Non-Western Worldview

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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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During the Hoei era [1704-1711] Battista of Rome, boasting to Arai Chikugo-no-Kami of the greatness of his own religion as against Confucianism, said, "That religion has been known of in our country for a long time now, but the Chinese have not yet succeeded in spreading it within the confines of their own country, which occupies only the southeastern corner of their continent. How can such a religion presume to spread itself elsewhere? Such small numbers are tantamount to nothing. It certainly does not merit being considered a universal religion." (These arrogant statements are recorded in the Sairan igen).

It is this Christianity which has hurt our country and led several hundreds of thousands of our people into error...

As for China, the Butoku taiseiki states that this religion dild not exist in China originally, but that during the Lung- ch'ing and Wan-li eras [1567-1620] of the Ming Dynasty a certain Occidental named Li Ma-tou came and, setting up a church on a barren lot in the capital of Chekiang Province and studying Chinese characters, translated his own language into Chinese [sic] and wrote books entitled T'ien-chu shih-i, Chi-jen shih-shu, and Yu-lun, which he used to beguile and deceive others. When some time had passed in this way, a certain P'ang Ti-wo hearing that his proselytes were increasing, went over to Li Ma-tou with several tens of his followers, and with him wrote, among other things, a book entitled Ch'i-k'o-shu. They gave gold and silver to the stupid populace in order to deceive them, and finally won them over to their religion. It is said that as time went by they ultimately admitted that they were planning to conquer the country.

According to its preface, the Butoku taiseiki was compiled, at the behest of the Shogun, by Hayashi Shunjo, Hitomi Y'ugen and Kinoshita Jun'an, Abe Bungo-no-Kami Masatake acting as Superintending Commissioner. The preface goes on to say:

The prohibition against the subversive doctrines of Jesus is strict, and there are thirty-four kinds of forbidden books on the subject. In addition, those books in which mention is but made of the name [of Jesus] may not be imported. They are as follows....

In all countries customs differ. First of all, there are dochaku and kokoku China and Japan, for example, are dochaku: their people are of the kind that are satisfied with their land, build houses and walls, and live in them. Kokoku are those societies which do not have a fixed abode, but which, in accordance with time and opportunity, dwell where it suits them best. China, Japan, and similar countries determine their boundaries and remain within them. Extraterritorial quests are characterized by them as aggression, and are condemned. The Occidental countries, on the other hand, regard all the confines of the seas as a single unit, and, undaunted by the greatest distances, evince a greedy desire for profitable trade with all countries, which they treat as vassal states. Wishing to seize other countries, they play upon mankind’s natural desire for gain in order to win sympathy for themselves. The rebellion fomented by the followers of Jesus in our country also can be traced to the employment of these means...

-Samidare-sho by Miura Baien, 1784 CE.
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The above are all books which were to be blotted out and thrown to
the flames in the Jokyo, Genroku, and Hoei eras [1684-1711], and were
not to be used by scholars under any circumstances. They include any-
thing dealing with ritual or doctrine, or even making a passing refer-
ence to the subject. When the prohibition was strictly enforced, for
example, the following books were prohibited: (a) Stt-chou fu-chih,
because, although it has no reference to doctrine, the chapter on
Emperor Shih-tsu-chang 35) mentions the Rites Controgoversy; (b)
Aling-chia shih-kuan, because there is a poem in it dedicated to the
Occidental T'ang Jo-wang (c) Fang-ch'eng-lun, because it has
chapter-headings on Occidental mathematics and famous forbidden
Occidental books. In short, anything with even an allusion was de-
stroyed, and anything with a reference to religious' doctrine was burned.
However, since the Bureau of Astronomy begged exemption from this
prohibition on the grounds that Occidental books, which were advanced
in matters of astronomy and geography, had much that was of value, in
the second year of Kyoho [1717] the ban was lifted on books con-
taining mere allusions, while it remained in force where religious doc-
trine was concerned...

I reproduce here a typical letter from Nagasaki, in which perrmission is requested to peruse a forbidden book:

R e p o r t
Re Ti-ching ching-w-u-liieh (one work in eight volumes, twenty-eight
chapters).

In the fourth and fifth volumes of this work, respectively, reference is
made to a church and to the grave of Li Ma-tou. In the passage on the
church mention is made of a house for the worship of Jesus and of Jesus' life
and death. In the passage on the grave of Li Ma-tou mention is made of his
initial arrival in China, of the treatment he received at the hands of the
Emperor, and of his death and burial.

However, the subject matter of the entire Ching-wu-liieh is a description
of Peking and vicinity. Therefore, with the exception of the two volumes
just mentioned, there is no mention of Jesus anywhere in the book.
Furthermore, in the abovementioned two volumes themselves there is no
mention of religious teaching or of proselytization.
In the poem praising
this man it is his learning and skill, his virtue and accomplishments, that
are praised. This is as we have already stated in a previous report on the
contents of this book..

Iwanaga Gento
Katayama Gensho

Shuntokuji 36) the nineteenth day of the third
month in the eighth year of Genroku [1 May 1695]

He, like the others, was a European.
Since he had come by way of the southern barbarian lands [Jap.
namban], he was referred to here as Namban. The person's name was
tlrugan Bateren. (Bateren means "teacher," while the word for "dis-
ciple" is said to be iruman.)40) In the ninth month of the eleventh year
of Eiroku [1568] he met Nobunaga. When asked through an inter-
preter why he had come, he replied that his purpose was to spread
Buddhism in Japan. (The fact of the matter is that he had been sent
from his own country to take our country.)
Nobunaga, taking a fancy
to his strange appearance, permitted him to stay and expressed a desire
to see him perform his missionary duties. The Confucian scholar Dosen

, of the Tenkeiin,41) said, "His ceremonial and garb are neither
Shintoist nor Buddhist. One day he may breed misfortune for us all.
It would be best to send him back whence he came."


13. The other courtiers agreed. Nobunaga, however, replied, "In
antiquity the teachings of Buddha, which did not originate in our
country, were brought here from abroad-were they not? Let him be,
for I wish to see how he conducts himself."


14. So saying, he ordered Sugenoya Kuemon Nagahide:
to confer upon the stranger a piece of land of four cho 42) at Shijo
Gate in Kyoto, and to permit him to go about his business there. His
country knew that our country had much gold and silver, and, since he
had come for the purpose of conquering our country, his king had given
him whatsoever valuable gifts he desired. Telescopes and magnifying
glasses were among the gifts he presented to Nobunaga when he first
met him.


Having brought valuables to his heart's content from his own
country, Urugan decorated his establishment with the utmost beauty
and refinement...

18. In this church, since Heaven was the object of their worship,
there was no image. Since the religious service, which made use of
ornaments of many precious materials and a brocade canopy, was an
unusual one, people came from everywhere to see it. The priests, unmoved by this, sent men out everywhere to find and bring to them beggars and outcasts lying in alleyways or at the foot of bridges, persons who
had been rejected from society because of their diseases and were dying
of hunger in their destitution. They would bathe their filthy bodies,
give them decent food, fresh clothes, and a clean place to sleep, treat
them with the costliest medicines, and care for them diligently. In this
way most of them were cured, while those who died were given decent
burial. To the poor they gave fresh food and boiled hot water for their
bath, washed them, gave them money, and sent them home, so that the
present was in fact happier for them than the prospect of Buddhahood.

19. At length, when they saw that men's hearts were inclined in
their direction, they preached as follows: "Our country venerates and
calls upon the name of the Lord of Heaven; therefore there are no poor
in our country. Our King, grieved that other countries, ignorant of
these doctrines, are immersed in poverty, misery, and sickness, has sent
us forth to rescue the people of these countries. If each of you venerates
the Lord of Heaven, there will be wealth and position for all. Since
you people are ignorant of the way of venerating the Lord of Heaven,
you incur Heaven's wrath, you are beset with poverty and misery, and
evil desires arise within you. Your evil desires in turn incur wrath, and
you are condemned forever to suffer the woes of this earthly existence.
For this reason we are here to rescue you from the woes of this life in
the name of the mercy of our King and the compassion of the Lord of Heaven. Nevertheless, since you are laden with the guilt of former sins,
it will be difficult for you to reap your future reward. If you are in
doubt, behold the proof!"

20. So saying, they brought out what they called the Mirror of the
Three Worlds and showed it to the populace. The people looked and
saw strange and terrifying reflections of horses, oxen, and imaginary
demons, which caused their liver and spirit to take leave of their bodies,
as it were.
21. "We have escaped the illnesses of this life, to be sure, thanks to
the mercy of the King and the Lord of Heaven, but how sad that we
must be the victims of such woes as these in the future!" exclaimed all
of them in tears, adding, "We pray you to rescue us from these evils as
well! "
22. "In that case, be converted to our faith," said they, and, giving
them rosaries of forty-two beads, taught them the proper incantations.
WVhen they had fasted for seven days, reciting the rosary all the while,
they were given another look at the mirror. This time the reflection
had changed completely to that of the gentle, upright countenance of
a Bodhisattva.
23. The priests, seizing their opportunity, said, "Note what a change
has taken place in only seven days of fasting! If you observe this reli-
gion all your lives, your happiness will be unbounded. Now we shall
permit you to behold the Lord of Heaven. He who worships the Lord
of Heaven but once, though he should be stretched on the rack, roasted
over a flame, or suffer torture through the use of water, fire, oxen, or
carts, would suffer them but ephemerally; whereas in the future he would
have the joy of eternal salvation. If you think on these things thus
without allowing your spirits to be crushed by your tormentors, we shall
permit you to see the Blessed Vision."
24. So all eagerly assented. First they produced something called a
Cross. Making a bar two sun in length out of refined gold and attach-
ing to it a handle two shaku in length, they put pins into it on one
side as in a grater and used this object to flay the skin and lacerate the
backs of the priests. They were bleeding and in great pain. Covering
their hands with the blood, they clasped them and worshipped, saying,
"Though we were to suffer such pain as this for the sake of the Lord of
Hleaven, we should have no regrets. In time to come, save us!"
25. So saying, they caused the people to turn to a painting which
portrayed a beautiful woman nursing an infant child. "The Lord will save you from your folly like this child. Be thankful!" said they, and
took the painting back.
26. The populace, deeply impressed, all became their proselytes...

28. All people, old and young, men and women, flocked to be converted, and as they gave a bu of gold to each person, all were inclined favorably toward thm. As for the proselytes, each received a sho of rice and eight bu of silver every day.48)

29. In the fifth month of the second year of Tensho [1574]
Nobunaga arrived in the Capital, where he heard a complete report.
Upon his return to Azuchi he regretted his actions exceedingly, and said
to his ministers,
"Some time ago, when I first took this matter under
consideration, Bunkeiin warned me, but I took no heed. When
I consider the actions of this group now, I see how they spare neither
gold, silver, nor other valuables to beguile and win over the hearts of
men. Undoubtedly that was their purpose in visiting our country in
the first place. How would it be to destroy the Nambanji now?"

30. Maeda Tokuzen'in replied, "The power of the Nam-
banji has waxed greatly. To shear it of its power now would be like
trying to hold back the ocean with one's bare hands. I cannot speak
for the retainers of the ruling house, but all of the other Daimyo At
and Shomyo are concerned with their own home affairs. If you
attempt to destroy this church now, I fear that there will be internal
strife. It would be better not to take any action."
31. Nobunaga, ever more regretful, pondered deeply how to over-
come this difficulty.


-Samidare-sho by Miura Baien, 1784 CE.
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Therefore, from the time Ieyasu definitively banned Christianity, the bugyo of Nagasaki played an important role in the attempt to extinguish the foreign religion in Japan – even though as noted earlier, there had already been an official since around 1640 whose primary responsibility was to stamp out the Catholic faith...

The placards that were posted to inform the public of the shogun’s orders and policies often carried the stipulation of a reward for those informing on Catholics. As late as the eighteenth century, these placards were still being erected regularly, even though serious instances of Christian apprehensions were extremely rare after the third quarter of the sixteenth century. It is striking that historical memory was so pervasive among the ruling shogunal class of Japan. The Dutch noted that they were continually pressed to reveal details of Catholic activities in Asia and were continually exhorted to keep the shogun informed should they learn of any Catholic plots. Long after a century had passed with no real instance of Christian subversion or any real Christian presence in public life, the shogunate was still concerned with the Christian “threat”...

As mentioned before, the preferred result was when Christians were captured was that they would renounce their faith and live their lives as Buddhists. According to George Elison, Inoue Chikugo-no-Kami Masashige "wants not martyrs, but apostates. Apostates better than martyrs attest the impotence of a religion, especially when those apostates had been apostles of the faith and priests." After they renounced their faith, priests were forced to take wives as part of their new lives and were constantly monitored by the authorities. If renunciation was not forthcoming through torture, however, the final act would be execution.

Source: The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony By Michael S. Laver
The Japanese are not followers of foreign religions. They give, however, full liberty to a variety of sects, besides permitting the public profession of even the Kurile religion; but they are quiet intolerant to Christianity, on account of the troubles it has occasioned among them. The Catholic priests, who formerly lived in Japan & enjoyed every possible freedom, preached the Christian faith, & converted a great number of the natives; but, at last, the progress of the new religion gave rise to a dreadful civil war. For this reason after the complete extirpation of the Christians, the following inscription was placed at the head of the stone tablets of laws, which are fixed up in all public places, & even in the streets:- "Whoever knows any individual who has taught Christianity, & can convict him thereof, shall receive a reward of 500 silver pieces.” – There is, likewise, a law which prohibits masters from hiring servants, until they receive from them a written assurance of their not being Christians. In Nangasaky, where Christianity had made the greatest progress, there is a staircase, on the steps of which are laid various ornaments & utensils of the Catholic church, & on the first step a crucifix. On new-year’s day, all the inhabitants of Nangasaky are obliged to ascend these steps; &, as a proof that they are not Christians, trample on the articles. The interpreter assured us, that many Christians who live at Nangasaky comply with this regulation from interested motives.

- Narrative of my captivity in Japan during ... 1811, 1812, and 1813 ...: To which is added an account of voyages to the coasts of Japan and of negotiations ... for the release of the author ... by Captain Rikord, Volume 2 By Vasiliĭ Mikhaĭlovich Golovnin, Rikord (Captain), pg. 68
ramana
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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NY Books article on

Hitler's Logical Holocaust

It says here
s Donald Bloxham suggests in his Final Solution, the Holocaust can be seen, among many other things, as the final catastrophe accompanying the breakdown of what some historians call the first globalization, the expansions of world trade of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It collapsed in three stages: World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. Its fatal flaw was its dependence upon European empire. The process of decolonization began within Europe itself, as the Balkan nation-states liberated themselves first from the Ottoman Empire and then from the dominance of their British, German, Austrian, or Russian imperial patrons. The leaders of these small, isolated, agrarian nation-states found a natural harmony between nationalist ideology and their own desperate economic situations: if only we liberate our fellow nationals beyond the next river or mountain range from foreign rule, we can expand our narrow tax base with their farmland.

After a few false starts involving wars against one another, the Balkan nation-states turned against the Ottoman Empire itself in 1912 in the First Balkan War, effectively driving Ottoman power from Europe and dividing up the spoils (although not without a Second Balkan War, in 1913). The conflict that we remember as World War I can be seen as the Third Balkan War, as elements within the Serbian government tried to win territory from Austria just as they had recently done from the Ottomans. With the coming of World War I, the Balkan model of establishing nation-states spread to Turkey (which involved the mass murder of more than a million Armenians); afterward it was accepted in Central Europe. World War I also shattered a system of world trade, and inaugurated an era of European impoverishment that would last nearly half a century.

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian soldier fighting in that war, though in the German army. His anti-Semitic response to the defeat of Germany and Austria, articulated in Mein Kampf in 1925, is interpreted by Bloxham in The Final Solution as an intellectually spurious but politically powerful attempt to extract Germany from its fate as a defeated nation-state by restoring its imperial goals. The war itself had harmed the German homeland itself relatively little, since the country was never occupied. But Germany, which lost nearly 2.5 million dead in the war, was defeated, a brute fact that Hitler found inexplicable. If a reason for Germany’s defeat could be identified, then the program for Germany’s return to the center of world history could be realized.

Hitler falsely held the Jews responsible not only for the defeat of 1918, but for the postwar settlement. In the West, Jews were supposedly the principal source of the heartless finance capitalism of London and New York that permitted the painful food blockade of Germany in 1918 and the hyperinflation of the early 1920s. In the East, Jews were supposedly responsible for the communism (“Judeobolshevism”) of the Soviet Union. Jews around the world were responsible, argued Hitler, for the false universalisms of liberalism and socialism that prevent Germans from seeing their special destiny.

Hitler’s program for German revival was, at one level, a simple reenactment of the Balkan combination of nationalism with agrarianism, which he had praised in Mein Kampf. Germany must fight with its neighbors for “living space” in the East to achieve agricultural self-sufficiency. Unlike the Balkan states, of course, Germany was a great power that could envision not just gains of territory but a new land empire, something it seemed to have achieved in Ukraine at the end of World War I. Hitler’s obsession with anti-Semitism made the vision global both in its symbolism and in its ambition: an invasion of the East would mean the occupation of the part of the world where most Jews lived, the destruction of the Soviet Union, and the achievement of world power.

To attempt to realize the program of Mein Kampf, Hitler needed to win power in Germany, to destroy Germany as a republic, and to fight a war against the USSR. As Edouard Husson notes in his book on Heinrich Himmler’s deputy Reinhard Heydrich, the Great Depression made it possible for Hitler to win elections and begin his transformation of Germany and the world. In Hitler’s Germany after 1933, the state was no longer a monopolist of violence, in Max Weber’s well-known definition. It became instead an entrepreneur of violence, using violence abroad—terror in the Soviet Union, assassinations of German officials by Jews—to justify the violence at home that was in fact organized by German institutions. Hitler then used the alleged threat of domestic instability to justify the creation of ever more repressive institutions.1

For most of the 1930s Hitler maintained the pose that his foreign policy was nothing more than the classic Balkan one, the gathering in of fellow nationals along with their land. This was the justification given for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the annexation of Austria in 1938. But in fact, as Husson shows, the takeover of these countries and destruction of their governments was a trial run for a much larger program of racial colonization further east.
In my view the 90 years from 1859 to 1945 saw the rise of Germanism and its defeat. This period had three major wars: Franco_Prussian in 1870, WWI and WWII. It led to a lot of destruction and end of empires and colonialism all over the world.
But this was preceded by the Prussian intervention in Waterloo which staved the certain defeat of Allies to a victory.

If Hitler was mistaken as then who were the real root causes for the punitve sanctions on Weimar Germany that led to the rise of Hitler?

I think Hiler was a new movement to create a new quasi religious order based on a new dogma.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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what does the gradual resurgence and spread of Islam in the Caucasus mean for Germanism? Russians, try as they might, are increasingly on the back-foot. the Caucasus Emirate, the Jihadi machine in the region, has broad alliance with the Islamists in Gulf and stretching in Pakistan. they've sent their soldiers into various theaters, including the Af-Pak, and statistically speaking, they have increased their nuisance value persistently over the last decade. the number of assassinations, and other terrorist incidents in the Caucasus that can be traced back to them, continue to increase and will keep going up in the future. they've succeeded in putting the fear of retribution in the pro-Russian or anti-Jihadi politicians and actors in the region.

so, as the Russian retreat continues, how will that affect Germany? historically, Germany played an important role in pushing the Islamics out of Europe. one could say that Germany is more "conservative" in its sensitivities to Islamic expansion than the Atlanticists. I think this space deserves watching. Russian retreat from Caucasus means the Islamics will finally secure a flank that they've constantly been threatened in for the past several centuries, ever since the Russian expansion into the Steppe first began in the 16th century. it basically means the continental Europeans, for the first time in a long time, can no longer use that threat as leverage against the Islamics.

Germanism might not be as dead as we might believe it to be. they've learned their lesson. they won't take any independent initiatives at empire anytime soon. but external threats might simply force their hand to once again go down the path of identity assertion. and this time, the fact that the threat is Islamic might just tone down the opposition from the Anglo-American-French side. it might be just the threat that will give Germany the opportunity to reinvent its Germanism in a more long-term project.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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ramana wrote:
In my view the 90 years from 1859 to 1945 saw the rise of Germanism and its defeat. This period had three major wars: Franco_Prussian in 1870, WWI and WWII. It led to a lot of destruction and end of empires and colonialism all over the world.
But this was preceded by the Prussian intervention in Waterloo which staved the certain defeat of Allies to a victory.

If Hitler was mistaken as then who were the real root causes for the punitve sanctions on Weimar Germany that led to the rise of Hitler?

I think Hiler was a new movement to create a new quasi religious order based on a new dogma.
Absolutely, and a very specific kind of growth where reckless militarism went hand in hand with industrialisation.

Bismarck understood the limits of German power and thus moved with care, but the Kaiser, Ludendorff and Hitler didn't. What's worse, German ideas of discipline and obedience meant that the public didn't like to question its leadership either.

Good observation about the quasi-religious stuff. If you get a chance look at the volkisch movement and its mystical tendencies, although Himmler took it much, much more seriously than Hitler did. Hence the SS sponsored expeditions to places Tibet, their archival work, archaeology, etc. I think you'd be fascinated by the SS's historical research institute, the Ahnenerbe.

Hitler regarded a lot of this as fringe distractions from the core task of turning Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union into a new colonial frontier for Germanic peoples and killing the 'polluting races' that held Germans back. On the whole unlike Himmler, he had no time for mysticism unless it served some kind of propaganda value.

Germany today is a country that finally has a kind of democratic framework where charismatic but self-destructive leadership can not have free reign. So its persistent industrial and economic power is likely to be uninterrupted by the self destruction of WWI and II. Bismarck would approve of the position that Germany stands today, where its essentially taking over the EU and continental europe without firing a shot.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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Crucial link between 1857-1947 period. For Europe, it is significant but we will not see th ereal picture unless we also look globally. US civil war starts off, destruction or temporary halting of the cotton economy of the south - and bringing France finally down to its knees in the continental divide so that it from then on becomes second fiddle to UK. It was about the consolidation of the British empire's hold on the Atlantic, putting up a buffer and expanding virtual fromtier to a sullen but still "ally" France - in Europe. Note that after 1870, Loui Bonaparte got asylum at the Brit court, and henceforth "republican" France will no longer have a monarch to challenge the Brit monarch. In all subsequent European contests - France will coordinate with uk.

In US, recovery will take time - and NY banking interests will already have tied up the southern economy as a subsidiary in the transatlantic setup. This is the point when US basically becomes the burly burgher wealth producer of the thin aristocrat ruling in Londonistan.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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devesh wrote: so, as the Russian retreat continues, how will that affect Germany? historically, Germany played an important role in pushing the Islamics out of Europe. one could say that Germany is more "conservative" in its sensitivities to Islamic expansion than the Atlanticists. I think this space deserves watching. Russian retreat from Caucasus means the Islamics will finally secure a flank that they've constantly been threatened in for the past several centuries, ever since the Russian expansion into the Steppe first began in the 16th century. it basically means the continental Europeans, for the first time in a long time, can no longer use that threat as leverage against the Islamics.

Germanism might not be as dead as we might believe it to be. they've learned their lesson. they won't take any independent initiatives at empire anytime soon. but external threats might simply force their hand to once again go down the path of identity assertion. and this time, the fact that the threat is Islamic might just tone down the opposition from the Anglo-American-French side. it might be just the threat that will give Germany the opportunity to reinvent its Germanism in a more long-term project.
The Germanists also seem to hedge their bets on India being the containing force for Islamism's eastward push. There are a few other roadblocks which needs to be removed in order for the long term objectives to be put in motion, USA's backing of TSP being one.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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Klaus wrote:The Germanists also seem to hedge their bets on India being the containing force for Islamism's eastward push.
What is the evidence of this?
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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What is also interesting is how Britain's mismanagement of Germany's rise has effected US's management of China's rise.

During the 1849-1945 period, Britain spent most of its energies in Europe to contain Germany, but eventually failed, and that failure cost it its empire.

US elite have read this and that is why they try to avoid confronting China since 1990s. Obama appears to be following a more confrontational policy, but it does not really challenge China deeply enough. India will have to consider this in any possible alliance with the US.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Singha »

is germany financially strong enough and enjoys public support for a more muscular military expeditionary role in eastern europe to stabilize weak areas and act as a bulkhead to safeguard western europe from the creeping islamist destabilization and demographic war in eastern europe and caucasus?
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Singha, Germany has enormous reserves of power, but their main weakness is lack of natural resources, esp energy.

Also, when discussing economic weakness, remember that western elites consider war itself a solution to economic weakness. So economic weakness is a trigger for war, not a constraint on it.
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ramana wrote:At the outset I am not alleging Conspiracy Theory.

In 1999 this was the world & India situation:

NATO intervention in Kosovo eventually led to demise of Yugoslavia
NDA govt suffers no confidence vote and is a caretaker govt
US bombing of Beijing Embassy and massive PRC protests
Almost same day the Lt Kalia patrol goes missing in Kargil
Soon TSP intrusion and occupation of Kargil posts in high mountains is revealed
India decides to not cross the border but clear the intruders out with massive force
Soon TSP leadership starts withdraw their soldiers
Leads to a coup in October 1999
2000 US elections brings in a new President taking power in 2001
Sept 9/11 attack by Muslim terrorists based in Af-Pak and having TSP gov agency non state actors
By Dec 2001 US occupies Afghanistan
Soon after Iraq war planning and the rest you know.
Ramana ji,

The first 'humanitarian war of intervention' was Somalia. That was the showcase war that was going to turn world opinion in favour of imperial interventionism across the world. When that mission turned into an utter failure, Yugoslavia conflict had to be resurrected into the public conciousness, so that intervention could take place.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by RajeshA »

Singha wrote:is germany financially strong enough and enjoys public support for a more muscular military expeditionary role in eastern europe to stabilize weak areas and act as a bulkhead to safeguard western europe from the creeping islamist destabilization and demographic war in eastern europe and caucasus?
:)

None!
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Post by Johann »

Singha wrote:is germany financially strong enough and enjoys public support for a more muscular military expeditionary role in eastern europe to stabilize weak areas and act as a bulkhead to safeguard western europe from the creeping islamist destabilization and demographic war in eastern europe and caucasus?
Not really. Eurozone economic trouble is not good for Germany.

Secondly, Germans regard military adventures as dangers to national well being, both politically and financially. Not unlike the Brazilians.

Thirdly, they're not worried about European Muslims in the Balkans nearly as much as they're worried about the assimilation of immigrant Muslims in Germany and Western Europe. The Caucasus are even more distant. If the Caucasus conflicts threatened investments in places like Azerbaijan or Russia the government might worry more about it. On the other hand camps in Pakistan worry them because thats where Arab and Turkish immigrants go to train.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by brihaspati »

Germany :

(a) has the same ideological redux as India is facing. Multikultur-ism has been woven into an ideologican frabric that makes it impossible for the state to prevent growth of Islamism. Moreover, state level protection of claims of immunity from any and all criticism or negative critical analysis by Islam - just as in India, has created a lobby of politicians, akademia, and business interests in the ME, especially markets for certain types of German products in the Gulf region, that seeks to over-protect on-the-ground Islam expansion agenda.

(b) additional problem for Germany, is the conflation of Leftism with "progressive" with multikulturism, and by natural implication in German collective guilt, the conflation of any protests against Islamism with "right-wing" with nazism or neo-nazism. The fact that left does not protest, implies that all protests or drawing attention to the problem of Islamism is left in the hands of the so-called "right wing". This is further used to delegtimize such opposition to islamism.

Germany faces the same self-binding and self-paralyizing algorithm as India has bound itself into.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by sanjaykumar »

Cogent and interesting view.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by RamaY »

brihaspati wrote:Germany :

Germany faces the same self-binding and self-paralyizing algorithm as India has bound itself into.
The most interesting thing is that it is the likes of Ahm-edi-ne-jad who unglify Germans by saying Holocausts are propagandu :mrgreen:

The difference between nationalism and fascism is that Nationalism presents the self-pride of one's own existence, history and culture; where as fascism is when this self-pride is converted into hatred towards others. Hitler's mistake was just that. For example today's Israel is standing on nationalistic strength where as the likes of Iran etc are standing on fascism.

India need to become nationalistic. But the propaganda is to call it fascism, and many (so-called) educated Indians can't even see the difference.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by brihaspati »

Germans will never come out of their distrust of the Anglo, and Anglo behaviour helps to preserve the myth. Germans are too interested in checkmating Anglo interests in the ME to completely get miffed by Ahmedinijad's bluster. They were quite eager to sweeten Iranian attempts at bypassing oil embargo.

We speak of nation states a shomogenous decision making entities. But as west appears to move together, there are intra-west cross competitions of interest too. North European interests do not entirely coincide with the Anglo alliance. There is a subtle contest over ME.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

brihaspati wrote:Germans will never come out of their distrust of the Anglo, and Anglo behaviour helps to preserve the myth. Germans are too interested in checkmating Anglo interests in the ME to completely get miffed by Ahmedinijad's bluster. They were quite eager to sweeten Iranian attempts at bypassing oil embargo.

We speak of nation states a shomogenous decision making entities. But as west appears to move together, there are intra-west cross competitions of interest too. North European interests do not entirely coincide with the Anglo alliance. There is a subtle contest over ME.

Not to mention every link, prior to PRC taking it over, of missile or nuke enrichment spread has German origins.

Looks like till NPT & MCTR was signed Germans were hedging.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Klaus »

Carl wrote: What is the evidence of this?
From Franz Kafka's unpublished essays. They are currently the inheritance of Esther Hoffe's estate, probably in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

so how did you know!
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by member_20317 »

brihaspati wrote:Crucial link between 1857-1947 period. For Europe, it is significant but we will not see th ereal picture unless we also look globally. US civil war starts off, destruction or temporary halting of the cotton economy of the south - and bringing France finally down to its knees in the continental divide so that it from then on becomes second fiddle to UK. It was about the consolidation of the British empire's hold on the Atlantic, putting up a buffer and expanding virtual fromtier to a sullen but still "ally" France - in Europe. Note that after 1870, Loui Bonaparte got asylum at the Brit court, and henceforth "republican" France will no longer have a monarch to challenge the Brit monarch. In all subsequent European contests - France will coordinate with uk.

In US, recovery will take time - and NY banking interests will already have tied up the southern economy as a subsidiary in the transatlantic setup. This is the point when US basically becomes the burly burgher wealth producer of the thin aristocrat ruling in Londonistan.

brihaspati ji,

whot would be your view on how much influence londonistan today enjoys with US. US is certainly producing wealth for londonistan but then they are producing it for a whole lot of other interest groups eg. cheen. In such a case what would be the level of influence that UK enjoys within US establishment.

Alternative POV that also needs consideration is to look at US as a corporate entity with uptill now Londonistan holding the majority stake. Now off course being challenged by cheen and the soverign funds of gulf.

How we view the role of US in such a relationship will have implications for how Indians should approach these two.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

From Norman times the English and French cooperrae when there is a stalemate and neither has ascendancy.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Agnimitra »

ravi_g wrote:brihaspati ji,

whot would be your view on how much influence londonistan today enjoys with US. US is certainly producing wealth for londonistan but then they are producing it for a whole lot of other interest groups eg. cheen. In such a case what would be the level of influence that UK enjoys within US establishment.

Alternative POV that also needs consideration is to look at US as a corporate entity with uptill now Londonistan holding the majority stake. Now off course being challenged by cheen and the soverign funds of gulf.

How we view the role of US in such a relationship will have implications for how Indians should approach these two.
There is a section within the US that views its relationship with the UK as deepel and tarrel than just wealth and investments. A few months back I met someone who has spent time working for the CIA and now works in the US media. During friendly banter she turned the subject to politics and was asking others around the table why India wastes so much money on defence expenditure, we should bury the hatchet with TSP and focus on economic development, and be "reasonable" and "logical". Most of the Bhindians there agreed with her, of course. I took her up on it and we had a rather long one-on-one conversation, in the course of which I started to finger her sensitivity to the US-UK relationship. I pointed out, with specific examples, how the UK has played mischief and abused the trust the US places in it, and often left America holding the baby. At this point she completely froze up, became angry, and told me that America's relationship with the UK was beyond logic or reason, and it goes very deep (in so many words). A few seconds later when she snapped out of it, even she was a little surprised by the nerve I had touched. BTW, she was a southern belle from an elite background, though one of he parents was originally from the north. I'm saying that there are plenty like her, especially in the government/academic/media establishment.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Klaus »

ramana wrote:so how did you know!
I dont know first hand. Had to get info out of a faculty member after much pleading. Those manuscripts are off-limits and its only a handful of people who have had access granted once or twice.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

So thats one area to seek.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by abhishek_sharma »

ramana
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

johneeG wrote:Viceroy is a good title. One can also use Mansabdaar. Mansabdaar is more or less Mughal equivalent of Viceroy.

---
I was reading about Roman History. The one thing that struck me is that introduction of X-ianity signals the beginning of end of Roman Empire. There is a common trait shared by all the X-ian emperors of Rome: they compromised with the external enemies that threatened the Roman Empire. And they persecuted the majority of Romans for being non-X-ians. They systematically undermined the ancient social system of Romans. All this led to the decline of Rome and it was taken over by the barbarians. The irony being that the X-ianity cut deals with the barbarians and continued to survive while the Roman empire was destroyed.

The last Roman Emperor who tried to protect Rome from external threats in a proper manner was Julian. Julian was the cousin of Constantine. He was one of the few family members that survived. Many of the family members were killed by Constantine. Julian was a non-X-ian. He was not impressed by the X-ianity's role in Roman society and he supported the ancient 'pagan' religion of Romans. Unfortunately for Roman Empire, Julian died pre-maturely.

After him, there was no non-X-ian Roman Emperor.

The case of Theodosius I is the best example to illustrate the rule of X-ian Emperors:
Theodosius, the Roman Emperor from 380 to 395 AD, decreed that adherents of other religions should not hold meetings and that the buildings used for such meetings would be confiscated. It was also decreed that there would be no freedom at all for non-Christians (Gibbon?s Decline and Fall of Roman
Empire Vol-3, page 412). In those days, if non-Christians refused to part with their properties, they were likely to lose their lives.
(Kristumata Chedanam -Chattampi Swami)
Theodosius I (Latin: Flavius Theodosius Augustus;[1] 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire. During his reign, the Goths secured control of Illyricum after the Gothic War, establishing their homeland south of the Danube within the empire's borders. He also issued decrees that effectively made Nicene Christianity the official state church of the Roman Empire.[2][3] He is recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church as Saint Theodosius.
The Christian persecution of paganism under Theodosius I began in 381, after the first couple of years of his reign in the Eastern Roman Empire. In the 380s, Theodosius I reiterated Constantine's ban on pagan sacrifice, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, pioneered the criminalization of Magistrates who did not enforce anti-pagan laws, broke up some pagan associations and destroyed pagan temples.

Between 389–391 he promulgated the "Theodosian decrees," which establed a practical ban on paganism;[17] visits to the temples were forbidden,[18][19] remaining pagan holidays abolished, the eternal fire in the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum extinguished, the Vestal Virgins disbanded, the practices of taking auspices and witchcraftwere punished. Theodosius refused to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate House, as asked by pagan senators.

In 392 he became the Emperor (the last one to claim sole rule over the Empire). From this moment till the end of his reign in 395, while pagans remained outspoken in their demands for toleration,[20][21] he authorized or participated in the destruction of many temples, holy sites, images and objects of piety throughout the Empire,[22][23][24][25][26] and participated in actions by Christians against major pagan sites.[27]

He issued a comprehensive law that prohibited any pagan ritual even within the privacy of one's home,[28] and was particularly oppressive of Manicheans.[29] Paganism was now proscribed, a "religio illicita."[30] He is likely to have suppressed the ancient Olympic Games, whose last record of celebration was in 393.[31]
The Goths and their allies (Vandali, Taifalae, Bastarnae and the native Carpi) entrenched in the provinces of Dacia and eastern Pannonia Inferior consumed Theodosious' attention. The Gothic crisis was so dire that his co-Emperor Gratian relinquished control of the Illyrian provinces and retired to Trier in Gaul to let Theodosius operate without hindrance. A major weakness in the Roman position after the defeat at Adrianople was the recruiting of barbarians to fight against other barbarians. In order to reconstruct the Roman Army of the West, Theodosius needed to find able bodied soldiers and so he turned to the most capable men readily at hand: the barbarians recently settled in the Empire. This caused many difficulties in the battle against barbarians since the newly recruited fighters had little or no loyalty to Theodosius.
Theodosius was reduced to the costly expedient of shipping his recruits to Egypt and replacing them with more seasoned Romans, but there were still switches of allegiance that resulted in military setbacks. Gratian sent generals to clear the dioceses of Illyria (Pannonia and Dalmatia) of Goths, and Theodosius was able finally to enter Constantinople on 24 November 380, after two seasons in the field. The final treaties with the remaining Gothic forces, signed 3 October 382, permitted large contingents of primarily Thervingian Goths to settle along the southern Danube frontier in the province of Thrace and largely govern themselves.

The Goths now settled within the Empire had, as a result of the treaties, military obligations to fight for the Romans as a national contingent, as opposed to being fully integrated into the Roman forces.[6] However, many Goths would serve in Roman legions and others, as foederati, for a single campaign, while bands of Goths switching loyalties became a destabilizing factor in the internal struggles for control of the Empire.

In 390 the population of Thessalonica rioted in complaint against the presence of the local Gothic garrison. The garrison commander was killed in the violence, so Theodosius ordered the Goths to kill all the spectators in the circus as retaliation; Theodoret, a contemporary witness to these events, reports:

"...the anger of the Emperor rose to the highest pitch, and he gratified his vindictive desire for vengeance by unsheathing the sword most unjustly and tyrannically against all, slaying the innocent and guilty alike. It is said seven thousand perished without any forms of law, and without even having judicial sentence passed upon them; but that, like ears of wheat in the time of harvest, they were alike cut down."[7]
It is these Goths who finally sacked Rome in the next decade.
410, 24 August: Sack of Rome by Alaric and the Visigoths.
This shows how pathetic ruler Theodosious proved to be. The same Goths who were patronaged by him, without hearing the protests of the locals, sacked the Rome within a decade. Theodosious' rule was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel's back and resulted in the begining of disintegration of Roman empire.

Roman Empire never recovered from this. Ironically, Theodosious has been declared a 'Saint' and Julian is called 'apostate'. Later the Huns came into the picture and gave many blows to the dying Roman Empire.

After the Roman Empire fell, it was followed by X-ian dark ages for approx. 1000 years.

What is the relevance of this to this thread?
Well, the same phenomenon is repeating in bharat... compromises with external threats, allowing the enemies to acquire space internally, persecution(backed by law) of 'pagan' majority, foisting ideologies that undermine the ancient traditions and break the social structure, imbecile and fanatic emperors, palace intrigues, ...etc.

If one does not learn from history, then one will end up repeating it...
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by brihaspati »

ravi_g wrote:
brihaspati wrote:Crucial link between 1857-1947 period. For Europe, it is significant but we will not see th ereal picture unless we also look globally. US civil war starts off, destruction or temporary halting of the cotton economy of the south - and bringing France finally down to its knees in the continental divide so that it from then on becomes second fiddle to UK. It was about the consolidation of the British empire's hold on the Atlantic, putting up a buffer and expanding virtual fromtier to a sullen but still "ally" France - in Europe. Note that after 1870, Loui Bonaparte got asylum at the Brit court, and henceforth "republican" France will no longer have a monarch to challenge the Brit monarch. In all subsequent European contests - France will coordinate with uk.

In US, recovery will take time - and NY banking interests will already have tied up the southern economy as a subsidiary in the transatlantic setup. This is the point when US basically becomes the burly burgher wealth producer of the thin aristocrat ruling in Londonistan.

brihaspati ji,

whot would be your view on how much influence londonistan today enjoys with US. US is certainly producing wealth for londonistan but then they are producing it for a whole lot of other interest groups eg. cheen. In such a case what would be the level of influence that UK enjoys within US establishment.

Alternative POV that also needs consideration is to look at US as a corporate entity with uptill now Londonistan holding the majority stake. Now off course being challenged by cheen and the soverign funds of gulf.

How we view the role of US in such a relationship will have implications for how Indians should approach these two.

Its no longer the domain of a particular country among the list you mention. The successors of the EIC went transnational in the days of the empire, and thereby continued unchecked and unharmed post WWII. The physical locations or nodes that connected the Anglo-Saxon world empire - all its colonies, the trade routes across the IOR and Atlantic, ex-colonies - all have intergeneration spanning infrastructure and network for intel gathering, keep cash flows going, drugs and weapons and human trade, and overall big-stake commerce.

In that sense pure physical location Londonistan may not seem to hold that much power. But the power is maintained by a network that reaches into both Londonistan and Washingtonistan. The same network also inherits the Brit founded [or taken over as the latest pirate dog in the neighbourhood to kick out the previous ones like the Arabs] drugs+financial+human traffic across the IOR right into China [through the Hong-kong Shanghai route into the Yunnan-Guangxi-Hunan-Jinangxi producers zones]. This also has ex-colonial way stops remnant in national systems/forces/groupsand possibly within the coercive wings if each state in between. The whole network is based on extreme obsession with military-force-coercive control of populations - to keep the monetary interests intact.

So its not as if China-US-UK interests are conflicting etc. Some of the stuff are played for the publci space so that the real nature of the interconnections do not get exposed and clash with the very culture and value system promoted overtly for public consumption. The value-system has been developed to deny "others" the methods that the network originally used to capture this network in the 17th-19th century. Hence the public performance.

When govs fall out of line, or make the error of taking the value-system too seriously - they "fall".
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by RoyG »



Madhu Trehan interview with Francois Gautier.
ramana
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

X-post....
johneeG wrote:
RamaY wrote:The third platform above IS the secular platform.

By separating 'secular' platform, we will be allowing the smoke screens to continue.

Secularism is "Christianity without Church".
That is the western phenomenon. In India, its the reverse. Secularism, in India, means uniting state with church/mullah and separating the masses from Temples/Gurus/Gods/Shastras...etc.

Remember, the X-ianity was introduced into Roman Empire by Constantine through a 'secular' law:
In February 313, Constantine met with Licinius in Milan, where they developed the Edict of Milan. The edict stated that Christians should be allowed to follow the faith without oppression.[204] This removed penalties for professing Christianity, under which many had been martyred in persecutions of Christians, and returned confiscated Church property. The edict protected from religious persecution not only Christians but all religions, allowing anyone to worship whichever deity they chose. A similar edict had been issued in 311 by Galerius, then senior emperor of the Tetrarchy; Galerius' edict granted Christians the right to practice their religion but did not restore any property to them.[205] The Edict of Milan included several clauses which stated that all confiscated churches would be returned as well as other provisions for previously persecuted Christians.
So, the emperor legalized X-ianity in Roman Empire in the guise of Secularism. Where did it end?

X-ianity was declared the official state religion of Roman Empire after merely 70 years of 'secularism'. It was not a co-incident or accident. It was deliberately planned and executed. The period of 'secularism' was to prepare ground for the complete take over of the state and masses. Once the X-ianity had state support, all other religions were banned, including the religion that was followed by Romans from ages. X-ianity, with the help of the state, persecuted all the other religions and its followers, establishing itself firmly in the saddle. Once it was in power, X-ianity and its clergy had no use for 'secularism'. When X-ianity became the state religion, pagans were not offered any 'secularism'. No. Instead, they were hounded, even in their private homes. Homes were confiscated, if any pagan ritual was conducted. Rituals and ceremonies that were being followed by generations of Romans were prohibited. Temples were demolished. Eternal burning fire(Akhand Jyothi?) was extinguished. It did not stop until the masses had completely converted to X-ianity. It did not even stop then. This was only the beginning... of dark ages.
On 27 February 380 he, together with Gratian and Valentinian II published the so-called "Edict of Thessalonica" (decree "Cunctos populos", Codex Theodosianus xvi.1.2) in order that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith).
Theodosius, the Roman Emperor from 380 to 395 AD, decreed that adherents of other religions should not hold meetings and that the buildings used for such meetings would be confiscated. It was also decreed that there would be no freedom at all for non-Christians (Gibbon?s Decline and Fall of Roman
Empire Vol-3, page 412). In those days, if non-Christians refused to part with their properties, they were likely to lose their lives.
(Kristumata Chedanam -Chattampi Swami)
The Christian persecution of paganism under Theodosius I began in 381, after the first couple of years of his reign in the Eastern Roman Empire. In the 380s, Theodosius I reiterated Constantine's ban on pagan sacrifice, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, pioneered the criminalization of Magistrates who did not enforce anti-pagan laws, broke up some pagan associations and destroyed pagan temples.

Between 389–391 he promulgated the "Theodosian decrees," which establed a practical ban on paganism;[17] visits to the temples were forbidden,[18][19] remaining pagan holidays abolished, the eternal fire in the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum extinguished, the Vestal Virgins disbanded, the practices of taking auspices and witchcraftwere punished. Theodosius refused to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate House, as asked by pagan senators.

In 392 he became the Emperor (the last one to claim sole rule over the Empire). From this moment till the end of his reign in 395, while pagans remained outspoken in their demands for toleration,[20][21] he authorized or participated in the destruction of many temples, holy sites, images and objects of piety throughout the Empire,[22][23][24][25][26] and participated in actions by Christians against major pagan sites.[27]

He issued a comprehensive law that prohibited any pagan ritual even within the privacy of one's home,[28] and was particularly oppressive of Manicheans.[29] Paganism was now proscribed, a "religio illicita."[30] He is likely to have suppressed the ancient Olympic Games, whose last record of celebration was in 393.[31]
Not just pagans but even other sects of X-ianity were not spared.
After the Edict, Theodosius spent a great deal of energy suppressing Arianism and other heretical sects, and in establishing Nicene orthodoxy throughout his realm.[4]

The Edict was followed in 381 by the First Council of Constantinople, which affirmed the Nicene Symbolum and gave final form to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. [5] In 383 the Emperor ordered the various non-Nicene sects (Arians, Anomoeans, Macedonians, and Novatians) to submit written creeds to him, which he prayerfully reviewed and then burned, save for that of the Novatians. The other sects lost the right to meet, ordain priests, or spread their beliefs.[6] Theodosius prohibited the residence of heretics within Constantinople, and in 392 and 394 confiscated their places of worship.[7]
This fanatic's rule sowed the seeds that were prime factors in the eventual decline of Roman Empire. Directly as a result of the policies followed by X-ian Emperors of Rome, Western Roman Empire ended. It was followed by take over of the barbarians of the west. X-ian clergies cut a deal with these Barbarians and continued in positions of power and privilege. Persecutions did not stop. Inquisitions and Witch-hunting were to follow in the next few centuries and progressively Europe declined and X-ianity rose.

That is X-ianity's history.

If you look at Islam's history(ahadiths, if one assumes their historic authenticity), it follows similar pattern:
When Islam's so-called prophet was initially in Mecca, he made full use of the 'secularism' of the Meccans. At one point, he is supposed to have issued 'satanic verses' to lure the Meccans into his new creed and taken them back after criticism from his followers and detractors.
The death of his uncle, Abu Talib, in 619 left Muhammad without a protector against the Meccan leadership, which was gradually losing patience with him. The true agitator in this situation, however, is quite clearly Muhammad himself, as even Muslim historians note. Consider this account of what happened at Abu Talib's deathbed, as the Meccans implored him a final time for peace with his nephew:

[Muhammad's chief adversary] Abu Sufyan, with other sundry notables, went to Abu Talib and said: "You know the trouble that exists between us and your nephew, so call him and let us make an agreement that he will leave us alone and we will leave him alone; let him have his religion and we will have ours." (Ibn Ishaq 278)

Muhammad rejected the offer of peaceful co-existence. His new religion was obviously intended to dominate the others, not be on equal standing with them. Meanwhile, the Muslims were beginning to become violent with the people around them.

Muhammad's search for political alliance led him to make a treaty of war against the Meccans with the people of Medina, another Arab town far to the north (Ibn Ishaq 299-301). This was the last straw for the Meccans, who finally decided to capture Muhammad and put him to death.

Although this sounds harsh against Western standards, it is important to note the contrast between the Meccan reaction and that of Muhammad when he had the opportunity to deal with perceived treachery in Medina at a later date on the part of those who hadn't even harmed anyone.

The Meccans limited their deadly aggression to Muhammad himself. This is quite clear from the episode in which Muhammad escapes his home by using his son-in-law, Ali, to trick his would-be assassins into thinking that they had him trapped (Ibn Ishaq 326). No harm was done to Ali or his wife, both of whom subsequently remained in the city for several days to complete the transfer of Muhammad's family business to Medina.

Compare this to the episode of the Banu Qurayza (below), in which Muhammad slaughtered an entire tribe of people based on their leader having switched loyalties in a conflict in which none of them even participated.

The year that Muhammad fled Mecca for Medina was 622, which marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar.
Once Mohammad reached Medina and acquired some followers, there was no need for 'secularism' anymore. It was outright war: Jihad.
Medina and the Origin of Jihad

Stinging from the rejection of his own town and tribe, Muhammad's message quickly become more intolerant and ruthless - particularly as he gained power. Islam's holiest book clearly reflects this contrast, with the later parts of the Quran adding violence and earthly defeats at the hands of Muslims to the woes of eternal damnation that the earlier parts of the book promises those who will not believe in Muhammad.

It was at Medina that Islam evolved from a relatively peaceful religion borrowed from others and into a military force that was intended to govern all aspects of society. During these last ten years of Muhammad's life, infidels were evicted or enslaved, converted upon point of death and even rounded up and slaughtered depending on expediency.

To fund his quest for control, Muhammad first directed his followers to raid Meccan caravans in the holy months, when the victims would least expect it. This was despite the fact that the Meccans were not bothering him in Medina.
Initially, he used Medina as a base to attack others(particularly, Meccans). Finally, he turned on his hosts in Medina itself. Initially, he was tolerant towards Jews. One may call it 'secularism' if one wants to. But, once he was firmly established and no use for the support of Jews, he went after them.
Muhammad defeated the Meccan army at Badr, which emboldened him to begin dividing and conquering the three local Jewish tribes at Medina. Their mistake was to accept the Muslim presence, but reject Muhammad's claim that he was in the line of Jewish prophets. His stories from the Torah simply did not agree with their own. (Muhammad's recited version of Bible stories sounds more like fragmented fairy tales with the same moral - believe in his personal claim to be a prophet or else).

How these three tribes, the Banu Qaynuqa, the Banu Nadir, and the Banu Quyrayza met their fate is insightful into the Muslim mindset, which employs an inherent double standard in its relations with those outside the faith.

First, to try and gain their favor, Muhammad briefly preached that Christians and Jews could attain salvation through their own faith. In fact, he changed his followers' direction for prayer from Mecca to Jerusalem, which prompted the Jews' tolerance of him while he worked surreptitiously for the power to evict them. These earlier concessions and teachings were later revoked by Muhammad, since the Jews ultimately refused his religion. The rare early verses of tolerance in the Quran are abrogated by later verses such as 9:29.

The Jews' knowledge of the Torah naturally threatened the Muslim leader's credibility, since it easily refuted the claims that he made about himself as a prophet of God. They also saw through the Biblical narrations that he had picked up from secondhand sources and knew that these contradicted established revelation. Conveniently, Allah stepped in to tell Muhammad that the Jews had deliberately corrupted their own texts to hide the very evidence of his own prophethood that he had previously insisted existed. (To this day, Muslims have never been able to produce a copy of the "true" Torah or Gospel to which their own Quran refers).

While the Jews remained unconvinced by such obvious gimmickry, Arab polytheists converted to Islam in large numbers, which soon gave Muhammad the power to make his intentions clear that Islam would be imposed by force
Since they chose to hold on to their religion (and their property) Muhammad looked for reasons to go to war against the Jews at Medina. According to some Muslims, the first tribe, the Qaynuqa, were driven from their homes and land on the pretext that one of their own had harassed a Muslim woman. Although the offender was killed prior to this by a Muslim, the Muslim was also killed by Jews in retaliation for the first murder.

After laying siege to the entire community and defeating the tribe, Muhammad wanted to put every male member to death, but was talked out of it by an associate - something that Allah later "rebuked" him for. The Qaynuqa were forced into exile and the Muslims took their possessions and property, making it their own. Muhammad personally reserved a fifth of the ill-gotten gain for himself (a rule that he was sure to include in the Quran).

This episode helped ingrain within Islam the immature principle of group identity, whereby any member of a religion or social unit outside of Islam is just as guilty as any of their peers who insult or harm a Muslim - and just as deserving of punishment. (Muhammad's punishments usually did not fit the crime).

Members of the second tribe, the Banu Nadir, were accused by Muhammad of plotting to kill him. What is most intriguing about this episode is that it occurred after the Muslims had killed several prominent Jews on Muhammad's order, including a leader of the Banu Nadir (named Ka'b al-Ashraf).
In a critical example of how deception is sanctioned under Islam, a surviving contingent of the Banu Nadir (under Usayr ibn Zarim) was later tricked into leaving their fortress by promise of peace talks. The contingent of Muslims sent by Muhammad to "escort" them, however, easily slaughtered the victims once they let down their guard (Ibn Ishaq 981).
By the time the Banu Qurayza met their fate, Muhammad was wealthy and powerful from his defeat of the other two tribes.

...

Although the Qurayza surrendered peacefully to the Muslims, Muhammad determined to have every man of the tribe executed, along with every boy that had reached the initial stages of puberty (between the ages of 12 and 14). He ordered a ditch dug outside of the town and had the victims brought to him in several groups. Each person would be forced to kneel, and their head would be cut off and then dumped along with the body into the trench.

Between 700 and 900 men and boys were slaughtered by the Muslims after their surrender.

The surviving children of the men became slaves of the Muslims, and their widows became sex slaves.
This included the Jewish girl, Rayhana, who became one of Muhammad's personal concubines the very night that her husband was killed. The prophet of Islam apparently "enjoyed her pleasures" (ie. raped her) even as the very execution of her people was taking place.

In some ways, women were much like any other possession taken in battle, to be done with however their captors pleased. But Muslims found them useful in other ways as well. In fact, one of the methods by which Islam owed its expansion down through the centuries was through the reproductive capabilities of captured women. In addition to four wives, a man was allowed an unlimited number of sex slaves, with the only rule being that any resulting children would automatically be Muslim.

Muhammad ordered that a fifth of the women taken captive be reserved for him. Many were absorbed into his personal stable of sex slaves that he maintained in addition to his eleven wives. Others were doled out like party favors to others.

At one point following a battle, Muhammad provided instructions on how women should be raped after capture, telling his men not to worry about coitus interruptus, since "Allah has written whom he is going to create." (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Approved of Rape)

Following the battle against the Hunain, late in his life, Muhammad's men were reluctant to rape the captured women in front of their husbands (who were apparently still alive to witness the abomination), but Allah came to the rescue with a handy "revelation" that allowed the debauchery. (This is the origin of Sura 4:24 according to Abu Dawud 2150).
Link

As one can clearly see that 'secularism' and tolerance are acceptable only as long as they are useful. They are used like a ceasefire(or a truce) when the enemy is too strong. These periods are used to prepare for the next battle and to lull the opposition meanwhile. Once the ideology thinks that it is strong enough to take on the enemy, the ceasefire(or truce or peace deal) are not worth anything. The 'secularism' is junked. And when the ideology is dominant, they never offer any 'secularism' to its enemy. The enemy is finished off ruthlessly.

PS: Of course, the doubts about historical authenticity on biography of Mo remain. They were created long after he is supposed to have lived. So, it is quite possible that much of those biographies(or maybe the entire work) may be later-day fiction. It may have been created at the behest of the later-day rulers to satisfy their political ends.
AbhiJ
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by AbhiJ »

The Link contains Nudes:

Timeline of Nudity according to Western POV:

gotopless.org/timeline

Reality:
1950

Balinese women bathing topless

While most Western women are ashamed of going topless, in Bali and other islands, it is a common, decent practice.
Hindu Women in Bali went nude in the open without any taboo/lajja in 1950. I think it was speculated the same for the Indic Civilization prior to entry of monotheists.

The West is still in the struggle mode.

gotopless.org/topless-laws

But it shows the SDDE Desis are still taboo oriented while the West is liberated. AoA.
member_20317
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by member_20317 »

Bhai,

Bongs and Biharis used to call all women, Maa/Mai till recently. Gujjus have Ben/Bhai in their names. All these appellations meant something. They still do but are sought to be burried under a lot of plastic.

Going topless is not about sexual freedom as it is made out to be. It is about functional relationships.

If people treat the women folk with respect then the question of bawdy joking and cribing against the rise of womenfolk, does not arise.

But if the men folk have their minds raped by some unknown, unacknowledged, unrecognised thing. Then pretty soon the vocabulary of the cross-over generation begins to match that of the foreigners and eventually it call comes round in the works as MC/BC stuff thrown at the unsuspecting poorer folk.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Bji,
The feudal age really ended in Great Britain on the battle fields of Western Europe in WWI. Passchendale etc killed a lot of the British aristocracy and upper middle class.
The same happened in US in the Civil War.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by member_19686 »

The end of the heathens

In 438 BCE the 12 meter image of the great goddess Athena made by the foremost of the yavana idol makers, Pheidias under the patronage of Perikles was installed at the Acropolis in Athens. It was built with 1.1 tons of gold, the face and the arms were made entirely from ivory and it was decorated with gems. It was described thus by the Pausanias in the 100s of the common era:

“The image of Athena is upright, with a tunic reaching to the feet, and on her breast the head of Medusa is worked in ivory. She holds a statue of Nike about four cubits high, and in the other hand a spear; at her feet lies a shield and near the spear is a serpent. This serpent would be Erichthonius. On the pedestal is the birth of Pandora in relief [description of the Parthenon temple of Athena].”

873 years after its installation, the pious Christian emperor Theodosius II passed an edict to extirpate the already beleaguered heathens:

“All persons of criminal pagan mind we interdict from accursed immolations of sacrificial victims and from damnable sacrifices and from all other practices prohibited by the authority of the more ancient ordinance, and we order that all their shrines, temples, sanctuaries, if any even now remain intact, should be destroyed by the magistrates’s command and that these should be purified by the placing of the venerable Christian religion’s sign [the Cross] – all persons knowing that if it it shall have been established by suitable proofs before a competent judge that anyone has mocked this law, the said person must be punished with death [Theodosius II legal edict 16.10.25 Nov 14th, 435 CE].”

The pretasAdhaka-s swung into zealous action putting the pious emperor’s directives into practice. They damaged the eastern pediment of the Parthenon and then uprooted the Athena from its precincts and placed a cross atop it. Thus, they recycled it as a church for the puMshchalI who birthed the preta. Subsequently, the Parthenon was to become a Masjid when fatih sultan Mehmed-II of the Osmans conquered it from the pretAcharin-s in 1460 and erected a minar. In 1687 during the war between the two West Asian cults the temple was blown up by the pretacharin-s leaving the ruins we see today at the Acropolis.

While the image of Athena was uprooted it was not destroyed and was taken by the last of the great yavana R^iShi-s, Proclus (Πρόκλος), the mathematician, heathen lawyer, philosopher, hymn composer and ritualist, to a villa in the southern Acropolian slope. Here the last sacrificers of the old deities of the yavana-s, besieged and battered, charily assembled for their rituals, away from the gaze of “those who moved that which should not be moved” and “the neighbors who abandon sobriety”. Though “the typhonic winds of Christianity” were hammering their world, they still took hope as long as the towering figure of Proclus could still invoke the gods and compose his hymns. Then on April 17th 485 BC Proclus died at the age 75 – he had stated in a hymn of “mokSha” in his 42nd year that he would attained oneness with the stars. He had lived through the darkest hour of the heathen world in the near West, yet was one of its greatest. His end, like that of the great emperor Julian before him, was to almost mark the end of the brahma and kShatra of that world.

Even before the convert and enforcer of the pretamata, Constantine, came to power, it was not without risks for the Hellenes to freely express their view: The Greek philosopher Porphyry who wrote the brilliant tract “Against the Christians” was beaten up by a mob of shavapUjaka-s at Caesarea in Palestine. Thus, it was gradually becoming harder to openly voice an opinion on the shava or the preta-pustaka without running into the danger of being attacked by them. All this even when the shavapUjaka-s were claiming to be persecuted and heathen emperors were still in power. With the coming to power of Constantine, he passed an edict that all copies of Porphyry’s “Against the Christians” be burned and prescribed the death penalty for any one who kept secret copies of the text. More than a century later Theodosius II and Valentinian II were still burning copies of Porphyry’s works with much vehemence. It was the reign of Theodosius II during which the heathen really came to see the grim darkness of the pretamata bringing an end to their world. Heathen thinkers like Hypatia the daughter of Theon were murdered by pretAcharin gangs. Temples were desecrated and Proclus and his school could only refer to the shavapUjaka-s with cryptic terms. As we have said many times before on these pages, these events are a chilling reminder of what can and is happening to us, who uphold the last, unbroken transmission of the Indo-European heathen tradition. Today in bhArata it is not easy to criticize the violent West Asian lunacy cults. The Hindus are losing their rights in their own land despite being the majority. A parallel to the desecration of the Acropolis could very well be the next stage. In this context we feel it worthwhile to revisit the brilliant heathen thinker Georgios Gemistos Plethon whom we had briefly alluded to on these pages (http://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/20 ... hermetica/).

The paradox of the renaissance
The period of the renaissance and the subsequent “age of enlightenment” are defining aspects of the civilization and intellectual expression of the modern Leukosphere and its satellite cultures. Indeed, many in the modern Indian elite also have a superficial knowledge and identification with the products of the both the renaissance and the “enlightenment”. There are many in the current day left-leaning leukospheric elite who sanctimoniously prefer referring to this period as “Early modern” as opposed to renaissance and like to transfer such terms to bhArata (e.g. Pollock and his band of South Asianists, and remember whoever uses the word South Asian to describe us is a dviSha). But even they implicitly or explicitly trace the primary strands of their identity to the renaissance. Outside of the scholastic circles there is a general lack of understanding of the two-faced nature of the renaissance though it is generally seen as some kind of prelude to the “enlightenment”. The two-faced nature can be described as the return and expansion of science through the reintroduction of Greek thought (however misunderstood) one side, and on the other, the spread of Isaistic violence on a global scale, with genocides and attacks on old civilizational centers of the world, along with the emergence of newer, virulent versions of the Isaistic meme. However, in the Leukosphere even those who acknowledge this bicephalic aspect, tend to cover up its role in the shaping of their modern world. They would prefer to state that the “enlightenment” along with its key features of democracy or socialism attenuated the earlier Isaistic violence, to bring a better life for all. Indeed, one could argue based on Steven Pinker’s study that the world has progressively become less violent. A mlechCha would take that evidence and tell you that it is because of the “enlightenment”. Indeed, the typical modern left-leaning Leukospheric academic would say that the “enlightenment” extinguished religion as it was after all the “age of reason”. But there are some issues of the progression from the renaissance to the “enlightenment” which a Hindu student of Leukospheric history must carefully investigate, unbiased by what their subjects might tell them. One of these is the amnesia regarding Plethon and his role at the beginning of the renaissance. Related to this is the question as to why the renaissance and the “enlightenment’ there after did not result in the return of Europe to the heathen fold.

At the juncture of two worlds
Leonardo da Vinci is acknowledged by all as one of the most inventive minds of all times, one might say he was truly the highpoint the renaissance. What is not widely known is that he was third in the preceptorial line of descent from Plethon. While Leonardo is widely remembered Plethon is largely forgotten or even downgraded. Yet until shortly after his death he was still a celebrated figure. When Plethon died on 26th June 1452 he is supposed to have a been a grand old man, nearly a 100 years of age. Even some of the pretAcharin-s around him respectfully acknowledged his intellectual attainments, while only cryptically alluding to his heathenism. They said: “He was veritably the paragon of philosophy and every kind of wisdom”. He was described as being admired by Greek and barbarian alike for his knowledge of “secret matters”, metaphysics, literary expression, music, physics, geometry and arithmetic. One of those who knew him well said at his funeral that:
“They called him Plato and Socrates for he was not inferior to those two in wisdom, as everybody would agree… He laid down the easiest route to knowledge for those who chose; he exposed with complete accuracy and wisdom the false route which misled some men; and he liberated the human race from its supreme deception. Proof of what I have said lies in the wise and brilliant writings of that blessed and divine soul; and whoever faithfully follows them in every respect could not miss the sacred truth.”


This acquaintance was speaking in the midst of rabid shavapUjaka-s and could not afford to be more direct. However, what he was referring to in the above words was the teaching by Plethon of religion of the Hellenes to those who chose to see the truth. The “false route” and the “supreme deception” which captured the human race were references to Christianity and its “theology” that Plethon had clearly exposed as fallacious in his writings. Another shava-pUjaka who had the opportunity of studying under him (and in the line leading to Leonardo [Footnote 1]), was much more direct in a letter of condolence to the two sons of Plethon, Demetrios and Andronikos:
I have learned that our common father and master has shed every earthly element and departed to heaven, to the place of purity, joining the mystical chorus of Iacchus [The god Dionysus] with the Olympian gods. I too rejoice to have studied with such a man, the wisest that Greece has produced since Plato. So if one were accept the doctrines of the Pythagoreans and Plato about the infinite ascent and descent of souls, I should not hesitate even to add that the soul of Plato, having to obey the irrefragable decrees of Adrasteia and to discharge the obligatory cycle, had come down to earth and assumed the frame and life of Gemistos. [Text edited by Mohler translated by English military officer Woodhouse]


It is clear from this private communication to Plethon’s sons that what he was referring to was Plethon’s complete reversal to heathen Hellenic thought. When he talks of chorus of Dionysus it is a reference to the ecstatic music and dance with which the celebrants of the festival of Dionysus praise and follow the deity. Indeed, Plato in his Ion [534a] refers to the poetry of hymn composers to be an inspired one that flows out of them, much like the miraculous ecstasy flowing through the Potniades following Dionysus. Thus, Plethon is said to partake of this Dionysian ecstasy upon his death in the company of the Theoi. Now, Adrasteia is one of the nymphs of Rhea, the mother of the gods, who along with Corybantes [Footnote 2] nourished the infant Zeus before he rose to defeat the Titans. She is supposed to control the inescapable fate and thus directs the cycle of reincarnation. Hence, Plethon was literally seen as a reincarnation of Plato in line with the Greek version of the reincarnation cycles.

In course of his education, Plethon played a major role reviving Greek knowledge in various spheres. In Lagarde’s work on Plethon, it is shown that he composed a Greek grammar, studied geography and corrected the geographical work of Strabo, worked on critically editing the Cosmographia of Claudios Ptolemaios (Greek “paurANic geography”) and produced commentaries or lecture notes on Homeric epics and Greek meters. He also taught mathematics, wrote some papers on astronomy and devised a new calender. He also extensively studied and produced summaries of the naturalists Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aelian and Galen. When he was studying the hymns of Pythagoras, Proclus and the corpus of the Orphic and Homeric hymns he connected to his heathen past and completed the link to the traditions of his ancestors. He also made a study of Mohammadanism and the analyzed the nature of the Islamic Jihad in the West. At this point he came to know of the scholar Elissaeus from the Osman sultanate, who had translated Aristotle’s works into Hebrew. Plethon became his student staying with him and serving him in return for his secret teachings. The pretAcharin-s state with much anger that Elissaeus, while a Jew, paid little regard to Moses or the beliefs and observances, which the Jews received from him. Instead, he had learned the Iranian rituals and incantations (“termed the doctrines of Zoroaster”) and the heathen practices of the Hellenes [We have suspected before that Elissaeus might have accessed cryptic refugia of the Neo-Platonic tradition that lingered in the territories overrun by the marUnmatta-s for a fairly long period]. Upon the death of Plethon a church father regretted that nothing serious was done by the church to put a stop to his teaching of heathenism beyond expelling him from Constantinople. Having come to know of Plethon’s book “Book of Laws”, a full-fledged exposition of Hellene thought and practice the church father wrote to a provincial official to gather and burn all copies of the book. In that letter addressing the dead Plethon rhetorically in second person he says:
“You first learned about Zoroaster, having no previous knowledge of him, from the polytheist Elissaeus, who was supposed to be a Jew. Departing from your own country, you lived with him in order to benefit from his famous teaching at a time when he enjoyed great influence at the court of the barbarians [The Osman Sultans Shahid Murad and Bayazid-I]. Being what he was, he met his end in the flames, just like your Zoroaster.”
The concealment of Elissaeus was eventually penetrated by the Islamic agents and he was sentenced to death by immolation by a sharia court as he was munAfiq and a kAfr rather than a Jewish dhimmi. Similarly, a member of the Byzantine royal family, Juvenalios, who had openly forsaken the shavamata for the Greek deities under the influence of Plethon, was executed for heresy in Constantinople an year before the latter’s death. It might be worth noting that around the very same time the Turkic Islamic tyrant Firoz Tughlaq had outlawed the practice of the dharma in dilli. A brAhmaNa was discovered as still doing so in concealment, and Tughlaq’s mullahs gleefully had him set on fire along with his images and pictures. Thus, East and West heathen traditions were being destroyed by the Mohammedans and Christians in the very same way. Given this, it is utterly unfortunate that the modern secularized Hindus do not realize the efforts of their forbears in pushing out the evil hand of marUnmAda at least to the extant we see today in bhArata. Interestingly, in the Book of Laws, Plethon cryptically alludes that the heathens would need to forcibly extirpate the shavamata and marUnmAda in the future in retaliatory strikes. Even as the Book of Laws was outlawed in the Christian world and consigned to the flames, some sufi Sheikhs in Osman empire realized that it was dangerous enough that it need to be studied and rebutted. Thus, they ended up collecting the fragments that survived, translated it into Arabic in the late 1400s, and wrote a rebuttal. The Sheikh who translated it is categorical in stating upfront that the work was fundamentally at odds with Islam. This again brings home a point we have repeatedly made on these pages that the Abrahamisms, despite their differences, are aligned when it comes to heathen tradition (often missed by the mental cretins among the Hindus, who despite the clarity of the other side, would want to claim a shared religious experience with eka-rAkSasa-mata-s).

From our view point there are two notable points regarding the ideas developed by Gemistos Plethon. First is his pan-heathen vision. Among the students of Plethon was Kabakes originally of ancient Viking descent settled in Greece. His immediate ancestors sought to be Christian holy warriors, but he wrote that he himself had reverted to heathenism early in life, probably after reading the emperor Julian’s hymn to the triadic solar deities (http://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/20 ... or-julian/). He is said to have worshiped the solar deities all the while concealing his heathenism from the Christians. He became close to Plethon and practiced heathen rituals while studying mathematics with him. This worship of the triadic solar deities by them is interesting in light of the teaching of Plethon on the cognacy of Pythagoras and other Greek sages, Plato, the ancient teacher Iranian teacher zarathushtra and the brAhmaNa-s of India. In this he appears to follow Plutarch who also holds that the doctrine of Plato on the triadic structure of the universe is comparable to that of the Iranians. He states that in the Iranian doctrine the three realms of are ruled by the three deities: Oromazdes (ahura mazda) in the first realm, Arimanes (airyaman) over the last, and Mithra over the middle section [Footnote 3]. Then he homologizes them with concepts in the Chaldean hymns. Even though he had very limited material on the non-Greek sources and difficulties in directly accessing their ancient ritual language (e.g. Avestan or for that matter even Pahlavi or Sanskrit) he was able correctly identify the natural link between the diverse heathen traditions. This is a point which we as the last of heathens should closely note. We need to take leadership of the pan-heathen system even as the heathen world seems to be on the brink. Unfortunately, this is not well- understood among Hindus today (only the vaishya luminary of the modern Hindu revival, Ram Swarup appears to have made note of this). Of course one may say that the heathen revivalist movements of Europe are flaky and even deeply flawed in some ways. While this might be true of some of them, there are those that are not, though few in number. In any case, this should not deter us, and we can hardly complain we have shown little to speak about in this regard: rather than being the beacon of heathenism for the whole world, we are presenting ourselves as a secular state, thereby pouring water on the fire of our historic uniqueness of being the most complete heathen tradition around, even by standards of the ancient world. So one of the key objectives of the Hindu revival is to not just stop the slide towards the end of heathenism but actually revert it on a global scale [Footnote 4].

The second point is Plethon’s global vision of knowledge, which united the tradition of ritual along with that of mathematics, and the sciences. This was seen among the Neo-Platonists and is parallel to the Hindu vision of knowledge, where all shastra-s exist in continuity within a “shAstra-puruSha”. While this spirit declined in bhArata during the struggle with the marUnmatta-s, it still existed in pockets, like in the school of mAdhava and nIlakaNTha somayAjin among the naMbUthiri-s. It was also the vision of the great Hindu intellectuals like sAyaNa and vedAnta deshika during the Hindu recovery from the Islamic whirlwind [South Indian brAhmaNa-s even bore this vision to the overrun north as illustrated by the Sanskrit literary activity in the realm of the TakarAja-s http://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/20 ... akaraja-s/]. But today it is nearly dead – the death of this continuity in knowledge and ritual practice could very well mark the end of the heathen civilization, for this is the most important mark of their intellectual superiority over the unmAda-s. It is here that the western amnesia of Plethon, with which we initiated this section becomes clear. This is despite the fact that both the reintroduction of Greek knowledge and the inspiration for key renaissance figures trace back to Plethon. One major connection in this regard is the family of the businessman/banker Cosimo de Medici who was a major admirer/patron of Plethon and gave him a forum for the exposition of Greek thought. It was under the aegis of this forum provided by the Medici clan that Leonardo, several other artists and later Galileo [who dedicated his Sidereus Nuncius to member of the clan] received patronage. Indeed, it offered an enclave were free-thought at least partly shielded from the wrath of the shavamata. This patronage of both the sciences and the arts was in no small part due the original vision of Plethon regarding the unity of knowledge as seen in the heathen tradition of the Hellenes. However, in the ensuing years what we saw was the rise of arts and sciences but not the unity of knowledge with heathenism as a part of it. Instead, we saw the simultaneous strengthening of the pretamata and its further development into more virulent forms (e.g. as exemplified by the preta cult promulgated by the German Luther).

This resulted in two apparently contradictory paths that have characterized the mlechCha world ever since. First, the followers of the shavamata quickly realized that Plethon was introducing something really dangerous to their foundations: indeed, he has himself remarked to a pretAcharin that both the religions of love and peace would soon be replaced by heathenism, like that of the Hellenes. At the same time they saw that the attractive feature of Plethon’s thought was the knowledge which it brought along on scientific and mathematical topics: this is apparent from both their and the Moslems’ acknowledgment (even with tinge of admiration, despite loathing for his heathenism) of the extensive knowledge of Plethon. Thus, they realized that the best thing for the shavamata would be to absorb this knowledge and recast it inside an Abrahamistic framework while throwing out the heathenism propounded by Plethon. Ironically, this happened right in the academy of the Medici’s which was inspired by Plethon wherein his descendents in the preceptorial line like Bessarion and Argyropoulos tried to work his ideas into the pretamata. This is comparable to the earlier appropriation of heathen material by the pretamata during the period of the fall of the Roman empire. On the whole what happened was that the pretamata was not diluted, but it simply digested the alien ideas and incorporated them into its corpus. The second trajectory taken by the pretAcharin-s which at the face of it seems opposed to the first was a violent rejection of the natural and mathematical knowledge. Right in the vicinity of the Medicis it was seen in the form of the burning of paintings by the preta revivalists and eventually the internment of Galileo. Elsewhere, it manifested as a violent opposition to science, best exemplified by Martin Luther’s statement on Copernicus:
“There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must needs invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth.”
However, the “pratyakSha” of science kept repeatedly hammering on the “pramANa” of the pretapustaka, with the final blow coming much closer to our times with the publication of the evolutionary theory by Darwin. One would have thought that this blow the pretamata would have no leg to stand on. However, even that did not eradicate the pretamata. Rather, the two apparently contradictory trajectories continued to coexist in the mlechCha world with the strengthening a concept called the separation of the secular from the sacral. This offered an opportunity for the pretamata to not just survive but even expand by pushing both its rapine secularized version that continued to engulf heathen civilizations in the name of various secular constructs and its unadulterated evangelistic form. This aspect is indeed seen by the imposition of the same kind dialog on heathen civilizations like our own wherein we are forced to cut up knowledge by separating secular from sacral [One might look up this earlier note in this regard]. This is followed by a trivialization of our sacral structures making it easy for the pretamata [or for that matter the rAkShasa-mata] to fill up the ensuing vacuum.

Epilog
We were lazing on the rim of a tank with a great tower in a university with Mn, ekanetra and ST. Mn remarked that he has great admiration for some mlechCha scientists and bloggers, who not only wrote on science but also such a wide range of “general issues” including social, artistic and cultural ones. He then showed us some samples of their writings on his smart phone and remarked that most of us bhArata-s are so narrow-gauge in our focus on science or technology. Should we not be inspired by these scientists/bloggers and emulate them in presenting a broader intellectual vision to include social and cultural issues rather than just science. Here, we must point out that even though ancestors of all four of us (including some common ones) were agnichit-s, the smoke from whose altars rose to the high antarikSha, Mn was one who had deliberately expunged this knowledge from his head. He had so soaked up the ways of his occidental teachers that he recently declared that he felt about the same affinity for Sanskrit as he felt for Urdu or Latin, and in any case it was way below what he felt for French, German or English. Given all of this, it was not a big surprise to the rest of us that his range of “general issues” were purely those defined by what the occidental professors allowed to be a part of the broader discourse [Note they feel certain matters are largely out of bounds http://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/20 ... ligiosity/]. The acceptance of this “spectrum of transmission” defined by them is verily one of the signs of the end of the intellectual tradition of heathenism in the west and the presence of the heavy hand of its enemies in the subcontinent. A man of brAhmaNa descent had forgotten that in bhArata we always respected the sarva-shAstra-vit and did not place boundaries in our acquisition of knowledge.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Footnote 1: Gemistos Plethon->Bessarion->Argyropoulos (and others of the revived Neoplatonic school)->Leonardo da Vinci

Footnote 2: The Corybantes are also mentioned by Plato as participating in an ecstatic dance as part of the retinue of Rhea. Rhea is an ortholog of the Indo-Aryan goddess aditI. It is possible that the fleetingly alluded yati-s in RV 10.72.7 in the company of aditI are cognates of the Corybantes. Plethon placed great importance on the teachings of the Corybantes in the ancient temple of Zeus as one of the original teachings of the pan-heathen tradition.

Footnote 3: Indeed the earliest surviving expression of this is seen in the mantra of gR^itsamada shaunahotra:
tisro bhUmIr dhArayan trInr uta dyUn trINi vratA vidathe antar eShAm |
R^itenAdityA mahi vo mahitvaM tad aryaman varuNa mitra chAru || (RV 2.27.8)

They uphold there earths and the three heavens; triadic are their functions in the assembly [of deva-s]. The might of the Aditya-s seen in the form of the R^ita, pleasing is that might of yours, aryaman, varuNa, and mitra.

Footnote 4: One could say that we are in a state of weakness, but let us not forget the wisdom of one our heroes in the struggle against Islam, the founder of the mahArATTa empire, who called for strikes deep in the Moslem territories even as they were prosecuting the Jihad with much violence in his own land. That is what brings victory.

http://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/20 ... -heathens/
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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Some information about Plethon:
Hanegraaff on Plethon: "The Pagan cat was out of the box." (An Inconvenient Pagan, Part Two)
.
"Nothing less than a revival of Hellenistic Paganism in deliberate opposition to Christianity"
.
The Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy recently (2009) celebrated it's 10th Anniversary, which was marked, among other ways, by the publication of the anthology Hermes in the Academy: Ten Years' of Study of Western Esotericism at the University of Amsterdam. In this post I take a look at Wouter Hanegraaff's contribution to that volume, on the subject of "The Pagan Who Came From the East: George Gemistos Plethon and Platonic Orientalism".

Here is an excerpt:
"Back in Mistra [after the Council of Florence], Plethon wrote his major philosophical synthesis, the Nomoi (Laws), which seems to have been made accessible only to the select membership of his intimate circle of pupils. When Plethon's manuscript turned up in possession of Princess Theodora in c. 1460-1465, his enemy Scholarius (now Patriarch [Gennadios] of Constantinople) had most of it burned and ordered the destruction of any surviving copies on pain of excommunication. Scholarius himself, however, preserved those parts he felt he needed to buck up his accusations against his former teacher. In the surviving opening chapters of the work, the Platonic orientalist perspective is developed in some detail, beginning with an introduction of the major ancient 'lawgivers and sages' who came after Zoroaster: Eumolpus (founder of the Eleusinian mysteries), Minos (the Cretan lawgiver), Lycurgus (the Spartan lawgiver), Iphitus (the reviver of the Olympian Games) and Numa (who had instituted religious laws among the Romans). Plethon continues by stating that the Indian Brahmins and the magi are to be preferred among barbarians, and the kouretes among the Greeks; and he finishes with a further list of authorities, including the priests at the oracle of Dodona, 'inspired men' like Polyides, Tiresias, Chiron and the Seven Sages, and finally Pythagoras, Plato and other philosophers belonging to thei school, notably 'Parmenides, Timaeus, Plutarch, Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus.' .... Plethon is explicit in opposing his list of 'lawgivers and philosophers' as a positive category against its negative counterpart, consisting of 'poets and sophists.' This latter turns out to be a code for the founders of revealed religions, and Christianity in particular."
[p. 39]
A little further on, Hanegraaff states bluntly of Plethon's intentions: "the conclusion cannot be avoided: what he had in mind was nothing less than a revival of Hellenistic paganism in deliberate opposition to Christianity." To drive this point home, Hanegraaff quotes from George of Trebizond's recollection of what had transpired in Florence:
"I myself heard him at Florence ... asserting that in a few more years the whole world would accept one and the same religion with one mind, one intelligence, one teaching. And when I asked him 'Christ's or Muhammad's?' he said, 'Neither; but it will not differ much from paganism.' I was so shocked by these words that I hated him ever after and feared him like a poisonous viper, and I could no longer bear to see or hear him. I heard, too, from a number of Greeks who escaped here from the Peloponnese that he openly said before he died ... that not many years after his death Mohammad and Christ would collapse and the truth would shine through every region of the globe."

[p. 40]

Hanegraaff also states that viewing Plethon as unambiguously Pagan is not some peculiar theory of his own:
"There is almost universal agreement among specialists about the fact that Plethon was indeed a 'neo-pagan' opponent of Christianity (although he obviously had to conceal this, since preaching his views openly would have been a capital offense in Byzantium)."
[pp. 40-41]

...

http://egregores.blogspot.ca/2011/03/ha ... s-out.html
A lot more can be found at:

http://egregores.blogspot.ca/search?q=plethon

http://egregores.blogspot.ca/2011/03/be ... athen.html

http://egregores.blogspot.ca/2009/08/cm ... r-and.html

Link to download a PDF version of Woodhouse's book on Plethon:

http://ebook3000.com/George-Gemistos-Pl ... 64407.html
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by svinayak »

ravi_g wrote:Bhai,

Bongs and Biharis used to call all women, Maa/Mai till recently. Gujjus have Ben/Bhai in their names. All these appellations meant something. They still do but are sought to be burried under a lot of plastic.

Going topless is not about sexual freedom as it is made out to be. It is about functional relationships.

If people treat the women folk with respect then the question of bawdy joking and cribing against the rise of womenfolk, does not arise.

But if the men folk have their minds raped by some unknown, unacknowledged, unrecognised thing. Then pretty soon the vocabulary of the cross-over generation begins to match that of the foreigners and eventually it call comes round in the works as MC/BC stuff thrown at the unsuspecting poorer folk.
The social engineering due to western norms and western media in the globalization drive is changing Indian traditions. This can be easily handled by making the people aware and changing the Indian media and Indian education.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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A very severe attack upon Christianity by Professor Inoue Tetsujiro.1893!
13/06/2011

Early in the year a very severe attack was made upon Christianity by Professor Inoue Tetsujiro of the Imperial University. He wrote an article that appeared simultaneously in six Buddhist and one Unitarian magazine.

For a while it became the subject of controversy in all religious periodicals and to some extent in the secular papers. It was hailed with the greatest joy by Buddhists, and the ablest Christian writers busied themselves in replying to its charges. The following extracts from a synopsis given in the Japan Mail will show the spirit of the article:

“At the issuance of the Imperial Rescript, only Christians were opposed to it Buddhists, Confucianists, and Shintoists accepted it The Christians made defense that they did not oppose the Rescript but only its worship. This, however, was a mere pretense. Christians do not like the meaning of the Imperial words; they oppose loyalty and filial obedience, the ancient principles of ethics in Japan. Why? Some Christians are of course loyal and teach the Rescript in their churches, but they are not supported by the conservative faithful. Christians are divided into two classes; one class seeking to preserve their doctrine, which is hostile to Japan, the other trying to Japanize their Christianity in spite of the impossibility of doing so. In a word, Christianity is not adaptable to Japan. If it were, why should it be necessary to try to adapt it to the country? Christians do not worship any other than their one only God. Monotheism is like an absolute monarchy. It denies all other gods but it’s one. Polytheism is like a confederation of states; toleration of one with another prevails. Buddhism, which is polytheistic, has therefore had a warm and gentle history, but the history of Christianity has been intolerant and warlike. In Shinto also there are many gods; all Emperors are regarded as divine. Japanese ethics are the teachings left by the Emperors. Our nationality rests on this foundation. . . . Worship of the Emperor’s words is nothing difficult to a patriot. Christians have lost their patriotism unconsciously. They wonder at the patriotic devotion of others. They antagonize the present moral passion, and will violate the order and destroy the unity of the country. . . . The essence of the Imperial Rescript and Christianity are different. If the former is to guide national education, Christians must oppose it. If there are Christians who accept it, they either simply acquiesce and wait, or, if sincere, they have changed their relation to Christianity. The two powers, the Rescript and Christianity are not in harmony.”

Professor Inoue adduced several instances where Japanese Christians were alleged to have shown disrespect to the Rescript or to the Emperor’s picture. By quotations from Christ’s words and by references to European history he endeavored to show that Christianity is destructive of patriotism. He closed by asserting that as Christ Himself had said, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation” therefore the reception of Christianity would involve national destruction.

It will be seen that this attack, like those of twenty- five years before, was based upon the idea that Christianity is opposed to the principles of loyalty and filial piety. The replies of the Christians contained indignant denials that they were lacking in love for country and Emperor, or in readiness to follow the moral teaching laid down in the Rescript. Doubtless the charge laid against them led them to be more earnest in displaying their patriotism, and the morbid nationalism thus fostered increased the friction between them and the foreign missionaries.

http://historyofchristianityinjapan.wor ... jiro-1893/
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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The Real Vikings

http://www.history.com/shows/vikings/vi ... free=false
"We've always represented the Vikings as the other, because their history was written by Christian monks, who wrote propaganda about the Vikings -- how violent they were, how terrifying, how awful their gods were," Hirst tells Zap2it, who has shown his yen for history with "Elizabeth" and "The Tudors." "We've taken on board that propaganda, because it's never really been challenged. What interested me was to go into the Viking world picture, into their gods, into their religion, their rituals. As the season goes on, you understand where the gods came from, you understand the attraction of the pagan worldview and the pagan gods. It's interesting for, let's say, a North American, largely Christian audience for the first time to be presented the pagan worldview that they overthrew, that they replaced, and what it meant. Intellectually and emotionally, it's an interesting ride."

http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox ... eover.html
Found the following interesting too. The only monotheist cult in the show is rightly presented as promoting religious fanaticism & the show makers explicitly mention it here:

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