Another thought provoking presentation from the Thoughts on Thinking podcast. “The human body is
What is Truth? The Romans referred to it as VERITAS and it was within the roman mythology and their religion that VERITAS gave birth to a son called: Virtus, meaning; Virtue, The God Virtus was deemed and looked up to as an extremely significant figure because Virtus signified and held all the elements which would establish the makings of a successful ‘Vir’ (Man) in ancient Rome, and in so doing; find the path to truth and/or VERITAS.
Valor, virility, excellence, courage, character and worth; these were the attributes of Virtus and that being the ONLY POSSIBLE PATH to VERITAS. Something often found within the deep most meaningful mythology is this idea of finding ones inner strength to face the unknown, for a boy to become a man. This is seen in the lost initiation ceremonies of ancient tribal cultures, whereby the boy has to face up to the masked men of beast and monster at the age of his early teens, this is to find the Virtue within and to use the trauma that is been inflicted upon him as a reversed form of weaponised energy for courage and to seek the truth, when he does this the men then place the mask upon the boy whereby he now becomes a man himself.
We don’t have these ritual ceremonies anymore but we do have the wise mythology behind VERITAS and Virtus, the simple relationship between these two Gods give us one of the most meaningful messages possible; that to reach the Truth, to reach and discover VERITAS, one needs to BECOME Virtus, one needs to embody the characteristics of Virtus to make the unknown known, to reveal the truth of the world one needs to face it with virtue, ambition and courage, that is how a warrior is to know and discover the truth of the world, by asserting their will to power to discover the Truth, this is why the God Virtus is paired and with Honos; the God of Honour, that through the attainment of Virtus you are then respected with Honour.
This virility within the God of Virtus makes you honourable and respected, turns your into a respectable and worthy Vir and is that which is moral and good in the eyes of the Romans. Hence, the writing of Nietzsche that; “Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior”, for if the truth is wise then truth is the goddess of Veritas.
This is why the romans were so successful and why they could develop such a powerful empire that expanded for miles, because their understanding of Truth was much more grounded in reality and competent then any other, one which was based on physical ability, will, instinct and virtue which commanded the development of understanding and difference, to revealing what a weak boy and a strong man actually is, there was no strict degree of intellectualism or rationalisation within the understanding of truth or attaining truth, there was no hyperbolic language of fancy philosophy or metaphysical/theological ideology.
It is this philosophy of life towards VERITAS THROUGH Virtus that is so desperately needed today within intellectualism and everyday life because it squeezes out all the silly over rationalisations, ideology and intellectual fantasy that is developed by sick neurotic people that find it impossible to live through their own body, to have a good nutrition, to have strong physical integrity, whereby intellectualism becomes increasingly detached from the body and centred into the realm of utopianism as a method of coping, to try and make an intellectual utopianism which is seperated from reality which holds decorated language all in a unconscious effort to run away from the body and to hide from their own weakness, you see this everywhere; you see it in the universities with modern critical theory, you see it in the media, you see it in newly created law and you see it being demanded by the technocrats as a false way out from modern existential human suffering, that the utopia of digital singularity away from the body will be our straight path to heavenly bliss… But again, just like over rationalisation and hyper-intellectualism; it is a neurotic misunderstanding of the Truth, of veritas itself, it is an attempt in moralising that the digital singularity would be a good thing to do, it is some kind of neo-Christian (or more so Gnostic) perspective on truth; that it is a good thing to avoid the living body and to instead escape through some sort of digital, gnostic transcendence and that it is immoral to live through the body with ambition, courage and will.
One true form of evil we all know well is deception, an undoing of loyalty and trust, those who believe that it is moral to negate the body and despise it for intellectualism or technocratic desires are the deceivers of our truth and it is these people who WE ALLOW to run OUR world, to be in OUR governments, to even be the deceiving, fat, unhealthy slobs of philistine which we call health ministers and the neurotic ideological fools which command and run the idiotic education systems who desire to teach our children complete utter crap.
Democracy was a good idea from the Greeks when the people would be educated properly as it was a two way system of trust and good will, but when the people are not educated properly democracy becomes dangerous, it is so easy to deceive people who are poorly educated whereby the virtues which we use to recognise a good leader dissolves, whereby values of what is VERITAS and virtuous become unknown, it becomes a reality whereby the populace either never learn or completely forget to understand what is right for their own people and themselves.
What is the point of a democracy, you may ask; when the society itself doesn’t care to aid the function of teaching people HOW TO THINK? Democracy will then develop into a futility and in so doing will stop to exist as practical for society because of the cultures impotence and mediocrity to not care anymore, to not know or be taught how to care to begin with.
The reason for this inability to teach people how to think is down to the consistent obsession of teaching people WHAT TO THINK, their own ideas of over-rationalised fantasy, neurotic intellectualism as fact, as what you should think, ways in which you should see the world, with people walking about referring to themselves as an extension of someone else’s ideology and idea, we people are stuck in our own heads and we have developed a long lived disability for reading books as a coping mechanism for our own misery, as a coping mechanism to escape ourselves from fear, by trapping ourselves inside a pretty palace of books and theory.
Many a reason why Ludwig Klages wrote:
“A man who cannot climb a tree will boast of never falling out of one”
In other words, a person who cannot step up to the plate of life will most likely start detesting life itself and start making illusory rationalisations to support their distaste towards virtue, make Virtus their enemy when deep inside their soul they cry for inner courage.
What good were all the BIG philosophical intellectuals of the past 200-300 years? very few have any value at all because most of them are just left-hemispheric chatter boxes that don’t offer any practical value to life for any regular person today. if we were to have such intelligent thinkers of enlightenment and philosophy in the 18th and 19th and 20th century why are we in the mess we are today? there works on the whole have done nothing more for us moderns then to further entrench ourselves into left-hemispheric, psychotic rationalism and jargon juggling with the intent of dismissing reality and the VERITAS found through the physical world and body.