I think VP would have felt intimidated by Koestler's intellect and academic achievements Apparently Koestler was a highly intelligent monster. I don't think "highly intelligent" fits the old cornfield preacher.
as did the vicster. Same concept, slightly different vocabulary.. like the teaching, where does the life in the blood come from.. from the "seed" of course. crowley called it something like the divine logos or something..
as did the vicster. Same concept, slightly different vocabulary.. like the teaching, where does the life in the blood come from.. from the "seed" of course. crowley called it something like the divine logos or something..
certainly lived the same lifestyle.
Yeah, but did Crowley ever see any snow magically appear on gas pumps?
"Forsaking his education, Koestler moved to Palestine.
Allergic to the hard physical labor it took to make the desert bloom, Koestler didn’t last long."
Ok, THAT sounds like vpw. He was not to be found when it was time to do his chores
around the farm, and avoided physical labor in general.
"But there is a consistent note of autodidactic crankiness, too. Koestler’s enthusiasms included Lamarckian evolution, telepathy and ESP, a theory of creation that we would call intelligent design, levitation and the belief — laid out in his late book “The Thirteenth Tribe” — that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars of the North Caucasus."
vpw also has "a consistent note of autodidactic crankiness."
He claims to have picked it all up without conventional sources,
and God help you if you disagreed with vpw! "Crankiness" puts it mildly!
Koestler's poor science- he embraced Lamarckian evolution, which is simplistic
science fiction, and knowing THAT, it's no surprise he could come up with the
idea that Ashkenazi Jews weren't "Jews" but Khazar converts to Judaism.
(Both Lamarckian evolution and Koestler's ideas about Ashkenazi have been
disproven conclusively using genetics.)
" But the Koestler he depicts is consistently repugnant — humorless, megalomaniac, violent. Like many people concerned about “humanity,” he was contemptuous of actual humans. He ignored and snubbed his mother (who had pawned her last diamond to pay for his passage to Palestine), and he rebuffed every attempt to arrange a meeting between him and his illegitimate daughter. What made him such a creep? Perhaps alcohol — Koestler threw tables in restaurants and was arrested for drunken driving on many occasions. Perhaps insecurity — he was tormented by his shortness (barely 5 feet 6 inches) and used to stand on tippy-toe at cocktail parties. “We all have inferiority complexes of various sizes,” Koestler’s Communist editor Otto Katz once told him. “But yours isn’t a complex — it’s a cathedral.”
In the late 1990s, Jill Craigie, the wife of the Labour politician Michael Foot, told Cesarani that Koestler had raped her decades earlier. The scandal that resulted when Cesarani’s own Koestler biography was published embroiled Scammell, who had defended Koestler in 1995 against an allegation of attempted rape made by Foot. Scammell argues here that “the exercise of male strength to gain sexual satisfaction wasn’t exactly uncommon at that time” and that “Craigie’s story and Cesarani’s embellishment of it have left a stain on Koestler’s reputation far larger than he deserves.”
He is wrong. Posterity has let Koestler off lightly. Every scrap of evidence that Scammell himself has so impartially gathered argues in favor of crediting Craigie’s story. Bertrand Russell’s wife claimed Koestler tried to rape her, too. “Without an element of initial rape,” Koestler wrote the woman who would be his second wife, “there is no delight.” One girlfriend called him “an odd mixture of consideration, thoughtfulness and extraordinary brutality.” Certain aspects of Koestler’s sexism — in particular, his expectation that his girlfriends serve him as stenographers and maids — are indeed mitigated by the era in which he lived. His pattern of predation and violence, though, is a vice of a different order. It shocked those who encountered it. "
I don't think Koestler INSPIRED vpw, but if vpw knew, he surely ADMIRED him for it-
vpw admired Stiles for an unkind word that "put his wife in her place", as they'd see it.
"The point can be made more generally: In print as in life, he was driven by ego, not principle. His subject was himself."
Now, THAT would be a neat summary of vpw for the curious, as well!
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TheEvan
I think VP would have felt intimidated by Koestler's intellect and academic achievements Apparently Koestler was a highly intelligent monster. I don't think "highly intelligent" fits the old cornfield preacher.
I enjoyed the article. Strange person, that.
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waysider
I read it years ago, though I don't recall if it was mandatory.
It's no wonder VPW recommended this guy's work. He probably saw him as some sort of role model.
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Ham
I wonder if he had any dealings with Aleister Crowley..
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waysider
Looking at it geographically and chronologically, I would say the chances are pretty slim.
They did, however, seem to share a similar opinion of women.
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Ham
as did the vicster. Same concept, slightly different vocabulary.. like the teaching, where does the life in the blood come from.. from the "seed" of course. crowley called it something like the divine logos or something..
certainly lived the same lifestyle.
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waysider
Yeah, but did Crowley ever see any snow magically appear on gas pumps?
I rest my case.
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Ham
I dunno.. but with some of the drugs he was involved with, I imagine he saw things that made snow lined gas pumps look mild by comparison..
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WordWolf
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/books/review/Caldwell-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1
Ok, let's see....
"Forsaking his education, Koestler moved to Palestine.
Allergic to the hard physical labor it took to make the desert bloom, Koestler didn’t last long."
Ok, THAT sounds like vpw. He was not to be found when it was time to do his chores
around the farm, and avoided physical labor in general.
"But there is a consistent note of autodidactic crankiness, too. Koestler’s enthusiasms included Lamarckian evolution, telepathy and ESP, a theory of creation that we would call intelligent design, levitation and the belief — laid out in his late book “The Thirteenth Tribe” — that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars of the North Caucasus."
vpw also has "a consistent note of autodidactic crankiness."
He claims to have picked it all up without conventional sources,
and God help you if you disagreed with vpw! "Crankiness" puts it mildly!
Koestler's poor science- he embraced Lamarckian evolution, which is simplistic
science fiction, and knowing THAT, it's no surprise he could come up with the
idea that Ashkenazi Jews weren't "Jews" but Khazar converts to Judaism.
(Both Lamarckian evolution and Koestler's ideas about Ashkenazi have been
disproven conclusively using genetics.)
" But the Koestler he depicts is consistently repugnant — humorless, megalomaniac, violent. Like many people concerned about “humanity,” he was contemptuous of actual humans. He ignored and snubbed his mother (who had pawned her last diamond to pay for his passage to Palestine), and he rebuffed every attempt to arrange a meeting between him and his illegitimate daughter. What made him such a creep? Perhaps alcohol — Koestler threw tables in restaurants and was arrested for drunken driving on many occasions. Perhaps insecurity — he was tormented by his shortness (barely 5 feet 6 inches) and used to stand on tippy-toe at cocktail parties. “We all have inferiority complexes of various sizes,” Koestler’s Communist editor Otto Katz once told him. “But yours isn’t a complex — it’s a cathedral.”
In the late 1990s, Jill Craigie, the wife of the Labour politician Michael Foot, told Cesarani that Koestler had raped her decades earlier. The scandal that resulted when Cesarani’s own Koestler biography was published embroiled Scammell, who had defended Koestler in 1995 against an allegation of attempted rape made by Foot. Scammell argues here that “the exercise of male strength to gain sexual satisfaction wasn’t exactly uncommon at that time” and that “Craigie’s story and Cesarani’s embellishment of it have left a stain on Koestler’s reputation far larger than he deserves.”
He is wrong. Posterity has let Koestler off lightly. Every scrap of evidence that Scammell himself has so impartially gathered argues in favor of crediting Craigie’s story. Bertrand Russell’s wife claimed Koestler tried to rape her, too. “Without an element of initial rape,” Koestler wrote the woman who would be his second wife, “there is no delight.” One girlfriend called him “an odd mixture of consideration, thoughtfulness and extraordinary brutality.” Certain aspects of Koestler’s sexism — in particular, his expectation that his girlfriends serve him as stenographers and maids — are indeed mitigated by the era in which he lived. His pattern of predation and violence, though, is a vice of a different order. It shocked those who encountered it. "
I don't think Koestler INSPIRED vpw, but if vpw knew, he surely ADMIRED him for it-
vpw admired Stiles for an unkind word that "put his wife in her place", as they'd see it.
"The point can be made more generally: In print as in life, he was driven by ego, not principle. His subject was himself."
Now, THAT would be a neat summary of vpw for the curious, as well!
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Twinky
Heh, I can think of someone who might be / have been very interested in such psychological underpinnings of dictatorship.
Another place where the psychological underpinnings are considered:
From Orwell's novel Animal Farm, a satire on Communism: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Just like on a farm in Ohio........
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