1. I’m amazed & disturbed how many people, after reading one article of mine that they agree with, write to me as if I know all the answers to life—if they saw the shambolic details of my life they would not do this. It’s easy to see how the unscrupulous could take advantage.https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1045307656804560896 …
1. They are hostile to remote “desk jockeys” & bureaucrats (soldiers beyond a certain rank are the same as any stupid bureaucrat, because they must play politics to rise). They may also be hostile to an incompetent local commander who is a “paper tiger”, not a natural leader.
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2. They are, as you observe, fiercely loyal to and motivated by their comrades, rather than abstract ideology. This is because the small team is the most natural state for a man in evolutionary terms. A natural leader will emerge in any such group.
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3. This leader may not be the “politically approved” leader, since the paper qualifications to be an officer or commander often do not accord with reality in war. See, cases where the officer is killed and a more natural and effective leader rises from the ranks.
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4. Why does this create meaning and purpose? It is the same as an expedition: a small group of comrades fighting to exist. Heidegger and Sartre agree meaning springs from confronting death. This is terrifying for an atomised individual, but in a small group it is canalised.
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5. The authority they submit to is nature: the need to survive & to do what is necessary. In the contemporary technocratic/technological world, this authority is veiled from us. The world of adventure, sailing, and war is a meaningful world for men. Dr. Johnson knew!pic.twitter.com/GEBEmmYltS
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We disagree merely over what seems to me your overstretching of the word "authority". Being compelled by reality to do something or other seems to me something importantly different to submitting to human authority. But perhaps just as satisfying.
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Humans and nature are one. There are eternal laws of survival—deviation from these laws, the laws of reality, means death. Legitimate human authority is that authority which is closest to the eternal laws of survival and so reality.
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How would you characterise the word "authoritarian", particularly the negative connotations it has? The word does not seem to me to have much to do with submission to nature.
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1. I see, per Aristotle, the “authoritarian” as someone who takes a virtue too far and turns it into a vice by becoming arbitrary and capricious. I actually view our current regime as authoritarian, though it defines itself against “authoritarianism”.
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