Interesting theory.

But mostly it’s really just Jews doing their usual Jew-thing of working to undermine and destroy the West, out of imaginary self-serving grievances and edited context (viz Oy! Nazis existed but somehow without Bolsheviks first) stemming from an imaginary self-serving fake history (the real Tevye was not a farmer, he was a tax-farmer, which changes cause and effect). The other thing is sheer spite: whites created a magnificent culture, civilization, and oh yeah, ALL of science, while Jews created only mountains of racist, hate-filled religious arcana and ingenious methods of swindling — so tear it all down!

There are two major impetus-centers for Modernism and abstraction: one came from the world of artists themselves (an increasing sense that it was time to try something new, so we go from Impressionism –> Cubism –> Ab-Ex –> Pop –> PoMo); the other was plain old Jewish spite, which sought to grab hold of abstraction and ugliness as ways to cut off Western man from the historical and religious themes which had traditionally been the subject matter of Western art. An old-fashioned building might have a classical figurative sculpture of some historical figure in the plaza; the new glass-and-steel box has a blob of steel goo in the plaza, creating a rupture and a disconnect between Whites and their history, religion, and culture.

And there was much hand-rubbing.

“What is the upper class socialist really doing? He is gaining power by collaborating with the working class against the interests of his own social class, in a context in which there is abundant evidence that social classes are substantially genetic castes. What are elite White people in Britain’s Labour Party doing? They are collaborating with working class Whites and foreigners in order to dominate the elite class of which they are a part.

How does this relate to Art and Architecture? I’m sure it’s clear by now. The traditional purpose of both was, in part, to create beauty. Beauty inspires people; beauty makes people feel good (feel transcendent, even). Beauty is symmetrical, it is about order, it aims to inspire the group with a sense of the sacred and the eternal.”

Classical portraiture and landscape painting, and some forms of sculpture, were sometimes performed solely by individual members of the upper class or individual artists of exceptional talent. However, in many cases classical paintings and sculpture not only involved a master artist (who himself may have been unrecognized and impoverished during his lifetime), but also a coterie of assistants and apprentices who remain anonymous, were paid poorly, and were effectively “working class”.

The brilliant achievements of classical architecture and other forms of art besides painting relied on the contributions of countless skilled artisans, craftsmen, stone-cutters, masons, carpenters, joiners, glaziers, smiths, glassblowers, metalworkers, ironworkers–and frankly, even loggers, miners, millworkers, common laborers, scribes (manuscripts), seamstresses, and textile workers (tapestries). The unequalled achievements of western civilization’s classical art, architecture, and even music (musical instruments don’t make themselves) are things of beauty that the overwhelming majority of the working class value and helped to create.

Britain’s Labour Party and its idealogical counterparts in other western countries have nothing but contempt for “working class Whites”. It is unfair to paint the latter as “collaborators” in the degradation of modern art and architecture.

I’ve worked thru several Edward Dutton books. His analysis takes up where Jung-Freud’s analysis leaves off. Jung-Freud dissects how bad things are and how ‘irrational’ our behavior is but leaves us wondering why. Dutton shows the the source of our behaviors in evolution and why the motivations are so irresistible. We are genetically compelled to do what we do. This knowledges gives us some hope for improving ourselves.

I find Dutton’s books useful and informative but, maybe, somewhat repetitive. I skim over the parts where I’ve already ‘gotten the idea’ and move on to the next section. Dutton’s books are always worth the money and time spent on them.

I especially liked his ‘Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West’. I read all the sections twice. Highly risable for a seriously unfunny subject.

Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.

~William Morris

Beauty, which is what is meant by art, using the word in its widest sense, is, I contend, no mere accident to human life, which people can take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity of life.

~William Morris

If i were asked to say what is at once the most important production of Art and the thing most to be longed for, I should answer, A beautiful House.

~William Morris

Gothic Fire Breathing Dragon

Water Baptism on bottom and Fire on top.

Door Knocker

~knock it it shall be opened to you

~my private collection

“This destruction of tradition creates dysphoria, it confuses people, it creates a sense of instability; a lack of order. It is in this chaos that the Machiavellian — and liberals are individualistic and thus power-hungry — can take over”

Inferno (Dante)

To put it in a nutshell, angels are beautiful and demons are ugly.
One major contributing factor to this race to the bottom zeitgeist of the day is the shear size of cities and states today. When you are just one of countless millions it is hard to have a clear and strong sense of identity that results in creating beauty and meaning. This desperation expresses itself in modern art and subconsciously appeals to the masses too.

Agreed.
The current manifestation of what you say above would be the exquisite, hand-built masterpiece of a Rolls-Royce. Assembled with pride by dozens of highly skilled craftsmen whose quest is perfection.

You:
Humans are “pack animals,” which means they must fight for the survival and triumph of their group, but, in the polygamous mating systems to which we are evolved, only the highest status males pass on their genes.

Really, Ed ? Where’s the evidence for this ?

You:
As I have explored in my book Breeding the Human Herd: Eugenics, Dysgenics and the Future of the Species, among the hunter-gatherer Bushmen of southern Africa only 40% of males have any children at all, while in seventeenth century England the richer 50% of males had about double the number of surviving offspring compared to the poorer 50% of males.

So it’s not the highest status males at all. It’s 40% of Bushmen. Then you say something very ambiguous about 17th Century England. How many many men actually married ( no details supplied ) and what criteria were used to define whether a man was affluent or not? ( no details supplied )

Memo to Dr Ed: Stop acting as a travelling salesman for evolutionary psychology and treat your audience as adults. Present the evidence.

Very well put. Excellent. If only I could be so eloquent.

Evolutionary psychology is a scientific theory, its adherents claim. Certainly, evidence can be adduced in its support. But, like all such theories, contrary evidence and counter arguments must be dealt with. And, of course, it may ultimately be disproven. In which case, the theory will have to be abandoned or drastically altered. Such is the nature of the scientific method.

Unfortunately, Dutton, all too often, acts like an ideologue, not a scientist. Ideology attempts to explain all possible outcomes and evade any possible attempts at disproof. Where it can be disproven, it will alter its claims, often denying that it has, into a form that cannot be disproven. For example, Marxists originally claimed that state bureaucrats acted in the interests of capitalists….until, of course, they didn’t. This was because of the “relative autonomy of the bureaucracy.,” they later claimed. I shouldn’t have to tell you that this is not a scientific theory. Something that claims to explain everything, all outcomes, explains nothing.

To make matters worse, Dutton can often act like a very sloppy ideologue. As I wrote in #12, he claimed that only the highest status men passed on their genes. He then cites evidence – Bushmen, 17th C Englishmen – which completely contradicts his claim. 40-50% of the adult male population does not equate to highest status males. And yet we are not meant to see this obvious contradiction.

As I explore in Breeding the Human Herd, liberals are also, on average, shorter, physically weaker, less physically attractive and more anxious and otherwise mentally unstable than conservatives.

Being a rightist (or far-right conspiracy theorist, in New York Times-speak), I guess I should be flattered. But this generalization is questionable. Are woke movie stars “shorter, physically weaker, less physically attractive”? (Granted, “anxious” and “mentally unstable” often apply to them, and movie stars are hardly on-average specimens.)

Sympathetic as I am to Dutton’s scorn for modern art and architecture, it’s a stretch to claim their bad design is down to the genetics of the elite, which has not varied much over time. Pre-2oth century, though, ideals of beauty and good taste prevailed. More to the point, with moderns it’s just plain old corruption of taste.

The Toronto art museum, isn’t it? I visited a few years ago and found the new, “explosion” addition shockingly ugly. On its own the Nightmare Wing is detestable enough, but to have it threatening to engulf the earlier building is clearly a fuck-you message to upholders of tradition. It signifies the degeneration of our cultural mandarins who approved the design.

I should add that the inside exhibits are attractively displayed.

I’d think twice before knocking on that door.

~movie stars are more likely to LIE for filthy lucre, after all acting is a form of deception!

Edward Dutton

“liberals are also, on average, shorter, physically weaker, less physically attractive and more anxious and otherwise mentally unstable than conservatives. In a sense, they are bad, unsuccessful hunter gatherers. So, how do you gain status if you are such a person?You can’t have a fair fight because you will be paranoid that you will lose, and you probably will. Accordingly, you “virtue signal”: You appeal to the conservative society – which is genuinely concerned about equality and harm – and attain status by seeming very kind. You also collaborate with outsiders. Being low in in-group loyalty and low in disgust, it has been found that the liberal moral circle – those with whom they identify – is further from self, in genetic terms. Conservatives are concerned with people in a series of concentric circles. In general, they prefer family to kin, kin to ethny, ethny to race and so forth.”

There are so many things wrong with these 2 paragraphs right here. Of course, the author is a conservative, so the bias is real and understandable.

First, regarding liberals being less attractive: have you ever been to a Trump rally and seen what those people look like? The fried twinky crowd is not exactly made of a bunch of lookers. Secondly, Angelina Jolie, Margot Robbie, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, Michelle Pfeifer, Meghan Fox and most other Hollywood actresses are Libs. Among the men: Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, and Keanu Reeves are all huge Libs as well. I see no evidence that liberals are less attractiv

Regarding liberals being shorter, I don’t know about that. I know that Holland is one of the most liberal countries in the World, and the Dutch are the tallest people on Earth. The same can be said about Swedes.

Also, the author does not pointout the incontrovertible fact that liberals are wealthier and more educated than conservatives, and that liberal cities and liberal states are wealthier, and more technologically advanced than copnservaive states.

“Blue” states are the minority of states, and yet they concentrate most of the country’s GDP, and pretty much all the best universities. *all8 of America’s Ivy League universities are located in “blue” states.

Here’s a bunch of fun facts for the author of this article: conservatives are not smart, or empathetic, or creative, fun and interesting in any way. There is a reason why academia and high culture is dominated by liberals and progressives.

Regarding conservative “morality”(or lack thereof) being based on concentric circles of loyalty. Well, thaks for admitting that conservative morality is inferior to liberal morality. It is inferior because it is more biased, less inclusive, and less fair(less meritocratic) than conservative morality. Liberals are *humanistic* and put empathy, love and consideration for the actual person above disgusting considerations such as “race” or nationality(arbitrary juridical and geographical( construct.

Conservatives are not only devoid of empathy and a sense of fairness, thjey are also unintelligent, intellectually incurious dullards. Conservatives also have enlarged amygdalas, and are more fearful than liberals. The fact that theya re dullards, combined with their low empathy and lack of intellectual curiosity explains why conservatives are mostly found among the poor, stupid and uneduated.

The author can bestow as much flattery as he wants on conservatives, but the *fact* is that “Red”(conservative) states are the poorest in the nation, the least scientifically advanced. Not only that, but white conservatives also have higher rates of alcoholism and opiate abuse compared to white liberals.

You can cry all you want, but almost every white gentile person that has power, influence, is eduated and belongs to the professional and educated classes tends to be a liberal or progressive. The few that are “conservative” tend to be old-style Republicans that are actually pretty liberal and secular on social issues(supporting suffrage, racial equality, etc).

Where are these three horrors?

The good news is they will be easy to dismantle and thus sold directly for scrap.

Agree. (I’m all out of buttons right now)

‘…Here’s a bunch of fun facts for the author of this article: conservatives are not smart, or empathetic, or creative, fun and interesting in any way. There is a reason why academia and high culture is dominated by liberals and progressives…’

Meh. If you want someone who is empathic in principle, pick a progressive. If you want someone who will stop and see what’s wrong if your car is broken down, get thee to a red state. This, I have seen repeatedly.

I’ll also note that while progressives are totally intolerant of dissent, conservatives can usually handle the idea that you disagree with them. These days, it is the ‘conservatives’ who are relatively open intellectually, and the progressives who are not.

This one’s actually visually interesting.

Usually, what I find jarring are successive buildings, each built without reference to the one next door. Of course I don’t like serried rows of modernist skyscrapers either, or ostentatiously modern houses — but then, there’s nothing wonderful about monotonous rows of Victoriana either. Moreover, I don’t think we should be confined to endlessly replicating the past. If that were the standard, we’d still be stuck with Ziggurats and Mayan pyramids.

Some variety and interplay is good; things need to relate to each other rather than be totally alien or exactly the same. There should indeed be innovation — that relates to the past.

Your example’s a bit much — but I can’t say I really object.

Reminder that individualism and harm avoidance are highly misleading words.

Individualism in fact refers to anti-hierarchical narcissism. Harm avoidance is short-termism.

Narcissists atomize because getting along requires hierarchy. If eight guys live in a house together, someone has to decide what the rules of the house are, lest it dissolve into intolerable chaos. Probably the decider is the guy with the power to enforce the rules. Narcissists can’t stand not being the guy at the top, so any given eight narcissists will instead choose eight single-occupancy dwellings. (Regardless of the additional costs and lost benefits. And still manage to get on each other’s nerves in an attempt to assert dominance.) Full atomization.

It should strike you that harm avoidance is always avoidance of short-term harm, regardless of the cost in long-term harm or in wide-scope harm. Naturally the atomized narcissist doesn’t care about anyone but themselves. It seems they also don’t care about future versions of themselves. Hence e.g. weightlifting is racist, because it causes short term “pain.” If you point out that ice cream and tendies is perhaps not an ideal dinner, they’ll say, “What’s the harm?” Well…about that….
Avoiding harm simpliciter is by definition a good thing – if you don’t avoid harm, you, you know, come to harm. If it’s not harmful, then it’s not [harm], yeah?

This has been an example of how it is impossible to make value-neutral science. A clear and straightforward description of the phenomenon will essentially always have social meaning and social consequences. Only by twisted the words into pure Satanic oblivion can you even partly mimic a value-neutral description. E.g. every word for “stupid” ends up being a slur, because being stupid is bad. Moron, idiot, retard – all originally supposed to be value neutral. A ludicrous project.

This one’s actually visually interesting.

Not how I’d describe it (or have, in this thread — see reply no. 15), but “interesting” is a weasel word when used in connection with aesthetics. A car crash is interesting in the literal sense: you look at it with great interest as you drive by. The same for a glimpse of a tarantula or tornado or shrunken head. It’s like when a so-called artist displays a life-size sculpture of St. Paul peeing in a urinal, and defends it with words on the order of, “Nobody passes it by indifferently. It gets a reaction, as all art should!”

Usually, what I find jarring are successive buildings, each built without reference to the one next door.

But it’s okay when parts of the same building clash with one another?

Moreover, I don’t think we should be confined to endlessly replicating the past.

I don’t think modern architecture should be confined to endlessly replicating other modern architecture.

Where is this monstrosity?

“This destruction of tradition creates dysphoria, it confuses people, it creates a sense of instability; a lack of order. It is in this chaos that the Machiavellian — and liberals are individualistic and thus power-hungry — can take over”

Inferno (Dante)

The abuse of Machiavelli really must stop.

Ananda Ji may or may not understand the irony in recognizing a reference to Dante: Niccolò Machiavelli was a master of the literature of Machiavelli and carried The Divine Comedy wherever he went. Machiavelli despised the Roman Catholic hierarchy of his time; his ‘religion’ was Dante-based.

Video Link

CORRECTION:

“Niccolò Machiavelli was a master of the literature of Machiavelli ” should be

“Niccolò Machiavelli was a master of the literature of Dante.”

Maurizio Viroli is a master of the life and thought of Niccolò Machiavelli.

I acknowledge that this essay is about evolutionary psychology and how it influences architecture, such that much present-day architecture is chaotic and psychologically disorienting, by design.

But the PoliSci 101 regurgitation of concepts about Machiavelli suggest that writers, even on Occidental Observer, are part of the problem. Machiavelli, properly understood beyond an F-function search, has more to suggest by way of cause and solution to today’s problems.

Consider this statement, from ~25 min. into Viroli’s lecture, after having explained that it was often the case that evil men succeeded whereas good men did not; therefore Machiavelli spent far more time writing about Being Good; Leaders who WERE good; and the like.
Even in the face of this disparity — between the success of the evil vs those of the Good, Machiavelli wrote in Discourses::

it is the duty of a good man to teach others the good that you could not work because of the malignity of the times and of fortune, so that when many are capable of it, someone of them more loved by heaven may be able to work it.” Machiavelli, Discourses Book II, Preface