Brett suggested (over Facebook) I post about something painful I am currently going through that is prompting a lot of even more painful self-examination. Whilst I don't think Corrupt is ready to handle my pre-menstrual, explosive, female levels of sensitivity, I found it interesting that he suggested "pain is a gateway drug to transcendence."

I flirted with ascetic interpretations of Eastern philosophy, more specifically, those featured in the Tao Te Ching or Bhagavad Gita. For those of you unfamiliar, general principles present in many Eastern philosophies seem to dictate that attachment cultivates pain and pleasure. In the Indian tradition, ridding yourself of attachment means also that you have to un-identify with your worldly ego in favour of the absolute soul. My interpretation of the Tao suggests that merely being mindful is the route to transcendence. Mindfulness is a hyper-awareness of things occurring in the moment.

How you choose to approach transcendence is often the mark of distinction between varying philosophies, though I would favour mindfulness and being-in-the-world as philosophically and personally a more important developmental experience over the aim of completely purging both pain and pleasure from your existence.

The latter can often lead to philosophical idealism, and radical ascetic practices that reject the world. The former is a more healthy way of being in the world, and moreover, accepting the world as real.

Having done mindfulness training as part of a therapeutic process, there are practical effects to be reaped by having the pain pass through you in a kind of metacognitive awareness. I favour this over a type of yoga previously practiced - the name escapes me - involving prolonging certain bodily positions, until they become painful, and then painless.

Ridding yourself of pain also means ridding yourself of pleasure, and I think recognizing ourselves as fallible, fundamentally human, creatures bear a lot more rewards in this world. Being mindful is subtle transcendence. Subtletly, letting yourself experience pain, and even pleasure, can sometimes be a much more challenging experience than isolating yourself from it.

I've written before about not being a "typical Conservative." However, I must further vulnerably express that anyone in a similar age and station in their life, i.e. accruing debt, unemployed, and pursuing formal education, would be an idiot or a perfect altruist not to vote for public education and health care. Ironically, it's just naked self-interest, which is how the political system practically functions - socialist, liberal, conservative or fascist.

I've been meaning to confront these contradictions in my philosophy for some time now: marrying my fondness for traditional, eternal values with the modern, selfish creature that I am. I feel trapped in the transition between classical Conservative values, and the wonders of liberal progressivism: by traditional standards I'm a Jezebel, by Western standards I'm practically chaste.

Not being tied to religion, something Alex's latest post ever-so-lightly touched upon, or culture (my ethnic, national, and civil affiliations are all incongruent), leaves me groping in foreign, untreaded territory when it comes to protecting my heritage, or values. For me, it will always be heritage in general and values that are secular, and philosophical, which will always appear hollow to those that have been cultivated in myth for centuries.

Those who reside in a similar vacuum identify more easily with liberalism, and though it's more effort, thinking and deliberating like a true philosopher should, you should eventually come to the conclusion that it's more worthwhile to stand for something rather than nothing. There is such a thing as culture without a nation, and so to, there is such a thing as secular morality. It's possible not to buy into the perpetual stream of constructed bullshit, whilst protecting your vision of the Good, and come out a better person for it in the end.

I've had the unhappy privilege of being exposed to a lot of anti-pornography, radical feminist propagandizing of late, which has cemented my belief that most women cannot acknowledge their true natures (a la Camille Paglia). I suggest reading Roissy to dissect all the pretty little lies feminism has tried to cultivate into mainstream consciousness.

What I'm really trying to get at, is that the feminist goal is fruitless. It aims for a gender neutral society, insofar as the ends meet a manufactured definition of a politically correct utopia. De-construct that! The very last thing women really want is gender neutrality: they want men to be traditionally men, just like men don't desire the en vogue concept of the androgynous woman.

Corroding the institution of marriage, coupled with unchecked hypergamous instincts, have made women unhappy. The truth is hard, cold, and corroborated. Meanwhile, we have a whole substratum of men who are sexually frustrated and unable to marry, versus a small minority of men who are loosely sleeping around and unwilling to marry.

The facts are neatly laid out; the very nucleus of society, the family, is crumbling (if not crumbled), while liberals hollowly cheer their progressivist call.

Nietzsche was the first philosopher to teach me that there is no inherent escape from the prison of false consciousness by practicing philosophy. In fact, very often philosophizing reconfirms our servility to false consciousness by reacting to it. Reactivity is weak.

From now on, my philosophical gentlemen, let us protect ourselves better from the dangerous old conceptual fantasy which posits a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of cognition”; let’s guard ourselves against the tentacles of such contradictory ideas as “pure reason,” “absolute spirituality,” “knowledge in itself”—those things which demand that we think of an eye which simply cannot be imagined, an eye which is to have no direction at all, in which the active and interpretative forces are supposed to stop or be absent—the very things through which seeing first becomes seeing something. Hence, these things always demand from the eye something conceptually absurd and incomprehensible. -- Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

Seeking objective truth is a variation of the fantasy concerning the Christian-religious ideal of purity. It rejects humanity, and constructs a beyond-human realm. It is a life-denying activity -- as all you Nietzscheans should know. But, I don't think Nietzsche would call himself a philosopher if there was no value in it.

The most important thing in philosophy is first eliminating your perspective, and then constructing it whole again after being humbled over and over - especially by Kant. Be open to discourse, but don't construct your ideas from authorities telling you how you should think, or you will never know why you think what you do, the way you do. Know that you know nothing: Platonic lesson number one. Then acknowledge everybody else knows exactly as much as you - nothing.

This is at once an exercise in humiliation and empowerment. Embrace the power you have with your mind. It is amazing. Evola conquered mountains. It evoked the power of self-transcendence. We may not have access to the heavens, or objective knowledge, or whatever you want to call it, but we have access to ourself and this is where philosophy should always return to.

Someone criticizingly mentioned that Corrupt was "anti-nerd" in the comments section. This seems to a point of recurring misinterpretation: generally taken as an espousal of empty machismo. Based on my cursory understanding of Corrupt's take on "nerd culture," I have to venture that it comes under attack for being a perfect demonstration of deflecting individual responsibility -- a continuing consequence of liberalism.

Nerds, to me - and this just might be a semantic point - in addition to being intellectual, bask in their social victimhood status. I study on a campus of 60 000 people who mostly identify as nerds. They all have a quest to be different and they wear their social defects as a badge of pride. Being socially isolated, or awkward, is no longer a mark of distinction when 59 999 other people suffer from the same issues.

Being a nerd isn't even a form of social rebellion so much as it is a form of social acceptance. It is a perverse source of happiness only found in relation to society at large. If nerds were able to re-structure the world as they saw fit, a world where sitting in basements and playing computer games all day were the societal norm (even though I would argue it already is), they would invent new ways to further differentiate themselves, more cripples to rely upon as a personality crutch.

The few intellectuals here in Toronto who seem to be well-adjusted, happy individuals - and I suspect elsewhere also - are often accused of being intellectual populists, as if their happiness was a bad thing. I fail to understand why perpetuating, or worse yet, creating, social weakness is positive. It certainly is not inherent to being intellectual, which I think is an important form of personal development!

Note that being socially awkward is often used as a funny replacement for being actually intelligent. It's as if playing particular computer games, wearing certain clothing brands, enjoying certain technologies are substitutions for the essence of being a nerd -- being smart.

If addictions are pathological, why aren't there more or equal cases of people getting addicted to things that don't feel as good as say, sex, alcohol, smoking, food, etc.? Why don't more people get addicted to health food over junk food? Why don't more people get addicted to non-sexual behaviours over sexual behaviours? Because many addictions are just liberal sterilizations of poor or indulgent character.

Liberalism actively seeks excuses for individual responsibility in order to justify large bureaucracy. If I desired to cheat on my boyfriend, I could claim I was addicted to sex. Moreover, if I wanted to indulge my appetites as much possible, I could claim to be addicted to food -- only fatty food, of course. Naturally, he would be expected to forgive me for either offense because, by definition, addictions deflects responsibility from the subject.

I don't see why it is necessary to attach psychobabble to every person with character flaws. It is important to accept that humans will act in fallible ways, without seeking ways to sanitize normal behaviours, otherwise we just grow to hate ourselves. We develop pathologies as a result of this self-hatred.

Man will always fuck, eat & sleep as natural conditions of his person, no matter how much we develop as a civilization.

What bothers me as a philosophy specialist is that too many non-philosophers read Nietzsche, thinking they've struck gold without sitting down to properly digest his ideas in context. For one, Nietzsche isn't a systematic philosopher and therefore people read him like literature. Then, unfortunately, because those readers have never been trained to read philosophically, fail to connect his problems with the solutions that can be found in complementary philosophers!

This is a pity, because one of the reasons I love Nietzsche is his essential connectedness to thinkers like Jung, Freud, or Heidegger. When someone thinks of the illness of society, particularly the problems associated with the ascetic ideal and the current ramifications of liberalism, the immediate conclusion is an active brand of nihilism.

But, the Hegelian interpretation of history tells us that there is a missing link between the ascetic ideal and the historical transition to active nihilism. A reading of Freud would indicate the same shift from pre-modern, psychically whole times versus the era of bad conscience, heralded by the advent of Christianity.

Jung would say that the shift is inherently psychic. Something psychic in us must have changed to mark the shift between tribalism and modernity -- whatever that means.

This is just another variation of Hegel vs. Marx on dialectic. Our society is ill, it is not denied, but the solution remains unclear, and will probably continue to remain a very hazy possibility until man has evolved psychologically.

The Canadian Supreme Court ruled that obese people should be entitled to another seat on the plane for free! Air travel in North America is obscenely (obesely) expensive as it is, and so many cutbacks have been made that airliners are usually so compact that a regular sized person barely has enough leg room within their own seats.

This is yet another example of chucking individual responsibility out the window in the name of blind equalism. If you have made yourself so horrifically fat that you can no longer contain yourself in one seat, perhaps you should swim across the Atlantic as opposed to flying.

Islam and feminism - in seeming opposition - are arguably the two most dominant threats to the modern world. I've discussed the irrational and inchoate basis of feminism previously, and the dangers that feminism holds to the state and society has been discussed on numerous occasions. What really needs to be raised in the contentious threat of Islam.

Those who crusade against liberalism often align themselves with Islam in the mistaken view that they are allied, but I would argue that those who crusade against liberalism still hope for a kind of modernism. The fundamentalist Islamic resurgence we are experiencing today is a clinging to a vestigial past as the developing Muslim world is being forced to confront modernity.

And in seeming contradiction, liberals also come to the defense and aid of Muslims who they perceive as a persecuted group. Accusations that paint Islam as a violent, anti-liberal, anti-modern religion are completely ignored at the expense of whitewashing the religion into something that is compatible with liberal society.

I think there are many problems with liberalism, mainly the fact that it is a self-undermining philosophy that allows opposing groups to flourish in the hopes that they stay a minority (like Muslim Conservatism). But, I don't want to join a blanket crusade against it if it also means sacrificing modernism.

I'm guessing that the majority of people that oppose liberalism outside of the Muslim world do not want to live in Islamist theocracies. I'm also guessing they don't want to live in a hyper-inclusive world of pretty lies that rid our society of an ugly exploration of the truth. There needs to be some middle ground. I think liberalism is a confused perspectivism, and I think many positive aspects of contemporary society can be salvaged. But, please, not at the expense of true progressivism itself.

High culture cannot exist in conjunction with capitalism, as I bear witness to every day in Toronto. This holds especially true in countries like Canada and America, where our nationalism is really just barely held together by legal documents. There is no persisting history of which to speak. Feasibly, if the connection between England was fostered more closely throughout the past couple of centuries, we might have developed some subsidiary traditions of which to boast. But really, there can be nothing outside of capitalism to fill the void of arts, tradition & culture.

We are already witnessing the dissolution of national authenticity in the old world as American hegemony finds its footing, as all that is left in Europe, Asia, arguably Africa, are mere vestiges of once rich traditions.

I hate to be a sentimentalist about this, or a knee-jerk social liberal mindlessly touting the wonders of Europeanism, but the truth is as long as money and profits are the baseline of policy, government, and society, the arts will always be seen as superfluous. What we have left of music, theatre, and television are base productions of what the masses enjoy mindlessly consuming.

This is a very Marxist perspective, but even if a cultural niche were allocated in a capitalist society, it would be so influenced by the dominant ideology of immediate gratification, high arts would have no way to develop itself. The question then becomes: can capitalism co-exist with Romantic (real, rich) culture?

An opera is not the same as a pop-song. A pop song is a catchy riff that will stay with us for a few weeks. It is unmoving. It is something that offers us immediate enjoyment.. A well-produced opera is something we have to look deep within ourselves, our psyche, to connect with.

Undiluted capitalism will only bring forth a great technological civilization devoid of the wealth of Romantic tradition, diversity of language and perspective, and a visceral link with our psyche. Nationalism does serve as a source of value in contemporary society.

Despite my appearance on this medium, I’m generally reluctant to share my pseudo-political, philosophical views with anyone who rests outside of my discipline. Most people are trained to argue, not engage in meaningful discourse, which entails actual re-examination and potential reformation of one’s views. In short, emotivist appeals are often the most effective, and I find the most effective way of arguing with the average person is to present an emotivist perspective on reason (irony noted).

A socialist I know openly espouses employing fashionable issues to reach more people. Populism is intellectually unsound, and sadly the only way to effectively garner attention for your cause or idea. Socialism is sexy because people in their late teens and twenties work low-income jobs and only see piles of debts in the form of tuition; the feeling of unfairness and exploitation permeates them. The yearning for the adolescent urge to rebel is manifested only in a slightly more sophisticated manner politically. Socialism is ironically a selfish philosophy, and something I largely consider a four-year temper tantrum through university.

How is cultivating discourse then possible? What hope is there for humanity if not every man is not capable of philosophy? Does the solution lie in Platonism or in Nietzsche’s perspectivism? I hope to develop my voice on Corrupt by further exploring these questions, in my quest to make meaningful discourse possible en masse.