Margaret Sutherland: Emperor Haute Couture
Canada Entering a Cultural Dark Age
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Render Unto Harper
We have a nasty bit of business afoot here in Canada, and that nasty bit of business strides the country under the name Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party and current Prime Minister of Canada.
Domed Cities and the Troglodyte Mentality
Some time ago, I posted some thoughts on the future techno-topias of “domed cities”. Recently, a WordPress blogger has posted some further illustrations on the theme of domed cities of the future. We still retain many features of our troglodyte origins.
The Protestant Work Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism
The Protestant work ethic once specified that “the faithful of the true faith” should dedicate their work to God and God’s purpose. In some ways, it resembles the fifth element of the Buddhist Eightfold Path, right livelihood.
But, as Nietzsche noted, God died, and so also did the Sponsor and therewith the foundations of the Protestant work ethic. Today, it lurks about like a zombie — merely a ghost and shadow of its original meaning. Today, one does not dedicate one’s work to God and God’s purposes for creation. Instead, one sacrifices oneself to Work, and without understanding why. Even workaholism, economism, and productivism have their roots in a decayed morality of the fallen — from morality into moralism.
It’s an example of how once vital principles decay over time into devitalised and unconscious ones, becoming mere ideology, slavishly obeyed and suffered like the devil’s whip upon the back.
Windows of the Soul
Anders Behring Breivik, AFP/Ghetty Images
Looking at this photograph of Anders Behring Breivik in The Montreal Gazette this morning — with his dead, soulless eyes bearing testimony to his own description of how he deliberately went about making himself inhuman, orc-like, the very picture of nihilism — I was reminded of a song by the Canadian folk rock band Spirit of the West called “Pin-up Boy”
A Prophecy
You “Beautiful Souls” with your beautiful ways
And beautiful delusions…
Will learn the truths of Ugliness too
Some terrible day.
Towards Social Renewal
Over the last couple of days, I’ve been reading Rudolf Steiner’s book Basic Issues of the Social Question. Published in 1919, it was written just after the calamity of the First World War, and that catastrophe weighs heavy upon it. That is the same year in which W.B. Yeats’ penned his ominous poem The Second Coming.
