MindMatters: The Road Best Traveled: Ernst Jünger's Forest Passage

In my view, this was one of your best discussions, where you were all involved and engaged.

Regarding suffering and pain. Buddhism is based on the 4 Noble Truths, all about suffering.

You don't need to seek suffering, but you face it when it comes and don't "buffer" it as Gurdjieff would say.

In Gurdjieff's teaching there are 2 conscious responses at the 2 intervals of an octave. First, remember yourself. Second, transform suffering. More later.

I think I need to get this book and read it. I'm 16 minutes in maybe 17, maybe 18 now - this 17:40 actually and literally, and I've been patiently listening. I look forward to when L.P Koch shares his views.

I don't think "freedom" the concept of achieving it is really worth much effort. You either have it or you don't.

I do think Virtue and Liberty have merit.

Degrees of suffering, seen from a geographical altitude - in the Western pleasuredome, supporting the losing team , the revulsion on discovering they put anchovies on the Pizza ,the bank won't extend the overdraft....or turning on to a TV pain hit that the saviours with influence employ to exploit the balance of fear and cheer, promoting their long accepted filth. In contrast to living in a War zone, or a lifetime of scooping up exploded sacs of rice as they hit the ground after falling from the back of a transport plane.

"Man finds himself in the bowels of a great machine devised for his destruction".,said Junger (p88)....as when witness to cringeworthy conversations, broadcasts of terrible trifles between mouthfuls of sponge cake, swallowed down with tea and beastly gratification....run to the hills, there's peace in nature, the screams fading into the distant darkness as the fox runs home with a mouthful of game.

the only place is up.....baby.

This is a man who has been a for freedom fighter for decades. Freedom is achieved once we rid ourselves of the fear of death...

.

This man is now running for president of the U.S. "...He quoted the sociologist Max Weber: “What is possible would never have been achieved if, in this world, people had not repeatedly reached for the impossible.”

“We have to arm ourselves with that staunchness of heart that refuses to be daunted by the collapse of hope,” he said. “That’s the Harriet Tubmans, the Frederick Douglass’, the Sojourner Truths and Lydia Maria Childs. There were different colors who were part of the abolitionist movement. They were trying to achieve the impossible! You can say the same thing about the labor movement of the thirties. You can say the same thing about the Black freedom struggle against American apartheid in the south in 1955 beginning with Rosa Parks. Trying to achieve the impossible! You can only achieve the possible by trying to achieve the impossible . And of course, as Nelson Mandela said, ‘And then when you achieve the impossible, everyone said Oh well that was inevitable.”’

“We’ve got to break the fear inside of us!” he said. “The first fear goes back to Frederick Douglass in that famous struggle he had with Edward Covey, his master. The first fear was the fear of dying. Once you break the back of the fear of dying you’re a free person, you’re a free human being. Frederick Douglass said, ‘Well when I broke that fear I felt for the first time that I was already free, even though I was still a slave.’ And we know that Queen Mother Moore said the same thing. There’s a whole weight of freedom fighters who have acknowledged this kind of thing. You can see it in the works of the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. You can see it in Grace Boggs. You can see it in Edward Said. You can see it in Dorothy Day. I mean, these are the figures, and my God, we haven’t got to it, the towering figures amongst Indigenous peoples, Chief Joseph, the towering figures among our Latin American brothers and sisters, José Martí, and others.”

“How do you break that fear?” he asked. “You have to have a movement, a campaign that speaks to the fear amongst poor and working people and breaks the back of fear inside of them to get them to want to straighten their backs up and do things that are outside of the box. Outside of the prevailing framework. Outside of what they have been perceiving themselves as being a part of.”

He said he will take his campaign south and into rural enclaves to address the disenfranchised white workers who support Trump..."

Who is this man? Some of you may know of him. I'll leave the link for you to follow if you are interested: [Link]

I have read The Forest Passage in archive.org, and I don’t know if it is a good translation.

There are a number of threads that Junger intertwines through the exposition. There is the tyranny thread in propaganda, enslavement, elections, elimination of human rights, which was very prescient, because it does apply to our time also. There is the Forest Rebel in the Forest Passage, who embodies freedom and sovereignty, “here and now”. What are the elements of this? Who are examples to Junger of this fight for sovereignty and freedom? What is the sovereignty he envisions?

One element of “here and now” is necessity. You have to deal with material requirements of existence: food, pain, war, plandemic, antifa, etc. The other element is meeting with yourself, your deepest core of being. Junger equates this with sovereignty and freedom. What does he mean? I think we can equate it to “free will” which depends on knowledge and moral direction. Freedom is then the ability to make choices that are in synch with your inner knowledge and moral direction. This depends on, “...it is essential to know that every man is immortal and that there is eternal life in him, an unexplored and yet inhabited land, which, though he himself may deny its existence, no timely power can ever take from him.”

Junger gives us some insight as to who he sees as representatives of the Forest Rebel in Ignatius and Socrates. Ignatius was a military warrior who fought the French and his leg was severely injured in the battle. The French brought him back to a monastery where he recovered and studied Biblical texts. Obviously the recovery would have involved pain and suffering that he would have had to transform. In time, he became St. Ignatius Loyola, who wrote Spiritual Exercises and founded the Jesuits. Ignatius is a physical warrior who was willing to fight a war, and a spiritual warrior who would sacrifice himself for spiritual values. This explains Junger's reference to knight and priest.

Socrates was similar, as he fought in the Peloponnesian war and he sacrificed himself for truth and freedom which were his inner being when he drank the hemlock. In part 29, Junger states the Forest Passage can be a military tactic in responding to tyranny.

We offer comprehensive study materials that cover a wide range of subjects and exams. From practice tests and sample questions to study guides and exam tips, our resources are designed to enhance your understanding and boost your confidence.

Visit: [Link]

Well, I got no feedback where I posted this when I thought better of posting it here first, but no feedback received, so why not post it here and sense what happens...

~~~~

Buffalo_Ken Writes BK's Gardening Ambitions Jun 8 I still have to finish watching the rest of this, but I'm going to randomly open to one of the middle pages in the book, which I now have a hard copy paperback version.....page 43 "19":~~~~~"Here is another objection to consider: Should we count on catastrophe? Should we - if only intellectually - seek out the most distant waters, the cataracts, the maelstroms, the great abysses?"~~~~~Well - sorry if this question has already been discussed, but I can answer it: Yes and no. It just depends on context of the situation. So that answer could logically be considered a "qualitative yes", but there are some abysses, most don't emerge from....so - there is that to consider. BK

That was posted on SubStack.

From a "mental" standpoint, I think seeking distant waters can be a good way to learn, but physically, if you do it one time to many, then one time will be the last time inevitably....and mentally the same is probably true as well, but to a lesser extent for one practiced and lucky I guess.

Anyhow, I'll listen to the rest of it and I got the book.

BK

49 minutes and 14 seconds and there is talk of "abundance". In my simple mind, abundance is what Kropotkin recognized when he witnessed Mutual Aid in the animal kingdom in Siberia and elsewhere. Its just you have abundance of life and what it takes to be healthy and you have abundance of material possessions and these two sorts of abundance differ fundamentally.

~

Now, I'm going to check page 62 in the book so as to be on topic more fully.....from the top of the page literally:

theologians, from Kierkegaard to Bernanos. As we said earlier, a balance remains open to this day only in art history.

Holy-Moly.....I'm gonna have to read this book from the beginning I reckon.

A double post for twice as much "fun"...

~~~~

OK, I've listened through the 1 hour mark on the video that was also at sott.net. It is June the 16th day of the 23rd year per present day calendar sensibilities. I don't know if I will watch the rest of the video, but I'm gonna pick out 3 of the 4 numbers typed above and read from that page from the "Forest Passage" book. Why not - this has some uncertainty to it. Now the book is not that long, I don't think it even has more than 200 pages, so the page number I choose to maximize my chance of actually reading something from a page in the book is: ??? (figure it out for yourself).Here is what it says:Upp....I got it wrong - the book doesn't even have 100 pages. But you figured 123 as the page # didn't you? If not, maybe you weren't reading close enough. So, now I conduct the same exercise, but this time knowing what I know, I choose the following page: 63. From the top:~~~~"...active, skeptical, inartistic, a natural-born debaser of higher types and ideas....."~~~Holy Moly - I need to read this book from cover to cover.BK

[Link]
BK

Tangential. At this link is a LondonReal interview with Mikki Willis about his third film The Plandemic: The Great Awakening. Mikki gives a sincere review of himself and his movies. At about the 25 minute mark he gives a good review of his understanding of Mass Psychosis of Desmet, which he calls hypnosis. This led him to ask himself whether he was hypnotized in his support of Bernie Sanders (at that time). At about 31 minutes he talks about "sovereignty". [Link]

thanks for share the good information in my life... <a href="[Link] glasses online</a>