Stephen Roney's Blog, page 132

A Historic Day

What can I say? The US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. This may be one of those days everyone remembers where they were at the moment they heard.

I believe the legalization of abortion is the alpha point for all the discord in  American society and Western society today. You cannot allow what half the population believes is mass murder and expect social tranquillity. Any more than you can allow slavery and expect it.

I anticipate a time of turmoil, but we have at least begun on the road to peace. Not to mention justice.

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'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Abusive Relationships

 

Discovered by my daughter, a song written from the point of view of a man trapped in an abusive relationship.

Why would anyone tolerate this? Or even, as in the song, at least half desire it?

It comes, as in Johnny Depp's case, from being raised by an abusive parent. 

We are pre-programmed to love parents, and to assume they love us. If the parent is abusive, we are most often doomed to spend the rest of our life accepting being abused is an expression of love.

As a result, we are drawn as if to a magnet, or like a moth to a flame, to some new abuser.

Hint: anyone who abuses you does not love you.

It is a hard cycle to break out of.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Studying Dead White Men

 

When parents object to Critical Race Theory in the schools, a standard riposte is that they must be opposed to teaching the real history of Canada/America. 

This is ironic, since the schools have been cutting back on history in favour of “social studies” for years. And when they teach history, the history that is taught is often not the real history.

Why study history? Because, in the words of Santayana, “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

We study history to learn about human nature and about how best to organize society. History is the real social studies. We study to learn from the successes and mistakes of our ancestors. We do this through history, not current events, to avoid vested interests and hence bias. This is why, in the old days, only classical history was studied.

The modern trend is to study instead “women’s history,” “black history,” insert your ethnic group here, or else “oral history” from ordinary people who lived ordinary lives through events. This to redress some supposed imbalance, that history has heretofore unjustly been all about “dead white men.”

But recording the lives and experiences of ordinary people does not give us any lessons. Ordinary people did not make decisions the results of which we can reliably see; precisely because they were relatively powerless. We generally have little data on their lives, and this leaves too much room for imagination or for falsification. 

As a result, this “history” is no more, and no better, than idle gossip.

We study the actions of great men; not because they were men or because they were white, but because they were great. That is, they made the decisions the results of which we can study, and the records of which are extensive and preserved.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Pollution

"Plastic Islands," Madrid, Spain

I read in a textbook from which I am teaching that a fountain in Madrid, Spain, has been filled with 60,000 plastic bottles as an art exhibit, “to raise awareness of the environmental impact of disposable plastics.”

A similar idea is behind the civic sculpture “Pollution,” that has graced the Kingston, Ontario waterfront since 1973. It is just two large green concrete cylinders vomiting forth a formless mass.

"Pollution," Kingston, Canada

Either illustrates well the decadence of contemporary art.

The point of art is to reveal beauty, one of the three transcendental values, along with truth and good. Without beauty, it has no point, and is not art. It is just stuff. 

“Beauty” here does not mean mere prettiness. That would just be kitsch. Beauty is something more profound and honest than that, including the sublime. Shakespeare’s “MacBeth” is not pretty; Colville’s “Horse and Train” is not pretty. They are troubling. But to just display ugliness, to make the point that it is ugly, is the opposite of art. It is just what it calls itself, visual pollution. If you like art, you must oppose it. And, if you oppose pollution, you also must oppose it.

Neither sculpture serving any possible educational purpose either—not that it is the business of art to educate. Didactic art is tiresome and plodding. It is likely that every single person who has walked by that sculpture on Kingston’s waterfront over the past fifty years already knew that pollution was unsightly. It is pretty much what the word “pollution” means. The sculpture taught them nothing. Most who stroll past the installation in Madrid probably have previously seen empty disposable plastic bottles. There is a good chance they are already against leaving them in public fountains. If they were not, there is no reason to suppose that leaving them in public fountains some more will change their minds.

Once, a group of Queen’s students painted the two cylinders of “Pollution” to look like a can of Coke and a can of 7-Up. This was derivative—of Warhol—but a vast improvement. But it counted as “vandalism.”

Angry mobs have demanded the removal of a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s founder, nearby; yet there is not call to remove this eyesore.

Our society has gone mad.

Statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Kinston, Ontario--since removed.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Joe Biden the Pedophile

Ashley Biden.

Apparently a diary of Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden has surfaced, and reveals he showered with her as a child. This, in her own estimation, caused her to develop an addiction to sex.

Another piece of the narcissist puzzle. Biden is a classic narcissist. The narcissist puts the greatest worth on satisfying their desires. As a result, they are highly likely to indulge in sexual activities that violate norms. In fact, aside from the pleasure derived, this reinforces their sense of superiority: the rules do not apply to them. This often means incest: their own child is highly available, highly vulnerable, and in their control. And this completes their control.

It is a troubling fact that the US is being run by a narcissist; and Canada is as well. Narcissists tend to destroy those with whom they come in contact. This was the traditional basis of Greek tragedy: hubris is what they called narcissism, and the hubristic protagonist generally left the classic stage piled with corpses, and the land devastated.
To some extent, this is probably deliberate. And it is hard to account for some of Biden's or Trudeau's actions in government without assuming they want to destroy their respective nations.
After all, to the narcissist, they must be greater than the nation.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Pierre Poilievre Making Sense

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Pride Parade

 

June is “Pride Month.” It used to be “Gay Pride Month,” but now it’s for pride in general.

Why does every town and city, even smallish ones like Kingston Ontario, hold an annual pride parade? 

It is not, after all, that there’re are so many gays.

But that’s just it. 

Imagine the problem for gays. You are physically attracted to people who, at least ninety-nine times out of a hundred, are not going to be attracted to you. More often the reverse; they will be repulsed at the thought of sex with you.

Not great for the old morale. How on earth are you going to hook up?

For this, the Pride Parade is most useful. There you are, out in public, advertising your availability. Or, if you lack the nerve, in the crowd, seeing who might accept an approach.

This is why we are disproportionately inundated with gay culture. If you’re gay, you gotta advertise. 

In the modern age of Tinder and such dating apps, the need to parade in public semi-nude ought to abate. And perhaps we can all get back to our dignified inhibitions.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Narcissist Smirk

 

Demonstrated by Chrystia Freeland.

Beware.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Jordan Peterson on Transgenderism

 

It is a new form of child sacrifice.
Whether we see it or not, our modern society is in the business of wholesale genocide against the young. And this is no new thing--it is an eternal temptation throughout human history.
To too many, children are resented as damned inconvenient; an unfortunate byproduct of the sex act.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Solving Homelessness

 

This is exactly the point I was making in the recent Ontario provincial election.

My idea was to quickly convert the many declining or derelict motels.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.