At its best,
Politics is the response to the mood of the people,
at its best.
At its worst,
Politics is the response to the mood of the people,
at its worst.
[Newton Fortuin, 31 December 2023]
_______________
Example: Obama's politics of Hope vs Trumps politics of Grievance.
This post originated from a Facebook comment discussing the Gaza-Israel conflict, accompanied by the caption: "How in the world does anybody in their right mind think that what is happening in Gaza is going to bring peace to anybody?"
Reacting to the post, an individual brought up Benjamin
Netanyahu's military background. They drew a comparison
between Netanyahu and Hitler, drawing parallels to the Holocaust.
Reacting to this, someone expressed disapproval, deeming the comment highly offensive. They suggested the importance of engaging one's thoughts before expressing them online in the future.
Without taking a definitive stance on the Palistinian-Israel issue, the response addressed the pervasive sensitivity surrounding any reference to the Holocaust observed over the years. I acknowledge the complexities of the entire historical context, reckognizing the inhibiting impact of this sensitivity on meaningful self-reflection.
I frequently encounter remarks like yours, where people express strong disapproval of any mention of the Holocaust, often leading to immediate labellingas antisemitic. In my view, it is essential to from time to time critically engage in and reflect on such comparisons.
No, there’s in-truth no comparison to the atrocity that Hitler
inflected on the Jews, it was utterly barbaric and an eternal stain on humankind.
The deeper question however is how does a society
that has endured such collective trauma reap such unimaginable hardship on an
entire people with such impunity: robbing them of their land (with illegal
settlements continuing to this day), locking them up in what essentially are
concentration camps, and killing and blowing up their children?
Where is the humanity and compassion of the
Israeli's given what they have endured at the hands of Hitler?
Unfortunately, Israel as a collective (and
certainly not all Israeli's but as reflected by the current far right wing ultra-nationalist government they have elected, and thus indeed reflect them currently as a
society) prefers to act like the abused who has become the abuser, now wanting
to wreak havoc on the dispossessed and less vulnerable people of Palestine. In doing
so, completely disregarding their humanity and right to exist as a people. A
real shame in my view on those who needlessly died at the hands of an abusive regime 80
years ago, and is a real dishonour on their legacy.
There could have been a way to execute the
retaliation against Hamas for their brutal acts without impunity and arrogance, but moreover, disohonor.
Unfortunately, it appears – and as the current status quo unfortunately is again
a poignant testament to – that "the only thing we learn from history is thatwe do not learn from history".
[Newton Fortuin, 30 December 2023]
A philosopher to take note of…
I had the fortune to read some of Newton Fortuin’s work and find it very incisive, imaginative and courageous, given the fact that he has little formal training in the many branches of academic philosophy.
At the end of the day, people like us are all lovers of wisdom and seekers of truth, so we should help one another, since we are a rare species, almost on the brink of extinction in the present consummerised world…
Scourge is a very original and provocative work.
WL van der Merwe, Ph.D. Professor: Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Culture and Metaphysics – Free University of Amsterdam
Months before the US Election season commences, I think it's an opportune time to reintroduce this book.
A letter received from a reader of Scourge: The Demise of Critical Thinking in the Age of Donald Trump.
My awakening to the crazy world of self help and recovery from its vice like grip occurred after a quite fantastical and unique experience. One thing I have learned is that you cannot download anyone else’s ‘system’ or ‘process’ and make it work for you. I think you need to pick through each person’s life experiences for the wool to weave your own tapestry. Certainly with the money, time, energy and hopes invested in other people’s ego creations I could have weaved the Bayeux and then some!!!
What I can say though is that in a bid to understand my
abusive childhood and how different I appeared to be from my family I embarked
upon a 20 year quest to understand who and what I was. Yes, I fell, hook, line
and sinker for the self help and personal development game.
More recently, over
the last 10 years I have stuffed myself silly with Law of Attraction (LoA) type
teachings that mainly block out anything negative or ‘not of the light’ and
thus, have given my power away more or less to anyone with a cheering claim or
nice smile. Then, even worse I started
creating courses and taught them to other unsuspecting fools. Cringe worthy
stuff called how to be happy and living the attitude of gratitude…(spewing into
a bucket).
Yes, I was a spiritual prostitute except that I paid to turn
tricks. God, put like that it is embarrassing and hysterical in equal measure.
Then, a catastrophe of epic proportions that turned all of
the LOA stuff on its head, inside out and doing somersaults occurred!!!!
It would fill a book and then some and perhaps one day I will
come across someone who wants to take it on. Certainly NBC Dateline wanted to
make a 2 hour documentary around events that led from my catastrophe….
Well, your wondering what it was, aren’t you? Mmmmmm how to
encapsulate the magnitude in a few paragraphs… (deep breath).
Essentially I met a psychopath (probably the physical
manifestation of all the repressed and ignored negativity and blocked out
critical thinking from the last 10 ‘positive’ years!!!).
I sunk every penny into a series of businesses with him, got
into a hellish personal relationship with him that involved every kind of abuse
and threats etc, helplessly watched him systematically destroy several other
people and then once I had withdrawn from him and the businesses despite what
was on the line (everything material I had) – saw him flee the UK leaving a
quagmire of 103 serious problems that escalated into near bankruptcy, over 50
threatened court actions, insurance issues, tremendous weight gain and the utter
desecration of everything I believed in. I was massively affected – physically,
mentally, emotionally, sexually, financially and spiritually.
Essentially ‘I’ ceased to exist. I became a recluse, stayed
away from everyone and everything except what I could not possibly avoid,
stopped going out, answering the phone, showering, getting dressed. The only
respite from the fireball of pain and stress engulfing EVERY facet of my life
was the safety net of suicide. I knew I could kill myself. I longed for absolute annihilation! I didn’t
just think it, I investigated the subject, formed a plan and came seconds away
from carrying it out several times – stopped only by my love for my cats and
who would care for them?
Without a doubt the worst aspect of all of the above was the
belief I had created and attracted it. I spent nearly a year on a wild goose
chase torturing myself further by trying to work out why and how a lifetime of
positive thoughts and actions had created a monster and a monstrous situation
that took 2 years hard time to resolve and was so permanently life changing…
There wasn’t any answers other than the LoA was either horse
shit or used wrongly could be disastrous.
I stumbled upon your book which helped as it showed all the
guru’s in meltdowns of their own, and I started looking at the shadow stuff
that was all around me. For 8 months I delighted in oozing out every shred of
anger and negative energy that had long been encased in the basement of my
psyche until one day I realised that negative energy was not better or worse
than its opposite - just different and that both are required for a reasonably
happy existence. Duh…
I knew I was in recovery when my critical thinking skills
began to creak into action again and I started reading novels (!!!). I have
emerged back out into the sunlight but armed with self reliance that life goes
up and down and around and around and ‘this too shall pass…’
Having been kicked out of society I feel quite content to
potter around doing not very much. I take each moment as it comes. I delight in
the joy that flows out of simple things but at the same time when I feel
enraged or angry or pissed off I beat up my pouf fee and enjoy that just as
much as all the smiling.
I am content to not know who/what is behind everything and to
surrender to whatever pulled me through. Forgiveness has and is helping me with
all that happened – even the near murderous hatred I feel towards lawyers
(laughing).
Footnote: My former business partner Michael
Lane went on to murder a woman in a particularly gruesome way and then tried
to run over and kill a transsexual in the dead woman’s car. He is currently in
Clark County Detention Centre, Vegas (where else?!) awaiting trial and possible
death penalty next year.
Mmmmm not sure any of this would help anyone. There may be a
few ears of corn if you pick through… (raucous giggles).
Hope all in your world is dark and light!!!!
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion
~~~
[Baruch
Spinoza]
To
highlight the reality delusion associated with many neo esoteric beliefs I want
to recount an incredibly horrific incident.
It concerns an atrocity that occurred just a few miles from my
home in which a seven-year-old girl was brutally raped, her throat slit, set
alight and left for dead.
In spite of the inhuman savagery the girl suffered, she miraculously
survived, though now most certainly having to bear the scars of this unspeakable
horror for the rest of her life.
And to add to the depravity of the act, it was perpetrated by a
close friend of the girl’s family, someone she knew and most likely trusted
unconditionally. Though someone who in a single hour shattered her innocence,
and with it most likely diminished the potential of her young life.
However the real tragedy is that this is a far too common
occurrence in a society having been the victim of centuries of brutal colonialism,
savage slavery and racial oppression. Though now in post-colonial South Africa
the former victims of past oppression are sadly brutalizing their own.
When looking at this particular instance of inhumanity logically
and you do hold strong esoteric views, then you unavoidably have to come to some
rather irrational conclusions about why this girl supposedly must’ve earned or
even deserved her fate.
For instance, if you believe in karma and reincarnation, then
it must also be your view that what happened to her – as a consequence of your
belief – had to be as a result of her past misdeeds. That is in this life but
also of her past lives, and that she now must be repaying back some monumental
karmic debt.
Or if you believe in personal spirit guides then they in their
infinite wisdom must have orchestrated this monstrous event from some or other
higher cosmic vantage. Perhaps it is so that the girl had willingly chosen this
lifetime to learn her spiritual lessons through pain and indignity.
Or if you subscribe to the views of The Secret, that “You cannot
"catch" anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is
inviting it to you with your thought”, in spouting this profanity you must be
of the view that her conscious or unconscious thinking must’ve been responsible
for bringing this cruel inhumanity upon herself.
Or
if you are of the opinion that “love
is all there is, all else is an illusion”, a quote by John Demartini a
contributor on The Secret, explain to her that her horror is not really real,
but that from a deeper perspective had been an act of
love. And furthermore that the actions of the perpetrator were in fact not a
vile and monstrous one, but motivated by some or other form of cosmic love which
he had unconsciously enacted upon.
If these indeed are your views then my honest opinion is that you
are not living in my reality, and particularly not of that girl’s, but rather in
a sick delusional fantasy.
Though if you are of the opinion that you are not deluded, then
you must be an incredibly cruel and unfeeling person for having had the gall to
confidently proclaim that these are your views. What you therefore are implying
is that at some supposed more consequential level, this poor girl had not been
the innocent victim of human savagery, but at some obscure ‘cosmic’ level had
deserved what happened to her.
Such attitudes are very real and unfortunately are significantly
increasing with the advent of New Ageism. The real danger in these neo
‘spiritual’ views is that they essentially are escapist. For instance at a talk
I gave in Cape Town where I spoke about this very incident, a prominent person
in the city’s New Age movement attempted to defend the notion that “love is all
there is, all else is an illusion” by indeed rationalizing it from Demartini’s
perspective.
In defense of his ideology he intimated that, unless one takes mental heed of the event, it did not really happen at
all from one’s individual perspective.
In his argument he literally equated the events of our lives to
the fictitious events on a movie screen by indicating that, if a particular
event was not captured on film, it then does not exist from the vantage of the
movie audience watching the showing of it at all and thus is not a reality for
that particular audience.
Quite frankly, this is the most
inhuman argument that I have ever heard.
I say this because I always understood from my Judeo-Christian
upbringing (not that I’m a Christian or Jew but an Agnostic, if anything) that
one’s capacity to become conscious of the suffering and inhumanity around one
and then to actively reach out to those ill-fated by circumstance, is the most
consequential act of humanity one can ever show.
Moreover, it is imperative we fully acknowledge that the brutality
of ‘humans’ are real and omnipresent and cannot be wished away or meditated into
spiritual oblivion as is becoming the predominant view.
Rather it is incumbent on us to fully acknowledge that this type of barbarity takes place, being a scourge within humanity that must be bitterly fought against if we indeed are to collectively evolve to a higher level of being.
Newton Fortuin, 2006
[Prologue of Scourge: The Demise of Critical Thinking in the Age of Donald Trump]
________________________
The incident
referred to occurred on Guy Fawkes day, 5 November 2006.
The
current Israel-Gaza conflict underscores the deep-rooted inability of both
sides, entrenched in their extreme religious perspectives, to fully recognize
and empathize with each other's suffering. This conflict has a history that
spans decades, shaped by profound historical, religious, and political
complexities. The tragic events of October 7,
2023, where Hamas was responsible for more than a thousand deaths of
innocent children and civilians, have deeply traumatized the Israeli
population. In response, the IDF's retaliatory strikes have led to the loss of
thousands of innocent Palestinian lives and extensive infrastructural damage in
Gaza. Actions that are guaranteed to perpetuate and intensity the cycles of
violence. This cycle of mutual animosity and mistrust conceals the genuine pain
and torment experienced by individuals, regardless of their background or
affiliation.
Regrettably, the violence continues unabated, as each faction
looks upon the other through a lens of dehumanization, justifying their actions
without full recognition of the extensive human cost. This scenario underscores
a profound failure of both parties to engage in critical introspection and
address their own roles in the crisis. Rather than navigating the situation
with discernment and empathy, there's an evident reliance on deep-seated biases
and resentments, inhibiting a more nuanced and productive approach to the
conflict.
