Metanoia, Self Enlightenment At Most Basic Mental, From Going Survivalist Primitive. To get reacquainted with rigorous thinking, nothing like rigorous conditions:
The healthy can get to metanoia in a hurry by running across a mountain range full of wild beasts and rushing streams, alone, nearly naked, unsupported, living off the land. Works every time.
Paul DeFatta I guess our not-so-distant ancestors were a hell of a lot more enlightened than we are, at least by this reckoning.
Metanoia: change in one’s way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion.
“what he demanded of people was metanoia, repentance, a complete change of heart“. Meta, beyond, here indicating “change” plus noein “to have mental perception,” from noos “mind, thought”.
Our “primitive” ancestors were forced to spend much of the day chasing after prey, or running away from predators, day in, day out. They are to think hard about which plants to ingest, for which disease, and how to prepare poison for the warheads. Our ancestors’ lives were full of strong emotions, the roots of the sturdiest thoughts.
Akeley an official taxidermist for US universities and great fighter of ferocious animals. He found himself in a bare hand fight with a superficially wounded small female leopard he had accidentally hurt. The resentful beast missed his throat, and got his arm instead. He succeeded to stuff his right hand in her throat while preventing her clawing (circa 1900, colorized picture)
Modern humans, by contrast, and especially their leaders and leading classes, live sheltered lives, where nothing much happens ever, fostering sheltered, snowflake thinking: melting under the harsh light of truth is the best which can happen to such meek hallucinations, which their masters are keen to have them embrace wholeheartedly. Said masters are even more sheltered, protected from authentic thinking, and it’s this very lack of authenticity and veracity which enable them to rule We The People… by infusing common people by these absurdities. They even call this philosophy of denial of reality “Absurdism”, and from this “Absurdism”, they have mightily profited…
Some of them, intellectual leaders much appreciated by the ruling elite, whined that life was absurd: yes, right, when not used as per the owner’s manual, the correct, natural modus vitae. But the philosophy of “The Absurd”, absurdly went on, because the masters indulged… thanks to it.
Modern life is about not thinking, because that’s what please the masters most. Where is all what the human brain is made to solve? Are we reduced to playing with boards, pushing colored pieces, as if we were 2 years old? Where is the fighting off lions, torn limbs, excruciating pain, the glory of tearing enemies apart, and the exhaustion after the savage struggle, finding water in a far-away oasis?
The archetype of the thinker nowadays is sitting, chin on a fist, Rodin style. As if thinking were what happens when nothing is going on. But prehistoric men had to think ultra fast and perfectly, standing on their legs, or even flying through the air. Dearth of instantaneous precision meant ingestion by enemies.
Civilization has reached a stage, a tottering over the abyss, when shallow thinking, protected thinking, is over, one way or another. The masses are vaguely conscious of this, so they tolerate Great Thunberg. Snowflake thinking, or is that SNOWFAKE THINKING, has indeed culminated in those snowflakes, the ultimate expression of Politically Correct thinking.
Unreal thinking has led self-described “liberal”, “progressive”, American citizens to laud Obama… for making the US the greatest producer of fossil fuels, ever… while the biosphere is dying from it. (Obama is a personal friend, I don’t hate him, he is just thoroughly confused by gred and opportunity.);
The United Nations’ refugee agency has found that the dozens of camps in Oakland, California, a mile across from Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco fortress, are worse than the worst in Mexico City. Even the pro-plutocratic New York Times concurred and wrote a large article on this nightmare.
While the quasi billionaire “representative” (all too much!) Nancy Pelosi, head of the US Congress, is busy impeaching the impeachment she brought against The One she pretends to hate, shallow thinking is forcing US mothers living under tarps in the rain, in the mud, among rats, while the glorious Politically Correct NIMBYs in the hills, next door are busy howling their hatred against the president. They are just covering up, with pseudo-leftism, their interdiction they enforced, for decades, to build affordable housing. Instead, covering up some more their desire for slaves, they proclaim the abominable refugee camps to be “sanctuary cities”. Meanwhile all of them are half an hour away from nuclear annihilation, due to a potential short circuit in the nuclear doomsday machines which they forgot to disconnect.
And the sea are rising and the Sixth Mass Extinction gathering momentum, with 500 ppm of CO2 equivalent human generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
All this happened, because We The People don’t know how to think anymore.
Time for Metanoia! All should strip, deny themselves modern comforts, run across mountain ranges to fend off snow, mosquitoes, bears, lions, thirst, hunger and high waters… to find what they are really about, who they are, and what civilization means.
Patrice Ayme
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P/S 1: Aside from sheer greed (making money out of it), this is why extreme sports have an enduring appeal: they foster the most radical enlightenment.
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P/S 2: Those driving the planet, those taking the decisions, or influencing them, from influencers on Youtube to “French Theory” (Sartre, Camus, etc…) to racist philosophers such as Saint Louis, Luther, Herder, Hegel, Marx, and countless lesser ones, even more influential, were the ones thinking they were so wise, and are still all too often viewed that way, while being so removed from reality, that the biosphere is at stake… And this is why, precisely, they have been so influential: they submit us to evil power (pluto-kratia)…
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 