… To understand all this you have to be willing to see there is no known way to stop the social mutilation positive science leaves in its wake. Society must forcibly be adapted to accept its own continuing disintegration as a natural and inevitable thing, and taught to recognize its own resistance as a form of pathology to be expunged. Once an economic system becomes dependent on positive science, it can’t allow any form of education to take root which might interrupt the constant accumulation of observations which produce the next scientific advance.
In simple terms, what ordinary people call religious truth, liberty, free will, family values, the idea that life is not centrally about consumption or good physical health or getting rich—all these have to be strangled in the cause of progress. What inures the positivistic soul to the agony it inflicts on others is its righteous certainty that these bad times will pass. Evolution will breed out of existence unfortunates who can’t tolerate this discipline.
This is the sacred narrative of modernity, its substitute for the message of the Nazarene. History will end in Chautauqua. School is a means to this end.
This passage is key to how I see “society” and am odds with it, in my beliefs of education, family life, God, Agrarianism, etc. It’s troublesome to have to actually see someone else write what I know deep inside already, that it’s ineveitable, that my views are underdog and won’t surface in my lifetime as majority view of population (though I hold HOPE out that they can be, will be) I cannot accept the forced down my throat junk from “them” that it’s all downhill for me and upward for “progress” … inevitability is there, sure, but I don’t accept it, I don’t and won’t.
I’ve had talks with people about Isaiah’s prophetic passages and Agrarianism and the future and they can’t see what I’m talking about, can’t see past “progress” –and this Gatto passage is great fuel for me, therefore, in understanding the side of people which I have impossibly tried to pass on a vision of Agrarian lovelyness to, NOT a utopia, just a better way to live, just a village living, de-centralized government, farming celebrated, natural things in use, “progress” and “science” put in their proper places, “efficiency” only a tool to be used at the right time –not the “end all” of everything, and so on. A true progress in man, man truly gaining perspective of this Earth we live on Under God’s watchful eyes, it sounds utopian, but ain’t … it’s the far outlook of man connecting in graciousness to the Earth and each other under God, and seeing what is valuable to the soul and mind and body, not perverting anything to gain power over others. A pipe dream many would call it. That’s not my way of seeing it though, I see things going on at some point, getting past this roadblock life we currently have. In my lifetime, nah, in some future generation, sure.
So we strive to do what we can in this age … rhetoric is key. I’m working on ideas for writing more about this and connecting things, in a book, maybe. Not just what this blog post is about … but all of life and how different learning and education and intellect are from schooling … and how society is structured and how it all relates to us with an Old-Time Patriot outlook, home educating our children, worshipping God, living differently from most others, and so on.
This is something to understand as well: people like me don’t abhor technology, just Technology, we don’t abhor progress, just Progress, we don’t abhor science, just Science. Capiche?
We have computers and television in our home. We watch movies and listen to all sorts of music digitally. Some people think this is wrong if we say we are “agrarians” … this is a prejudicial view and what must be dismantled through some critical work of complexity, that which I am attempting to put together. I’ve had these ideas for years and am gathering, gathering, gathering, and getting ready to start actually acting on it instead of just “thinking” about it and “talking” about and “writing blog and message board posts” about it. I mean, by “acting on it” to begin writing things for a “book” to put together and publish somehow. Our voices are important in history. We should shout out the truth.
Positivism? — I like the highs and lows, pain and suffering — it’s what makes feeling good and things going well actually MEAN SOMETHING for the human. Positivism is embued through so much, and I can see how it frustrated my family and made a mess of them (the one I was born into) and why I’ve rebelled against it so heavily. 🙂
I don’t write this sort of stuff on this blog much. I think about it nearly all the time though. I used to have a site I planned to write about Agrarian stuff on, but ditched the idea when I just never got myself to dissect my family self from the actual information in my head. Of course I can’t dissect it away. I do have another website that is dormant basically right now, where I had planned to be moreso my ‘family self’ but find that though I wish to dissect my self from my family self and such, I just can’t. And so it goes.
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