The burning bush asks: are you not entertained?

Are we (over) entertained? Quoth Thiel:ⁱ

In such a unified [end of history] world, “what remains is neither politics nor state, but culture, civilization, economics, morality, law, art, entertainment, etc.” The world of “entertainment” represents the culmination of the shift away from politics. A representation of reality might appear to replace reality: instead of violent wars, there could be violent video games; instead of heroic feats, there could be thrilling amusement park rides; instead of serious thought, there could be “intrigues of all sorts,” as in a soap opera. It is a world where people spend their lives amusing themselves to death.

But fear we not! For no matter how “consuming” is the entertainment of our day, The Matrix can never win for as long as we can find time and space to listen to the Wisdom Of The Ages, particularly as channeled through our wisest sons:ⁱⁱ

Athenian:ⁱⁱⁱ Dad stop tickling me!
Dad: *teasing, tickling son* I don’t have to listen to you, just like you said you don’t have to listen to me. I don’t have to listen to anybody.

Athenian: Dad, why would you say that? Everyone has to listen to the Guard of the World, G-d.
Dad: Oh I see… and how are we supposed to know what G-d says?

Athenian: Because we can hear Him! At least some of us can, but when He speaks only one of us can hear Him at a time.

Dad: And you’re lucky and you can hear Him?
Athenian: Yes I can hear Him in my head. And everything I say is something He said once before.

Dad: Oh… well that’s very lucky. But what about people who can’t hear Him? Who should they listen to?
Athenian: They should listen to the people who can.

Indeed, this is exactly how the Ancient Greeks understood their “own” thoughts! Not as “emergent” products of neurotransmitters jumping the synaptic cleft to incite action potentials next door from which “consciousness” magically emerges, but as divine expressions of our Gods and ancestors.^iv The Ancient Hebrews understood themselves similarly, certainly if Exodus 3:2 is any indication.^v

Which really makes you wonder if perhaps the entire endeavour to separate Mind from G-d – and in turn our Selves from the Whole – was as naïve and destructive as the separation of Church from State,^vi however “well-intentioned,” “reasoned,” or “enlightened” was the transition.^vii Or are we still wondering why Mohammedanism is flourishing on college campuses right now, multiplying like a million flies feeding on the rotten carcass of empty “tolerances“? But what choice does the West have?^viii

Straussians wonder no more.

1. From “The Straussian Moment” by Peter Thiel, 2007. ↩
2. He’s the son who knows how to ask questions! ↩
3. Aka my 6-year-old youngest son. ↩
4. Even the English word “enthusiasm,” which is derived from the Greek “enthousiasmos,” means to be inspired or possessed by a god! This ancient truth is hiding in plain sight, I tells ya. ↩

5. 

   ↩

6. Or for the Bitcoiners in the audience, of State from Money. Y’see you might be “Crypto Rich” but sovereignty isn’t that simple! ↩
7. As Rabbi Zohar reminds us, priests are still human and therefore fallible:
   

   In the years preceding and following the destruction of the Temple, the priesthood was perceived as a semi-corrupt institution. The Kohanim relied too much on their status and failed to mind the gap between the perception they demanded and the perception they deserved. Authority began to flow away towards priests and towards rabbi-scholars. […]

   The endless cycle of priests who are promoted to positions of sanctity only to fall in scandal and frayed trust points to a fundamental, and universal, Biblical challenge: We are required to be like God while also acknowledging that nobody is God. We shouldn’t worship priests or expect them to be perfect, even as we want them to be credible and inspirational. Monotheism destroys the illusion that people can and should be worshipped. It is an equal opportunity destroyer of idols and all forms of inflated human authority.

   ↩

8. Quoth Thiel again:
   

   However, one must confront an alternative and perhaps even more troubling conclusion. For let us assume that it is possible, somehow, to turn back the clock and set aside our uncertainties; that we can return to the faith of Cromwell and Urban II; that we understand Islam as the providential enemy of the West; and that we can then respond to Islam with the same ferocity with which it is now attacking the West. This would be a Pyrrhic victory, for it would come at the price of doing away with everything that fundamentally distinguishes the modern West from Islam.

   ↩