Tag: revolution

Antigone, rebellious and intimate (6/7. The vocation)

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So many stories about identity! The word does not appear in Greek epic or tragedy. Identity at the time of Antigone is based on lineage and belonging to a city. Identity was impregnated with rootedness. The family and the city brought together under a virtual banner all of what the other was to know about himself during a first meeting. During antiquity, no one proclaimed his identity or promulgated it, and no one decided on his identity. It wasn't about putting on a costume. Men depended on their identity. Identity was like a charge, we had to be worthy of it. It established being and becoming. The modern era has made it an issue, because it has transformed identity into having, a sort of asset which one can dress up or discard. In its modern fantasy of believing that we can choose everything all the time, the modern era has relentlessly replaced being with having. Yet this logic, this ideology has its limits: some things cannot be acquired, among them: otherness. Living one's identity, being what one is, inhabiting one's name , allowing intimacy and therefore knowledge and deepening of one's being, these are the sine qua non conditions for an encounter with the other. The first difference between Creon and Antigone is located in this precise place, the ground on which the fight is built, Antigone preserves anchored in her this gift of the elders, of the gods, this rootedness which defines the authority to which she leans for stand up to this man, his relative, the king, who espouses the will to power and finds himself blinded by it to the point of hearing only his own voice, its echo. Continue reading “Antigone, rebellious and intimate (6/7. The vocation)” →

Antigone, rebellious and intimate (3/7. Destiny)

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3rd part: destiny

The man comes down from the tree. Man, like the tree, is defined both by its roots and by its fruits. Man, like the tree, depends on external and internal elements to reach maturity. Man resembles this trunk sculpted by hardship, leaning on its roots and bearing more or less beautiful, more or less good fruit… The resemblances between the plant world and man are endless. From the water that nourishes the roots, to the sun watering the fruits, to the oxygen exuded by the leaves, all this life that rushes in and circulates reminds us in an irremissible way of the human condition. The tree is a metaphor for the family. From the seedling to the fruits and leaves, a metaphor for the history of man and the family develops. Which evil fairies presided over the birth of the Labdacides family from which Antigone descends? Any fine conscience these days would see it as a calamity and a pathological explanation for Antigone's decisions. How does this little Antigone become this heroic fruit by being born on a trunk so full of stigmata and bruises? Destiny blows and guides this family in an uninterrupted and obtuse way and, suddenly, Antigone frees herself from this straitjacket, frees her whole family from this straitjacket, she undoes the straitjacket, and completes the dismissal of destiny. What a miracle! From a distance, clinging to their branch, two leaves always seem identical, yet you just have to approach to see how much they differ. Continue reading “Antigone, rebellious and intimate (3/7. Destiny)” →

Antigone, rebellious and intimate (2/7. The funeral)

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Part 2: The funeral

“ My dear Ismene. I come this morning to tell you that I took care of everything. I took the same undertakers for our two brothers. I couldn't choose and since our brothers didn't leave any last wishes, I took matters into my own hands to get it sorted out as soon as possible. I still ordered embalming so that they are presentable. If you want to go see them, they'll be ready around 3 p.m. You do not have to. Well, if you can take ten minutes, that might be fine. It may be better to keep an image of them happy, children for example. I took the same urn model for both. A priest will come to the funeral home and give a short speech before the cremation. I ordered him to come to the funeral home. You see, I took care of everything. Eteocles will be buried in the cemetery which is located about thirty minutes from Thebes by taking the national. For Polynice, it is more complicated with the law of our uncle, Creon. I decided to scatter his ashes on the battlefield as the king does not want him buried. Makes sense, right? Tell me what you think, I'm not stopped on this point. This portrait of Antigone living in the 21st century delivering the remains of her brothers to the funeral director summarizes the rite of funerals today. The family has since the Industrial Revolution been rendered unproductive. Funerals are no longer part of the family tradition. The modern world is reassured by using the formula make sense , as the translation of the Anglo-Saxon expression is heard today, and as it is so comforting to repeat it to oneself without it really having any… sense, because what what are these mini-senses found on the ground almost by chance, what are these skin-deep that invite themselves in almost without our being there for nothing, if not the residues of a past sense, a common sense, a good sense sculpted by the centuries? Through the destruction of the family, transmission between generations is lacking, the meaning of our actions is lost, so we have to invent meaning, create meaning, we have to give ourselves the illusion of still living, of not not have totally given up. Deceit is backed up by ignorance, and on this point too, trickery is not new. The meaning given by death within the family, this meaning almost completely forgotten nowadays, is recalled by Antigone in Sophocles' play where she stands as a guardian of the values ​​that liberate, because they protect man from death. 'animal. Antigone reaffirms what man can and cannot; it takes hold of a force destined to protect us from our will to power and to teach us the time of responsibility; a time nowadays entrusted to specialists replacing the family, the people who compose it and the tenuous links woven between them over time.

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News from Hyppolite Taine

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He is a pedant, the pedant is the hollow and inflated mind which, because it is full of words, believes itself to be full of ideas, enjoys its sentences and deceives itself in order to dictate to others. He is a hypocrite who thinks he is sincere, a Cain who takes himself for Abel.

 

In this shrunken brain, given over to abstraction, and accustomed to herding men into two categories under opposite labels, whoever is not with him in the right compartment is against him in the wrong one, and in the wrong compartment between the rebels of all flags and rogues of all will, intelligence is natural. […] Every aristocrat is corrupt and every corrupt man is an aristocrat.

 

The left which is born with the Revolution displays a totalitarianism which, if it is sometimes hidden, is not less always present; it rests on the hatred of what does not think like it.

Hyppolite Taine in his Origins of Contemporary France described Robespierre in this way. But if instead of Robespierre, we put Hollande, Valls, or even worse Taubira, this portrait would fit them like a glove. Especially since pedant is masculine and feminine, he thus places everyone on an equal footing, this notion so dear to these… pedantic.

Antigone, rebellious and intimate (1/7. The family)

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1st part: the family

From the first reading of Antigone, an ambiguity settles in the mind of the reader. Does Antigone embody action or reaction? What moves Antigone? The reaction never exists by itself whereas the action needs no one, it legitimizes itself in the act. Action always inaugurates something. Contrary to what is often said or believed, Antigone does not wait for Creon to be Antigone. Like Electra for revenge, Nausicaa for hospitality, Penelope for fidelity, Antigone embodies duty. It is action, because it serves: it is accomplished in duty. It is accomplished in servitude (are we pretending to forget that servitude means “to be a slave”?). Contrary to what is often said or believed, Antigone is never an individual. She never stands alone. If the law of Creon pushes it to action, and if this one can seem a reaction, it is only on the surface, by simple chronology.

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Simone de Beauvoir on human life

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“To declare that life is absurd is to say that it will never have meaning. To say that it is ambiguous is to decide that its meaning is never fixed, that it must always be won.*”

Tremendous declaration of impotence draped in an expression of the will to power or how envy must regulate, rule life. This sentence is of course a revolutionary manifesto. Simone de Beauvoir defines the class struggle and all the actions of the left since the French Revolution: envy as an act of faith. Envy is always the daughter of immanence. Simone de Beauvoir tells us: “God is dead, let us now know that we are masters of our lives and that they are fulfilled in action. By acting in this way Simone de Beauvoir ignores religion but also ancient philosophy, she affirms that permanent struggle is the only way. This permanent struggle is maintained by envy; envy has this unstoppable force, it feeds on its defeats as well as its victories. It is the evil force par excellence. She faces life.

Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy of life is adulescent, as Tony Anatrella would say, and in fact it is a negation of life because it denies its quality and its thickness in order to resolve it into a permanent and pathetic struggle.

We also see the form of modernism. This action immediately becomes a negation of the inner life. Or rather it wants to be a replacement for the inner life because it is common to hear, by a spectacular reversal of meaning, that action is the inner life of the militant. We also understand that this declaration in no way wishes to find a solution, appeasement would be its end. She only delights in noise and violence.

*An Ethics of Ambiguity.

The death of intimacy

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Everywhere, on the Internet, in newspapers or on television, personal experience is displayed, exhibited and intended to be a reference. This indecency is based on an inversion of values. It is based above all and everywhere on the idea of ​​the same. The idea of ​​the same thinks: “I lived that, my experience reflects a universal feeling. I mean what I experienced. I pose as an essential witness”. This is to confuse the universal with the general. What is forgotten, misunderstood, is the difference that resides between each man; and each man is unique. Not singular by his sexual orientations or by his manias, but intrinsically. This is an old new concept at the beginning of the 21st century. By his experience, by his culture and by his nature, each man shows a facet of Man, and each facet is unique. Create in the image of God . Now it is impossible for us, except by looking at men and considering them as all singular, to embrace God. Forgetting God leads to the same thing. Everyone goes there with their nursery rhyme which, even if it can tell the tragedy of an existence, is only a nursery rhyme because it does not even begin to tell the tragedy of Man.

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A short history of Envy, from hero to scapegoat

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4The modern world keeps presenting us with scapegoats. Lance Armstrong, Richard Millet, Jérôme Kerviel, John Galliano, to name but a few, each in a field, with completely different causes and reasons, have recently embodied the scapegoat, the justly punished culprit, the impediment in a circle put back in its place. The scapegoat is linked to egalitarianism, itself linked to envy. From hero to scapegoat, only the desire does not change. The modern world has the spectacle in its blood, the scapegoat has a cathartic function there.

In the era of modern democracy, everything goes through Twitter or Facebook. The real information is there. Not being there is tantamount to disappearing, to maintaining a life in the shadows, a shadowy life. On social networks, the height of modern democracy is allowed: rub shoulders with the idol, live with the idol, to the rhythm of the idol, knowing everything about her, seeing her when she gets out of bed, embracing good evening; only tactile contact is missing. This proximity transforms the role of the idol that has always been known, it changes it forever. If the idol were a simple statuette, it would not speak, it would not respond, it would only occupy the place left to it, it would gather on its effigy all the mental images that the brain can produce. The modern world does not know the mental image, it is beyond fantasy. He hates what is hidden, let alone what is secret. Hence the often-used phrase: fantasy come true. The fantasy - phantasmata , the mental image for the ancient Greek - cannot be, must not be, a reality. Otherwise horror awaits. Otherwise we can only pray while waiting for everything to return to its place. There is a possible wildness in rubbing shoulders with the idol too closely. Through this proximity, the modern world has undertaken to create a cathartic lever to control consciences. The idol can be a hero or a scapegoat, it can serve the society of the spectacle and its soft dictatorship. It also allows you to fill in boxes: hero, scapegoat, fallen, condemned, victim... A sheet of cigarette paper separates these qualifiers. Against a background of moralism, society shows its cards and distributes the good or bad points. All areas are affected, but some are more “popular” than others. The scapegoat allows you to get a makeover, to deceive, or to affirm your responsibility and your incorruptibility. But no one should be fooled by such schemes. The society of the spectacle is a simulacrum of society based on intrusion, indecency and denunciation.

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Notes on History of Catholicism

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Notes from Histoire du catholicisme by Jean-Pierre Moisset (chapter 9: The shock of modernity (mid-18th century — 1870).
p 394. The ritual of touching the scrofula at the end of the coronation, still practiced, is losing its credibility. Symptomatically, the formula for imposition, the formula for laying on of hands is changing. She was “the king touches you, God heals you”; it becomes “the king touches you, God heals you”. Another sign of the distancing of old certainties and the emergence of a new relationship with authority is found in the spread of contraceptive practices from the middle of the 18th century, still in France.

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Notes on the French Revolution

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Most of the quotations concerning the French Revolution given in this article come from the book “ Historically correct ” by Jean Sévillia.

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Solzhenitsyn: “Men not being endowed with the same capacities, if they are free, they will not be equal, and if they are equal, it is because they are not free. »

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There is a revolutionary idea of ​​permanent invention that still persists today. It is an idea which is also contained in the idea of ​​Progress. That everything remains to be invented. René Guénon said: “There are no new ideas on earth. “

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Robespierre: “If Louis can be the subject of a trial, he can always be absolved; he may be innocent: what am I saying? He is presumed to be so until he is judged; but if Louis can be presumed innocent, what becomes of the Revolution? »

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Westermann at the Convention: “There is no more Vendée: it is dead under our free sword. I crushed the children under the feet of our horses, massacred the women who will no longer give birth to brigands. I don't have a prisoner to blame me for. I wiped it all out. »

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Carrier (after drowning 10,000 innocent people in the Loire): “We will make France a cemetery, rather than not regenerating it in our own way. »

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“The Vendée must be annihilated because it dared to doubt the benefits of freedom. »

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