Eradicating invasive species is old science. New science consists in finding whether the invaders is having a positive effect, or not. For example goats and pigs have been eradicated from some Galapagos islands, and that’s a good thing, because they were having a very negative effect..

But eucalyptuses in California are an entirely different matter. And there is a new twist that I have observed, all by myself. And I was very surprised.

Monarch butterflies is one of the most spectacular creatures of the planet. The violently orange, black veined and white speckled flying stain glass window can flutter in great numbers. This insect is intelligent in mysterious ways.

I have seen a sizable whitish bird dive at great speed on a peacefully flying monarch. The butterflies sensed its enemy, twisted and turned, dog fight style, to avoid becoming dinner. At the last fraction of a second the bird also made a desperate avoidance maneuver. The flying dinosaur may have remembered that monarchs are poisonous.

Monarchs used to migrate in fall from North America to their sacred groves in Mexico where they would gather by the billions, in thick drapes on the trees. They spend the six months of winter there. Those butterflies live only 6 weeks. After a few generations in the groves of Mexico, they would migrate back north in Spring. Nobody knows how they do this.Birds learn migration routes, but the Monarchs obviously cannot.

In recent years, the groves in Mexico have been cut down. In a country where police, thugs, politics and 50,000 corpses from the drug war are making an unfathomable mix, it should not be a surprise that Monarchs‘ groves fall by the way side.

So what did I observe? Monarchs over-wintering in at least one California’s eucalyptus grove (which is located in a city park). They extract nectar from eucalyptus flowers to sustain themselves. Local birds have come to know them well. It is an amazing spectacle: hundreds of large bright orange butterflies fluttering around.

As Monarchs are a threatened, irreplaceable species, poetically, esthetically, and as stupendous achievement of biological evolution, this is an important development. Cutting down eucalyptuses may be PC, but it would be more correct for the biosphere to plant huge eucalyptus groves.

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THOSE WHO THINK BETTER, EAT BETTER:

The termite thinks it knows it all. It is master of its universe. The chimpanzee knows better. This is, in a nutshell, the nexus of the interactions between civilization, religion, superstition and legislation.

Those who refuse to understand the principle that higher thinking is superior in all sorts of vital ways, refuse to understand, not just culture, but reality. We have seen all before, when the Roman empire went down. Chimps shrug, and invite more termites to climb on their stick.

The 2009 book from Chris Wickham (Medieval History, Oxford): “The Inheritance of Rome, Illuminating the Dark Ages“. contains the breezy statement (page 92) that “The high point of Gothic western Mediterranean was around 500. It was destroyed by two men, Clovis the Frankish king and the eastern emperor Justinian.”

Professor Wickham omits a few details: Clovis was a general of the Roman army, with the rank of imperator, just like his father, Childeric. Clovis was also Roman Consul, and dead before Justinian became emperor. The Wikipedia article I hyperlinked to failed to mention the most important detail about Childeric; he was buried in the extravagantly expansive purple mantle of a Roman imperator. The Salian Frankish army was fully a Roman army. Although an elected “regis” (king in Latin), just like his father, also buried in Latin, Clovis was as much part of the Roman establishment as one could be. And he, Clovis, not Justinian, broke the Goths. Justinian’s generals finished the job in Italy.

But that is not the worse: the good professor misses the big picture about his important subject completely. He looks at the celebrities, Clovis, Justinian, not the ideologies that animated them. The big picture is this: civilization is not about celebrities, it’s all about mental systems, & some are more capable than others. The fact that pseudo progressive heavy weights have been unwilling to proclaim this has made the message of our civilization incoherent (paradoxically, it is in places such as China that good old Western progress makes coherent discourses… therein its superiority!)

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GOTHS ANNIHILATED BECAUSE THEIR VISION OF CIVILIZATION WAS REGRESSIVE:

Clovis, and Justinian were remarkable individuals. Yet, they could, they would, have been replaced. Actually Clovis sons pursued their fathers’ wars with gusto and finished the conquest of Francia to the south east (Clovis died at an early 44). Generals Belisarius and (the eunuch)  Narses, who fought Justinian’s wars, could have replaced him (& nearly did).

The reason the Franks won, for the next seven centuries (they finally conquered and raped Constantinople in 1204 CE, in an excess of French craziness),  and beyond, was because they had developed a superior mental system the debating, legal, fascist and engineering of Romanitas, with the anti-sexism and equalitarianism of Germanitas, and quite a few new ideas about exploiting and creating a new Christianity endowing considerable philosophical progress. That mentality with Christianity as an art form in the service of the Frankish vision of superior civilization made them more prone to domination than the Goths. The Goths were handicapped by their racism, and their old fashion Arianism (fanatical Christianity with Jesus as a “creature”).

This was perfectly illustrated in Italy. The great Ostrogoth king Theodoric pursued a policy of full compatibility with the empire, recognizing imperial authority, and allowing Romanitas to flourish (although he was never integrated in the Roman state as Clovis was). His daughter, the reigning queen Amalasuntha pursued her father king’s policy of integration with Roman civilization.

However, Gothic nobles would not have it, they were positively enraged by integration with Rome, and they opposed the queen at every turn. They forced her to give her son a barbarian education (he got in heavy teenage drinking and died). She had conspirators executed, but ultimately, after 13 years of rule, was imprisoned, and executed. Justinian  reacted to that horrific crime by declaring total war to the Goths. Narses would ultimately win, the (Ostro)Goths would be annihilated, never seen again in history, but Italy was destroyed in the process.

The Franks were all for integration with Roman civilization. They were not racist as the Goths. Why the difference? Partly because the Franks had been in contact with Rome for centuries more than the Goths (who came in from the savage East the hard way, after defeating Valens in 378 CE).

The Goths still ruled Spain. And they established a shining civilization with some top thinkers (Isadora of Seville, say). Yet, propped by their Arian superstition, they kept on discriminating against Catholics and especially Jews. Big mistake, a mistake the Franks over the Pyrenées had not committed as they had established a secular anti-plutocratic Disneyland  where Christianoid fantaisies were strong, but not exclusive.

In 710 CE the Berber Umayyad general Tariq ibn-Ziyad led the reconnaissance into Iberia in advance of the main Moorish force, crossing the straight of Gibraltar (Jabal Tāriq (جبل طارق), at the “mountain of Tariq”, referring to the Rock of Gibraltar. In 711 the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I, leading the main Berber, Moorish, Arab and Syrian armies crossed over from Morocco.

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FRANCIA WAS UNITED BY HER MORE ADVANCED PHILOSOPHY:

Those Islamist armies, armed by the formidable bellicose ideology of Islamist Jihad, had not been defeated for three generations. They had built the largest empire the world ever saw, in a few years. Some Jews apparently betrayed the fortifications of some cities, and the divided Goths lost the crucial battle. Eleven years after the first incursion in Iberia, the giant Islamist armies were spilling into Francia.

It was a scenario from hell, reminiscent of the invasion of the Huns, 270 years earlier. The target was Constantinople. Just as with the Huns, the Islamists were confronted to a Frankish army. But, this time, the Franks did not have the Goths and the main Roman army to help. There were no more Goths, and the Franks were all the Roman army there was. However, just as with the Huns, and differently from Iberia, the Islamists were invading a country united under more advanced philosophical principles. So when he army of the Frankish Duke (a Roman military title) Odo of Aquitania took flight, some of the Islamist generals urged caution, but their warning was not heeded, and the rest, as the saying has it, is history.

In the end the armies of the Caliphate were annihilated, just as the Goths had been, and the Caliphate fell, just as distant Antarctic ice shelves broke under the action of the 2011 Japanese tsunami. Clausewitz said that war was continustion of politics. But politics is the application of philosophy. Superior philosophy, superior armies.

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THE APOCALYPTIC ORIGIN OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS:

How does one get to think better? Well one has to connect with deep human psychobiology. That’s why the Germans (including the Franks) were not sympathetic to Roman sexism and slavery. Sexism and slavery, being anti-human, were the Achilles heel of socio-economic Romanitas. However, it was not Politically Correct to point this out under the Roman empire.

Political Correctness gets in the way of conforming  humanity to reality is. What’s “Politically Correct” (‘PC”)? PC is fundamentally a non logically supported appeal to some Pretty Conventions. PC is perfect for people so incapable of thinking by themselves that they use a moral show conforming to the powers that be rather than the powers that ought.  In particular,  resonating instead of reasoning with the most significant logic and facts.

The concept of PC started, long ago. Once again our frienemies the Christians come to the fore to mess things up. It is the Christians who started Political Correctness, big time. In the Fourth Century. They used a moral show based on the mythical Jesus’ elucubrations. Christ’s “Thou shall not kill (except unbelievers)”, etc. A lot of this axed the moral system not towards the defense of the empire’s republic, but towards the coming of the Apocalypse. So whereas heretics, those who chose (their faith), were burned alive, murderous highway men were spared evil treatment. In a way it makes sense: Christians recognized themselves in the latter, not the former.

The Apocalypse (“revelation”) is the last book in the Bible. It describes the coming destruction of the world, to be followed by the “kingdom of Christ“. So of course, all genuine educated Christians wanted to bring down the world. Christians have been not enthusiastic about making a connection between their belief in the Apocalypse, and their attempted destruction of civilization. Now that we have a fanatical Christian running for the presidency of the USA, this fundamental Christian hatred for civilization may come back to the fore.

To make sure that he can stay a heart beat from the presidency, Biden covered himself with ash, thus making clear that he was as strident a Christian fanatic as Santorum.

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POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AS PROGRESSIVISM

Lenino-Stalinism got a huge advantage from Political Correctness. Stalin made a big show that he was anti-fascist, when secretly he was salivating about all things Nazi, and when, in fact, he did nearly everything the Nazis did, just two decades earlier. Lenin and Stalin were fascist in the sense that they bound the entire nation around their persons as an ax.

I have met readers who disagreed hysterically with my definition of fascism, so I am giving more details. A big problem the French High Command had in 1940 was that the French Communist Party was getting its orders from Moscow, then allied to Hitler. So the High Command refused to fully arm French state of the art warplanes with their guns at  the factories! When undetected Nazi tank armies pierced out of a mountainous Belgian forest on May 10, 1940, many of the best French warplanes could not be thrown into the fight right away.

So the fact that Stalin was a fascist too was not just a matter of vaporous debate among intellectuals!

As it turned out, if the entire French Air Force had been thrown in the war in May 1940, the Nazis would probably have been broken.

Stalin had started as a seminarian, before switching to bank robbing. No doubt Christianity taught him a few tricks, starting with dissembling.

It was long politically correct to venerate Stalin, among Europeans with leftist intellectual pretenses. Those who did not agree with this were viewed as lost, right wing intellectuals. Then Camus strongly disagreed, but, unfortunately died, or was car accidented to death (the KGB hated Camus, who had fiercely denounced the invasion of Hungary in 1956). So Camus could not do as much as he would no doubt have done, had he lived. He was 100% what came to be known later as a “Nouveau Philosophe“. Camus safely dead, the hypocritical, hysterical Sartre remained in the pope of the Politically Correct.

One had to wait for the French “Nouveaux Philosophes”, waxing lyrical around the principles of May 68, such as the refusal of the Authority Principle, to expose a few obvious truths.

But then Islamism became the next object of cult by the Politically Correct. No doubt they were reciing a lesson learned from a very surprising place. Indeed, interestingly, the main themes of Political Correctness fit like a glove the main themes of mainstream plutocracy. Originally, to get oil, and supplant the French and British, president FDR made a devil’s pact with the formidable Muslim fundamentalist, that giant of a military man, Ibn Saud.

Venerating Ibn Saud’s Islamist front gave a respectable aspect to the unacceptable. In truth Ibn Saud was a warrior, through and through: for the few days he spent on the US Navy cruiser with FDR, he kept top American brass riveted and mesmerized by tales of his decades of war in the desert. As we will see below, using religion as an acceptable front of the unacceptable is what Biden is doing, too. Speaking of invasion…

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DESTROYING INVASIVE SPECIES:

It has been Politically Correct in the USA in particular, to eradicate “invading” species.

In California, where there is a dearth of teachers and police, volunteers can be observed busily spending days after days, months after months, eradicating “French Broom”, an innocent, and very pretty plant which explodes in huge bright yellow bushes in Spring. Is it the name they are trying to eradicate? “French” Broom is indeed a French plant. Beautiful and invasive, like any good French stuff. However it is the victim of Californian authorities’ wrath, at the cost of ignoring a myriad of much more important ecological issues, such as reforestation.

“French Broom” competes with the indigenous “Poison Oak“, a plant so poisonous, it has been known to kill people. Poison Oak is covered with the most mutagenic and carcinogenic product found in nature (when it burns, the gas can ravage the lungs of victims, days afterwards). The expansion of “Poison Oak” is human related, as it invades human disturbed land. Just as “French Broom” does. The difference is that one is soft and beautiful and the other can make one sick for a month (except if one uses medically prescribed immune system lowering drugs such as Prednisone).

Another California obsession has been to eradicate Eucalyptuses. Giant trees and groves are been cut down. Monstrously, just as for French Broom, authorities poison the soil with herbicides, to make sure the plants do not come back. Never mind that this in hilly terrain, with cities and water table below (speaking of this, most brooks have been cemented over: is not that more important than a bush of French Broom here or there in a few places?)

I think it is a good idea to do away with smaller eucalyptuses if Sequoias, or Monterey Cypresses (say) are planted instead. However replanting is generally not the case. So spectacular forests of towering Blue Gums, the tallest tree in the world, with the California’s native Sequoia Sempervirens, are replaced by… Poison Oak. No respect for majestic trees, or the majesty of nature in general. The towering is replaced by the small and poisonous. Devastation honored, and the object of a work program.

Why the obsession with propagating “Poison Oak”? Is it symbolic of something worse? Is it symbolic of the poisoning of California with erroneous ideas such as Proposition 13 (a trick to lower taxes on seniors, that became an extremely efficient tax avoidance scheme for the hyper rich). As California, by far the largest (38 million) and most competent (Silicon Valley, Hollywood) American state, leads the USA in various fashion, it has led the USA into degeneracy.

It’s actually California which invented Reagan, another invading species who injected his fateful ideas, such as children paying for public education, in California first. Reagan succeeded Pat Brown, an apostle of the correct role of the state (such as top quality public education).

Now Brown, the son of Brown, governor for the third time, is trying to teach Californians that there is no civilization without taxes. Astutely, he closed first 70 state parks, to show Californians that tax avoidance had some painful consequences. That’s called pedagogy.

(To be continued… Complete with the ash-amed Biden.)

Patrice Ayme

Tags: Invasive Species, Mentalities, Monarchs, Politically Correct