The Book War, And The Mention Of Google Books Sends Shivers Down Their Spines

[VikLevaPatel]

Checking, and posting from, places like Google Books, Google Scholar, Internet Archive, e-books, journals, articles, and libraries.

A universe of high quality information is at our fingertips.

What a great time to be alive! And Herr Hitler certainly would have loved it. (He would have loved Google Books, too). Call him whatever you want to call him, even "a paranoiac savage", just as Brandon Shaw does in Hitchcock's "Rope", but there's no denying he was a true genius, proclaiming a new paradigm and a very new way of thinking that is very much contrary to standard thinking or to normal democratic thinking. I recall reading about him becoming an avid and omnivorous reader. Problem is, the pursuit of any kind of higher knowledge never ends. You can ask me all about it. Mine seems to be never-ending, too. I can still vividly recall the comment by the Greek-Australian supervisor at the University of Sydney Fisher Library: "It will take yeeeeeears!" That comment stuck with me since that discussion and since Day 1. How simple and yet how profound! And it's clearly a significant moment since it stuck with me for this long. But that doesn't mean that we should cease the pursuit of genetic science, our eyes fixed on it "like a traveller in the desert fixes his eyes on one guiding star" that will lead him to salvation. And we should settle for nothing less. And we don't have to settle for tepid, mediocre versions, or for reductionist versions, or for inexpensive knockoffs. And yep, we should always indulge our desire for genetic answers. But desire is just the beginning, and it's equally special and equally important to always keep in mind that advances in genetic science have seen genes become all-encompassing in political and scientific discussion. As pointed out, in a similar fashion, in this New York Times piece.

The study of racial differences had led to disaster in the past but the new analysis of genetic differences is a form of racial science for the good, rather than the bad. Racial science has brought so many terrible things. But it's a norm now in genetics to study the racial genetics of groups. So it is an amazing difference.

: comp26:



If Google Books (books and other publications principally from the 19th and 20th centuries) sends shivers down your spine, this is for you.

:l ol00002:

By scanning first and asking questions later, Google has gained first mover advantage. Google (and especially Google Books) are excellent resources for finding citations. Advertising and marketing agencies believe that Google intends to supplant them, and book publishers say that Google Books will monopolize the digital rights to all books ever published. People can read out-of-print items at no cost on Google Books, if those works are no longer subject to copyright protection. Excerpts, and in many cases the entire contents, of a staggering number of books are readily available on Google Book Search, yet some of the most definitive works on Google itself are nowhere to be found at the site.

Just do it? :n oidea:

No, it's more like doing the opposite. And it's actually doing the opposite. So it would sound like this.

Just do the opposite.

: bump2:

And we must do so, we must do so. And we MUST do precisely the opposite, and even more especially so when the New York Times claims that "the future's not so fun when print isn't plentiful." Or so they claim. Sounds like party-fun to me. Everyone say it with me: Aw, Aw, Awwwww! My poor baby, he doesn't want people to have unfettered access to information. In fact, Jason Zinoman equates the death of publishing with a dystopian nightmare, and even implies that Google Books can potentially send shivers down your spine and make you cry.

Welcome to the "near future." Pens and paper are scarce, and one company has hoarded all the books, magazines and presumably other media into one vast digital cloud. Naturally, it has eliminated all the books, even those in your homes. If Google Books sends shivers down your spine, this is the story for you.

They also discuss fonts, and in particular the font named "Futura". Oy vey, why are there so many fonts? And is a font a kind of language, a work of art or both? What does the ubiquity of Times New Roman say about us as a culture? Questions upon questions upon questions. Why so many? What kind of dumb question is that? What kind of questions are you being asked? What a pity they can't even get their own house in order before lashing out at digitized book services. I'm talking about their font types on their New York Times website. No one seems to have told them this, and it seems as if they should know by now this:

There are two types of fonts, serif fonts and sans-serif fonts, and sans-serif fonts are often preferred for text in e-books and on internet pages. Sans Serif type is better for reading on computer screens.

But they're living in fantasyland if they don't know this by now. And it's definitely an "eyesore" to look at serif fonts on a computer screen.

:fuc k_you:

In Jordan Harrison's script set in "the near future," books seem to have been destroyed, paper is a rarity, and pen and ink are quaintly obsolete. So wrote Backstage, an American entertainment industry trade publication. All public information, it seems, can be found in the digital world. Published opinions can be tinkered with if not completely rewritten by the public. All private information is available for all to see. But that's a far cry from saying there was any connection between that and the death of print. The "death of print" rhetoric has certainly reached new heights. Knowledge is power, after all. As the saying goes. Information, knowledge, is power. As The Economist notes, "Throughout history, the prospect of greater access to knowledge has frightened some people. Apparently the New York Times is not too happy about the digital revolution, and it certainly seems like the NYT is not too keen on the people having a chance to access this information. Literally at our fingertips. So move along folks, nothing to see here. Like you were the sheeple, not the people. Like you were being played. Trust us and move on.

:fuckyo u:

[JamesBond007]

What a great time to be alive! And Herr Hitler certainly would have loved it. (He would have loved Google Books, too). I recall reading about him becoming an avid and omnivorous reader.

Montaigne speaks of “an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it.” The first is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their ABC’s, cannot read at all. The second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. They are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantly read. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores--Mortimer J. Adler

THINKING FOR ONESELF.

The largest library in disorder is not so useful as a smaller but orderly one; in the same way the greatest amount of knowledge, if it has not been worked out in one's own mind, is of less value than a much smaller amount that has been fully considered. For it is only when a man combines what he knows from all sides, and compares one truth with another, that he completely realises his own knowledge and gets it into his power. A man can only think over what he knows, therefore he should learn something; but a man only knows what he has pondered.

A man can apply himself of his own free will to reading and learning, while he cannot to thinking. Thinking must be kindled like a fire by a draught and sustained by some kind of interest in the subject. This interest may be either of a purely objective nature or it may be merely subjective. The latter exists in matters concerning us personally, but objective interest is only to be found in heads that think by nature, and to whom thinking is as natural as breathing; but they are very rare. This is why there is so little of it in most men of learning.

The difference between the effect that thinking for oneself and that reading has on the mind is incredibly great; hence it is continually developing that original difference in minds which induces one man to think and another to read. Reading forces thoughts upon the mind which are as foreign and heterogeneous to the bent and mood in which it may be for the moment, as the seal is to the wax on which it stamps its imprint. The mind thus suffers total compulsion from without; it has first this and first that to think about, for which it has at the time neither instinct nor liking.

On the other hand, when a man thinks for himself he follows his own impulse, which either his external surroundings or some kind of recollection has determined at the moment. His visible surroundings do not leave upon his mind one single definite thought as reading does, but merely supply him with material and occasion to think over what is in keeping with his nature and present mood. This is why much reading robs the mind of all elasticity; it is like keeping a spring under a continuous, heavy weight. If a man does not want to think, the safest plan is to take up a book directly he has a spare moment.

This practice accounts for the fact that learning makes most men more stupid and foolish than they are by nature, and prevents their writings from being a success; they remain, as Pope has said,

"For ever reading, never to be read."—Dunciad iii. 194.

Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.

Indeed, it is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of some one else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

The thought we read is related to the thought which rises in us, as the fossilised impress of a prehistoric plant is to a plant budding out in spring.

Reading is merely a substitute for one's own thoughts. A man allows his thoughts to be put into leading-strings.

Further, many books serve only to show how many wrong paths there are, and how widely a man may stray if he allows himself to be led by them. But he who is guided by his genius, that is to say, he who thinks for himself, who thinks voluntarily and rightly, possesses the compass wherewith to find the right course. A man, therefore, should only read when the source of his own thoughts stagnates; which is often the case with the best of minds...-Arthur Schopenhauer

[JamesBond007]

Checking, and posting from, places like Google Books, Google Scholar, Internet Archive, e-books, journals, articles, and libraries.

A universe of high quality information is at our fingertips.

What a great time to be alive! And Herr Hitler certainly would have loved it. (He would have loved Google Books, too). I recall reading about him becoming an avid and omnivorous reader.

: comp26:

If Google Books (books and other publications principally from the 19th and 20th centuries) sends shivers down your spine, this is for you.

:l ol00002:

By scanning first and asking questions later, Google has gained first mover advantage. Google (and especially Google Books) are excellent resources for finding citations. Advertising and marketing agencies believe that Google intends to supplant them, and book publishers say that Google Books will monopolize the digital rights to all books ever published. People can read out-of-print items at no cost on Google Books, if those works are no longer subject to copyright protection. Excerpts, and in many cases the entire contents, of a staggering number of books are readily available on Google Book Search, yet some of the most definitive works on Google itself are nowhere to be found at the site.

Just do it? :n oidea:

No, it's more like doing the opposite. And it's actually doing the opposite. So it would sound like this.

Just do the opposite.

: bump2:

And we must do so, we must do so. And we MUST do precisely the opposite, and even more especially so when the New York Times claims that "the future's not so fun when print isn't plentiful." Or so they claim. Sounds like party-fun to me. Everyone say it with me: Aw, Aw, Awwwww! My poor baby, he doesn't want people to have unfettered access to information. In fact, Jason Zinoman equates the death of publishing with a dystopian nightmare, and even implies that Google Books can potentially send shivers down your spine and make you cry.

Welcome to the "near future." Pens and paper are scarce, and one company has hoarded all the books, magazines and presumably other media into one vast digital cloud. Naturally, it has eliminated all the books, even those in your homes. If Google Books sends shivers down your spine, this is the story for you.

They also discuss fonts, and in particular the font named "Futura". Oy vey, why are there so many fonts? And is a font a kind of language, a work of art or both? What does the ubiquity of Times New Roman say about us as a culture? Questions upon questions upon questions. Why so many? What kind of dumb question is that? What kind of questions are you being asked? What a pity they can't even get their own house in order before lashing out at digitized book services. I'm talking about their font types on their New York Times website. No one seems to have told them this, and it seems as if they should know by now this:

There are two types of fonts, serif fonts and sans-serif fonts, and sans-serif fonts are often preferred for text in e-books and on internet pages. Sans Serif type is better for reading on computer screens.

But they're living in fantasyland if they don't know this by now. And it's definitely an "eyesore" to look at serif fonts on a computer screen.

:fuc k_you:

In Jordan Harrison's script set in "the near future," books seem to have been destroyed, paper is a rarity, and pen and ink are quaintly obsolete. So wrote Backstage, an American entertainment industry trade publication. All public information, it seems, can be found in the digital world. Published opinions can be tinkered with if not completely rewritten by the public. All private information is available for all to see. But that's a far cry from saying there was any connection between that and the death of print. The "death of print" rhetoric has certainly reached new heights. Knowledge is power, after all. As the saying goes. Information, knowledge, is power. As The Economist notes, "Throughout history, the prospect of greater access to knowledge has frightened some people. Apparently the New York Times is not too happy about the digital revolution, and it certainly seems like the NYT is not too keen on the people having a chance to access this information. Literally at our fingertips. So move along folks, nothing to see here. Like you were the sheeple, not the people. Like you were being played. Trust us and move on.

:fuckyo u:

https://z-lib.org/

https://calibre-ebook.com/

https://koreader.rocks/

[VikLevaPatel]

I was actually searching on Google Books for information on the topic of caste and of race relations (specifically shame, dishonour, disgrace, ignominy, and degradation, and particularly about the leveling of differences between castes) for another post, and just my luck, when I googled or typed in the sentence, "We must put off, for the present, the consideration of our deeper ignominy, our lower degradation," The "Bible in Germany," to use Ferdinand Tuohy's description of "My Struggle", came up on the first page and as result number four. It is actually the first one, if we exclude the aforesaid sentence.



Mein Kampf
By Adolf Hitler · 2021

https://www.google.com/books/edition...J?hl=en&gbpv=0

The introduction says that in the beginning of 1923 the French invaded Germany, occupied Ruhr district and seized several German towns in the Rhineland. This was a flagrant breach of international law and was protested against by every section of British political opinion at that time. But the French ignored the protest, and tried to bring about a Rhineland movement for the establishment of an independent Rhenania. The Germans could not effectively defend themselves, as they had been already disarmed under the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. The U.S. Congress also pointed out back in 1961 that in 1919 disarmament was stressed in the Versailles Treaty, and the fourth of Woodrow Wilson's 14 points demanded that national armaments be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

Since 1870 — and still more since 1914 — France had been morbidly conscious of her weakness in face of Germany, notes Edward Hallett Carr in his classic "International Relations Since the Peace Treaties". She had turned the tables on the victor of 1871. What could be contrived to prevent Germany one day turning the tables on the victor of 1918? France's first answer to this question was clear and emphatic. She wanted what she called a "physical guarantee" — the possession in perpetuity of the Rhine and its bridges, across which any invader of France from the east must pass. The danger comes, ran a French memorandum presented to the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919, from the possession by Germany of the left bank and of the Rhine bridges. It may also be asserted in the beginning of serious studies of French foreign policy that, to a very large part, it was inspired by the desire to escape from the nightmare of another German invasion of the soil of France. Such a drastic measure, however, would only cripple Germany to a point that payment of any more instalment of reparation would become impossible. Thus, such actions have invariably been branded as faults of the unrealistic, vindictive, selfish French. Another grave mistake of France at this time, as J.C. Johari (1985) rightly notes, was the instigation of a separatist movement in the Rhineland. To make the situation more fraught with disaster for Germany and therefore more appalling in its prospect, the French carried on an intensive propaganda for the separation of the Rhineland from the German republic and the establishment of an independent state with the name of Rhenania. At the same time a vigorous movement was being carried on in Bavaria for the secession of that country and the establishment of an independent Catholic monarchy there, under vassalage to France, as Napoleon had done when he made Maximilian the first King of Bavaria in 1805. Clemenceau, David T. Zabecki (2014) notes in the book Germany at War: 400 Years of Military History, called for detaching the Rhineland from Germany and forming it into one or more independent states that would see the present of a permanent Allied troop presence to guarantee the peace settlement.

All this begs a chicken/egg question.

"Can states be disarmed even without going to war and, if so, in what circumstances?" asks Philip Towle in the book "Enforced Disarmament: From the Napoleonic Campaigns to the Gulf War."

ISBN:9789390504879, 9390504872
Page count: 560
Published: 19 March 2021
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd
Language: English
Author: Adolf Hitler

'MEIN KAMPF' is the autobiography of Adolf Hitler and gives detailed insight into the mission and vision of Adolf Hitler that shook the world. This book is the merger of two volumes. The first volume of 'MEIN KAMPF' was written while the author was imprisioned in a Bavarian fortress. The book deals with events which brought the author into this blight. It was the hour of Germany's deepest humiliation, when Napolean has dismembered the old German Empire and French soldiers occupied almost the whole of Germony.

The books narrates how Hitler was arrested with several of his comrades and imprisoned in the fortress of Landsberg on the river Lech.

During this period only the author wrote the first volume of MEIN KAMPF. The Second volume of MEIN KAMPF was written after release of Hitler from prison and it was published after the French had left the Ruhr, the tramp of the invading armies still echoed in German ears and the terrible ravages had plunged the country into a state of social and economic Chaos.

The beauty of the book is, MEIN KAMPF is an historical document which bears the emprint of its own time. Moreover, Hitler has declared that his acts and 'public statements' constitute a partial revision of his book and are to be taken as such.

Also, the author has translated Hitler's ideal, the Volkischer Staat, as the People's State.

The author has tried his best making German Vocabulary easy to understand.

You will never be satisfied until go through the whole book.

A must read book, which is one of the most widely circulated and read books worldwide.

Source: Publisher

[VikLevaPatel]

Two questions must certainly be asked. How corrupt is Britain? And what's wrong with the British Constitution? At some point, it will seem plainly correct to say that the UK government has been almost entirely plundered of all value and assets. Under these circumstances, it would certainly not be unjust or immoral to ask, as a poster on the 4chan forum asks everyone, if you are ready for the financial collapse next year?

This edited collection looks at corruption in different arms of the British state, and calls for fundamental political change.

Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: A Very British Corruption -- Part I Neoliberalism and Corruption -- 1 Moving Beyond a Narrow Definition of Corruption -- 2 The New Normal: Moral Economies in the 'Age of Fraud' -- 3 Neoliberalism, Politics and Institutional Corruption: Against the 'Institutional Malaise' Hypothesis -- Part II Corruption in Policing -- 4 Policed by Consent? The Myth and the Betrayal -- 5 Hillsborough: The Long Struggle to Expose Police Corruption -- 6 Justice Denied: Police Accountability and the Killing of Mark Duggan -- Part III Corruption in Government and Public Institutions -- 7 British State Torture: From 'Search and Try' to 'Hide and Lie' -- 8 The Return of the Repressed: Secrets, Lies, Denial and 'Historical' Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Scandals -- 9 Politics, Government and Corruption: The Case of the Private Finance Initiative -- 10 Revolving-Door Politics and Corruption -- Part IV Corruption in Finance and the Corporate Sector -- 11 On Her Majesty's Secrecy Service -- 12 Accounting for Corruption in the 'Big Four' Accountancy Firms -- 13 Corporate Theft and Impunity in Financial Services -- 14 High Pay and Corruption -- List of contributors -- Index
Source: Publisher

https://www.google.com/books/edition...oAEACAAJ?hl=en

What's Wrong with the British Constitution?

In this provocative new study, Iain McLean argues that the traditional story of the British constitution does not make sense. It purports to be both positive and normative: that is, to describe both how people actually behave and how they ought to behave. In fact, it fails to do either; it is not a correct description and it has no persuasive force. The book goes on to offer a reasoned alternative. The position that still dominates the field of constitutional law is that of parliamentary sovereignty (or supremacy). According to this view, the supreme lawgiver in the United Kingdom is Parliament. Some writers in this tradition go on to insist that Parliament in turn derives its authority from the people, because the people elect Parliament. An obvious problem with this view is that Parliament, to a lawyer, comprises three houses: monarch, Lords, and Commons. The people elect only one of those three houses. This book aims to show, contrary to the prevailing view, that the UK exists by virtue of a constitutional contract between two previously independent states. Professor McLean argues that the work of the influential constitutional theorist A.V. Dicey has little to offer those who really want to understand the nature of the constitution. Instead, greater understanding can be gleaned from considering the 'veto plays' and 'credible threats' available to politicians since 1707. He suggests that the idea that the people are sovereign dates back to the 17th century (maybe the 14th in Scotland), but has gone underground in English constitutional writing. He goes on to show that devolution and the UK's relationship with the rest of Europe have taken the UK along a constitutionalist road since 1972, and perhaps since 1920. He concludes that no intellectually defensible case can be made for retaining an unelected house of Parliament, an unelected head of state, or an established church. The book will be essential reading for political scientists, constitutional lawyers, historians, and politicians alike.

Source: Publisher

https://www.google.com/books/edition...sec=frontcover

How Oxford ruined British politics

[GreatTribulation2023]

The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire

Human action played its role, but Rome's fate "was equally decided by bacteria and viruses, volcanoes and solar cycles." Romans were dreadfully unhealthy, with a life expectancy under 30. Adults were shorter than their Iron Age ancestors and medieval descendants.

There are some great points here. As one reviewer rightly pointed out, this is a thoroughly terrifying book, especially in light of climate change and COVID-19. It reminds us that our world which we take for granted as "normal" has only been so for 200 or so years at maximum. Our civilization is not as stable or as normal as we would like to imagine, as the reviewer notes. Indeed, it is a thorough and chilling exploration into the fall of Rome. It's worth reading in full, but the best part is the second last paragraph or the end of the review which reads:

In its own way this book testifies to the satisfaction of all the plagues prophesied in the book of Revelation against the beast, false prophet, and whore known as Rome and its Empire and religion...and yet there's plenty to challenge Christian theology here, since the Empire experienced its great death knell at the height of its Christendom in the sixth century. As a result, many "Christianized" lands would be Islamicized as they have been until this day.

Oh, how time can change things, as TechCrunch says. This is best described through a poem titled 'Time's Changes', published in numerous literary and cultural magazines and anthologies such as American Penny Magazine, and Family Newspaper, Dwight's American Magazine, Eliza Cook's Journal, and The Anglo-American Magazine. "Oh!" says the poem. Oh indeed. Time's changes - oh! Time's changes. It's, like, 'Oh, shit!' They, as the poem says, may work what'er they will, turn all our sunshine into storm, and all our good to ill. This poem ends on a desolate and a pessimistic and a chilling note. It's dark and nihilistic, but realistic, nevertheless. As the poem itself says, better, then, to die and give the grave its kindred dust, than live to see Time's bitter change in hearts we love and trust. Time's changes, indeed, and we bear to see them come. As this reviewer has correctly noted, a Roman in 150 CE would have lived in what he or she imagined was an enduring, robust civilization, having reached a pinnacle of development and growth which the world had never yet seen, manifesting stability which they would easily imagine would continue indefinitely. But by 600, the world had completely changed for the Romans, and they knew their great age had passed. Civilization would not reach the same extent of strength, quality of life, etc. until the 19th century. The Encyclopedia Britannica notes that Christians were blamed for the desperate situation because they denied the gods who were thought to protect Rome, thereby bringing down their wrath. The religious environment of the Gentile mission was a tolerant, syncretistic blend of many cults and myths, whereas the transcendent God of biblical religion, in contrast, was very different from the numerous gods of limited power and local significance. And this is one of the reasons why Rome fell. Yes, the loss of traditional values had contributed to the fall. That, and Christianity being one of the main contributing factors. To quote from the book titled "The 50 Greatest Events in the History of Humankind":

The decline of Rome dovetailed with the spread of Christianity, and some have argued that the rise of a new faith helped contribute to the empire's fall. The Edict of Milan legalized Christianity in 313, and it later became the state religion in 380. These decrees ended centuries of persecution, but they may have also eroded the traditional Roman values system. Christianity displaced the polytheistic Roman religion, which viewed the emperor as having a divine status, and also shifted focus away from the glory of the state and onto a sole deity. Meanwhile, popes and other church leaders took an increased role in political affairs, further complicating governance. The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon was the most famous proponent of this theory, but his take has since been widely criticized. While the spread of Christianity may have played a small role in curbing Roman civic virtue, most scholars now argue that its influence paled in comparison to military, economic and administrative factors.

Read the great reviews here to see how history repeats itself, and definitely stay tuned for The Great Tribulation (seven years of suffering)! The last sentence is the really explosive one and is the appropriate summarizing statement. It admonished us not to repeat the mistakes of the Middle Ages, and it suggests that there are some very substantial lessons to be learnt from the fall of Rome and if we are going to win. As the saying goes, failure to learn from history dooms us to repeat it. By now it's a truism. Overall, a comprehensive historical analysis is necessary, as also pointed out in Forest (2015). Behold: this reminds me of a passage in the Forum (1889) that I had read, the other day. To quote: "No man possessed of a high-strung, swift, subtle brain, could ever wish to revert to the dullness of the earlier stage of humanity. With its drawbacks and perils, we have yet in this, as in most other ways, attained a higher step than humanity has occupied hitherto in the long santa scala of progress". Of course, who's to say that a little nostalgia can't be a good thing? As Stanton-Henry (2022) notes, nostalgia in small doses isn't such a bad thing, like many things. And according to HuffPost, studies have found that a little nostalgia can actually be a good thing. Reflecting on the past can boost your optimism for the future because it raises your self-esteem and your confidence and ability. Your self-esteem and self-respect will, or might, skyrocket. And this might be an excellent thing, as it could force us to be more cautious and more self-censoring and more aware of the potential consequences and of the risks.

I agree with Mary J. Blige's favorite message, which was cited in a New York Times article from 2009, that tribulation is the beginning of redemption. But next year is special, because it is the beginning of the Great Tribulation, and, as a 2000 article in The New York Times pointed out, the Tribulation or all of this will culminate in an Apocalypse, and the Great Coming. The time has come (if not long overdue). Tribulation is indeed upon us! The beginning of the "great tribulation" or the beginning of the End is upon us. Can there be any doubt?

In light of this, there is no one who is currently alive who escapes this tribulation. The rules are clear on one thing: no one, absolutely no one, escapes the tribulations in the years to come. Seven years, to be precise. That said, as The New Yorker notes, seven years is a long time in our culture. Thomas L. Saaty says that seven is the 'magic' number in Nature, and Wadsworth (2022) also observes that seven offers a special insight into whole numbered divisions of all natural cycles. Indeed, it's more complicated than the number five, but above all else it seems obscure in its meanings. He also asks what is its cultural, cosmological, anatomical, and clinical significance, and says that perhaps this gap has to do with the close connection of the number seven to the moon, to the feminine, and to ideas of Alchemy long ago rejected by science. Hindson et al. also note that the prophetic calendar of Daniel 9:24-27, specifically verse 27, shows that the Tribulation will last for seven years. And as pointed out by Edwin Hubbel Chapin (1814-1880), the brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished and glorified through the furnaces of tribulation. And no one alive today and existing in the present moment and going through our current system can escape hearing this message or can escape the impending wrath. And in fact no group of persons alive now, or likely to exist in the future. Of the present, that much is certain. Four things, though, are as certain as can be, and it cannot be emphasized enough that the elements of liberty and popular sovereignty, the glories of intelligence and intelligence quotient (IQ), the ssanctities of home and of the marriage or relationship. bond, and the institutions of culture and religion, abide in sterner soil and beneath colder skies, as Edwin Hubbell Chapin rightly pointed out in his book, Living Words, in 1866. The New York Times cites him as saying that books are "the embodiments and manifestations of departed minds — the living organs through which those who are dead yet speak to us". And to qutoe the wise and influential American preacher who best summarizes and describes the concern, once again:

The world is the great place for us to work in, and there is work a plenty for us to do. Any man who does not believe this ought to be shut up in a glass jar, and made to suck God's atmosphere through a straw.


:crucify::crucify:

[GreatTribulation2023]

Here are some additions that will be useful. I'll expand on some of these later in this thread titled "KASTENKAMPF (CASTE STRUGGLE): AND THE IDEA OF DOMINATION".

Oh, how time can change things, as TechCrunch says. This is best described through a poem titled 'Time's Changes', published in numerous literary and cultural magazines and anthologies such as American Penny Magazine, and Family Newspaper, Dwight's American Magazine, Eliza Cook's Journal, and The Anglo-American Magazine.

:crucify::crucify:

"Oh!" exclaims the poet, and the word oh, of course, is followed immediately by the mark denoting exclamation, because, as John Wilson noted back in 1871, it is independent of the next expression, which in the example numbered 4 presented there, closes merely with a period, there being nothing characteristic of emotion in the structure of the language used. Oh-oh, indeed. Poetry, says Fry (2012), seems to get itself in trouble constantly, and poets, claims Venturino (2013), don't claim what they say is true, so it can't be lying. Or, as Sir Philip Sidney wrote in his most famous line. "Now the poet," says Sidney, "he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth." Yet, as Langen (2005) observes, this is not quite right: he affirms many things, as Sidney understood—but the truth affirmed is different from, and higher than, the admittedly fictional characters and events in the poem. Paul H. Fry says that it's not that it's not trying to tell the truth, as Sidney said (it “nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth”), but that it is in fact, you can go as far as to say, following Plato (or, as far as Plato did), lying. Sidney's famous refutation of the charge that poets are liars, Bates (2018) says, strikes one less as a persuasive argument than as rhetorical bravado. One might, as Wimsatt (1978) notes, summarize the problem by saying that Sidney, like most of those who have maintained that poetry is (and ought to be) moral, has not been able to resolve an ambiguity of the word ought as used in the formula. In a similar manner Toliver (2018) says in "Mythic Worlds and the One You Can Believe In" that Sidney isn't fully justified in saying that the poet "nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth". Even in openly acknowledged fiction, artifice does affirm and does lie. Parables and moral fables indoctrinate. But because fables illustrate precepts, he is correct to find them livelier than cut-and-dried philosophical axioms and better at moral instruction than chronicles confined to what happens. History, on the other hand, lacks what we crave, and people seek more ample greatness and more exact goodness than history normally illustrates. Indeed, this is the reason for heroic modes. We ought to realize that poets can be easily mistaken for (real) prophets. And, moreover, what they imagine, others hold to be real. Toliver goes on to point out that poets mistaken for prophets are in the forefront of moral legislation, and they acquire from their positions as spokesmen for invisible powers considerable leverage in legislating behavior. In this context, Malins and Purkis's ideas and opinions are worth quoting:

One reason for the growing number of students of English literature in colleges and universities today must be the realization that the relationship of poetry to values in life is of first importance; and some may have sensed that those poets in touch with the wisdom of the ages through the archetypes of myth and its imagery may be able to give us, through the incantations of their verse, something which can no longer be said by priest and philosopher, if indeed it ever could be — and certainly not in a magically self-contained artefact like a poem.

And while on the topic of change. The SEP admits that the topic of time is inseparable from it. Time's changes - oh! Time's changes. It's, like, 'Oh, shit!' Oh, shit, indeed. They, as the poem says, may work what'er they will, turn all our sunshine into storm, and all our good to ill. This poem ends on a desolate and a pessimistic and a chilling note. It's dark and nihilistic, but realistic, nevertheless. As the poem itself says, better, then, to die and give the grave its kindred dust, than live to see Time's bitter change in hearts we love and trust. Time's changes, indeed, and we bear to see them come. As this reviewer has correctly noted, a Roman in 150 CE would have lived in what he or she imagined was an enduring, robust civilization, having reached a pinnacle of development and growth which the world had never yet seen, manifesting stability which they would easily imagine would continue indefinitely. But by 600, the world had completely changed for the Romans, and they knew their great age had passed. Civilization would not reach the same extent of strength, quality of life, etc. until the 19th century. The Encyclopedia Britannica notes that Christians were blamed for the desperate situation because they denied the gods who were thought to protect Rome, thereby bringing down their wrath. The religious environment of the Gentile mission was a tolerant, syncretistic blend of many cults and myths, whereas the transcendent God of biblical religion, in contrast, was very different from the numerous gods of limited power and local significance. And this is one of the reasons why Rome fell. Yes, the loss of traditional values had contributed to the fall. That, and Christianity being one of the main contributing factors. To quote from the book titled "The 50 Greatest Events in the History of Humankind":

The decline of Rome dovetailed with the spread of Christianity, and some have argued that the rise of a new faith helped contribute to the empire's fall. The Edict of Milan legalized Christianity in 313, and it later became the state religion in 380. These decrees ended centuries of persecution, but they may have also eroded the traditional Roman values system. Christianity displaced the polytheistic Roman religion, which viewed the emperor as having a divine status, and also shifted focus away from the glory of the state and onto a sole deity. Meanwhile, popes and other church leaders took an increased role in political affairs, further complicating governance. The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon was the most famous proponent of this theory, but his take has since been widely criticized. While the spread of Christianity may have played a small role in curbing Roman civic virtue, most scholars now argue that its influence paled in comparison to military, economic and administrative factors.

History repeats, opines Forbes magazine, because we don't learn from past mistakes. Thus, in this regard, we should learn from the past, or as Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al. (2022) aptly put it, we should learn from the hardwon lessons of the past so that we can make swifter progress with fewer missteps. We must take heed of this and of our history and our potential, and learn from past mistakes, because that, as HuffPost points out, is how we avoid repeating past mistakes. Obviously I agree with that, and I also agree that we should learn from history to avoid repeating past mistakes, not to reopen old wounds, as the New York Times aptly noted in 2010. A certain regard to self, as pointed out in Todd (1856), is not only lawful, but necessary. We must take diligent heed to ourselves; we must seek the salvation of our own souls; we may long for that inheritance of "praise and honour and glory." But all of this begs the question: what is the fate of the United States? As Lawrence Payne asks in "The Journey to the End of the World: How are We Going to Get There?" And there are a few possibilities that already look ominous. That the situation or the future does not look promising is an understatement. And it must be said, as The Economist says, that the omens do not look especially auspicious now. Payne (2021) goes so far as to say that the United States may not even exist. To use his own words: "Or maybe not a nation at all". Isn't that the perfect recipe for civil war? For, as the National Archives points out, the United States went to war in 1861 to preserve the Union; it emerged from the war in 1865 having created a nation. It also points out that if the same percentage of Americans were to be killed in a war fought today, the number of American war dead would exceed 6 million. At this point it should also be noted that Lincoln, as the New York Times notes, was not particularly interested in ending slavery, and that he did not care about the fate of African-Americans. I think that the court in the Texas v. White case rightly held that the Union was solemnly declared to "be perpetual" and that the states do not have the right to unilaterally secede from the United States. And so the Confederate states during the Civil War always remained part of the nation. In this regard I draw attention to a line from a poem by W. B. Yeats, "Things fall apart: the centre cannot hold," and I ask whether there is relevance in it for the situation facing the state today. Malins and Purkis (2014) have accurately described all this as follows:

In a world which is dashing down the Gadarene slope of materialistic chaos at the expense of the spiritual, 'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.'

I think they have very aptly described the situation. Never were truer words spoken, or more necessary and more practical advice given. There is much valuable and interesting information in the research papers concerning the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Live Science is of the opinion that the West crumbled because of a creeping and steady loss of centralized control, sometimes due to incursions by non-Roman tribes and occasionally instigated by traitors from within the Roman establishment. Plackett says that it's hard to mark the precise moment when Rome lost control over a given territory, because unlike the decolonization of imperial empires in the 20th century, it was rare to make or sign documents and declarations of independence. The article went on to point out that the decline of Western Rome was a fairly gradual, nebulous process. Lawrence Payne, on the other hand, finds it interesting that History.com lists various reasons why the mighty Rome fell, and goes on to say that some of these reasons resemble what is occurring in the United States. Christianity came in second to last, and which came last? Weakening of the Roman legions. What's first on the list? Invasions by Barbarian tribes. Here are some key passages:

Rome had tangled with Germanic tribes for centuries, and the most straightforward theory for Western Rome's collapse pins the fall on a string of military losses sustained against outside forces. Even as Rome was under attack from outside forces, it was also crumbling from within thanks to a severe financial crisis. Constant wars and overspending had significantly lightened imperial coffers, and oppressive taxation and inflation had widened the gap between rich and poor. The fate of Western Rome was partially sealed in the late third century, when Emperor Diocletian divided the Empire into two halves—the Western Empire seated in the city of Milan, and the Eastern Empire in Byzantium, later known as Constantinople. The division made the empire more easily governable in the short term, but over time the two halves drifted apart. At its height, the Roman Empire stretched from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Euphrates River in the Middle East, but its grandeur may have also been its downfall. With such a vast territory to govern, the empire faced an administrative and logistical nightmare. If Rome's sheer size made it difficult to govern, ineffective and inconsistent leadership only served to magnify the problem. As the situation worsened, civic pride waned and many Roman citizens lost trust in their leadership. The Barbarian attacks on Rome partially stemmed from a mass migration caused by the Huns' invasion of Europe in the late fourth century. When these Eurasian warriors rampaged through northern Europe, they drove many Germanic tribes to the borders of the Roman Empire. Christianity displaced the Roman religion, and the decline of Rome dovetailed with the spread of Christianity. For most of its history, Rome's military was the envy of the ancient world, but during the decline, the makeup of the once mighty legions began to change. Unable to recruit enough soldiers from the Roman citizenry, emperors like Diocletian and Constantine began hiring foreign mercenaries to prop up their armies.

[Homa-Dhuma]

I will try to cover and to answer the question of whether, in fact, reason or faith came first. The question is which came first, and I will give a definitive answer to the question, although it is not clear right now whether reason or faith came first. That's what this debate is all about. It's kind of like which came first, the chicken or the egg. And as Biology Direct points out, in an article titled "The Lamarckian chicken and the Darwinian egg," the "Chicken and the Egg Question" or "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" is a well-known metaphorical paradox, and the New Yorker says that the eternal conundrum is no debate at all. Of course, the same might be said, for different reasons, of questions that arise here. But while the argument over which came first, the chicken or the egg, may never be resolved with certainty, we, on the other hand, will know for sure, and I will resolve, which came first, reason or faith, this time.

::

The Global Shift is Hapenning! Prepare to Enter 2023!

[Homa-Dhuma]

These findings suggest an urgent need to understand the phenomenon of modern day national socialism. Further research may be needed to confirm and generalize this finding and to fully understand this phenomenon. Steinweis and ‎Rogers (2003) suggest that the consequences of Germany's twelve-year Nazi regime continue to reverberate and to spark debate among scholars and the general public. In this volume titled The Impact of Nazism: New Perspectives on the Third Reich and Its Legacy, leading scholars present provocative essays probing the nature, history, and aftermath of the Nazi regime, including its connections to the Federal Republic of Germany after the war. The essays identify and address, among other things, the origins and character of fascism, the many forms of antisemitism, German scholars' efforts to promote persecution in the Third Reich, the role of ethnic Germans in the anti-Jewish and anti-Slavic policies of the Reich, and the actions of German police in the occupation of eastern Europe. Standardly, when we tell the story of the National Socialist Party, should we not also speak of Julius Caesar and Pericles? So asks Johann Chapoutot in the book "Greeks, Romans, Germans: How the Nazis Usurped Europe's Classical Past." In fact, his book argues that to fully understand the complexity of the national socialist system and the implications of change, we must examine its appropriation of the heroes and lessons of the ancient world. Chapoutot (2016) notes that when Hitler told the assembled masses that they were a people with no past, he meant that they had no past following their humiliation in World War I of which to be proud. The Nazis' constant use of classical antiquity—in official speeches, film, state architecture, the press, and state-sponsored festivities—conferred on them the prestige and heritage of Greece and Rome that the modern German people so desperately needed. At the same time, the lessons of antiquity served as a warning: Greece and Rome fell because they were incapable of protecting the purity of their blood against mixing and infiltration. This observation seems to literally corroborate Macdonald's (1998) statement that the Jews have continued as a creative race into the present, while the Greeks gradually merged with the barbarians and lost their distinctiveness, a point remarkably similar to Houston Stewart Chamberlain's "chaos of peoples" idea described in the book "Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism", in which the decline of the ancient world is attributed to loss of racial purity. Some studies have noted that although Aryan Nazism was an expressly stated anti-Christian creed, (restructuring German culture in terms of a pre-Christian and pre-Judaic neo-pagan revival, i.e., erasing Jewish and Christian world views), many Jews today ignore a myriad of other variables and stretch medieval Christian antipathy for the "Jews who killed Christ” into a psycho-social basis in the formation of the Third Reich. Moreover, if we are going to seek out, in ancient origins, the presumed roots of Nazism, it is obviously more viable to locate examples of -- and role models for -- "nationalist" violent hate behavior even back further in the religious past, not in Christian universalism that invited others to join their fold, but in the "particularist," exclusionist beliefs and brutally merciless actions of the ancient Jews themselves. It seems to make no sense, and, as many have noted, because Jesus was a Jew, and based his teachings on the Old Testament, Christianity is not free in categorically dismissing the Jewish religion. Nor destroying it. As Jewish scholar Samuel Sandmel once even argued, Jesus "was ... a Jewish loyalist ... He was a martyr to his Jewish patriotism." It's also worth quoting Marcus Arkin, who once astutely noted, particularly with regard to Jewish British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli's writings:

[He] reminds the Jews that Jesus Christ has done more for them than anybody else and that had the Church not flourished and Christianity had not become widespread, Judaism may have been forgotten completely.

MacDonald (1998) is of the view that National Socialist ideology is a mirror image of traditional Jewish ideology. The evidence he cites in support of his view is tangentially relevant, especially since these two things and ideologies are only tangentially related to each other. To support his theory, he gave historical explanations based on his analysis or "investigation" of Judaism, and says that there was a strong emphasis on racial purity and on the primacy of group ethnic interests rather than individual interests, as is the case with Judaism. Like the Jews, the National Socialists were greatly concerned with eugenics, and there was a powerful concern with socializing group members into accepting group goals and with the importance of within-group altruism and cooperation in attaining these goals. Both groups had a well-developed ideology of historical struggle involving the group, and moreover had very powerful internal social controls that punished individuals who violated group goals or attempted to exploit the group by freeloading. Corresponding to the religious obligation to reproduce and multiply enshrined in the Tanakh, the National Socialists placed a strong emphasis on fertility and enacted laws that restricted abortion and discouraged birth control. As in the society depicted in the Tanakh and throughout Jewish history, the National Socialists regarded people who could not prove the genetic purity of their ancestry as aliens with fewer rights than Germans, with the result that the position of Jews in National Socialist society was analogous to the position of the Nethinim or the Samaritans in ancient Israelite society, or converts in historical Jewish societies, or the Palestinians in contemporary Israel. As with Israel, the state had become the embodiment of an exclusivist ethnic group. It is interesting to note that although there are some similarities or some similar features/characteristics, these crude proxies or indicators do not give identical images. Still, it's interesting to note the similarities and differences between National Socialism and Judaism. Frøland (2020), on the other hand, believes that Nazism was deeply rooted in German culture. From the fertile soil of German Romanticism sprang ideas of great significance for the genesis of the Third Reich ideology--notions of the individual as a mere part of the national collective, and of life as a ceaseless struggle between opposing forces. This book — titled "Understanding Nazi Ideology: The Genesis and Impact of a Political Faith" — traces the origins of the "political religion" of Nazism. Ultra-nationalism and totalitarianism, racial theory and anti-Semitism, nature mysticism and occultism, eugenics and social Darwinism, adoration of the Fuhrer and glorification of violence--all are explored. However, it must be remembered that the Nazis, to regain their rightful place in the world, had to make all-out war on Germany's enemies, within and without, as had been observed by Chapoutot (2016). Hitler's "war of annihilation", as Kubow (2020) observes in Poland and the Holocaust in the Polish-American Press, 1926-1945, began with annihilating Poles. The Führer clearly stated: 'The destruction of Poland is our primary task. The aim is not the arrival at a certain line but the annihilation of living forces.' He, as Zehfuss (2013) notes, advised his men to be merciless and to be brutal. The war is to be a war of annihilation. As Shirer (1991) so aptly put it:

Hitler wanted a Nazi-ruled Europe whose resources would be exploited for the profit of Germany, whose people would be made slaves of the German master race and whose 'undesirable' elements' -- above all, the Jews, but also many Slavs in the East, especially the intelligentsia among them -- would be exterminated. The Jews and the Slavic peoples were the Untermenschen -- subhumans. To Hitler they had no right to live, except as some of them, among the Slavs, might be needed to toil in the fields and the mines as slaves of their German masters. Not only were the great cities of the East, Moscow, Leningrad, and Warsaw, to be permanently erased but the culture of the Russians and Poles and other Slavs was to be stamped out and formal education denied them. As early as September 18, 1941, Hitler had specifically ordered that Leningrad was to be 'wiped off the face of the earth.' After being surrounded it was to be 'razed to the ground' by bombardment and bombing. Its population (three million) was to be destroyed with it.

[Eurasian Adam]

Is The Ego The Devil?

As Frew and ‎Spiegler (2012) correctly point out, the ego is the mediating force between id and superego, but there are those who go as far as believing that the Ego is, in fact, the Devil. I have researched this topic quite thoroughly and will post my latest findings once I've finished composing and writing about them.

:::