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Sex & Derailment
Sexe et dévoiement [Sex and Perversion — Ed.]
Éditions du Lore, 2011
Four years after Guillaume Faye's La Nouvelle question juive (The New Jewish Question, 2007) alienated many of his admirers and apparently caused him to retreat from identitarian and Euro-nationalist arenas, his latest work signals a definite return, reminding us of why he remains one of the most creative thinkers opposing the system threatening the white race.
In this 400-page book, which is an essay and not a work of scholarship, Monsieur Faye's main concern is the family, and the catastrophic impact the rising number of divorces and broken households is having on white demographic renewal. In linking family decline to its demographic (and civilizational) consequences, he situates his subject in terms of the larger social pathologies associated with the 'inverted' sexuality now disfiguring European life. These pathologies include the de-virilization and feminization of white men, the normalization of homosexuality, feminist androgyny, Third World colonization, spreading miscegenation, the loss of bio-anthropological norms (like the blond Jesus) – and all that comes with the denial of biological realities.
At the core of Faye's argument is the contention that sexuality constitutes a people's fundament – by conditioning its reproduction and ensuring its longevity. It is key, as such, to any analysis of contemporary society.
As the ethologist Konrad Lorenz and the physical anthropologist/social theorist Arnold Gehlen (both of whom have influenced Faye) have demonstrated, there is nothing automatic or spontaneous in human sexuality, as it is in other animals. Man's body may be like those of the higher mammals, but it is also a cultural, plastic one with few governing instincts. Socioeconomic, ideological, and emotional imperatives accordingly play a major role in shaping human behavior, especially in the higher civilizations.
Given, moreover, that humanity is an abstraction, there can be no universal form of sexual behavior, and thus the sexuality, like everything else, of Europeans differs from that of non-Europeans. In the United States and Brazil, for example, the Negro's sexual practices and family forms are still very unlike those of whites, despite ten generations in these European-founded countries. Every form of sexuality, Faye argues, stems from a specific bioculture (a historically-defined 'stock'), which varies according to time and place. Human behavior is thus for him always the result of a native, in-born ethno-psychology, historically embodied (or, like now, distorted) in the cultural, religious, and ideological superstructures representing it.
The higher, more creative the culture the more sexuality also tends to depend on fragile, individual factors (desire, libido, self-interest), in contrast to less developed cultures, whose reproduction relies more on collective and instinctive factors. High cultures consequently reproduce less and low cultures more — though the latter suffers far greater infant mortality (an equilibrium upset only in the Twentieth century, when intervening high cultures reduced the infant mortality of the lower cultures, thereby setting off today's explosive Third World birthrate).
Yet despite all these significant differences and despite the world's great variety of family forms and sexual customs, the overwhelming majority of peoples and races nevertheless prohibit incest, pedophilia, racially mixed marriages, homosexual unions, and 'unparented' children.
By contravening many of these traditional prohibitions in recent decades, Western civilization has embarked on a process of 'derailment', evident in the profound social and mental pathologies that follow the inversion of 'natural' (i.e., historic or ancient) norms – inversions, not incidentally, that have been legitimized in the name of morality, freedom, equality, etc.
Sexe et dévoiement is an essay, then, about the practices and ideologies currently affecting European sexuality and about how these practices and ideologies are leading Europeans into a self-defeating struggle against nature – against their nature, upon which their biocivilization rests.
I. The Death of the Family
Since the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, numerous forces, expressive of a nihilistic individualism and egalitarianism, have helped undermine the family, bringing it to the critical stage it's reached today. Of these, the most destructive for Faye has been the ideology of libidinal love (championed by the so-called 'sexual liberation' movement of the period), which confused recreational sexuality with freedom, disconnected sex from reproduction, and treated traditional social/cultural norms as forms of oppression.
The Sixties' 'liberationists', the first generation raised on TV, were linked to the New Left, which saw all restraint as oppressive and all individuals as equivalent. Sexual pleasure in this optic was good and natural and traditional sexual self-control bad and unnatural. Convinced that all things were possible, they sought to free desire from the 'oppressive' mores of what Faye calls the 'bourgeois family'.
'Sexual liberation', he notes, was 'Anglo-Saxon' (i.e., American) in origin, motivated by a puritanism (in the Nineteenth-century Victorian sense of a prudery hostile to eroticism) that had shifted from one extreme to another. Originally, this middle-class, Protestant prudery favored a sexuality whose appetites were formally confined to the 'bourgeois' (i.e., the monogamous nuclear) family, which represented a compromise — between individual desire and familial interests — made for the sake of preserving the 'line' and rearing children to carry it on.
In the 1960s, when the Boomers came of age, the puritans passed to the other extreme, jettisoning their sexual 'squeamishness' and joining the movement to liberate the libido – which, in practice, meant abolishing conjugal fidelity, heterosexual dominance, 'patriarchy', and whatever taboos opposed the 'rationally' inspired, feel-good 'philosophy' of the liberationists. As the Sorbonne's walls in '68 proclaimed: 'It's prohibited to prohibit'. The 'rights' of individual desire and happiness would henceforth come at the expense of all the prohibitions that had formerly made the family viable. (Faye doesn't mention it, but at the same time American-style consumerism was beginning to take hold in Western Europe, promoting a self-indulgent materialism that favored an egoistic pursuit of pleasure. It can even be argued, though again Faye does not, that the state, in league with the media and the corporate/financial powers, encouraged the permissive consumption of goods, as well as sex, for the sake of promoting the market's expansion).
If Americans pioneered the ideology of sexual liberation, along with Gay Pride and the porn industry, and continue (at least through their Washingtonian Leviathan) to use these ideologies and practices to subvert non-liberal societies (which is why the Russians have rebuffed 'international opinion' to suppress Gay Pride Parades), a significant number of 'ordinary' white Americans nevertheless lack their elites' anti-traditional sexual ideology. (Salt Lake City here prevails over Las Vegas).
Europeans, by contrast, have been qualitatively more influenced by the 'libertine revolutionaries', and Faye's work speaks more to them than to Americans (though it seems likely that what Europeans are experiencing will sooner or later be experienced in the United States).
Against the backdrop, then, of Sixties-style sexual liberation, which sought to uproot the deepest traditions and authorities for the sake of certain permissive behaviors, personal sexual relations were reconceived as a strictly individualistic and libidinal 'love' – based on the belief that this highly inflated emotional state was too important to limit to conjugal monogamy. Marriages based on such impulsive sexual attractions and the passionate 'hormonal tempests' they set off have since, though, become the tomb not just of stable families, but increasingly of Europe herself.
For with this permissive cult of sexualized love that elevates the desires of the solitary individual above his communal and familial attachments (thereby lowering all standards), there comes another kind of short-sighted, feel-good liberal ideology that wars on social, national, and collective imperatives: the cult of human rights, whose flood of discourses and laws promoting brotherhood, anti-racism, and the love of the Other are synonymous with de-virilizition, ethnomaschoism, and the destruction of Europe's historic identity.
Premised on the primacy of romantic love (impulsive on principle), sexual liberation has since destroyed any possibility of sustaining stable families. (Think of Tristan and Iseult). For its sexualization of love (this 'casino of pleasure') may be passionate, but it is also transient, ephemeral, and compelled by a good deal of egoism. Indeed, almost all sentiments grouped under the rubric of love, Faye contends, are egoistic and self-interested. Love in this sense is an investment from which one expects a return – one loves to be loved. A family of this kind is thus one inclined to allow superficial or immediate considerations to prevail over established, time-tested ones. Similarly, the rupture of such conjugal unions seems almost unavoidable, for once the pact of love is broken – and a strictly libidinal love always fades – the union dissolves.
The subsequent death of the 'oppressive' bourgeois family at the hands of the Sixties' emancipation movements has since given rise to such civilizational achievements as unstable stepfamilies, no-fault divorce, teenage mothers, single-parent homes, abandoned children, a dissembling and atavistic 'cult of the child' (which esteems the child as a 'noble savage' rather than as a being in need of formation), parity with same-sex, unisex ideology, a variety of new sexual categories, and an increasingly isolated and frustrated individual delivered over almost entirely to his own caprices.
The egoism governing such love-based families produces few children and, to the degree even that married couples today want children, it seems to Faye less for the sake of sons and daughters to continue the 'line' and more for the sake of a baby to pamper – a sort of adjunct to their consumerism – something like a living toy. Given that the infant is idolized in this way, parents feel little responsibility for disciplining (or 'parenting') him.
Lacking self-control and an ethic of obedience, the child's development is consequently compromised and his socialization neglected. These post-Sixties' families also tend to be short lived, which means children are frequently traumatized by their broken homes, raised by single parents or in stepfamilies, where their intellectual development is stunted and their blood ties confused. However, without stable families and a sense of lineage, all sense of ethnic or national consciousness — or any understanding of why miscegenation and immigration ought to be opposed – are lost. The destruction of stable families, Faye surmises, bears directly on the present social-sexual chaos, the prevailing sense of meaninglessness, and the impending destruction of Europe's racial stock.
Against the sexual liberationists, Faye upholds the model of the bourgeois family, which achieved a workable compromise between individual desire and social/familial preservation (despite the fact that it was, ultimately, the individualism of bourgeois society, in the form of sexual liberation, that eventually terminated this sort of family).
Though, perhaps, no longer sustainable, the stable couples the old bourgeois family structure supported succeeded in privileging familial and communal interests over amorous ones, doing so in ways that favored the long-term welfare of both the couple and the children. Conjugal love came, as a result, to be impressed with friendship, partnership, and habitual attachments, for the couple was defined not as a self-contained amorous symbiosis, but as the pillar of a larger family architecture. This made conjugal love moderate and balanced rather than passionate — sustained by habit, tenderness, interest, care of the children, and la douceur du foyer. Sexual desire remained, but in most cases declined in intensity or dissipated in time.
This family structure was also extraordinarily stable. It assured the lineage, raised properly-socialized children, respected women, and won the support of law and custom. There were, of course, compromises and even hypocrisies (as men, for instance, satisfied certain of their libidinal urgings in brothels), but in any case the family, the basic cell of society, was protected – even privileged.
The great irony of sexual liberation and its ensuing destruction of the bourgeois family is that it has obviously not brought greater happiness or freedom, but rather greater alienation and misery. In this spirit, the media now routinely (almost obsessively) sexualizes the universe, but sex has become more virtual than real: there's more pornography, but fewer children. It seems hardly coincidental, then, that once the 'rights' of desire were emancipated, sex took on a different meaning, the family collapsed, sexual identity got increasingly confused, perversions and transgressions became greater and more serious. As everyone set off in pursuit of an illusive libidinal fulfillment, the population became correspondently more atomized, uprooted, and miscegenated. In France today, 30 percent of all adults are single and there are even reports of a new 'asexuality' – in reaction to the sexualization of everything.
There's a civilization-destroying tragedy here: for once Europeans are deprived of their family lineage, they cease to transmit their cultural and genetic heritage and thus lose all sense of who they are. This is critical to everything else. As the historians Michael Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder write: 'The family is one of the most archaic forms of social community, and at all times men have used their family as a model for the formation of human societies'. The loss of family stability, and thus the family's loss as society's basic cell, Faye emphasizes, not only dissolves social relations, it brings disorder and makes all tyrannies possible, for once sexual emancipation helps turn society into a highly individualized, Balkanized mass, totalitarianism (not Soviet or Fascist, but US Progressive) becomes increasingly likely.
II. The Idolization of Homosexuality
Homophilia and feminism are the most important children of the cultural revolution. They share, as such, much of the same ideological baggage that denies biological realities and wars on the family, conforming in this way to the consumerist and homogenizing dictates of the post-Rooseveltian international order that's dominated North America and Western Europe for the last half century or so.
In the late 1960s, when homosexuals began demanding legal equality, Faye claims they were fully within their rights. Homosexuality in his view is a genetic abnormality (affecting less than 5 percent of males) and thus an existential affliction; he thus doesn't object to homosexuals practicing their sexuality within the privacy of their bedroom. What he finds objectionable is the confusion of private and public realms and the assertion of homophilia as a social norm. Worse, he claims that in much elite discourse, homosexuals have quickly gone from being pariahs to privileged beings, who now flaunt their alleged 'superiority' over heterosexuals, seen as old-fashion, outmoded, ridiculous – like the woman who centers her life on the home and the care of her children rather than on a career – and thus as something bizarre and implicitly opposed to liberal-style 'emancipation'.
Faye, by no means a prude, contends that female homosexuality is considerably different from and less dysgenic than male homosexuality. Most lesbians, in his view, are bisexual, rather than purely homosexual, and for whatever reason have turned against men. This he sees as a reflection on men. Lesbianism also lacks the same negative civilizational consequence as male homosexuality. It rarely shocked traditional societies because women engaging in homosexual relations retained their femininity. Male homosexuality, by contrast, was considered socially abhorrent, for it violated the nature of masculinity, making men no longer 'properly' male and thus something mutant. (To those who invoke the ancient glories of Athens as a counter-argument, Faye, long-time Graeco-Latinist, says that in the period when a certain form of pederasty was tolerated, no adult Greek ever achieved respectability or standing in his community, if not married, devoted to the interests of his family and clan, and, above all, not 'made of woman' – i.e., penetrated).
Like feminism, homophilia holds that humans are bisexual at birth and (willfully or not) choose their individual sexual orientation – as if anatomical differences are insignificant and all humans are basically alike, a tabula rasa upon which they are to inscribe their self-chosen 'destiny'. This view lacks any scientific credibility, to be sure (even if it is professed in our elite universities), and, like anti-racism, it resembles Lysenkoism in denying those biological realities incompatible with the reigning dogmas. (Facts, though, have rarely stood in the way of faith or ideology – or, in the secular Twentieth century, ideologies that have become religious faiths).
Even when assuming the mantle of its allegedly progressive and emancipatory pretensions, homophilia, like sexual liberation in general, is entirely self-centered and present-minded, promoting 'lifestyles' hostile to family formation and thus to white reproduction. Homophilia marches here hand in hand with anti-racism, denying the significance of biological differences and the imperatives of white reproduction.
This subversive ideology now even aspires to re-invent homosexuals as the flower of society — liberators preparing the way to joy, liberty, fraternity, tolerance, social well-being, good taste, etc. As vice is transformed into virtue, homosexuality allegedly introduces a new sense of play and gaiety to the one-dimensional society of sad, heterosexual males. Only, Faye insists, there's nothing genuinely gay about the gays, for theirs is a condition of stress and disequilibrium. At odds with their own nature, homosexual sexuality is often a Calvary – and not because of social oppression, but because of those endogenous reasons (particularly their attraction to their own sex) that condemn them to dysgenic behaviors.
In its public display as Gay Pride, homophilia accordingly defines itself as narcissistic, exhibitionist, and infantile – revealing in these characteristics those traits that are perhaps specific to its condition. In any case, a community worthy of itself, Faye tells us, is founded on shared values, on achievements, on origins – but not a dysgenic sexual orientation.
III. Schizophrenic Feminism
The reigning egalitarianism is always extending itself, trying to force the real – in the realms of sexuality, individuality, demography (race), etc. — to conform to its tenets. The demand that women have the same legal rights and opportunities as men, Faye thinks, was entirely just – especially for Europeans (and especially Celtic, Scandinavian, and Germanic Europeans), for their cultures have long respected the humanity of their women. Indeed, he considers legal equality the single great accomplishment of feminism. But once achieved, feminism has since been transformed into a utopian and delirious neo-egalitarianism that makes sexes, like races, equivalent and interchangeable. There is accordingly no such thing as 'men's work' or 'women's work'. Human dignity and fullfilment is possible only in doing something that makes money. Faye, though, refuses to equate legal equality with natural equality, for such an ideological muddling denies obvious biological differences, offending both science and common sense.
The dogma that differences between men and women are simply cultural derives from a feminist behaviorism in which women are seen as potential men and femininity is treated as a social distortion. In Simone de Beauvoir's formulation: One is not born a woman, one becomes one. Feminists, as such, affirm the equality and interchangeability of men and women, yet at the same time they reject femininity, which they consider something inferior and imposed. The feminist model is thus the man, and feminism's New Woman is simply his 'photocopy'. In endeavoring to suppress the specifically feminine in this way, feminism aims to masculinize women and feminize men in the image of its androgynous ideal – analogous to the anti-racist ideal of the métis (the mixed race or half-caste). This unisex ideology, in its extremism, characterizes the mother as a slave and the devoted wife as a fool. In practice, it even rejects the biological functions of the female body, aspiring to a masculinism that imitates men and seeks to emulate them socially, politically, and otherwise. Feminism in a word is anti-feminine – anti-mother and anti-family – and ultimately anti-reproduction.
Anatomical differences, however, have consequences. Male humans, like males of other species, always differ from females – given that their biological specification dictates specific behaviors. These human sexual differences may be influenced by culture and other factors. But they nevertheless exist, which means they inevitably affect mind and behavior – despite what the Correctorate wants us to believe.
Male superiority in worldly achievement – conceptual, mathematical, artistic, political, and otherwise — is often explained by female oppression, a notion Faye rejects, though he acknowledges that in many areas of contemporary life, for just or unjust reasons, women do suffer disadvantages – and in many non-white situations outright subjugation. Male physical strength may also enable men to dominate women. But generally, Faye sees a rough equality of intelligence between men and women. Their main differences, he contends, are psychological and characterological, for men tend to be more outwardly oriented than women. As such, they use their intelligence more in competition, innovation, and discovery, linked to the fact that they are usually more aggressive, more competitive, more vain and narcissistic than women — who, by contrast, are more inclined to be emotionally loyal, submissive, prudent, temperate, and far-sighted.
Men and women, though, are better viewed as organic complements, rather than as inferior or superior. From Homer to Cervantes to Mme. de Stäel, the image of women, their realms and their work, however diverse and complicated, have differed from that of men. Women may be able to handle most masculine tasks, but at the same time their disposition differs from men, especially in the realm of creativity.
This is critical for Faye. In all sectors of practical intelligence women perform as well as men – but not in their capacity for imaginative projection, which detaches and abstracts one's self from contingent reality for the sake of imagining another. This holds in practically all areas: epic poetry, science, invention, religion, cuisine or design. It is not from female brains, he notes, that there have emerged submarines, space flight, philosophical systems, great political and economic theories, and the major scientific discoveries (Mme. Curie being the exception). Most of the great breakthroughs have in fact been made by men and it has had nothing to do with women being oppressed or repressed. Feminine dreams are simply not the same as masculine ones — which search the impossible, the risky, the unreal.
Akin, then, in spirit to homophilia, anti-racism, and Sixties-style sexual liberation, feminism's rejection of biological realities and its effort to masculinize women end up not just distorting what it supposedly champions – women – it reveals the totally egoistic and present-oriented nature of its ideology, for it rejects women as mothers and thus rejects the reproduction of the race.
Sexe et dévoiement treats a variety of other issues: Christian and Islamic views of sexuality; immigration and the different sexual practices it brings (some of which are extremely primitive and brutal); the necessary role of prostitution in society; and the effect the new bio-technologies are going to have on sexuality.
From the above discussion — of the family, homophilia, and feminism — the reader should already sense the direction Faye's argument takes, as he relates individual sexuality to certain macro-changes now forcing European civilization off its rails. Because this is an especially illuminating perspective on the decline of the white race (linking demography, civilization, and sex) and one of which there seem too few – I think this lends special pertinence to his essay.
There are not a few historical and methodological criticisms, however, that could be made of Sexe et dévoiement, two of which I find especially dissatisfying. Like the European New Right as a whole, he tends to be overly simplistic in attributing to the secularization of certain Christian notions, like equality and love, the origins of the maladies he depicts. Similarly, he refuses to link cultural/ideological influences to social/economic developments (seeing their causal relationship as essentially one-way instead of dialectical), just as he fails to consider the negative effects that America's imperial supremacy, with its post-European rules of behavior and its anti-Christian policies, have had on Europe in the last half century.
But after having said that — and after having reviewed many of Guillaume Faye's works over the last ten years, as well as having read a great many other books in the meantime that have made me more critical of aspects of his thought — I think whatever his 'failings', they pale in comparison to the light he sheds on the ethnocidal forces now bearing down on the white race.
American Renaissance, June 29, 2012, http://amren.com/features/2012/06/sex-and-derailment/, revised July 6th
anti-natalismbiological sex differencesbook reviewsdemographicsemasculationEuropean New RightfeminismGuillaume FayehomosexualityMichael O'MearaSex and Deviancesexuality
"To those who evoke the ancient glories of Athens as a counter-argument, Mr. Faye, a long-time Graeco-Latinist, says that in the period when a certain form of pederasty was tolerated, no adult male ever achieved respectability if he was not married, devoted to the interests of his family and clan, and, above all, was never to be "made of woman," i.e., penetrated."
By "long time Graeco-Latinist' I assume you're not making an olde-tyme insinuation ["He's quite the Graeco-Latinist, you know, wink wink"] but simply noting that he learned Latin and Greek and has kept up with his reading now and then. I suppose I fall into the same category with Sanskrit but I don't claim to offer opinions on life in ancient India "as a Sanskrit scholar myself."
It does allow one to appreciate better the works of actual scholars, and it's on those I would rest my opinions. For example, no one who was a real Graeco-Latinist would talk about Graeco-Latinist attitudes, since there were in fact quite different.
And yet, he started off so well, acknowledging the role of cultural over bare nature. That was emphasized long before Lorenz etc. by Hans Bluher, the theorist of the Mannerbund and Wandervogel, but whatever. For an actual scholarly look at the various cultural forms, see Crompton's Homosexuality and Civilization [Harvard, 2003].
The take away is that for all their "diversity" if I may use the word, the main juncture is between Jews and the rest of the world. Read them sometime, they boast of it themselves! Filthy pagans!
Applying the 'one drop rule' of racial purity, the Jews and those influenced by them are the only people to have utterly condemned homosexuality. [By that I mean that Mormons and Prots would find your sturdy Graeco-Latinist yeomen to be filhty demonic pagans no different than Elton John] I say 'Jew' rather than Semite because despite all the NeoCon {Jew!] propaganda, Islam took not only science but its sexual attitudes from the Greeks.
And there's a connection there: Jew = 'family values' = no civilization; Greek = homoeroticism = science and civilization. [For Islam see John R. Bradley, Behind the Veil of Vice]
So Willy can huff and puff all he wants, but those of us who can' see' [They Live!] can' see' a former "New Rightist", a supposed "New Rightist", promoting not Europe or the Aryan tradition but the Jew. I suspect we will soon see him on French TV schmoozing with the neocons, perhaps running for office, certainly invited to the better parties. It's the usual pattern, isn't it?
All these issues, especially the ESSENTIAL matter of distinguishing the homosexual from the fake, phony Leftist 'gay' identity [again, Willy almost gets it right!] will be clarified in my forthcoming book, The Homo and the Negro, as well as on a continuing basis on my blog.
As I say there, in the words of the MC5's official preacher, Rev. J. C., you must choose, brother, you must chose. White Europe or Jew Faye, there is no tertium quid.
BTW, I've just been reading Lark Rise to Candleford, a wispy nostalgic look, from the 1940s, at English country life in the 1840s. All that stuff Willy has about the good old days of marriage and family: utter bosh.
Chechar says:
In fact, Faye's views on homosexuality reminded me very strongly my own "Gitone's magic" that I wrote last March. In a nutshell, the Greco-Roman erastes-eromenos institution had little, if anything, in common with today's "gay" movement. Some would even think that it's just a travesty of Aryan history to present Greco-Roman pederasty as a legit basis of today's sexual "liberation" movements that Faye so rightly criticizes. After all, not only the Jews but some pre-Christian Aryans also condemned overt homosexuality.
Fourmyle of Ceres says:
Chechar:
It might be very instructive, and very helpful, for you to do a short piece on the Greco-Roman erastes-eromenos institution. It might provide the light we need on a subject that lends itself well to intemperate expression.
As well, all should recall the Greeks were defeated. Their stepping stone should not be our stumbling block.
I would like to comment on Dr. O'Meara's excellent piece, but I need more time to understand it well enough to comment on it intelligently. I promise my comments won't be derailed by dreams of long-conquered, rightfully defeated, Ancient Greece.
Jaego says:
Face it: modern Gays wouldn't cut it with the Ancient Greeks. Elton John IS an abomination in some sense and the Greeks wouldn't up with him put. If you want to gain a real hearing, become like them and then get back to us.
And yes, you are going to have to get married just like Gay Muslims do. To Women. Please invite me to the wedding, I wouldn't miss the look on your face for all the world.
BasilX says:
Excellent essays with many penetrating observations.
I will mention some of many contradictions of today's liberalism.
If we value individualism why do we give privilege to certain groups ?
If we value universal rights why we do not notice denial of rights of whites in South Africa and Zimbabwe ?
Do we see devirilization of man or substitution of classical masculinity not only of physical strength but virtue, honour, self-denial, with a new masculinity of brutal,wild force as we see on the athletic fields and stadia ?
rhondda says:
In the 1940's and 50's scientists convinced women that the best way to give birth was to be completely anesthetized. The result was that the subjectivity of the experience was wiped out. They also convinced women that bottle feeding was better for the child than the centuries of experience with breast milk. The end result of this was alienated children and the imposition of artificial methods of child rearing. The Freudians, B F Skinnerians, and Christian dogmatists and other opportunists dived in with their so called superior methods. Shaming and humiliation were the best psychological methods to get children to conform, as long as you said it was all about love. It was the hippies and back to landers of the sixties who rediscovered the organic instinct of love which happens through the subjective experience of giving birth consciously and trusting your body to do what it was meant to do. The result is a bliss that all these other experts do not want you to experience. Why you might discover that original sin is just another label for psychological control.
While I do agree that the sexual revolution was hijacked by morons, I do believe it started with a simple belief that sex is not wrong. A child conceived in a sexual love union is child of the Gods. Sex between a man and a woman who love each other is not wrong. It is the pornifers and the lechers and the priests who turn it into debased act who should wear the dunce cap and whose karma will catch up to them. Love is the instinct that says you would die for another. It has been hijacked by religion and perverted. It is what makes kin, kin.
Petronius says:
Whenever I stumble upon "the other" O'Meara's rather vulgar and bizarre eclecticism, like his Burroughs-Evola-crossover, I always have to think of a line from Public Enemy: "The parts don't fit."
I'm so vulgar and eclectic that at first I thought you were referencing the film, "The Public Enemy," and was happy you had picked up that reference to it in my essay on the Mannerbund in de Palma's The Untouchables. Then I wondered what the context was, imagining something like Ed Robinson's classic riff on "ah, soft stuff, eh?" in the contemporary Little Caesar, only to find it's something spewed by one of those rap[e] "artists". Yes, when in doubt, ask a negro. A perfect illustration of the cultural decline delineated in my book: Jew-Love = Homo-Hate = Negro Worship.
And you call yourself "Petronius"! "Polonius" would be better. A good Faye-Family man, and full of such useful tidbits of "wisdom" too!
Great, how you got your parts together again, but they still don't fit. I am neither Jew-Lover (from where do you get this conclusion, btw?) , nor Homo-Hater (I am a big fan of Donovan's stuff) nor Negro-Worshipper (I loathe rap music). I just happen to find your ideas pretty bizarre and unconvincing.
Your conceptions of the Männerbund are pretty much over the top and historically false, and obviously you haven't actually read Blüher (how could you, he has never been translated to English). You just don't seem to be able to deal with the universal fact that homosexuality remains repulsive and problematic for most heterosexual men. How else could it be, if our sexual attractions are wired towards females? It is a simple question of sexual polarity. I am pro-tolerance for Homos, but they must deal with that fact this will never change as long as there is human sexuality. It is nonsensical to blame this on the Jews as well. "Homophobia" is as natural as "racism". You are crusading against reality.
Wulf Grimsson says:
Within Indo European societies there were kin and non kin relationships. Kin relations focused on healthy in-group (racially intact) and healthy reproduction. Non kin relations including healthy warrior based homosexuality. There is a mass of evidence for such activities within Aryan Indian, Iranian, Norse and Celtic Mannerbunds. The Theban Band were hardly effeminate but greatly respected warriors as were the Spartans. I fear Faye has not examined the difference between the Semitic model of homosexuality which demonised homosexuality as effiminacy and the Aryan model of warrior same sex love. Modern "gay" lifestyles are repugnant and infected with Jewish and multicultural values, that, however, does not invalidate true masculine homosexuality or Androphilia. Too often writers on the right reject Judeo-Christianity but continue with the homophobia which is Judeo Christian in origin. Androphile warriors respect good white families and in traditional cultures work in warrior bunds teaching, transmitting knowledge (spiritual and practical) and protecting the village. This is is sort of warrior ethos that homosexuality belongs to.
Donar van Holland says:
Although I like the idea of the Männerbund, I think the historic evidence for it to be the basis of Aryan civilization is rather thin.
Furthermore, to equate the Männerbund with homosexuality is premature. Of course, the intensity of war experience and comradeship may have given rise to some, or even many, sexual encounters between men. However, this is not the same as an exclusive, overriding sexual attraction.
But then, the whole idea of "homosexuality" as a distinct, dichotomized identity is a completely modern invention. A medieval knight might "bugger" his servant, but in no way would this define him. For the Church he only had to repent his acts. He was not a distinct kind of being, just a sinner like everyone else.
Further proof that the idea of a separate "homosexual identity" is false comes from the efforts to politicize it into liberalism. Since when does the fact that a man may prefer women as sexual partners determine his political choices?
Unlike race, "homosexuality" is truly a social construct.
Therefore, it will not solve our problems to posit the Männerbund as an Aryan homosexual basis to replace the Judaic heterosexual basis of our civilization.
In our battle for survival, I see the devaluation and hate of white manliness as our core problem. To wrestle our "cojones" back from the Judaics and their female and effeminate accomplices will be the first and essential step towards a solution.
This does not mean persecuting any "homosexuals", that is just an easy non-solution. It means breaking the bonds of liberalism through action. For this, the Männerbund seems the ideal vessel: a social model to restore, validate and strengthen white manliness.
As examples the "Fight Club" springs to mind, as do war reenactment clubs, riffle associations etc. But so do Neo-Nazi demonstrations, especially as these are often attacked. We may not agree with all of their program, we might think many participants uncouth or even stupid, but they do form a kind of Männerbund.
These are valuable comments.
I do believe that male groups — sports teams, hunting parties, warrior bands, etc. — are a necessary step both in the psychological maturation of boys and also in the evolution of society. Camille Paglia was right to claim that if women ruled, we would still be living in grass huts. But women rule the household and the upbringing of boys, and at a certain point, it is necessary to cut the apron strings.
I think it is also anthropologically and historically and philosophically defensible to claim that the evolution of higher forms of civilization required male groups, particularly the warrior band. Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and others believed that the beginning of history and the development of high culture was the foundation of a stratified society in which one group toils to give the rulers the leisure to create values, institutions, practices, etc. that are not merely ruled by biological necessity. And the most primal form of caste society is probably established by the conquest of one people by another, conquest carried out by warrior bands.
But I think it is not warranted by history to claim that such groups are entirely or predominantly involved in same-sex relationships. Aside from the Theban band, is there any other evidence to attest to this? To be sure, same sex attractions are possible in every such setting, and we do know that it formed a feature of other Greek societies. But it strikes me as an overstatement to say anything more.
And yes, the Greeks still were "heteronormative": they expected men to marry and have families, even if they carried on same-sex relationships on the side. There were men who led exclusively homosexual lives, but they were regarded as abnormal and were stigmatized.
Yes amazing how a wonderful idea like the Mannerbund is resurected only to be immediately saddled with an exclusive Homosexuality – making it completely useless. To promulgate Gay Brotherhood as the secret to White National Success is the ultimate narcicism.
Think of the Spanish and the French explorers and conquerors. They didn't bother bringing their own women and ended up mating with the Indians. I suppose if they were all Gay they could have avoided this, but the result would have been equally sterile. Compare these outcomes with the English who came with their Women and together, conquered for their Race.
To promulgate Gay Brotherhood as the secret to White National Success is the ultimate narcicism…
That is not what I was suggested. I believe there are two modes of living, kinship and non kinship. Kinship relations are focused on the family and sustaining high quality white national identity via reproduction. Non Kinsip relations include male groups and blood brothers (which may or not be sexual at all) and Mannerbunds (which vary from sexual to non sexual). There is much evidence for early Indo European same sex Mannerbunds which were warrior in orientation. I simply feel this is overlooked within the white nationalist movement and that many modern "gays" are as manipulated as straights. If we could educate them about their traditions a new ally could be forged – masculinist, white, warrior and homosexual.
Stronza says:
If we could educate them about their traditions a new ally could be forged – masculinist, white, warrior and homosexual.
You can go back to your traditions without going back to them completely. Indeed, no culture of any kind ever has. Every generation inherits traditions. The mature, intelligent ones sift through them and decide what is worth keeping and what is not.
Of course. The earliest Aryan in India were the Vryatas – warrior bands. Now alien warrior bands threaten Europe and America and with all our Organization – we are disorganzied at the social level and cannot repel them. Our Military is controlled by an Elite that is against the Muslims abroad but for them at home. And they all love the Hispanics and the Blacks.
Brotherhood is the Key now. It cannot be surrendered to Activists with their own agendas. I have no problem with anything I've read of Jack Donovan. He's Gay but he preaches brotherhood for men – and he knows White Men need this message more than any. And he knows he's White – no small thing nowadays. If Gays show loyalty then maybe the next Civilization can be more tolerant than this one has been. I hope so but we aren't going to tolerate the certain things – and if they push for too much then they might not get anything at all. Obviously I'm talking about boys and recruiting.
Jaego,
A reading of my almost-yet-forthcoming-released book from CounterCurrents, The Homo and the Negro, will show that my argument, given in the opening Manifesto, is exactly the converse: Judaic homophobia prevents the "resurrection" of the Mannerbund by tarring it with negative suspicions, EVEN IF there is no trace of sexual activity.
Go ahead, try and make you sexually pure traditionalist films. Fight Club, 300, Beowulf : "They're all homos, maaaaan!" Yeah, that's the way to reach the public.
As for the Spanish/English, you're the one sounding like Burroughs now: "The Mexican had the luck of being conquered by the white trash of Europe and survived."
Speaking of which, Alain Danielou, who has better credentials as a Traditionalist than you, or Evola, or perhaps, even, Guenon, remarked that India was safe as long as the British only sent out their men, who adapted to the native culture; when the women insisted on going out with them, the whole country had to be reconfigured to meet Victorian standards [no more boys or mistresses; Faye-style marriage all around]. That wast the end of Traditional India and the start of the Raj. I would have more confidence in your recommendations for how to proceed to restore Tradition if you didn't speak so glibly of using Judeo-Christian marriage to destroy the remaining holdout of Tradition.
In my book, the essay on Fashion Tips for the Far Right discusses the similar situation in the American West: Wild Boys beyond the reach of church and women, long blonde hair flowing, cheering Oscar Wilde on his lecture tour as "a real right chap." You no doubt would prefer his treatment in Victorian England. As so often, the Right confuses the old forms with the principles itself, and merely sticks in the mud, the Jew's best friend. And that bit of wisdom, gentlemen, is purest Evola.
Well I'll give you India: Savitri Devi herself said that if the English had gone as conquerors and not colonizers, had picked from the Vedic Tree a cult that suited them, and married with the high caste women – they'd still be there. India is accepting that way. But you see we're not interested in all that anymore – losing oursleves in other races has been our downfall. And much as I revere Savitri Devi, I don't see Hindus as White anymore. Neither did Hitler.
I grant you that some of the thought patterns are still closer to us than the far East. So I understand your attraction – I have it too. We all have our isles of paradise where the demands of Civilization are in abeyance. What's the name of that guy who wrote about Transgressive Islam? Hakim Bey was one of his pen names. He mourned the fall of the Shah – no more access to boys! Ah homosexuals, what are we to do with you?
I'm being a little unfair. India has its own Civilization and is an amazing sythesis of Aryan and South Causcasian memes and genes. At the higher levels, it has a deep rigor and austerity. But we want something all our own now – and it's now or never again.
NM says:
Guenon, remarked that India was safe as long as the British only sent out their men, who adapted to the native culture
Basically, what every other conqueror in India did. On the other hand, the Brits wanted to properly colonize the place, not become part of it. In the long run, it's a just a senseless waste of men if they all hook up with native women and "go native".
using Judeo-Christian marriage to destroy the remaining holdout of Tradition.
European culture has always tended to monogamy.
That Jewish influence is not mentioned, that Christianity seems to be endorsed more strongly than I can honestly recommend, is not a major problem for me as the discussion is true enough according to my experience – that tends to be the best gauge for me.
It is probably good to have some treatments which do not accommodate discussion of Jewish interests so that we might, at least from time to time, concentrate on ourselves and our own logics of meaning and action.
It is an excellent commentary on what probably is a very good book. Speaking again of the gauge of my experience, however, one characterization of men and women does contradict my experience some:
"They (men) are usually more aggressive, more competitive, more vain and narcissistic than women who, by contrast, are more inclined to be emotionally loyal, submissive, prudent, temperate, and far-sighted"
This seems to be either anachronistic or coming from a vastly different culture than the ones I've experienced.
In the White cultures I've experienced, I can see men being more aggressive and competitive than women in some ways. But even that is suspect. More suspect even, is that men are more vain and narcissistic than women, or that women are more emotionally loyal and submissive. Maybe, but I doubt it. Anyway, not in the cultures I've experienced.
Prudent, temperate and far sighted? Certainly not the pattern of White women of recent times.
It must be true, however, of those who have survived and who will survive.
EssEm says:
My own three-decade history as an "out" man who very much values traditional men leads me to believe that the problem with contemporary male homosexuality is its cultural and ideological bondage to feminism, so that it becomes part of the arsenal of liberal weaponry against men and manhood.
A central question for me: can any form of adult male/male sexuality be constructed so as to serve, rather than erode, a healthy culture's sense of manhood?
Homosexuality isn't about guys slapping each other on the back and being "brothers". It's about the (apparently) uncontrollable impulse to commit acts the contemplation of which are a little too much for decent people's sensibilities. You are skating around the issue, boys. Maybe I should say "skirting".
Lew says:
Men and women engage the same acts. I suspect decent, normal people aren't preoccupied with homosexuality and have more important things to worry about.
Quote: "can any form of adult male/male sexuality be constructed so as to serve, rather than erode, a healthy culture's sense of manhood?"
Such a project would be trying to defeat the devil through Beelzebub.
Only our modern age invented the idea of "sexual orientation" as a universal category, a life-long predisposition that never wavers or changes, or even a metaphysical essence that must be discovered and obeyed. There is not much empirical data that supports this position.
Marginalization of "homosexuals" occurred in the first place because this special category of life-long sexual preferences was created and then some variants of this invented essence were defined as psychologically aberrant. Some malicious minds might argue that the idea of a homosexual essence served to protect "heterosexuals" from recognizing any sexual desires for other men…
Now social constructs, of which "sexuality" is the prime example, are products of pure modernist, liberal thinking. Liberalism rejects Blut und Boden in favour of an abstract humanity. Then it tries to compensate the loss of identity this entails through abstract, artificial identities, through "Ersatz" tribes. To this end it "essentializes" aspects of human existence such as "sexuality". Further down this road to superficiality we meet the consumerist, vulgar adagium: you are the things you buy.
There is neither such thing as "homosexuality" nor a "homosexual tribe" (the fake tribe better known as "gay community"). There are only sexual acts, and these acts do not define you. Woo unto him who defines himself as belonging to the worldwide "gay community". He is like Jack in "Fight Club" who seeks identity through the IKEA furniture he buys.
Therefore, both the people who try to promote "homosexuality" as a kind of divine gift to our movement and the "homo hunters" are profoundly mistaken. White nationalists should ignore "homosexuality", and in fact "sexuality" in general. It is a will-o'-the-wisp that leads us into the liberal swamp, and away from what is truly essential.
Just as our main concern rests not with manliness in general, but with WHITE manliness, the tribe, the bonds of Blut und Boden, trump all other concerns, especially when these entail fake tribes such as the "gay community". Or the "IKEA family".
I tend to agree that White nationalists should ignore "homosexuality", and in fact "sexuality" in general. We live in abnormal days and should be focused on where and how we went wrong and how not to repeat it.
O'Meara's comments concerning Faye are insightful, and humbling.
The question of "What?" has been answered. The only questions remaining are "Why?" "How?", and "What to Do About It?"
Few issues evoke controversy like sexuality in practice, so let me quickly address what I see as a proper framing of the issues>
(1) Essentially, we have been hypnotized against that which is natural and normal, highest and best, in our nature, both as we see it, and as it is becoming.
I have made reference to a show done for Britain's Channel 4, called "The Heist." In it, Derren Brown, an illusionist and master of NLP, take ordinary people and trains them, in the guise of a management seminar, to become armored car robbers on command. This process of indoctrination, masked as education, linked key concepts to certain external; stimuli – sights, sounds, and particular words particularly organized and phrased.
I was totally stunned at how easily Brown manipulated ordinary, every-day people into being armored car robbers. The technology for manipulation of Humanity is well advanced beyond what I imagined it was. After watching "The Heist," you will never read Cass Sundstein's "Nudge" in the same light, or see so many of the manipulations fighting for control of your Mind in the same light.
(2) Freud stated he was coming to America to destroy the West. Ably assisted by his nephew, Eddie Bernays, a process of wholesale demoralization took place in the media, and, in time, the colleges, and the public schools. The replacement of moral certainty with moral ambiguity is a done deal. With nothing worth living for, much less fighting for, the demoralized populace reverts to nihilism. Remember what the Durants said; hedonism is a cultural response to despair. Hedonism also reduces relationships to commodities; the lowest cost producer "wins," for the moment.
(3) This demoralization extends to the most primal forces that act within our Souls. Metaphysically, the First Chakra can focus up – to Creativity, or down, to Carnality, the fullest expression of materialism. We have been manipulated to have a thirst that can not be slaked, and need a way off the hamster wheel, and out of The Matrix. (Mixing metaphors is necessary at this stage. Sorry.)
(4) Jared Taylor made a remarkable comment in his interview with Jim Giles; he said that what we call "White nationalism" is simply what we would have called "Nationalism" before, say, the 1960's. Strong point, indeed, as only one race can create an effective nation-state, one that has been so prosperous that all others wish to join it.
(5) Yet, the forces of Creativity, matched with the moral duty to conquer, and the certainty of that moral duty to conquer, and thus manifest a Destiny much greater than our Ancestors could have imagined, have been turned AGAINST themselves by the consistent demoralization of millions of "nudges" – very effectively phrased suggestions – all but commanding us to do the exact opposite of what works, and what made us great. These "nudges" have been so powerful as to all but have us commit suicide. (Incidentally, am I alone in noticing that, after the Supreme Court passed Obamacare, articles began appearing talking about how doctors facing end of life medical decisions for themselves choose not to burden their families financially, but to go home and have "palliative care," with dignity, in their final days? "We're not saying you have a duty to die, just not to be a burden on those around you…" Talk about inversions of values…)
(6) So, the process of Creativity, matched to the moral impulse of righteous conquest in the fulfillment of a Manifest Destiny, linked to a metapolitical purpose, are now being neutralized, and inverted.
(7) The only solution is a Remoralization of the West. Call it the Restatement of Christianity, for want of a better term.
Thanks to Michael O'Meara for forcing me to go back to a "bare metal rebuild" of my thinking.
Now, about Game…
Samuel	Christianity contra Humanism Is a single sole man who claims to be God, God? The priest of the Most High of the order of...


Guess who's turning 90 years old in 90 days? It's our favourite Disney cartoon character, iconic legend Mickey Mouse.
Icon Mickey will beturning 90 on 18 November 2018. Disney will be running a nationwide campaign to celebrate all things Mickey. So prepare for the hype during the months of October through to December as we not only celebrate but honor Mickey Mouse.
The famous cartoon character has been bringing smiles and joy to kids and adults alike for nine decades.
Mickey was originally going to be named Mortimer!
Mickey wears white gloves so that you can see his hands (otherwise they would blend in against his body.
Walt Disney said that Minnie and Mickey Mouse are indeed married, although they keep it private and they do not share a home.
In the 1970s, Mickey released a disco album which went double platinum.
Walt Disney himself voiced Mickey Mouse for many years.
Prima Toys has an amazing range in store for you guys. This season there really is something for everyone! Keep your finger on the pulse by going to www.primatoys.co.za or www.Facebook.com/primatoys and follow @PrimaToys.


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Tag: infrastructure
Ukraine's suffering goes beyond the front line
Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, the country has lost people, cities, infrastructure and money at a dizzying speed. Current statistics regarding the state of the country make for grim reading. However, not every loss is measurable.
There is nothing more devastating in life than the loss of a child. It is not only a tragedy for the family, but it also appeals to our deepest evolutionary mechanisms – both to our modern set of values regarding the rights of children and to our eternal drive to survive as a community. As of August 1st, 358 Ukrainian children have been killed since the beginning of Russia's invasion and 693 have been injured. Furthermore, 203 children are still missing, most of them in the combat zones (there have been 4,242 reports to police since February 24th, though most children have been found).
October 3, 2022 - Oksana Forostyna
What the Russian invasion has cost Ukraine
Ukraine has now experienced half a year of war with no end in sight. Despite this, numerous individuals and groups are now attempting to calculate the real cost of the brutal Russian invasion. Whilst the fog of war makes such studies difficult, they will prove pivotal in understanding the true level of suffering in the country.
Withstanding six months of onslaught from one of the world's most powerful militaries comes at a price – and Ukraine is learning about that cost in real time. Of course, Ukraine has been at war for far longer than just six months. Russia's capture of Crimea and the eight-year war in Donbas must also be included when looking at the price Ukraine has paid for defending its sovereignty. Ukraine's losses go far beyond the significant loss of life and livelihoods of tens of thousands of Ukrainians. At its peak, Russia occupied nearly one-fifth of all Ukrainian land, depriving the country of its resources and industry.
October 3, 2022 - Lee Reaney
Infrastructural connectivity of the South Caucasus: A chance for a community of interests?
The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh has shown the world the anachronistic nature of the problems faced by the politicians, armies and citizens of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Nevertheless, this real and grim conflict that continues to cause tension in the region contrasts greatly with the hopes of many for peace and well-being. The prospects for development, prosperity and peaceful coexistence between the peoples of the Caucasus are still overshadowed by territorial and ethnic conflict. Despite this, they do not match the aspirations and dreams of the societies present in this region.
December 2, 2021 - Mariusz Maszkiewicz
The South Caucasus after the Second Karabakh War
The trilateral co-operation format – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – has inexhaustible potential. Of course, not all external players claiming special interests in the region will be happy about this development. However, the time has come to encourage a radical increase in the culture of co-operation and pursue more ambitious goals. This will ultimately lead to the formation of a common vision of regional development as a space belonging to all three of these countries.
Despite the fact that the South Caucasus is undoubtedly a region with clearly delineated natural borders, it can hardly be called a full-fledged region. For almost 30 years after the restoration of independence, the states of the South Caucasus have not used the opportunity to create an integrated space of stability and security. Nor have they been able to provide their populations with decent levels of prosperity and opportunities for economic growth. Today, we instead face a reality marked by dividing lines and alienation.
December 2, 2021 - Valery Chechelashvili
Georgia's roads
Despite the government's articulated policy and the priority given to infrastructure rehabilitation, road construction in Georgia is experiencing delays.
July 26, 2019 - Kaha Baindurashvili
Russia's strange acceptance of the sewage pit
Sewer systems in Russia have been neglected for decades. Many citizens do not even have access to working water closets, and some public infrastructure has literally collapsed due to unmaintained sewage lines. However unattractive this fact may be, it should be taken seriously as it attests to wider societal problems in Russia.
April 16, 2019 - Yury Lobunov

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Designing and optimizing traffic behavior and animation is a challenging problem of interest to virtual environment content generation and to urban planning and design. While some traffic simulation methods have appeared in computer graphics, most related systems focus on the design of buildings, roads, or cities but without explicitly considering urban traffic. To our knowledge, our work provides the first interactive approach which enables a designer to specify a desired vehicular traffic behavior (e.g., road occupancy, travel time, emissions, etc.) and the system will automatically compute what realistic 3D urban model (e.g., an interconnected network of roads, parcels, and buildings) yields the specified behavior. Our system both altered and improved traffic behavior in novel procedurally-generated cities and in road networks of existing cities. Our urban models contain up to 360 km of roads, 300,000 vehicles, and typically cover four hours of simulated peak traffic time. The typical editing session time to "paint" a new traffic pattern and to compute the new/changed urban model is two to five minutes.
Ignacio Garcia-Dorado, Daniel G. Aliaga, Satish V. Ukkusuri. Designing Large-Scale Interactive Traffic Animations for Urban Modeling. Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings Eurographics). 2014.


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Q: Settings.Designer.cs vs Web.config I have just joined a project that has a connection string which is defined in the Settings.Designer.cs file and also defined in the web.config file.  When I need to look at a different instance of my DB I have to modify both values.  I am unfamilier with why the Settings.Designer.cs file is being used.  What is the value of using Settings.Designer.cs vs web.config?  Assuming I can remove one of the connection string entries...should it be removed from Settings.Designer.cs or from web.config?

A: Being a Winforms guy myself, and now working on a web project, my guess is that the Settings.Designer.cs was being used by a winforms guy working on a website :)
I would probably blow away the connection string in Settings.Designer.cs

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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ATHERTON ARTS FOUNDATION
Friends of AAF
Local Artists' Response to Shelter in Place
It is fair to say we are living in unusual and unprecedented times! As we enter into the winter season and time of fatigue, I hope visiting with several Atherton artists will give you a glimmer of inspiration! Art brings a sense of purpose, creativity, solace and connection to not only the artists but to their community of viewers. These artists' passion for their 'craft' inspired and encouraged me to look differently at this period of my life, my art and my teaching. I hope it does yours too! I recently chatted (virtually) with several Atherton artists and asked how they are finding a balance between sheltering in place and staying connected to their art. I'm happy to share with you, ART is alive and well in Atherton!
BARBARA TUFFLI: Barbara is an award winning horticulturist, fine art photographer and floral designer. She studied landscape architecture at University of California Berkley and has studied photography nationally. Not only is she nationally known for her knowledge and excellence in camellia horticulture (she has upward to 500 camellias), she has created a limited edition of fine art camellia portraits. She finds herself busier than ever during this time of sheltering in place. Barbara told me, there is a "Silver lining to being at home": Spending more time in her garden, and enhancing her photo editing skills. A national project with the Garden Club of America, and water color artist Angela Ovary (Garden Club of Denver) photo editing the prints of paintings of 100's of native plants and pollinators, readying the drawings for a commemorative scarf is at the top of her art to do list! Between her garden, photography (of her flowering plants), enhancing her digital and 'tech' skills, she is definitely an inspiration TO DO and to keep learning! To view her work, visit her website: barbaratuffli.com
COSETTE DUDLEY: Cosette began printmaking in the late 1960s, during the Vietnam War. Since then, her work has concentrated on themes of social justice, civil liberties, war and peace and the environment. In recent years images of family history have also emerged. She is a third generation Californian, born in Sacramento and residing in Atherton for the past fifty-nine years. Cosette graduated from Stanford University in 1964. Before that, she studied with Wayne Thiebaud 1954 – 1955. She continued her art studies with lithography at San Francisco State University, 1982 and photogravure at Crown Point Press, San Francisco 1993 – 1995. She is currently affiliated with California Society of Printmakers, Los Angeles Printmaking Society, and Women's Caucus for Art. She has shown in numerous exhibits and had been scheduled to exhibit when the pandemic hit. Despite finding it difficult to concentrate on daily art time, she still considers "Art as an ongoing process!" To view her work: cosettedudley.com
ELAINE MCCREIGHT: As a painter and a poet, Elaine is interested in the overlaps of dream, reality and imagination. After painting abstracting landscapes for almost a year now, her recent concerns about our fractured country have pulled her back to the figure. She's especially interested in ways people misperceive each other. Continuing to work in oils, cold wax and acrylics, she wants to pose questions, not pretend to offer answers. During the first few months of sheltering, she worked for hours each day in the garden, and devoted lots of 6'- apart, outside time sitting and talking with family and friends. Elaine has now happily returned to a daily practice in her studio. Many of you may recognize her name since she taught in the Menlo Park Schools for seventeen years! Thank you Elaine for continuing to 'give back' to our community through your passion of art! elainemccreight.com
JOANNA BACIOCCO: Joanna has lived in Atherton for 45 years, having moved here from the city in 1975. She started painting about 20 years ago and found painting outdoors in plein air her dream come true. Her medium of choice is oil paint. She has been inspired through her travels throughout the world but to be a Bay Area artist has been her dream, and painting the golden coast will never lose its appeal. She paints several days a week; 2 days with groups, the POPS GROUP and another organized by artist, Eric Greenhut. Joanna has not been influenced by the covid shelter in place as her creative time is shared between her computer and her studio. Her hope is her paintings will soothe souls and satisfy minds. Each day is a new source of learning.
MARY (WOOLLOMES) LIPIAN: Mary grew up in Atherton and is now a San Francisco based artist. Mary holds two graduate degrees in Psychology, and actively uses this background as an influence for her art. She primarily paints with oil and her paintings are intended to capture the pulse of cities. The sparse clues of a building and empty facades, often with neon signage glow in a dimmed half-light while any sign of life inside is obscured by reflections of color dancing across the windows. In other paintings, the colors can be seen soaring through the sky. The beat is omnipresent. She has exhibited in the United States, France, Italy, and United Kingdom. The Covid shelter in place and partial shut down has added an entirely new medium and dimension to Mary's artist expression! She jumped at the opportunity to paint the outdoor dining structure accommodating the San Francisco Italian restaurant, Tommaso's, on Kearny in the North Beach area. Not only has the challenge
been working with exterior house paints, it's depicting the flavor and ambiance of the restaurant's interior to the exterior of a partial wooden structure! Mary has not put her art on hold during the pandemic, but has embraced new artist challenges! www.marylipian.com
GORDON DEEG: Approximately one third of Gordon's Atherton lot is lined with tables of 300-400 Bonsai trees. I have never been so taken back as when I first visited Gordon's back yard to ask him if he would consider 'hosting' an art class for Botanical Artists! I knew Bonsai was a Japanese art form of growing trees and keeping them 'small' but I was awe struck at seeing azalea, apple, gardenia, maple, redwood, and many more varieties in beautiful form everywhere I looked! Gordon first became interested in Bonsai in the 1960's when he lived in the Sacramento area. He and his wife visited the State Fair and wandered into a Bonsai exhibit, and a new passion and art form began! Upon moving to the Bay area (San Jose, San Mateo and now Atherton) Gordon continued and enlarged his passion for Bonsai, growing his own and caring for other people's Bonsai plants. A member of a local bonsai club connected him with a Master Bonsai artist in Japan. He has since lived and studied with Bonsai masters in Japan over a half of dozen times! The care of Bonsai continues; pandemic or not! If you would like to take an outing, bring your mask and visit the Bonsai Garden at Lake Merritt! gardensatlakemerritt.org/bonsai-garden
KRISTA (UNGERMAN) SKEHAN: Krista grew up in Atherton, attending Laurel and Sacred
Heart Schools. She had the opportunity to have the Art in Action program while attending Laurel School and later severed on its Board. As an adult, she lived in Menlo Park for 15 years and is currently residing in Hawaii. In her art work, Krista uses acrylic paint, loves to paint fast and use gobs of paint! Being a busy mother and working professional (along with her husband in their personal branding business), she appreciates how quickly acrylic dries She spends most of her time thinking and processing the art work before putting a brush to canvas. "My process is extremely layered and thoughtful; think like a turtle and paint like a rabbit!" Krista paints just about everyday. Last October she succeeded in a daily painting challenge, finishing 31 paintings in 31 days! Using some of these 'October' painting, Krista has started a new 'Island Style' series, which will be available for viewing starting December 5 on her website. In between painting whatever her heart desires, she loves to work with clients and paint what they desire! Covid's sheltering in place has influenced her life's choices…family time and residence…and therefore her art. It has made her re-evaluate her priorities. "Life is too short to not do what you love!" Thank you Krista, for sharing you 'love' of art with us! kristaskehan.com
EDITH BERGSTROM: Edith has carried her life, which began in the Imperial Valley of California, not only to her home in Atherton but into her life's passion: Palms. Edith began concentrating on palms in the early 1970's. She has lived her entire adult life in Atherton, transposing two lots into a garden of over 100 species of palms and 400 individual palms! Each one of her paintings she considers as a 'portrait of a palm,' relaying the uniqueness and beauty of each specimen. She began painting using watercolors, then oil on canvas. Some of her palm portraits are a large as a wall, and I remember visiting her studio and seeing the ladders she climbed on to complete her paintings! Now, she says they are 'Regular size' paintings. Pandemic or not, she enjoys painting, and finds it much more relaxing as she is not pushing herself to sell her work. However, her work is still available at 'A Gallery Fine Art' in Palm Desert. Be sure to say 'Hi' to Edith if you see her in the neighborhood walking her labradoodle, Haley! edithbergstrom.com
Regardless if you are a professional artists, art hobbyist, or an I'd-like-to-try-that artist, stay connected to your passion, desires or curiosity! In Part II, for the next Athertonian I'll introduce you to some of the art instructors, past and present in our community. Stay healthy, happy and enjoy the art that surrounds us! I'm looking forward to the day we can meet once again at an AAF art show or class!
- Dorothy Hunter
August 2021 Newsletter
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Tag Archives: 石元泰博
New limited supply titles in bookstore
October 30, 2009 Kurt	Leave a comment
I'm sure some will accuse me of stoking the panic fire of "order now or regret later", but I'm going to use that gambit here because with all four books I'm introducing in this post, we're talking of items where the stock is very low and basically, once they're gone, they are gone. Two of them are over 10 years old, one is gone from shops in Japan, and one is a catalog published earlier this year that we have in limited supply.
A couple of weeks ago I saw the Michael Kenna book discussed below pop up on eBay for $150 (it has since come down to something more reasonable), and it made me realize that more people need to know about the fact that we are carrying some of these titles that — even after shipping is factored in — are very reasonably priced. But beyond saving money or grabbing a collectible before the price shoots up, all four below are books well worth having for what we're hopefully all here for, the photography. I have to confess, our stock on each is one copy less because I had to grab a copy of all four for myself!
Ikko Narahara, Fifteen Thousand Nights
Published in 1994 by Mole, this is a slim, wonderfully printed, 20-page book collecting work done over the course of Ikko Narahara's career up to then (1958 – 1990), bound together by the fact that all the photos in the book were taken at night. Has a brief afterword by Narahara in English. Published 15 years ago, but these are brand NEW copies that look like they came off the press yesterday.
Michael Kenna, In Hokkaido (Update: Sold Out!)
This new publication produced to coincide with Michael Kenna's exhibition at the Kushiro Art Museum in Hokkaido brings together 50 photographs of Michael Kenna's growing body of work produced in Hokkaido over the last 7 years, including several photos taken earlier this year. Afterword by Daido Moriyama (available in English). This was published in August in a print run of 1,200 copies. There may be a 2nd printing later this year, but no confirmation on that. (Communication with this publisher leaves something to be desired, to be honest.)
To be sure, we are not the only place you can get this title, but I dare say you'll be hard-pressed to find it for cheaper than the approximate $55 we've got it for.
Michio Yamauchi, Street Cats (Update: Sold Out!)
This was published as part of the "Mole Unit" series of small, magazine like publications issued by Mole during the 1990s that featured Osamu Kanemura, Mitsugu Onishi, Akihide Tamura among others. This particular issue is No. 8 and was published in 1999. Cats are a well-worn subject for any Japanese photographer from your Lomo enthusiast to Araki, but very few will present them the way that Yamauchi does. Along with Hong Kong (1997), this now represents perhaps the hardest Yamauchi to find for those completists (like myself!) who can never get enough Yamauchi.
Yasuhiro Ishimoto, multi exposure Exhibition Catalogue
This is a beautifully-produced exhibition catalog for an exhibition of Yasuhiro Ishimoto's multiple exposure work that was held at the Musashino Art University Museum & Library in May-June, 2009. The work is presented in a wonderful accordian style of connected pages (see the photos in the bookstore), and includes a booklet with three essays (in both Japanese and English) on Ishimoto's work and career. Irrespective of the photography and peoples' taste in that regard, this Ishimoto catalog will I think appeal to book lovers the most out of the four presented here (with the possible exception of the Kenna). I have a few books done in this accordian style (Masato Seto's The Living Room and a wonderful facsimile book of Hiroshige prints done by the Metropolitan Museum of Art are two I treasure) and it really is a wonderful way to look at the work, and not nearly as inconvenient as it might seem at first glance. The inclusion of three different essays on Ishimoto's career in English translation, including a nice overview of his time in Chicago, is icing on the cake.
石元泰博Ikko NaraharaMichael KennaMichio Yamauchiyasuhiro ishimoto奈良原一高山内道雄
Interview with Marc Feustel
May 19, 2009 Kurt	3 Comments
Marc Feustel, Studio Equis
On current view at the Setagaya Art Museum is a wonderful photography exhibition entitled Japan: A Self Portrait, that uses the works of 11 photographers† to give us a view onto the incredibly important 20 year period following the end of World War II. The milestone events of this period are well known — the ending of the war via the atomic bombings, the American occupation, and the rapid rebuilding of the country and following economic recovery, including the citizens' self-esteem, that culminated with the hosting of the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. But while these might form part of the structure of the exhibit, what's really special about this particular exhibit are the details of how those years were lived — details that have manifested themselves in the 168 photographs that make up the show.
The exhibition is the brainchild of Paris-based curator and writer Marc Feustel, one of the driving forces behind Studio Equis, which has organized several important traveling exhibitions of Japanese photography in recent years. Feustel can also be found at the two blogs he maintains — eyecurious and Shashin etc. — which are essential stops for anyone interested in what's going on with Japanese photography.
Japan Exposures recently asked Feustel via email to talk about the unique evolution of the current exhibition, how he himself got involved with photography, and his thoughts on how an exhibition of Japanese photography curated by a European might be received in Japan.
The following interview was conducted via email at the beginning of May.
Japan Exposures: Marc, anyone interested in Japanese photography and browsing the web will eventually come across your name, a true beacon in the Western cultural landscape. Could you give us a bit of personal background information about yourself and tell us how you came to be so involved with curating and writing about Japanese photography?
Marc Feustel: I am from a fairly international background: one part German, one part Australian, English by birth and Parisian by upbringing. To add to these layers I studied Economics and Politics in Dublin and then International Development in London. I don't have an academic background in Art History but spent most of my time at university loitering around that department. My central interest has always been photography since I saw a William Klein show at the Maison Européene de la Photographie in Paris, about fifteen years ago. I began to focus specifically on Japan through the book that I authored on postwar Japanese photography, Japan: A Self-Portrait, Photographs 1945-1964. The book was published in 2004, in English and French by Flammarion and in Japanese by Iwanami Shoten.
"I think that there is a lot that contemporary photography can learn from the intensity of the engagement of these photographers with the society and the nation around them."
JE: It was from this project that Studio Equis began, right?
MF: Yes, that's right. During the research for the book, we were put in touch with Managing Editor of Illustrated Books at Iwanami Shoten, Tsuguo Tada. He was instrumental in introducing me to the photographers and obtaining their approvals for the project. After the success of the book we agreed to form a company to continue our involvement and to find other ways of introducing more Japanese photography in Europe and in the US. Studio Equis is myself, Tsuguo Tada and my mother, Helen Feustel. Our aim is to promote the work of the individual artists that we represent but also to find projects that promote a better understanding and closer relationships between Japanese and Western photographic circles. We are also involved in helping museums and collectors develop their collections of Japanese photography. Studio Equis is a three-man band so everyone does a bit of everything, however my main role is Artistic Director. I curate the exhibitions that we present, manage our publications and identify those photographers that we represent.
JE: The current exhibition at Setagaya — which we understand will also travel to Yamagata, Aichi, and the Kiyosato Museum†† — is based on the book Japan: A Self-Portrait, which was published in 2004. It's interesting that this is an exhibit based on a book, when usually it is the other way around. Could you tell us more about the original book and how it came to become an exhibition.
MF: Yes, this exhibition has followed an unusual path. The book initially began as a stand-alone project, but over time we realised that it had the potential to make an interesting exhibition and (hopefully) one that presented these works in a new light. The book is both a study of the extraordinary transformation of Japanese society after the war, as well as a study of the incredibly dynamic evolution in the photography of the period. This was a period where Japan changed radically, and one where photography played a major part in documenting and processing the changes that were occuring. This idea formed the basis for the exhibition as well as the book and while many of the works from the book appear in the exhibition, I modified and expanded the selection of images to 168 prints in total, accompanied by first edition publications from the period. The exhibition was initially planned to first open in Europe, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, however because of changes in their photography department this was no longer possible. We then decided to collaborate with Tokyo's Setagaya Art Museum to open the exhibition in Japan and then to travel it in Europe afterwards.
JE: Do you have any thoughts on how an exhibition curated (or co-curated) by a non-Japanese will be met by Japanese, or is that a non-issue? What would be different if this same material was being solely curated by a Japanese person?
MF: I think that the fact that I am a foreigner is a central feature of this exhibition. The eleven photographers in this show are all well-established artists in Japan with several decades worth of exhibitions and books to their names. However, many of them have been lesser known in Europe and the US and, even in Japan, have not often exhibited in a group context. When I began this project, I wanted to try and bring a fresh look to the photography of this period. As an outsider, I didn't have to contend with the context of the Japanese photographic canon and I made my selection from a different perspective than a Japanese curator would. Of course many 'key' images are present in the show, but I have also often been told that my selection is 'surprising' or 'unusual', which I think is a good thing in this context. As an outsider in Japan you can allow yourself a certain number of choices that maybe would be more difficult for a Japanese curator who is very aware of established photographic relationships and reputations.
However, I think that it is very unlikely that there will be a consistent 'Japanese' reaction. Already in the first week I was very interested to see how differently different generations reacted to these images. For the older generation, this exhibition is a more emotional experience, one which is tied to their memories of the era. For younger generations there tends to be more of a reaction to the photographic developments of the time and a sense of surprise at how modern these photographs are. My hope is that this exhibition will succeed in presenting these works in a new light and to highlight just what a crucial period this was in the artistic development of photography in Japan.
© Takeyoshi Tanuma - Modern dress versus traditional dress at the Sanja festival. Asakusa, Tokyo, 1955
JE: The time period of the exhibit is 1945 – 1964, a time of intense rebuilding leading up to the Tokyo Olympics. But I'm curious about another Japanese fascination or obsession — that of the "Showa Boom" of recent years, which has manifested itself in countless photo books and exhibits. What do you think is behind this nostalgia for the "Showa" years [The years 1926–1989 in Japanese history, corresponding to the reign of Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) — Ed.], and how do you see your book/exhibit in the context of that nostalgia?
MF: As I don't live in Japan, I don't feel the 'Showa boom' that intensely, but I think the nostalgia for this period is understandable. Since the 1989 financial collapse Japan has been left somewhat adrift, and a new direction hasn't really been forged for the nation. For a country where there was a strong sense of the group and the collective, many of these collective institutions (the family, religion) are being eroded by more materialistic and individualistic aspirations. Within that context, I think people are nostalgic for the postwar years, as the end of an extremely difficult period of several years of conflict and one when there was a real collective sense of a brighter future. That nostalgia is probably exacerbated by the fact that for the younger generations in Japan, the future seems very precarious and uncertain.
In terms of Japan: A Self-Portrait, as a European in his thirties, nostalgia was not a strong motivating factor for me. While the show may be linked to the current Showa fascination, I don't think that it presents an overly romanticised image of these years. In my view, while these works portray a sense of positivity and optimism and perhaps sometimes describe a simpler 'traditional' life, they also highlight the extraordinary hardships of the time and the negative consequences of the social changes during these years. Whether driven by nostalgia or not, in purely photographic terms, I think that there is a lot that contemporary photography can learn from the intensity of the engagement of these photographers with the society and the nation around them.
JE: If you were going to curate a similar "self-portrait" exhibit of Japan during the "Heisei" years (say the last 10-20 years), at this point in time, how would that exhibit look?
MF: That is a very good question… maybe I should take you up on that idea! I think an exhibition on contemporary Japan would be a very different animal. It would be an interesting challenge, particularly as there would not be the benefit of hindsight that I had for Japan: A Self-Portrait. A few names spring to mind: Miyako Ishiuchi, Osamu Kanemura, Hiroh Kikai, Tomoko Sawada, Yutaka Takanashi, Hiromi Tsuchida, Miwa Yanagi and of course Araki and Moriyama, but that list would take a long time to refine. Happily you would see a much more significant number of female photographers, who have carved out an important place for themselves in the contemporary Japanese photographic landscape. I think that this landscape has become increasingly fragmented, with fewer groups such as Vivo or Provoke, and therefore it is perhaps harder to identify coherent photographic movements. Visually the exhibition would of course be dramatically different, particularly as the changes that have occurred over the last two decades in Japan do not have the visual drama of the postwar years and as photographers today have a radically different visual vocabulary. Also photography today inhabits a very different space than it did during the postwar years, where it was a crucial source of 'information'.
In terms of approach, you would see far less visceral images that display the engagement of the photographer with the subject. Contemporary photographers tend to have a more detached, sometimes deliberately cold and distant approach and many more works deal with major societal issues through the prism of personal identity and the ordinariness of the everyday. Overall, I think that a contemporary self-portrait of Japan would leave viewers with a very different impression, one which is less dramatic and perhaps more uneasy and uncertain, but one which certainly confirms the richness of the Japanese photographic landscape. &#8226
† The 11 photographers are Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Kikuji Kawada, Ihei Kimura, Takeyoshi Tanuma, Shomei Tomatsu, Ken Domon, Shigeichi Nagano, Ikko Narahara, Hiroshi Hamaya, Tadahiko Hayashi, and Eikoh Hosoe.
†† The dates of these other showings in Japan are as follows:
Domon Ken Photography Museum, Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya
Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Yamanashi Prefecture
Japan Exposures Reader Giveaway
For those unable to see Japan: A Self Portrait for themselves, we are excited to offer to a single Japan Exposures reader a copy of the official exhibition catalog. This hardcover catalog measures 18cm by 25cm, features an introductory essay by Feustel (in both Japanese and English), and all 168 photographs included in the exhibition (captioned, also in both Japanese and English).
Simply answer the question below by 15 June 2009 and we will randomly draw the winner from all correct entries. (Please note that the book will be sent via Economy Air, which normally takes two weeks and is uninsured and not traceable).
田沼武能石元泰博細江英公eikoh hosoe長野重一featuredhiroshi hamayaIhei KimuraIkko Naraharaken domonKikuji KawadaMarc Feustelshigeichi naganoshomei tomatsustudio equistadahiko hayashiTakeyoshi Tanumayasuhiro ishimoto土門拳奈良原一高川田喜久治木村伊兵衛東松照明林忠彦濱谷浩
Yasuhiro Ishimoto – On a Tokyo street (1953)
Image May 18, 2009 Kurt Leave a comment
© Yasuhiro Ishimoto
Yasuhiro Ishimoto was born in 1921 in San Francisco, California, and grew up in Kochi on the island of Shikoku. In 1939 Ishimoto returned to the U.S., and was interned with other Japanese-Americans in Colorado from 1942-1944. He moved to Chicago in 1944 to study architecture at Northwestern University, and a couple of years later he transferred to the Institute of Design, the famed institution founded by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, where he studied under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. In 1961 Ishimoto returned to live in Japan for good. Ishimoto's most famous body of work is Chicago, Chicago, published in 1969 and comprising work he shot in his adopted city from 1958 – 1961. His other published works include Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture (1960), Chicago, Chicago: Sono 2 (1980), and Shibuya, Shibuya (2007).
The above photo from 1951 is part of the current Japan: A Self Portrait exhibition, which looks at Japan from 1945 – 1964 through the eyes of 11 photographers, including Ishimoto, Ken Domon, Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, and Shigeichi Nagano. The exhibition at the Setagaya Art Museum will run until June 21, after which it will travel within Japan before making its way to Europe. The exhibition was curated by Marc Feustel of Studio Equis — please see our interview with Feustel for more on the show and how it came to fruition.
石元泰博yasuhiro ishimoto