#6142 - 03/21/08 11:59 PM
Re: Books of the Left Hand Path
[Re: Fist]
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LUCIFERIFIC
active member
Registered: 02/01/08
Posts: 629
Loc: CA
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These are excellent books and authors. May I add Robert Anton Wilson; and the old school humanist cats like David Hume... maybe even J.R. "Bob" Dobbs to the mix?
I like Rand and her "Objectivism."
She's a bit of a nut thoe. Most women in the book writing business or philosophical arena don't fair as well as she does. If so we'd have more female prophets and religious figure head.
I suspect she's either a hermaphrodite like Joan of Arc was or she has this Enlarged Left Brain Syndrom... or she's just real butch like Melissa Ethridge is. Either way I've given her the coveted Honorary Man Award for her accomplishments. And you can't accuse me of being sexist either, because I am her gender kindred. A sell out to my gender maybe, but not sexist.
I also think she misnamed or misunderstood her own philosophy by calling it "Objectivism."
""Reality is 10 percent Objective, and 90 percent Subjective."" Robert Anton Wilson.
Let me share with you why I think Objectivism is wrongly named and instead should be called "Subjectivism."
By "Objective" I understand it to mean uninterpreted tangible things as they are before the human mind takes it and conceptualizes it subjectively with his thinking and reasoning process.
For example the Sun. Objectively its just a Sun- a round thing in the sky that shines and is hot. Thats it. Everything else we know about it (the other 90 percent) or believe it to be, comes from a subjective process of thinking, reasoning, and observation. You can't observe, conceive, or ponder on Objective Reality without first sticking it into your subjective mind to use your subjective ideas, opinions, and intuition to add gravy to it or understand it.
If Objectivism praises and puts objective reality on a divine pedastool, than Objectivism is missing out on the other 90 percent of reality... and that is weak.
Thankfully Anton LaVey balanced this imbalance with Niezsche's Existentialism. I know some people will argue and say that Nietzsche wasn't an Existentialist, but many consider him to be the father of it.
In my opinion the two don't even mix right. In my mind Objectivism says: "hey, look at things objectively with reason, thats really important, because thats what makes humankind different from animals." Whereas Existentialism says: "Who gives a shit? We Exist and thats all that matters, enjoy it while its last and don't spend your time interpreting shit."
Thats just my two cents on Rand.
~Kayla
Edited by LUCIFERIFIC (03/22/08 12:02 AM)
_________________________
Lux Ex Tenebris
Lux Lucet Ex Orientis
~~352~~
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#6169 - 03/22/08 02:41 AM
Re: Books of the Left Hand Path
[Re: LUCIFERIFIC]
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Meq
Banned
active member
Registered: 08/28/07
Posts: 861
Loc: UK
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For existentialism, check out 'The Outsider' by Albert Camus and 'Nausea' by Jean-Paul Sartre. A stark contrast to the religious RHP...
If it's ancient philosophy you're after, forget about Plato.
Take a look at Epicurus - his individualistic, balanced hedonism, and materialistic worldview very close to full-blown Atheism, make Epicureanism quite interesting for the modern Satanist (though naturally, Nietzsche wasn't keen on all its teachings). The Sophists were also interesting (and in some ways a forerunner of postmodern relativism), as were the Cynics and Stoics.
Most modern philosophy has its roots in Hellenism - for example, there are strong Stoic and Epicurean threads in David Hume's philosophy (in addition to its throwback to the Greek Sceptics).
In terms of the LHP/RHP distinction, it can be said that the RHP is characterised by a focus on the collective, morality, altruism and dogma; while the LHP is characterised by individualism, autonomy and freethought.
Taoism seems the most LHP-like of Eastern philosophies (although its western cousins such as Epicureanism and the Sophists are more individualistic).
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#9932 - 06/30/08 01:10 AM
Re: Books of the Left Hand Path
[Re: ZephyrGirl]
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Sinthesis
stranger
Registered: 06/27/08
Posts: 40
Loc: various places in New Jersey
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Nice reading list Fist. I wanted to second all of that Nietzsche and Machiavelli. I think I have read just about half of your list and indeed benefited from it greatly.
I think I had posted this on some other thread (apologies) but heregoes anyway:
"Human, All-Too-Human" by Nietzsche (contains most of his ideas in prototype, wonderfully sarcastic about human foibles)
"Demian" by Hermann Hesse (will take you down with it)
"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley (self again all, existence of rejection, science triumphant over nature, rebellion against creator)
"The Sea Wolf" by Jack London (working-class ubermensch vs. intellectual softie, finding a balance between the two)
Some excellent applied psychology...
"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
"Getting Past No" by William Ury
I don't value political heresy for its own sake - I'd rather my political ideas become more standard and prominent, so we could actually put them into practice, but anyway...
"Lenin: Building the Party" by Tony Cliff
aka "how-to manual for revolution and all types of political faction fighting," I'd say it rivals The Prince in its instructiveness
"Catechism of a Revolutionist" by Sergei Nechaev
"God and the State" by Mikhail Bakunin
(the last two are easily available online)
"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn
the finest subverted of the official American narrative
"The Gendered Society" by Michael Kimmel
a fine subverter, possibly, of your own identity
_________________________
accept the darkness in your self
make war against everything else
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#9937 - 06/30/08 08:20 AM
Re: Books of the Left Hand Path
[Re: Sinthesis]
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Fist
active member
Registered: 08/31/07
Posts: 1007
Loc: B'mo Cautious MF
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"Lenin: Building the Party" by Tony Cliff
aka "how-to manual for revolution and all types of political faction fighting," I'd say it rivals The Prince in its instructiveness
This assumes a traveller of the LHP has a use for building a political party of the communist model. Given that the whole body of communist thought seeks to subvert the individual through state mandated white light RHP programs, the LHP practitioner has little need for it. "The Prince" seeks to aid the individual in consolidating his own personal power.
"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn
the finest subverted of the official American narrative
In some circles we call this 'revisionist history.' A worthless book for America hating leftists who lack the intellectual honesty to actually move to a true 'workers paradise' like Cuba, China, or North Korea.
"The Gendered Society" by Michael Kimmel
a fine subverter, possibly, of your own identity
Again, more leftist nonsense. One of the great victories of the now defunct USSR is that it did succeed in subverting American culture and infiltrating the Academy. This clap-trap has emasculated much of West, has led to the destruction of traditional families, and caused a backlash in the form a new sort of nihilism and misogyny that seem to be the new pop-culture norm.
The world seems to be full of vandals and hooligans who justify their crimes by calling them 'revolutionary.'
_________________________
I am the Devil and I am here to do the Devil's work.
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#9946 - 06/30/08 01:56 PM
Re: Books of the Left Hand Path
[Re: Fist]
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Sinthesis
stranger
Registered: 06/27/08
Posts: 40
Loc: various places in New Jersey
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I wouldn't really argue over book recommendations, Fist, but you challenged if they even fit the category of LHP itself. I will try to demonstrate that they might be useful for LHPers.
(1) Building the Party
I'm surprised you turn your nose up at Building the Party so quickly. The Marxist/Leninist tradition which wrote that book is informed by Machiavelli himself. Marx called Machiavelli one of the giants of the Enlightenment. Even if you don't agree with the ends of a Leninist party, you might pick up something from its methods. Marx and Lenin sat around reading Karl Von Clausewitz, the military scientist. I've read plenty about the Nazi rise to power, not to achieve fascism but to see if there were any tactical successes I could pick up.
As I posted in the ONA thread, do not confuse socialism and Stalinism. Yes, Stalinists crush individuality, which I see as inseparable from collective working-class confidence and consciousness - at least for workers.
The working class, though consisting of individuals, can be spoken of collectively. For the worker, the only path to self-expansion and personal development must necessarily be in cooperation with other workers, against owners - either that or they can have rich uncles who buy them out of wage-slavery. I have no such luck. Marx called for "an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." Isn't the Marxist call to turn the working class into a self-conscious class, a class for-itself, the epitome of the left hand path? It reminds me of the Temple of Set's idea of xeper, "I have come into being." Marxism is trying to accomplish just that on a global scale, for the whole human population.
Sorry, Fist. The right wing does not have a monopoly on libertarian populist sentiments. Sometimes I feel like people use the word "individualist" when all they really mean is "independent and assertive." Those traits can also describe collective working class activity, and not to the detriments of the individuals in that movement, but aiding their *personal* expansion.
(2) People's History
You call it revisionist history. I call most history taught in American public schools somewhat revisionist.
To quote the first chapter of the book itself, whose author I had the pleasure to have dinner with:
"It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth...
My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis...but the historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideogical; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual."
He goes on to explain that he chooses to that most public school history focuses on a "few great men," lots of war, and lots of America, whereas history can be told - not distorting anything - instead with an emphasis on working class and oppressed struggle.
Again, Cuba, China, North Korea, none of these interest me, except as one more state to see overthrown. They are places in which power is out of the hands of the working class. They call themselves Marxist in order to better control people, much in the way that the USA calls itself the center of the free world to better control people. I am staying right here and focusing my efforts in the USA, because if the USA goes socialist it will be able to support working-class revolt the world over, a position that Russia was not in from 1917 to 1927.
(3) The Gendered Society
To hell with the traditional family. In Latin as used in Rome, "famulus" meant domestic slave, and "familia" meant the collective slaves that a man owned, and his women and biological offspring were lumped into that category, since they were seen as property as well. The head of the family also had the power of life and death over his property - or, his family - or...jee, family and property were the same thing.
Isn't that the greatest travesty against all instincts to freedom? Freedom being the defining characteristic of the LHP to me. How much more RHP can you get than family? Freedom is demonic, dangerous, and uncontrollable. It is naturally disruptive and toxic to traditional structures - and it creates new and better ones.
As far as the modern day, I do not care whatsoever about a unit of economic dependence. Children should be able to associate with whomever they choose and not be trapped and stifled within one miniscule set of influences called their family. It takes a whole village to raise a child, and the development of the nuclear family can be seen as the mirror of privatization (externalize all social problems and responsibilities onto isolated individuals) within the domestic sphere. We already have public schools, which place all children in one institutionalized center. Why not just go all the way and recognize that life itself in any modern society functions according to institutionalized centers, and use these for mass distribution and liberation (there's no such thing as a free hungry person) instead of keeping people in check?
I am that very leftist infiltrating the Academy that all the McCarthyists have their panties in a wad about.
Edited by Sinthesis (06/30/08 02:10 PM)
_________________________
accept the darkness in your self
make war against everything else
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