Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Vertical Invasion of the Barbarians, by Mário Ferreira dos Santos

“Vertical Invasion of the Barbarians”, by Mário Ferreira dos Santos, is a manifesto denouncing the invasion of barbarism in Western culture. The book focuses on the concept of vertical invasion, where a people’s culture is possessed and corrupted, leading to the decline of its spiritual and cultural geography. The author outlines the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian traditions that make up the historical soul of the West and discusses the risks they face.

The book is divided into two parts: the invasion of affectivity and sensitivity, and the invasion of intellectual life. Through various empirical and historical examples, the author highlights the dangers of excessive force, devaluation of law, trivialization of art, and separation of reason and aesthetics in the first part. In the second part, he addresses the consequences of the separation between philosophy, religion, and science, and the rise of intellectual exclusion, defeatist negativity, and crude materialism.

The invaders are likened to demons emerging from the abyss of the human experience. The book ultimately serves as a call to arms, urging people to confront these invaders with reason and sensitivity, illuminating the abyss that lies beneath humanity’s existence.


Preface

The expression “vertical invasion of the barbarians” is not our creation. It was already used by the German politician Rathenau in the last century. However, the characteristic we want to give it is somewhat different from that intended by that politician. However, it is impossible to clarify our intentions without first clarifying the concepts: invasion, vertical, and barbarian. Let us begin, however, with the latter.

The term “barbarian” was initially used by the Greeks and Romans to refer to all foreigners. However, it later took on the sense of what is uncivilized, uncultured, and combative against any manifestation of culture. In this sense, we also use it in this work. But it is necessary to present other aspects that will further facilitate our understanding of what we intend to propose.

The term “barbarian,” among the Greeks, did not refer only to the foreigner but to any people who spoke a different language from theirs, as for the Romans were the people who did not speak either Greek or Latin. Later, the Romans called barbarians those uncivilized peoples or those who were not under Roman jurisdiction.

History tells us that there were many horizontal invasions of barbarians, that is, invasions that occurred more slowly or quickly, and that consisted of the peaceful or violent penetration of peoples who moved to regions inhabited by others, imposing their power or at least their customs. But we can speak of an invasion of barbarians when it takes place in the territory that corresponds to civilization. These invasions were not as bloody as they are often described, as those that occurred in the ancient Roman Empire, especially in the final period, occurred gradually, and often with the internal support of the civilized people themselves, already barbarized in many of their customs.

In fact, the invasion that is the gradual and broad penetration of the barbarians not only occurs horizontally by penetrating civilized territory, but also vertically, by penetrating through culture, undermining its foundations, and preparing the way for the easier corruption of the cultural cycle, as happened at the end of the Roman Empire and as it begins to happen now among us.

This work is a denunciation of this invasion, which, preparing and developing for almost four centuries, now reaches an intolerable stage and definitively threatens us. As a denunciation work that aims to reach as many people as possible, we have avoided as much as possible the technical language of scientific language, which is appropriate to the disciplines addressed here, themes that are specific to their formal object. Our language is as general as possible, sufficient to make the aspects under examination clear.

The facts we point out, the processes we record, the events we gather in favor of our thesis are not all that occur, but those that we consider essential. From the outset, the reader will see that each subject we deal with would admit of a more prolonged and exhaustive study. It was not possible to do so, on pain of making this work voluminous and, therefore, more restricted to readers. We made it a point to only point out the barbaric side it presents, leaving a long margin of meditation for the reader.

To the Romans’ exclamation: “barbarians extramuros!” (the barbarians are outside the walls of the cities, of civilization), today we can respond: “barbarians intramuros!” (the barbarians are already within the walls, in full civilization, assuming aspects, dressing in civilized attire, but behind that appearance, acting recklessly to dissolve our culture).

On the other hand, there are the corruptive pre-existing dispositions that are present in every cultural cycle and act from the very beginning, with greater or lesser intensity, to destroy the form of the cycle they repel.1

The active corrupting elements, guided by an intelligence of malicious will, have always known how to take advantage of barbarism as an instrument to undermine culture. And today, more than ever, they handle it with a staggering skill, having means capable of doing so, giving the corruptive work an intensity and a scope never before reached.

Many may accept this situation as inevitable. No cultural cycle, they say, can claim to be eternal. But this argument, which seems true, is roundly false. If cultural cycles are contingent, one cannot establish an absolute necessary course, only a hypothetical one. What can perish, can only perish, and its demise is not of absolute necessity to occur sooner, because there are possibilities of enduring if the balance between corruptive pre-existing dispositions and generative pre-existing dispositions is found. And that is also a possibility, as it is a possibility that human life may be prolonged indefinitely. Man may then perish, but he may also endure. The endurance of the contingent does not find a definitive reason to the contrary, only contingent also. Moreover, every life aspires to perpetuation. And this desire in us is not something that opposes life.

If we know what makes things corrupt and efficiently apply what balances destruction with conservative elements, the final corruption can be diverted further away. It will then be possible to prolong the enduring being for an unlimited time, but which can be delayed as much as the balance between the opposites can be maintained.

Thinking this way, our desire to prolong the cycle of our culture is not a vain one. If it carries in its womb supreme ideals of humanity, such as the reign of justice, moderation, wise and holy prudence, moderate and just courage, the elevation of women and children, if we preach equality among men, defending each one’s right alongside their duties, if we admit that equal opportunities should be given to all, if we affirm freedom and deny oppressive shackles and coercion, if we preach love among men and mutual support that will make everyone help their neighbor, if we develop science, democratize knowledge, and elevate the standard of human life, if our cycle, in short, gathers in a happy synthesis everything great that humanity ardently dreamed and desired, and if we have not yet realized everything we can and should accomplish, how then can we wish for the destruction of this cycle to return to an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, to the polarities of master-slave, barbarian-cultured, oppressor-oppressed, faithful-unfaithful?

If we have in our cultural structure, within the realm of its higher ideas, everything that humanity ardently dreamed and desired, how can we admit that what is the foundation for a more promising path has been destroyed?

Let us remove what obstructs, let us fight against what perverts, let us strengthen what helps us to move forward, that is good! But to renounce, to resign ourselves to what we have conquered, to go back, never!

To fight for our cultural cycle, to strengthen the positive aspects to prevent the development of what is negative, that is our duty.

We believe that the first step in fulfilling this duty is to denounce what threatens us.

That is why we denounce. And this is the reason for this work.2

Part I – Vertical Invasion of Barbarians in Sensibility and Affectivity

Characteristics of Our Culture

For a better understanding of the subject matter of this work of denunciation, it is necessary to characterize Western Christian culture which, as Christian, is characterized by a worldview that includes the following principles:

a. The universe is a creation, including man;

b. Peoples are united by the same faith, and all are equal before God;

c. Divinity is providential; that is, it has foresight, sees, and disposes in advance what may happen, the possible historical;

d. Man is an intelligent and free being, who sinned freely;

e. However, he can be saved, thanks to a mediator (Christ), and by choosing salvation freely, or by divine grace (gratuitous or not);

f. Peace will reign when goodwill prevails among men, a healthy will, free from vices that condemn it to error.

The principles described above are constitutive of the backbone of this culture, which does not prevent remnants of Greek, Islamic, Hebrew, and other worldviews from surviving in it; however, they are subordinated, in greater or lesser intensities, to the Christian conception.

The destruction of our cultural cycle would be completed with the breaking, or rather, the rupture of the tension of the six aspects mentioned, threatened today from all sides, as we will see in the analyses that follow.

One of the most current measures of the barbarians is to fight against intelligence, even using intelligence itself, for considering it as the most legitimate sign of the civilized, cultured man.

The vertical presence of the barbarian in civilized society is also manifested by this struggle, which in our time takes on the most varied and also the widest aspects, such as:

Valorization of Everything That Affirms Animality in Us

It is no longer possible to seriously question the animality of man, nor that he possesses a mind that makes him specifically distinct from all other terrestrial animals, for he is an animal that not only is capable of evaluating values (animals also have an estimative capacity), but of capturing values as such, possible values, values to be created, as well as of constructing concepts and structuring an entire speculative science on these concepts, which, when well ordered, reaches the laws that govern all regions of being, and are valid in all spheres of reality, which is supremely scandalous for those who would like the Cosmos to be Chaos, and that no intelligence governs things.

Despite this evidence, there is always an attempt to discredit intelligence in its highest aspects. The barbarian vertical invasion in this sector manifests itself in various ways, and uses the most refined subliminal propaganda processes, in order to influence the human subconscious, so as to place intelligence in its highest flights under the aegis of distrust and even slander. And it proceeds in these ways:

Firstly, by Exalting Strength

There is a marked valorization of men who prove themselves to be possessors of great strength, even if it is only brute force. The similarity of this force is proudly compared, alleging the greatness of the man who possesses it. It does not matter if he is a mental weakling, but if he is able to break records, bend an iron bar, or deliver a punch equal to a mule’s kick, then we are facing a specimen of high human value. Fighters, boxers, men who reveal great resistance, become sought after and exhibited as the ultimate examples of human nature. At first, they are only curious and strange examples, but soon there are no shortage of those who value these high virtues. It is not surprising that they become models worthy of imitation for young people since then.

Overvaluation of Strength

The man with steel muscles is no longer a curious specimen, he is the popular hero, something that represents an idealtypus of the barbaric crowds.

Accentuated Valuation of Agility and Merely Physical Ability

As the highest barbaric way of appreciating human values, there is a marked emphasis on agility, physical abilities. This does not mean that the civilized person is not capable of obtaining them, and should not value these aspects. Certainly, they are obtained with signs of intelligence and art; however, as a cultured person, they will not take them as the pinnacle of human elevation, nor will they transform them into exemplars to be imitated in the first place, but only eventually and secondarily, since it is also necessary to value the body and not just the mind.

Exaggerated Valuation of the Body at the Expense of the Mind

This is one of the most serious aspects of vertical barbarism. “A healthy mind in a healthy body” is a cultured maxim. However, no cultured person considers a healthy body to be more valuable than a healthy mind, nor that only a healthy body is sufficient. Undoubtedly, the sanity of the body is fundamental because we are also body, but the sanity of the mind is inseparable from humanity, under penalty of man losing his value. The popular heroes of this kind are presented only in their physical aspect. Among them are many who take care of the sanity of their minds and dedicate themselves with enthusiasm even in the highest realms of thought. However, what is done is to only emphasize physical ability or capacity, without any attention to other superior manifestations. Precisely, the concealment of these cultured aspects is the tactic of the vertical invasion of barbarism.

Valorization of the Visual Over the Auditory

Psychology experts know that our intelligence is based on the elements provided by the senses, such as touch, vision, and hearing, to build our mental frameworks. And in these frameworks, in the ascending order indicated, the auditory surpasses the visual and the tactile. We find in philosophical language, and also in psychological language, the terms that take on figurative sense, but that come from these sensations, such as clarify, illuminate, see, consider (from sideria, stars, see the stars), clear, etc., which come from vision: grasp, capture, concepts that come from touch: tonality, absurdity, harmony, which come from hearing. It is easier to see, to contemplate, than to listen attentively. What is heard attentively is more easily stored in memory, and the inner voice is more logical and more reliable than loose visual images of the imagination. The ear, in general, does not fantasize, but vision does. Vertical barbarism processes an overvaluation of the visual, so that shows are more organized for the eyes than for the ears. Popular music, for example, is relatively lacking in cultured aspects, although it is full of precious contributions to human catharsis. In periods, such as ours, in which the vertical invasion of barbarians is taking place, the valorization of the visual over the auditory is increasing, and even the book is threatened with the visual overtaking the reading, which is more auditory because words are meant to be heard and not seen. There are many intellectuals who defend the predominance of comic books, highly illustrated works, to the point where the visual increasingly replaces the auditory. It is not barbaric to have a balanced emphasis on both, but what is barbaric is to increase visuality at the expense of hearing.

The Romantic Exaggeration of Intuition, Sensitivity, and Non-reason

In our work, Philosophy and Romanticism, we gathered extensive aspects of the exaggerated romantic valuation on sensitivity, sensation, common feelings, sensitive intuition, fantasy, and non-reason, and the damages that romanticism caused, not only in philosophy but in all other superior manifestations of man, which were deplorable, and whose bitter fruits we are now harvesting.[^4] Romantic theses are not created in a specific historical period, such as our own from the late 18th century to the present day, in which the romantic movement took place not only in art and philosophy but also in ethical and moral attitudes of men, including politics and economics, etc. They are present in all phases of cultural cycles, in greater or lesser degrees, because they constitute not only an emotional but also an intellectual ballast of man himself throughout his existence.

They primarily characterize romanticism (and we will do so synthetically) as follows:

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  • Sensation is richer than reason. Reason is sterile, merely classifying structures stripped of life. Affective life is deeper, and through sensitive and affective intuition, man penetrates more into the intimacy of things. Reason only labels, catalogs, d
  • Sensitivity is creative. Art is superior to speculative thinking. The artist is not just any visionary, but a prophet who anticipates the creations of science and technology (which is not historically true). The artist creates new worlds; the speculator
  • Life surpasses reason – The reasons of life are superior to those of reason. Life is creative, not reason.
  • Non-reason surpasses the mechanical and geometric schemes of rationality, and is much richer in intuitions and discoveries than reason.

Based on these prejudices, exaggerated to the extreme, and having a shaky argument in their favor, romanticism, by appealing to irrationality, naturally has to provoke in all souls inclined only to feeling, and incapable of penetrating thought deeply, an unparalleled enthusiasm. When social conditions are favorable, their field is open to vast layers. After Napoleon’s defeat and the formation of the Holy Alliance, in which it was promised to once and for all banish wars in Europe and prevent the advent of another Napoleon, it was natural that enthusiasm should seize the crowds tired of the Napoleonic carnage. The way was open to the waltz, music of sensitivity and immensely vital, to cheerful songs, to the sweet hopes of a good life, peace, understanding. It was necessary to let life assert itself now, to let feelings loose from their fetters, to let men drink with large sips the lymph of happiness… And the dream went on for years and years, undoubtedly happy years for European humanity, until gradually these hopes faded, and romanticism became increasingly bitter, more acidic, more grating, until it fell into the morbid manifestations of black romanticism, of “God’s assassins,” of negative nihilists, of Satanists, of all kinds of desperate people, of living in boredom, to disgust, nausea, disgust of life, dulling of feelings, even to brutishness, desire to become plants, or just to be things without meaning.

There is no period so full of hopes and so full of miseries and disillusionments, certain values were never so exalted, but also never so depressed. Never has the voice risen to such enthusiastic dithyrambs, and never has the voice lowered to hoarse rebellion and shouts of vile insults.

In short, Romanticism was one of the periods in which the European soil was best cultivated for the great satanic harvest of cursed fruits. It was the era of blessing and curse. Everything that was great became small; everything that was noble was vulgarized; everything that was superior was depressed.

The Superiority of Force Over Right

One of the most marked characteristics of vertical barbarism is to present force as superior to right. Right is no longer what is due to the nature of a static, dynamic, and cinematically understood being, and therefore is based on a principle of justice that consists in giving each one what is due to them and not harming that good. Right is no longer the natural recognition of this truth, but only what comes from the arbitrary power (kratos) of the state. Natural law is postponed, discussed, and even denied in order to overvalue the norm emanating from the arbitrariness of the legislator, the legal order emanating from the holder of political power (kratos), the constituted authority. Justice is no longer the object of speculation. Mistrust surrounds it, doubt sets in, until finally any foundation for this entity, which is one of the most cherished virtues of cultured man, is denied. Rights are granted, obligations are determined. Obligation is no longer an indicator of rights. The state establishes them through its legislative organs, and imposes them by force and ensures them by legal sanction.

But even written law has a relative value. It is only valid as long as social kratos guarantees it. The arbitrary power of the powerful is supreme, and organized force can overthrow it. It is enough to organize and dominate kratos to have the “right” to overthrow, abolish, and even sanction new laws, contrary to those that were then in force.

The law has a secondary value. It is only the will of the legislator that it expresses, and it is no longer a manifestation of natural law or justice. Right moves away from the field of Ethics to be integrated only into the field of Politics. Force is then exalted as the creature of right. “The right of force surpasses the force of right” is the most cherished sentence of the caesariocrats. “I am the law,” proclaims the despot. “The State is Me,” exclaims Caesar, or else “The class is the law.” And private interests predominate over general interests, popular will is annulled and subordinated to krateria’s. Barbarism then dominates sovereignly. Cultivated speculation in law is ridiculed. What are reasons worth in the face of the empire of force! Reason is humiliated, belittled, and disgraced. Organized brutality dominates.

Force is the Guarantee of Value

All those who have lived with African peoples, studied their lives and customs, have noticed and emphasized that blacks in Africa only recognize value in those who use force or, at least, who show they possess it and have the capacity to use it when necessary. They only respect those who manifest this power. They do not love, they fear. They obey, not because of the conviction of the need for discipline and order, but because the commanding voice comes from the strongest. They obey only the voice of the strongest. This constitutional defect of the African people has been a hindrance to the development of their social life, now that Africa is awakening to democracy and freedom. The failures that present themselves are terrible. Many educated Africans are stunned by a reality that seems impossible to overcome and change. The voice of cultured freedom finds no ears to hear it, nor enough minds to understand it. Good intentions are almost in vain in the face of obstacles that seem insurmountable. Many, abandoning their new ideas, relapse into barbarism, desperate to be able to lift their people to European cultural levels. They feel that the historical conditions were not yet ripe for the new experience. The freedom, which was emerging as a grateful hope, becomes a bitter disillusionment. The fruits contradict the theory, reality defeats the dream. Some abandon everything, distance themselves from the social struggle. Others try, almost fainting, to find a way out that saves them, and few still nurture hope. What is seen today in Africa is discouraging. Words of hope alone do not help, nor do promises full of optimism. Reality is tremendously disappointing and the expected liberation seems to be forging even more terrible shackles. Some already propose a return to colonialism. Some ask that the people be better prepared and that they step back. If this number does not become a legion, it is because those who still pretend to believe in better possibilities spur themselves on with intensity, but with the intention of overcoming their defeat and creating a faith that is not built with shouts or roars. They prefer to believe even in the impossible than to accept despair. We will go through decades of terrible experiences in Africa, of bloody and endless struggles, of returns to tribalism and barbarism, that will astonish the world. However, something better must be obtained. But these positive results, due to their meager volume, will not be enough to feed strong hopes. Only time will tell us the truth of what will happen. Predictions here are dangerous. But nurturing exaggerated hopes will be an even greater recklessness.3 The terrible thing, however, is that this barbarism also invades us and threatens us, and lurks us at every corner of history. Look for the signs and you will find them.

Unbridled and Tendentious Propaganda

The means of intellectual dissemination in our time – journalism, radio, television, theater, and the book – are infested with the most unbridled propaganda of the inferior and primitive. There is no need for lengthy comments.

The astonishing thing is the overvaluation of violent crime. The growing increase in criminality is not something that accompanies human progress indices, for what can be verified does not indicate any superior advancement, but rather returns to brutality and premeditated crime as humanity has never known.

There are periodicals that specialize in detailed and even sadistic disclosure of violent crimes. The figure of the criminal is accentuated to such an extent that it becomes exemplary, and many aspire to the notoriety that such criminals achieve. Radio and television programs are opened to interview criminals, to hear confessions from mothers and relatives, who report on their children’s lives that prepared them for crime. Great gestures and noble acts receive minimal space, if not silenced. All criminality is accentuated with a criterion of excessive and undeserved exaltation. The criminal who reveals skill is exalted as intelligent, and cunning is presented as a virtue. Unrestrained audacity is an index of heroism.

The fraudulent is seen as a skillful intellectual of crime. The blackmailer is an artist of malice. The contravener is an acrobat who with refinement evades the meshes of the law. The corrupt is a skillful defender of his rights to participate in social goods. Fraud, forgery, and scams are examples of mental acuity. Delinquency is the limit reached by the most skillful. The honest are depressed and ridiculed. The victim of these criminals is presented as an unforgivable naif, who seems well deserving of the injury suffered, for letting himself be deceived by his good faith.

Newspapers bleed, are washed in filth, malodorous, unworthy. But they invade homes, as do magazines that only exploit stale sexuality.

Sexualism, semidelinquency, affronts to morality, irregular life are accentuated with advertising refinements. The divorces of movie, radio and television stars are presented as historical events of the utmost importance. An event of real worth receives minimal attention, and alongside it columns are opened to recount the semidelinquent life of a foolish and stupid playboy who has accomplished stupid feats that any mentally weak person can do and even surpass. The life of a football player has a biographical importance superior to that of a Pasteur. Their steps are examined, their gestures are described, their idiotic tastes are accentuated, their ridiculously foolish preferences are presented as expressions of the highest taste, and their health makes crowds tremble with fear.

Does more need to be described about what is accentuated in the periodicals? Isn’t it evident the intention to exploit the lowest in man? Are we not witnessing the most unbridled speculation on the low human values to satisfy the curiosity and interest of crowds brutalized, barbarized by this disintegrating action?

What is exalted, deserved, and accentuated, but everything that points to the inferior, the mediocre, the horizontal?

The Valorization of Mechanical Memory

Memory is shared by man and animals alike. It comes from the lower intellect, but it points to the higher. Undoubtedly, memory is indispensable for the mind to construct its higher schemes, but it does not reveal any superiority by itself. There are mentally challenged individuals with prodigious memories. There are idiots who know all of The Divine Comedy by heart. We knew an illiterate man who knew The Lusiads by heart. He had paid someone to read Camões’ canticles to him and had memorized them. He mispronounced many words, perhaps due to who read them to him, but the truth is that he recited the canto he was asked for. Such a man could receive high prizes on pseudointellectual programs, in which people who only stand out for their memory and are knowledgeable about the details of a life or a discipline they know mechanically. And all of this is presented as an index of high culture.

Cultured memory is not mechanical; it is eidetic, it is the memory of ideas. Such people are not asked to develop or discuss an idea, but to say on which day of the week John Smith was born. The important thing is to know how many utensils were on the banquet table offered to the painter Reginaldo de Melo, or how much he sold his first painting for, and on what day of the week, at what time, in which month, in which year, to whom, and where. About his art, nothing. About the language of his paintings, nothing. About his real artistic value, nothing.

And do not say that this only happens in the media that have to address the large, usually ignorant, public, and that therefore they need to lower the level of their programs to serve it, and that they need writers with a mind proportionate to the listeners, or who know how to descend to the mental level of the majority of listeners. No. In an exam at a Philosophy college, candidates were approved or rejected depending on whether they could say the year, the day of the week on which a philosopher was born, on which date his first book was launched, in which newspaper he wrote an article in defense of his work, and almost all similar questions. And if the answer did not match the facts, the rejections were inevitable, and they were massive. In this way, many who wished to dedicate themselves to philosophy were shut out. Minds that could tomorrow contribute to raising the degree of culture of a people were already cast aside. Those who know psychology know very well what emotional damage these unfair rejections produce. If in the strongest ones they are capable of impelling them to break the stupidity of such masters and to project themselves decisively forward, in the weakest ones they bury all hopes and all stimuli.

The valorization of mechanical memory has also led to an exaggerated valorization of cybernetics, in which undue hopes are placed.

No one can deny that cybernetics can extraordinarily help the man of science, insofar as it corresponds to the mechanical memory part. It can compensate for deficiencies in this area, since it is common for the most intelligent to be devoid of the most marked degrees of mechanical memory. But cybernetics will never surpass eidetic memory, nor the creation of ideas, nor well-understood dialectic. It is a resourceful helper but in a certain area. To pretend that it can totally replace the human brain is the most foolish idea that could arise, and a manifestation of the worst kind of intellectual barbarism. However, there are not a few who think so. They believe that in the future man will no longer need to think (indeed, thinking is tremendously painful, difficult, and tiring for such people

No one can deny that cybernetics can extraordinarily assist the man of science, with regard to the part that corresponds to mechanical memory. It can supply deficiencies in this sector, since it is common for the most intelligent people to lack the most marked degrees of mechanical memory. But cybernetics will never surpass eidetic memory, nor the creation of ideas, nor dialectics well understood. It is an aid with great resources, but in a determined scope. To pretend that it can totally replace the human brain is the most foolish idea that could arise, and a manifestation of the worst kind of intellectual barbarism. However, there are not a few who think so. They believe that in the future, man will no longer need to think (in fact, thinking is tremendously painful, difficult, and tiring for such people, who encounter insurmountable resistance in their mental deficiencies). The machine will replace the human brain. Perhaps human rules will be determined by such a brain. There are not a few who dream of a great cybernetic brain to direct humanity, like a Caesar of Caesars. It is the exaltation of the thing in its materiality. Then ridiculed and oppressed intelligence will be removed to some museum of useless antiquities. What a beautiful dream of a barbarian! No barbarian, in any era, has dreamed of such an extraordinary thing!

Valorization of the Horde, of Tribalism

The unbridled crowds in the streets, which are the path to great brutality and injustice, a manifestation of primitivism, another example of the horde, driven by passions, especially fear, sharpened by the eternal exploiters of their weaknesses, by the most sordid demagogues, are now examples of human superiority.

Such spectacles are presented to many as the highest stage of human greatness. They are praised as manifestations of “social consciousness”, of “popular will”, etc. There is nothing grandiose about it. Not that men cannot unite to manifest what they desire, fear, want. For this, there are several means, cultured, ordered, superior to propagate their wanting, their thinking, and their desire. A cultured society multiplies these means and will use the horde, the popular flood, the unbridled, only in extreme cases. Opinion can be organized in cultured and civilized organs, and have cultured and civilized means of manifesting itself. And they are powerful and effective enough to achieve desired goals. The horde should be the last thing to be used. However, their formations are instigated, as if this path were not the most suitable for creating Caesars, instead of organizing a movement of cultured depth. These movements have only served to support tyrants and develop organized brutality because the unbridled masses in the streets cannot be permanent and immediately require the imposition of order, which then favors the excessive use of force and its abuse, with serious and pernicious consequences even for those who were most active in these barbarous manifestations.

The resurgence of tribalism and its prejudices, which re-emerge in the crowds, is one of the most evident signs of barbaric development. The tribe, due to its conditions, demands a more affective and emotional coherence than rational. The tribe member, as such, is judged by his companions as possessing a value superior to that of anyone else from another tribe. An offense to a member is like an offense to the entire tribe. We see tribalism born in castes, where an offense to a member, even in a purely particular matter, is taken as an extension to the whole caste.

A doctor accused of quackery awakens in many doctors an irrational solidarity. A military person assaulted by a civilian awakens in many military personnel a desire to take revenge on civilians, and until they retaliate, they feel that the tribe’s honor is not cleansed. A public official denounced for misappropriation of public money receives the tribal solidarity of many of his colleagues. The member of corporation A who offends the member of corporation B offends the tribal honor of the latter. And there will be no shortage of those from corporation B who decide to violently retaliate against some from corporation A. This tribalism is more common than we think. But it remains one of the lowest barbaric manifestations that we know, and its presence in society, according to the degree it presents, indicates the degree of barbarism that dominates it.

Exploitation of Sensuality

In all aspects, in times of ethical-cultural depression, sensuality receives a stimulus like no other. But what characterizes this period of vertical invasion of barbarians that we are living in is an unbridled exploitation of sensuality, which has the concupiscence of man in its favor and has certain moral facilities, certain introduced customs, and advertising that tries to reach the last limits, only contained by the action of political and social authorities, for if it were left to its own devices, we would not only have strip-teases on TV, but also in schools, and licentious films full of extreme obscenities, with refinements of details that would make the joy and glory of their producers, actors, scene designers, etc., with all their names mentioned, including even the studio sweepers, in a self-promotion of sensationalism, which is the most “eloquent” form of social promotion we know of at the moment.

Pornographic books sold secretly today would have the best placements in the windows of bookstores, and resounding advertisements of pages that would tell the “Life of Ernest Taylor” or “Elizabeth Bordon,” or something similar, in whose works the most unrestrained imaginations would be mobilized for their making. Literati who cannot achieve anything of value would find in this sub-literature their field of action and would show their immense possibilities, their inexhaustible resources, their creative capacity. And then their works would be “messages of the flesh to the spirit,” they would be “the revaluation of Life before Death,” “the cry of freedom of instincts cerberely contained by intellectualism,” and other expressions like such, which other sub-literati would use to justify, if necessary, that such works can and should be included in works of art, of genuine art, and that aesthetics has nothing to do with ethics (a famous phrase, taken only from the well of ignorance of many literati who have never studied either ethics or aesthetics, about which they constantly talk, in a charivari of empty words that only hide the vacuity of ideas, for ethics presides over all the acts of human dramaticity, all the active and factual life of man, and cannot be disconnected from it).4

And just as we see drugs being sold at the doors of our schools – although drug dealers are pursued leniently, because such crimes are treated with tolerance, in an era of manifest indulgence in favor of the criminal – we would see roving bookshops setting up to sell such works freely.

Let us not dwell on this point any longer, for it would be repeating what everyone knows, but to conclude that, if it were not for the action of political and social authorities, the unrestrained would be total. We do not believe that even organized churches, under the most diverse beliefs, nor honest and decent parents and teachers in action, would be capable of preventing the proliferation of such businesses, which would prosper, for bad ideas, like bad practices, like vice, tend to progress with more intensity than virtue, because it is easier to be vicious than virtuous, and because a large part of humanity is pusillanimous and even cowardly.

What we need to emphasize, as we have already done, is the publicity of sensuality in magazines, newspapers, radios, televisions, in cinema and theater, whose rate of progress exceeds all indices of any positive aspect.

The barbaric instincts of men threaten to break loose completely and, when they do, their fury leads to total destruction. History has already revealed to us similar moments, as was seen in the actions of the barbarians in their invasions. A lawless humanity would destroy all culture and, if not contained, will end up destroying itself.

The exploitation of sensuality presents an upward trend today, but it is already blunting human sensitivity itself. Much or almost all of those who indulge in sensuality no longer give a free and natural course to their practices. They need drugs to stimulate them because they feel their senses dull, their flesh cooled, fatigue threatens to devour them in a boredom of death, an inevitable final point of all these excesses, because nature itself rebels against excesses and exacts a high price for our faults. The always growing number of wretched, addicted, drugged grows immeasurably and devours a large part of youth, aged and rendered useless in their early years. However, until the final outcome is reached, new waves of victims are brought in to increase the number of the defeated.

The Dissemination of Bad Taste

The education of taste (of good taste) has always been one of the great cultured concerns of humanity, since good taste necessarily implies the ability to observe values, to appreciate them under just and secure criteria of judgment. Now, to achieve such capacity, culture, knowledge, distinction of aspects, aptitude in separating what is truly valuable from what is not, are required. Everyone knows what it means to have vulgar tastes and what distinguishes it from having delicate and cultured tastes. But the tendency to fight against good taste takes the most insidious forms known. Thus the exaggerated etiquette of the courtier is presented as an example of what is called good taste. Indeed, there is a partial good taste in it, alongside ridiculous excesses. But only the ridiculous excesses are highlighted, caricaturing them. In the days of the French Revolution, the riffraff of the streets wore noble clothing, made gestures and bows of lords, with the awkwardness that would be natural to them, but added with caricatures, and thus made fools laugh. In circuses, theaters, everywhere, good manners were ridiculed and covered with delicious laughter. There was no acrobat, no vulgar circus clown, who did not take advantage of the gold mine to elicit laughter and make a success.

But this open fight against courtly mannerism was justified by the social conditions of the time. We do not want to talk about those caricatures common in history, such as barbarians imitating Greeks or Romans, or warring peoples imitating each other with buffoonery, because all of this is still a remnant of the barbarian in us, but it has a limited action in time and a relatively small effect. We do not want to fail to understand that few respect opponents, recognize their value, and know how to assess their genuine worth, because this requires humility, which, although one of the noblest Christian virtues, is the least widespread. What we want to emphasize is the spread of bad taste that is evident, for example, in fashion. The Attic composure of the Athenians, the sober beauty of the great periods of Rome, or the cultured severity of the European Middle Ages would naturally have to disappear in times of invasion, such as the Renaissance and the Baroque. The style is only replaced by the dominant taste, and that is not always of good quality. It is natural that the most absurd ways of dressing were used, but not with the intensity and extent that we see in our time, in which there is no spectacle more ridiculous than a current fashion show. The most tasteless postures, the most foolish gestures, the clothes designed by the most imbecilic tailors, the most stupid manners, hide feminine beauty, replacing it with the unusual, the hybrid, the degenerate, the monstrous, even reaching the gruesome.

Sometimes creatures with doll-like gestures appear on the catwalks, and if they are not well received as apparitions from some otherworldly, scarecrow realm, it is because a large part of the audience, dulled in their good taste, receives the unusual, the unexpected with exclamations of surprise and animal satisfaction.

Those who observe the development that thrillers, those sensation films, have had in cinemas, the screams that explode in the audience at unexpected danger situations, the prolonged shudder in roars that are heard in cinema halls before ridiculous horror movies, whoever witnesses all this sees how much and in what way it is necessary to violate the sensitivity of barbarized audiences.

In the theater, the most morbid themes are explored. The studies carried out by depth psychology have provided ample material for sub-intelligences to create a theater in which the heroes are maladjusted, neurotic, moral lunatics, anguished at all levels, temperaments in tatters, personalities in decomposition, people of equivocal and malformed character, situations of the most unusual kind, intrigues that only the mind of a madman could create, for that theater is closer to asylums than to common sense, and all of this is presented as art, as sublime art. These equivocal plays in which characters say foolish things out loud and which an ignorant audience considers “high philosophy” sentences, in which the dialogue is a pile of clichés that should make us laugh more than think, all of this receives the praise of a critically damaged mind and is exalted to the maximum. And then, when someone with good taste, after suffering the exhibition of these monstrosities, watches a play by Shakespeare, he or she naturally feels tremendous relief, because one thing is to treat a neurotic like Hamlet by Shakespeare, and another is to treat a moral lunatic like John or Walter by some dubious prestigious playwright, the same success as Shakespeare’s competitors, so pampered by renowned critics as if they were the pinnacle of dramatic art and tragedy. All of this is witnessed, and even when Shakespeare is performed in the way we know can truly cause nausea, we can still see the hand of the giant, and the magnitude of the work is such that, despite the interpretation, it astonishes those who still have traces of intellectual good taste.

Now, we all know that advertising media depend on the highest number, and they will naturally have to yield to the demands of this clientele. But from there to descend to seek the lowest standards among this same clientele, and to do nothing to raise the taste of the customers, is an unforgivable neglect.

All of this contributes to disseminating bad taste, the most vulgar taste. Literature to meet this taste multiplies. Books that only speak to these lower feelings are presented as high-value human documents. The life of a thief is exploited, who describes in his memoirs how he rose up the ranks of crime. What should be delivered to scholars, especially psychiatrists, psychologists, lawyers, moralists, and ethologists for studies, is delivered to the public with the fanfare of the most resounding advertising. Book signing events are held, excessive advertising, and even “marquee” advertising is used to launch any work that tells the life of some unhappy creature, and even clumsy works are exploited, which someone writes to describe a life of misery, as if this were a great human document. And there are even those who see such things as superior art achievements. There is no shortage of sub-literates to gather laudatory words and proclaim values that only they, privileged by intelligence, are able to grasp.

The decadence is so overwhelming that even girls are used to launch books, stripped to excess, not to mention cases in which athletes, cinema artists, stage artists, etc., are called upon.

Everything serves to traumatize the crowds of customers, whose dull taste requires these traumas to be awakened.

Undoubtedly, there are those who oppose these things and do not cooperate with them. They distance themselves silently. But their number, although large, is silent and does not drown out the clamor and exclamations of others, who use all the advertising resources.

A company that intends to launch any product exposes a naked woman to display the offered product. It is the woman who attracts, not the product, and thanks to this attraction, it will sell more. We all know that all of this is so and that companies are forced to resort to these resources to sell their products. But it is degenerate bad taste that dominates, that demands these “effective formulas.”

To illustrate what we are saying with an example, we will tell a very telling story.

Recently, a noisy case occurred that seriously concerned the political fields of São Paulo. A state secretary had suffered serious accusations that had undermined his honorability. As is natural, this case aroused public passion, and a television channel decided to broadcast a live debate between the accuser, who was also a deputy, and a political leader of the party supporting the accused. This debate (called a round table at the time, we don’t know why) was directed by a well-known radio announcer. When presenting the conditions of the debate to the public, he said, among other things, the following: following the custom of the jury, the prosecution should be given the floor first, followed by the defense. Now, this radio announcer has a law degree. His mistake of attributing the word first to the prosecution because it is a “custom” is somewhat unforgivable. It is not a matter of custom, but of logical order. It is not possible to defend something that has not previously been the subject of an accusation. It is possible to defend oneself in advance against possible accusations, not against current accusations.

But why do we point out this fact? To accuse the radio announcer of just one mistake, when we all make mistakes? No. Such an attitude would have no merit. It is simply to warn of a very characteristic sign of our time, in which there is a regression worthy of attention. Note well: the fundamental difference between the barbarian and the civilized, as the Greeks felt, between the barbarian and the Hellenic, was not in relation to race or political status. It was, above all, in relation to the way of behaving in relation to facts. The barbarian is one who knows without knowing why he knows; the civilized person is one who knows, knowing why he knows. There is only science when the near and remote reasons for a thing, its causes, and its reasons are known. Knowing that there are trees arranged in such a way in that field is only barbaric knowledge, but knowing why they were planted, following such an order, is a learned knowledge. There are many things judged by many as just customs because they no longer know why such customs were instituted among men. The danger of modern pedagogy, in its negative aspects, is to believe that it is enough to inform the student well to achieve knowledge when true pedagogy would consist of giving him the ability to investigate the causes, reasons, and whys of things by himself. Here is a theme of utmost importance that deserves more careful attention from us: the pedagogical problem from the perspective of the mental formation of man. Shouldn’t the primary purpose of pedagogy be to build minds capable of investigating the whys, causes, and reasons of things, or just to form mediocre minds, erudite in a certain way, but without knowing how to reach the causes of things by themselves?

Primitive Creeds

Another aspect that reveals barbarization is the growing flowering of primitive creeds. The religions of lower cultural cycles, the primitive way of conceiving divinity, the most primitive rituals find a free field and support from crowds, even from people considered cultured.

In our country, such facts are multiplying, in a mixture of Christianity, spiritualism, witchcraft, Umbanda, and they present the most bizarre forms. In the crowd, an ambivalence between Our Lady and pagan female deities is common, when they are confused and identified in such a way that it is no longer known whether Our Lady is Yemanjá or Yemanjá is Our Lady.

A clergy, largely ignorant and improperly prepared, ill-disposed for pastoral action, fails every passing day. It takes blind eyes not to see that Catholicism, in Brazil, is losing ground in a frightening progression.

In other more cultured countries, where such facts should not arise, they also appear, with an insistence and amplitude that is astonishing. Everywhere, there is the emergence of primitive beliefs, the most barbarous creeds. Far from us to belittle what belongs to humanity. If no one will be irritated because the child harbors absurd beliefs, it is not possible to tolerate that adults return to primitivism and, intramuros, in the middle of the city, in the midst of civilization. These are the most serious signs that can be pointed out. The apologia of the superior religions has failed in its intent to correspond to the masses. Churches are emptying while the places of equivocal beliefs multiply, although with pompous titles of superior religion. We have visited these “temples” in many Brazilian cities, and it is staggering the ignorance of many false pastors, people of the lowest primitivism, passing for “spiritual guides” of crowds, where there are men who display diplomas from the most pretentious faculties in the country. The speeches that are heard are pieces of the lowest oratory, interspersed with biblical quotations. We do not want to deny the good intentions that are given there. However, good intention is not enough to justify anything. It would be best if there were more humility in many of these “spiritual guides” and that they sought to study to orient themselves better, in order not to become more instruments of inculturation and barbarism than of sound religiosity. Above all, what they should do is to elevate their admirers so that they reach higher levels and never descend to satisfy primitive impulses and fall into irrational practices, as are found in some “temples”, which even affront human dignity.

If we were to examine what happens in this sector, we would have material for long descriptions, but it would only be piling up facts to justify a fair conclusion, which is easy to draw. Our desire is that this work may serve to awaken some consciences, so that they may contribute with their actions to prevent the repetition or proliferation of such sects and that existing ones improve their methods and practices, in order to impel the feelings of their followers upward and never downward. It is not enough to quote biblical passages to awaken souls and uplift hearts, if these quotations are interspersed with false ideas and primary prejudices that produce effects contrary to those desired, reaching, as in some cases in our country, the practice of heinous acts, torture, personal sacrifices, serious mutilations, and simply criminal actions.

It is necessary for better-educated people to contribute to a broader monitoring of these organizations, as they even require intervention by the authorities because they reach criminal excesses. Much blood has already been shed in this country, caused by these false prophets, as we have seen arise in the Northeast and also in the South of Brazil (Canudos, Riacho de Sangue, the Muckers in Rio Grande do Sul, revolts in Goiás, etc.).5 The awakening of barbaric primitivism under the pseudo-Christian pseudomorphosis6 is one of the most terrible aspects of our land, although astonishing examples are also recorded in cultured countries of Europe.

The Emphasis on Repetition at the Expense of Creation

One of the aspects that most characterizes primitive societies is the constant perpetuation of their forms, ways of life, technique, and cultural schematization. Anthropologists, ethnologists, archaeologists, sociologists, and others have analyzed this point in detail.

Primitive societies are stable and dominated by the persistence of repetition. And repetition (so pleasing to children), which stimulates sensitivity in a sense that is only sensory-motor, also accompanies cultured and civilized man, as it is essential to do so. However, as with all excess, excessive repetition in all areas prevents further cultural development. What properly characterizes culture is its creative capacity within the systematic schematism that constitutes it. It is a self-realization that promotes the development of the possible forms contained in the essence of culture, and that makes it rise from the lowest to the highest stages. There are only high cultures where there is constant creation, and creation requires real innovations (not false innovations, which are the repetition of forms that have already been surpassed).

Progress is inevitable in the sense of the natural development of updates of superior possibilities. A culture, while creative, is a living culture, ascending. When it stagnates, sometimes on some platforms, it is like taking a breath for a longer march. When culture stops creating and petrifies itself, then the doors to vertical barbarian invasion open, and the stimulation of pre-existing corruptive dispositions finds an open field for its development. They work partly in parallel with barbarism, and partly mesh with it, so that a perfect symbiosis is formed between them, and both contribute markedly to take the cultural cycle to its decadence and even its destruction.

One of the most typical signs of barbarization lies in the growing development of repetition. The music, in which the rhythm is constantly repeated, the reiterated repetition of the same situations, the imitative repetition of the same abstractions, all of this finds support and develops. The same types of heroes are repeated, the copy of the same originals is repeated by imitation. The imitative replaces the creator. Not that repetition should be prevented. It has an important function. However, we want to draw attention to the repetition of primitive forms, the constant accentuation of the imitation of what is primary, which gradually replaces the creator until it stagnates. But repetition also stagnates when abstraction dominates. The tendency to take, as art, a constitutive value of a concretion, as the highest value, so as to make it excessively predominant, and even, in the most exaggerated cases, unique, leads to stagnation, as happened with Impressionism in emphasizing certain values, Expressionism in allowing itself to be dominated by catharsis, Cubism in the exaggerated accentuation of the geometric, Futurism in the excessive concern with stages of movement, until falling into “tachism” (or stainism) and the most violent forms of abstraction that end up tiring from the beginning, dead at birth, frustrated attempts that will not lead to any higher stage, but mere incomplete and false imitations of primitivism, because they are equivocal. The art of the Primitives must never be forgotten, it is abstract due to the lack of concretion, which requires more cultural amplitude and universal vision. The emphasis on specialism, the valorization of speciality, influenced modern artists in such a way that they fell into a deception, which is consuming them, and also killing the best virtuosities, since many values waste their resources, concerned, as they are, with presenting something new, something unpublished, which is a desire, not of barbarian origin, but bourgeois.

We only want to emphasize the predominance of imitation over creation, which is typical of the primitive, since the above theme requires further attention. However, we do not want to defend false innovations, a certain fad, which is also not creative and is also barbaric. What we want to defend is creation, not innovation carried out excessively. We want to defend the ascent to higher stages, not just the reformulation of decadent and primitive aspects, which, because they are unknown to many, seem to be new conquests, when they are just avatars of formulas already surpassed and inferior.

Reason and Chaos

One of the romantic prejudices, but which operates in a truly barbaric sense, is to affirm that Reason leads us to Chaos, to disorder of thought, and that only Intuition will free us from this terrible end. This aspect develops into apparently cultured pseudomorphoses and will be examined in the Second Part of this work: “Barbarism and Intellectualism.”

Valorization of the Inferior

There is an unbridled valorization that is made in the lowering of values. It is not only about unbridled speculation on what is low (crime, delinquency, vice, excessive sensuality, accentuation of vicious forms, low literature, overvaluation of the popular hero, cuddled by the crowds and receiving the highest payments, etc.), but, above all, by the inversion of such values, to the point of pretending to establish that the highest consists in being the lowest. As these practices want to present them as elevated ways of considering facts and men, we will deal in detail with these examples, more in the field of pseudomorphoses, since many of them present themselves in cultured clothing. It is as if a barbarian were dressed in civilized clothing…

However, there are examples of valorization of the inferior, which are only barbaric and are not presented disguised as cultured.

Let’s look at some examples. One who, due to his weakness and ignorance, or driven by his concupiscence, is capable of carrying out an action of some importance, comes to deserve a treatment that elevates and makes it appear that there was greatness in his action. For example, the valorization of the history of gangsters, of vulgar and cruel criminals, as if this represented a victory over weakness.

The valorization of a man who has enriched himself at the expense of embezzling public funds is presented as an example of intelligence and ability. We have reached such a point of stupidity that many believe public positions are only a path to enrichment, and even consider the corrupt and vile politician who does nothing but take advantage of the situation to be justified. The dulling of moral sensitivity in much of the population to such facts is mere barbarism. The so-called “scandals” no longer scandalize! The most astonishing news about acts of corruption is published in newspapers, and there is no even superficial quivering of the epidermis. All of this is accepted as something natural and normal. Thieves of the worst kind are elevated to high positions, and many are reelected in memorable campaigns. The entire past life of these individuals does not make the faces of thousands and even millions of voters blush. The reverse is true. The cleanest and most dignified politicians see their reelections threatened, and many are forgotten because their names were not in the headlines or accused of crimes of this nature. Honesty is seen as ridiculous, and the gullible man, the man of good faith, the dignified man, is the subject of humorous programs. Much of these figures are presented as true hypocrites who, when the time comes, take advantage of others. The intention is clear: to cast doubt on decency, honesty, and honor (a word heard less today than ever before). Nobody’s honor is respected anymore. There is always someone who raises doubt about decency, and when someone tries to present a person as an example of dignity, the least heard around is: “Really? People don’t know…” and the ellipses hide clear intentions. Doubt is established, and it doesn’t take long for someone bolder to say they heard that… and tells, without taking responsibility, that they say… “I don’t know if it’s true.”

It is easy to raise doubts, suspicions. The propagandists of indecency know this…

It is necessary for newspapers to publish scandals in families, so that the family that causes scandals is corroborated and excused. The sordid swindler likes to hear about cases of big hits by fortunate thieves to justify his vicious life to his children. The man of vicious life cites the vices of the Romans and all peoples in a marked manifestation of “historical culture” and has long descriptions of historical facts on the tip of his tongue. The home that is on the verge of breaking up finds support in the examples of homes that are breaking up: “This is not the first…”

There are readers, spectators, listeners for all of these stories, as it seems to help cover up their weaknesses. “The pain of many hurts less…”, “The misfortune of all makes us suffer less…” There are arguments for everything. Comedians, poor comedians without creative power, always point to marriage as a misfortune that falls upon man, describe the wise as a charlatan, the honest as a hypocrite, the mother-in-law as a shrew, the religious as a Tartuffe, the thief, the crook as examples of mental acuity.

TV shows that are the most stupid “succeed”. There are valuations that are astonishing. The “spirit of the pig”, the “friend of the jaguar”, the “crook” with their jargon, their language, become heroes and national glories, idealtypes of a consoling poverty, but which are presented as genius creations, as picturesque, as intelligent achievements of the spirit. All of this is admissible to some extent, where there is no excess. But the problem is that they go overboard. The easy success they achieve provokes imitators, and everywhere the exploitation of the same veins is endless, until it reaches fatigue, total exhaustion.7

It is unnecessary to multiply examples. Each one is capable of pointing out more numerous ones than those we have just made. It will only be necessary to put a little of their attention and moral consciousness directed towards the spectacle we are witnessing, so that it will be easy to perceive other examples.

The Influence of the Negative

Negativity is characteristic of every intelligent being, which is therefore able to say no, to take a position contrary to another. In itself, negativity is not an evil, except when it refers to the refusal of what is really positive and constructive, when it supports the negation of what has value because of the absence of the same value. Now, what is observed in periods of cultural decline is the excessive increase in negativity in relation to the main values. There is a tendency to deny everything that the cycle admired and accomplished. There is a complete inversion of the scale of values and all sectors are affected by the negative action. Religious principles, which constitute the foundations of the cycle, are shaken by negative doctrines, which not only question, but peremptorily deny what was previously accepted, admitted, and venerated. The negative action does not stop there. It seeks to attack, above all, customs, denying the ethical validity of certain acts and ways of behaving, and establishing that others should be preferred, which invades the field of human relations and puts at risk what until then brought men closer together. It is not surprising that periods of decadence and alienation from moral principles are periods in which men move further away from each other, and that social atomization increases to the point where there is no longer any possibility of understanding between two human beings, who can no longer “dialogue,” and we witness “dialogues of the deaf,” in which some no longer understand others. Barbarization reveals itself there, threatening to encompass the totality of society.

The propaganda of negativism is made by all imaginable means, and subliterates excel in this, seeking to take possession of all communication channels. With rare exceptions, they contribute even in the slightest news, to negative propaganda, to the annulment of values. They do not know, or if they do, they do it maliciously, that a simple news item may contain some words that encourage good or stimulate evil. Those who write for others have a great responsibility and should have at least a basic psychological and moral education, sufficient to not just be a conveyor of bad news, bad information, and, above all, pernicious advice. For example, when one reads those personal messages found in newspapers, in which desperate people seek the help of a male or female writer, and reads the solutions offered to serious cases that would require, as they have required, long and patient studies by psychologists, psychiatrists, ethologists, and moralists, the precipitated and standardized solutions, the responses given, with all the irresponsibility that comes with dealing with a subject that requires greater care and study, as if it were a simple advice to wear a dress of this or that color, and advising to do or not to do something that could mark a definitive course, good or bad, in a life, all of this is simply astounding. And if someone were to say that such programs should be prohibited or carried out by teams of competent men and women in the matter, there would be an outcry from those who speak of freedom of expression, of freedom of speech, as if freedom tolerated lack of ethics and irresponsibility.

We are not defenders of censorship, especially when it falls to the State, since it can be dragged along by political interests and can naturally employ it for other purposes. However, it is necessary to understand that freedom of the press has provided great benefits, but has also brought harm through the freedom granted to certain authors, who spread their errors and their foolish ways of considering and judging, which have greatly contributed to putting current humanity in a state of true intellectual and moral disorder. The audacity with which intellectuals poured out ideas upon the world without the slightest consistency, without a solid foundation, the hasty philosophical formations of authors not properly prepared, was a true disaster. When faced with today’s knowledge of physics and electronics, seeing that so many theories based solely on the sensible corporeal matter as the ultimate reality and foundation of all things (theses that were caressed by materialists, who seemed to threaten heaven and earth with their theories, whose leaders were presented as incomparable geniuses) have no more basis, when even Soviet scholars dare to affirm that there is something beyond and superior to matter, without fear of the anathemas of Engels, all these doctrines have only one destiny: the trash. And the trash, yes, because these gentlemen were so impudent, so pretentious, made such boastful affirmations of their theories, sought to mercilessly ridicule doctrines contrary to theirs, much more consistent and better constructed, because they had secure mathematical and ontological bases, that today we cannot, nor should we, mourn their defeat. The modern ignorance of what was accomplished during the Middle Ages, including the great philosophical works of the Renaissance up to the seventeenth century, was the cause of much ill-founded doctrine, which had the support of the ignorant but could not withstand the test of time, as did Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Thomism, Scotism, Suarezism, etc. The doctrines of these philosophers are secular and even millennia old, and their theses are increasingly corroborated every day. Every advancement of science in the last five centuries has not brought down any fundamental thesis of these philosophies, and yet it has undermined hundreds of doctrines that have emerged in the last three centuries and that were hailed as the last word in knowledge.

Now, these simple facts should be enough to awaken some suspicion in the minds of many who believe that certain nonsense preached today is a surpassing of what was so carefully and lovingly constructed in the past, when talented men employed all their forces to develop human knowledge on secure and solid foundations. Ignorance of these works, exhaustive analyses on the themes proposed by Greek philosophy and also the revelations of Christianity, produced a great harm to humanity because, remaining only in the hands of a group of scholars, undoubtedly the most valuable today, they could not fertilize the youth of these last centuries. This deficiency allowed for fantastic ideas to emerge that would solve all problems, definitively solve the theme of truth, and even offer a finished solution to the great social difficulties of humanity. They were promises, and nothing more than promises, because they did not pass the realm of possibilities and never penetrated the realm of effective and definitive accomplishments. Behind utopias and chimeras, humanity lived through three centuries of profound social convulsions, to finally accomplish only, in a solid way, what had already been foreseen by those who dedicated themselves to the serious and careful examination of social facts. Undoubtedly, men of the Catholic and Protestant Church of all kinds bear the blame for the tremendous neglect that has occurred, such as the invasion of barbarism in the field of religion and philosophy, as well as their primary manifestations in the field of social ideas, where the most abstruse solutions were proposed and the most absurd practices were carried out. The majority of the clergy did not know how to maintain the great heritage received from scholasticism, nor did they know how to create an apologetic that was proportional to the era in which we live. Religion lost ground because of the greater fault of the clergy themselves, unprepared for the advent of modern forms of social life. On the other hand, the adversaries of the Church would take advantage with emphasis of everything that seemed to undermine the foundations of religion and stamp forever as false their dearest affirmations.

The clergy did not know how to and could not fight for the people and allowed the popular concupiscence to be exploited by exaggerating absences and by exaggerated affirmations of social injustice, even though they were based on undeniable realities. For this reason, the Church became more disconnected than it should have from the popular masses, abandoning them to the hands of demagogues and social panacea builders.

A hurried and error-ridden literature took over and led human intelligence to the most sordid ideas, presented as the highest achievement of the human spirit, true flashes of immortal truth. The death of God was announced emphatically, and the end of religion was presented as something imminent. But at the same time, the most amazing conversions shook the world. In the field of science today, there is no great sage, truly great, who is an atheist. Some may be blessed with publicity. Besides, it is always ready to incense mediocrities. But those who know and can assess true values perfectly know that the field of atheism is constantly losing its best elements, and only the number of mediocrities is increasing. These same people, when awakened to the light, turn away from the negativity and barbarism of primary ideas and seek new horizons. Undoubtedly, churches have contributed little to such facts. Most of the converts were not guided by the hands of priests, although many impressive conversions have taken place. Most of the converts did so spontaneously, by their own actions, having one day realized that atheism, materialism, positivism, and such doctrines did not stand up when subjected to serious philosophical criticism.

However, the world was invaded and flooded with unhealthy works that, under the sacred name of science, proposed doctrines without the slightest consistency. It was believed that to be scientific is to be materialistic and atheist. The impression was created that science and philosophy could not work together, and that religion and science were opposing poles, one of error and popular superstition, and the other of epistemic knowledge, cultured, and solid.

In the 19th century, then, controversies between religion and science reached their maximum. To the eyes of the unaware, atheism had won the battle forever. The achievements of science had shown the improbability of any religious creed. Religion was only the barbaric field of knowledge, and science was the cultured and civilized field.

In vitro science would solve all the problems that had tormented the minds of philosophers. The laboratory would provide the final solution. The great day was near, and there were even philosophers who feared to say that they were philosophers, and religious people who already hid the manifestation of their faith because the intelligent, the superior, was to be an atheist, to blaspheme against God, to make fun of sacred things, and above all, to beat the clergy with a club, the “ignominious and infamous caste.” That the clergy deserved much of what it received, undoubtedly it is true because it was they who contributed to such errors, as they still do, ineptly supporting certain modern doctrines that propose to solve all human problems.8

It is not possible for the Catholic Church and Protestants to do anything more serious without properly preparing their men. You can’t manufacture priests like sausages. Pastoral life is not as simple as it seems to many. Moreover, they will not only face people who need religious support, but also those who need strong moral and philosophical support. The clergy cannot fail to recognize this need. Therefore, it is not surprising that numerous priests, especially in Latin America, choose the communist side to fight, believing it is the only path that still offers a solution to solve the most acute social problems that arise in this part of the world.

The ignorance of the clergy about social matters is regrettable. With democratic, libertarian, and totalitarian social doctrines, these men prefer the last two, which are the most opposed to the true Christian spirit,9 although more pleasing to the spirit of Caesarist priests who believe that they will snatch the social revolution for their side, imagining that the communists will be so naive that if such a disaster were to happen in the world, they would spare the Church and allow the clergy to also participate in power.

We want to show how negativism acts in society invaded by barbarism. In all sectors, the refusal of positivity and constructivism is established. Real value is denied to exalt the devalued transvested in clothes that are not its own. Mesquinho (insignificant) is praised while the truly valuable is spared. The work of the truly great must be surrounded by silence, while commissioned praise is propagated far and wide. There are groups that guide this propaganda, but they are subordinated to larger ones. We are here facing one of the most criminal organizations of human exploitation, a true international conspiracy organized by the worst kind of men, born criminals and malicious, who lead the most heinous organization of exploitation in all sectors, including stupefacients,10 narcotics trafficking, white slavery,11 crime, etc., a true international organization that is linked in all sectors of human activity and dominates almost all means of publicity, influencing even indirectly those it does not dominate, but enough to orient them according to their interests, which consist of demolishing the Christian order and establishing once again the order of “tooth for tooth, eye for eye,” which is genuinely barbaric.

The denunciation of this monstrous organization has already been made, but in vain. Its power silences anyone who dares to denounce it. To this day, we have not seen any Marxist have the courage to attack it. They only point out particular aspects, placing blame on those who have a lesser role, never on the real culprits.

Attributing all the evils to American capitalism, as they do, is an unfair and dishonest way of pointing out errors, because they know very well that exploitative and imperialist capitalism is not American, but international. They know or should know what their masters Marx, Engels, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, etc., taught them, that this type of capitalism has no country, and they know, above all, that the great international trusts are not composed only of Americans, but of English, French, Germans, Swiss, Italians, Levantines of all kinds, Russians as well, and even some well-known Brazilians with popular support. They know that these men have no country and are fighting for the destruction of the Christian order that hinders them, and that they have the complicity of many men of the clergy on their side. They know this. And if they know, why don’t they denounce it? And if they do not denounce it, how can they prevent themselves from being accused of accomplices when they defend the same positions in the field of philosophy, and in the field of politics launch their attacks with the wrong address, intentionally, since they know very well how the mechanism of human exploitation works, because their masters have already taught them, and it is not possible for these bad disciples to have such a weak memory. If they have it, we are here to revive it and ask them to reread their masters, for there they will find the story told in this way, not the way they currently do.

This propaganda, commissioned and directed by secret groups, is one of the most serious and grave problems that has arisen for humanity because it serves malicious and cruel intentions. Christianity, by its nature, does not favor the exploitation of man by man. It is the only religion that is not based on a race, caste, class, or people. It is a religion that does not depend on any cultural foundation since the Christian can arise in all social classes and could arise at any time. That is why it provokes fierce antipathy in many sectors. There are racial groups that hate it. On the other hand, those who like to enslave men, those who feel extreme sadistic pleasure in seeing someone suffer or be exploited by another, those who have endless pleasure in gaining at the expense of others’ sweat, those who boast of having snatched from their fellow human beings what belonged to them to use it for their benefit; in short, all those who exploit and expropriate man have a true aversion to Christianity because in its moral and philosophical purity, it does not agree with such practices. It is too human to please the inhuman. It is too ethical to please moral monsters. It is too noble and dignified to please dirty and infamous souls. It would not be possible to expect anything else but an organized aversion on a large scale. On the other hand, every act of weakness that men of the Church may perform causes immense joy to their opponents. Nothing is more pleasing to their enemies than the bad clergy, the hypocritical religious, the foolish defense of their doctrine, the naive and poorly founded preaching.

All of this is received with pleasure by the barbarians, who feel that Christianity is founded on culturally very strong bases, since no creation of non-Christian science and philosophy has been able to shake any of its fundamental theses. Of course, those who are ignorant of what has been accomplished in this field may believe the opposite, but that will be due only to their ignorance. If there is a reader who accepts the opposite of what we say, let him read the works of the great authors of the Church, which he certainly does not know, and he will see that Christianity is philosophically founded on the most serious postulates, and that science, at no time, in what it has acquired as certain and experimented, has shaken any of these postulates, except for the unwary.

However, the opinion of large sectors of writers and intellectuals is contrary to what we say. They believe that precisely the opposite is happening. Often, when we discuss with men who call themselves anti-Christians, we observe that they construct a false view of Christianity. We have not yet found a single atheist who had a clear and fair idea of God. The “god” they conceive of is a caricature, deformed by imagination and the product of hasty readings in ill-intentioned authors, which is attributed to Christians.

We have come to the conclusion that there is no atheism; there is only a bad placement of what theism is. From the moment that the conception of God is properly clarified, the only just conception, not tainted by contradictions, which we can construct, everything changes and even the atheist himself will waver in his disbelief.

It should be noted that disbelief also tires. Skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism tire and fatigue. Each one feels the impossibility of continuing without belief in something superior. There is a moment when his mind and heart turn uncontrollably to faith. If there are many who can no longer believe, there are many more who can no longer disbelieve. There is a source of faith and hope in the world. If the current spectacle seems distressing, a good analysis reveals that this despair is already a despair of despair and announces a lot of positivity to update. There is an open field for extraordinary works to be accomplished, waiting for new apostles, but humble apostles, who know how to recognize their own value and do not discredit that of their adversaries, as just Christian humility demands.

The negative propaganda we are witnessing is reaching its climax. It already tires, it already repulses. There is much faith to blossom. And there are many minds ready for great affirmations. It is necessary that those who feel the need to accomplish something positive and constructive seek their companions and affinities, and unite with them to do something. If there are hopes that are dashed and provoke in us the blossoming of discouragements that seem invincible, it will be a mistake to let ourselves be given up to despair, without waiting for another light of hope to shine again in us in high values.

We have come to the conclusion that there is no atheism; there is only a misplacement of what theism is. From the moment that the conception of God, the only just conception not tainted by contradictions, is properly clarified, everything changes and the atheist himself will waver in his disbelief.

It should be noted that disbelief also tires. Skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism tire, fatigue. Each person feels the impossibility of continuing without belief in something superior. There comes a moment when one’s mind and heart uncontrollably turn towards a faith. If there are many who can no longer believe, there are many more who can no longer disbelieve. There is a source of faith and hope in the world. If the current spectacle seems distressing, a good analysis reveals that this despair is already a despair of despair and announces much positivity to be actualized. There is an open field to carry out extraordinary works, awaiting new apostles, but humble apostles who know how to recognize their own value and do not detract from that of their adversaries, as just Christian humility requires.

The negative propaganda we are witnessing is reaching its peak. It is already tiresome, already repugnant. There is much faith blooming. And there are many minds ready for great affirmations. It is necessary for those who feel the need to do something positive and constructive to seek out their companions and like-minded individuals, and unite with them to do something. If there are hopes that are dashed and provoke in us the budding of seemingly invincible discouragement, it will be a mistake to leave ourselves to despair, without waiting for a light of hope to shine in us once again in the lofty values.

It was precisely in the moments when all seemed lost that humanity found a path that put it in safety. When all possibilities seem to have crumbled, behold, new promises loaded with effective realities emerge.

We are living through a terrible moment in our history. The vertical invasion of the barbarians, alongside the corrupting action of those who wish to destroy our cultural cycle, is acting terribly, almost unchecked. But they also carry within themselves their own positions, ready to erupt demanding, and we still have inexhaustible resources for resistance and for regaining lost ground.

Negative action must be countered with positive action. However, it is necessary to have a sharp enough suspicion to perceive what is negative and denounce it. We must keep our conscience alert and pay attention to everything that is destructive. We must also pay attention to what is new in the marketplace of ideas, and acutely capture what it brings that is malicious and negative. And then have the courage to point the finger at the wound and denounce it. Hesitation here is betrayal. Compromising is cowardice. At this precise moment when the true intention is clarified to us, nothing should prevent us from accepting the challenge and also raising our lances and accepting the fight.

Vicious Exploitation of Sport

First of all, it is worth noting that sport, by its foundations and goals, deserves the best attention.

What is regrettable about it, however, are the vicious forms it takes, thanks to its barbarization and, in turn, its use to favor the campaign of corruption of the Christian structure.

Professionalism in sports has been more of a harm than a good. Justified by some reasons, it has produced disastrous effects, creating a profession where there should only be a free act, or at least whose interest should never be reduced to that of capitalist systematism.

The characteristic of capitalist systematization consists of the intention to turn everything into goods for the market. The capitalist does not understand or appreciate anything except for its meaning in figures. Value is no longer the axiós, but the thymos,12 not the intrinsic value of the thing, but the extrinsic value, the exchange value, and no longer the use value.

Marx reached the apex of the capitalist spirit in The Capital, the most complete work of capitalist systematization, because Marxism is only a capitalist doctrine of the State, disregarding the use value and focusing only on the exchange value, since, as he said, since no one would produce what is of no use, all economic goods have use value, but the exchange value is what varies and what matters in economic evaluations.

This doctrinal position in economics is typical of systematic capitalism, because it also does not see the value of use in things, but only the exchange value and, above all, its price. This wrong way of viewing economic reality led Marx to distance himself from Proudhon, whose concrete view of value was more just and philosophically more serious, and to make his doctrine the most finished defense of the capitalist conception.

Thus, one sees that capitalism disregards axiós13 to emphasize thymos,14 exchange value. Things are primarily evaluated by their price, by what they cost in exchange to obtain them, and it is not surprising that the refined taste of the capitalist is directed more towards what is more precious (more expensive) than towards what is of greater value. For him, a painting is worth in proportion to the figures, as is a vase, and so on. It is natural that this mentality, dominating the social environment, since capitalism systematizes society according to its way of conceiving the world, not only sports, but also art and literature, would have to suffer from monetary prejudices as they do.

The result is the degradation that is seen in sports, where the most shameless combinations and secret machinations are carried out, solely in order to increase revenues and achieve greater results. Sport for sport’s sake is disappearing; amateurism is dying for lack of interested parties, because the public itself is only interested in capitalized sports. How, then, can we avoid the sportsman becoming selfish, seeing only his own interests? Who has the right to appeal to patriotism or other values to sportsmen who are handled as objects of commerce for commercial exchanges? Without a doubt, there is much pride in sportsmen who, despite everything, do not allow themselves to be overwhelmed by the vicious and react against it. But their reaction is almost nothing in the avalanche that surrounds them; their protest is not heard, a multitude of sub-literates of sport exploit it as a great source of income and are not interested in the truth, but in lies, and founded on them they manage to build their career and their fortune.

The exploitation of base impulses is evident in violent sports, such as wrestling, and even in boxing, despite the softening it has already achieved. If there are no gladiator fights today, with fights to the death, it is because the authorities do not allow them, but there are regions where men are allowed to earn a living by risking their lives in bloody fights.

These examples are not exaggerated! They represent the reality of a rampant sadistic exploitation that man makes of his own kind. The blame lies with a much larger number than is thought. It is not only the entrepreneurs who are to blame, for they do not create popular tastes; it is the demands of the spectators that lead to some sports taking the most violent and barbaric form. If entrepreneurs could freely cater to the sadistic taste of the public, gladiator fights would undoubtedly return, and worse things too!

Accusations Against Christianity

Facts like these are seized upon by barbarians and cultural corrupters to accuse Christianity as guilty of what happens. They say that the Christian religion has not made man better, for one also kills and murders, exploits and hates, destroys and opens concentration camps and firing squads, without Christianity having prevented any of it. However, they cannot say that it fostered all of this. And those who tried to do so were definitely proven wrong. They are left only to affirm that it was not able to contain the barbarian within us and, therefore, let us not complain that barbarism rises when Christians have given opportunities for such.

In truth, we repeat, Christianity did not favor barbarism. But Christians certainly did not know how to fight it to the bitter end. Part of it is due to human nature, the sadistic and masochistic component that dominates us, the destructive and malevolent impulses within us, but on the other hand, and this is important, it is due to the negligence of Christians, and why not say the betrayal of many of them, while a third part is due to the errors of its propagation.

Since we have three parts highlighted, we must analyze each one, within the sobriety that is required by this book, for as the reader can see, the subjects covered here give rise to many specialized works. This is a work of synthesis, not analysis. If we have enough strength (and may those who are scandalized by our being workers and productive forgive us), we may do that someday.

The part of the sadistic and masochistic component, and the malevolent impulses, which in-depth psychology studies today, undoubtedly play an important role in all this. But the work and interest of valuable psychologists are directed towards the solution of this defect, which can be sublimated for socially superior and ethically worthy achievements.

Regarding the negligence of Christians, there is no honest Christian who does not recognize that many who call themselves and proclaim themselves as such are refined egoists who use religion to hide their flaws and cover up their mistakes, and who at the time of advantage do not want to know about any Christianity.

They are also many of its traitors because they defend it poorly by their words (and sometimes even with second intentions) and combat it, especially by their actions, for, like the selfish Pharisee, they beat their chests with mea culpa but continue to perform their rosary of infamies and exploitations.

But the main point, for us, is in the third aspect. The propaganda of Christianity has focused, since the early days, on touching human sensitivity and affectivity, and on founding Christian doctrine more in the heart than in intellectuality, although the former is more subject to the domination of passions and deviations of concupiscence. Great Christians did not arise only in this way, but also through the paths of intelligence. Since we live in an era of dissemination of culture, and vast human masses have access to scientific and philosophical knowledge, Christianity, more than ever, would need true propagandists who knew how to handle reason more, who spoke more to the understanding than to affectivity. The way to God is not only the way of the heart, it is also the way of the mind. There is a path from the mind to God. Scholasticism wanted to achieve this work, and partly did so, but the size of its enterprise prevented its popularization. The great difficulties that arose made many people discouraged, and the action undertaken in this sector only reached small groups and not the larger number, as desired. All of this shows us that there is a need to review the methods and formulas, that new apologists are necessary, new dialectical studies, that we dedicate ourselves more to controversy, to agonistics, and prepare ourselves for such battles. It is necessary to organize groups capable of taking knowledge further, and the centers of action cannot only be limited to pastoral action and catechesis. There must be centers of study, serious debates, controversies, and intelligent propaganda. Undoubtedly, what we approach here is a subject that requires extensive study, but it is urgent, for this action is being demanded immediately and there is no time to lose. The barbarians are within the walls and the corruptors of culture are sharpening their daggers to attack from behind…

The Blasphemers

These abound in our cultural circle, like all others, always ready to undermine what is most respectable in religious beliefs. There is a shamelessness without boundaries and a lack of respect for beliefs, because even the most primary ones have the right to respect. It is not possible for a Christian to raise his voice to offend Buddha or Brahma, Muhammad or Tupã. It is essential that we respect all beliefs. None of them worship Satan, except Satanism. All pretend to reach the true God. If they are incomplete, they are not false in their entirety. There is something respectful in all of this. However, blasphemers are at large. We see on TV, on the radios, imbecile comedians who make jokes about religious themes and even perform infamous representations. And these cases are not rare: they multiply. In the nineteenth century, there was an attempt to reconstruct Sodom and Gomorrah. The right to live a licentious life openly was proclaimed, and there are still those who do so today. There were capitalists who acquired abandoned convents and even monasteries to establish cabarets or houses for irregular encounters. There were, and still are, those in France who organize in an ex-convent of nuns a brothel, where prostitutes dress as nuns and receive blasphemers. There were atheists who acquired monasteries, and their first act was to go to the chapel and there perform all the possible filth, in order to blaspheme and enjoy sacrilege. There were and are satanists who make soups of hosts and then give them to pigs. Others take advantage of Good Friday to celebrate, in great orgies, their satisfaction with the crucifixion of Christ. All of this and much worse, which pains us to relate, has been done, is being done, and threatens to continue. And all of it under the complacent eyes of the authorities, and all of it an affront to what belongs to the dignity of others and deserves respect. What Jew would like his Jehovah blasphemed against, or Arab have his Muhammad called a dog, or Buddhist have his Buddha accused of madness? None, that’s for sure. And no one has the right to do so. On the contrary, they have a duty to respect them. If you don’t believe, respect. It is not possible for someone to offend the dignity of the Virgin Mary because they don’t believe in her, or to say that Christ was a homosexual,15 or something similar. These stupid satanic attitudes are a manifestation of human indignity. It is necessary to have decency even in disbelief, it is necessary to be noble even in atheism. They may not believe in God, but they should respect the beliefs of others. These heinous practices reveal the character of these people and are described in books by authors who receive Nobel Prizes, proclaimed as luminaries of human intelligence. But this can only please people who are dulled of any moral sense, perfect moral lunatics whose destiny should be the madhouse, not the public square, and certainly not the halls of false glory. We will not cite these authors because we do not want to assist in the propagation of their works, because there are no shortage of similar lunatics who, knowing the address of their kindred spirits, do not seek them out for an alliance of indignities.

The barbarians are blasphemers against the gods of their rivals. They were the ones who directed their horses to the temples and turned altars into mangers. They profaned temples with vile orgies, inundated holy places with filth for so many believers, did not respect the dignity of people who dedicated their lives to a belief or mission, and violated bodies with sacrilegious intentions. All of this happened, is happening, and threatens to continue. Blasphemy and sacrilege are an offense to human dignity and reveal the baseness of the soul of those who practice them. This barbarism grows. In Russia, satanic processions are made to disrespect religious beliefs, and clowns and moral lunatics do not hesitate to play these obscene roles.

All of this is barbarism, mere barbarism. Culture and civilization demand that the validity or not of such beliefs be discussed with decency and secure reasoning on the table of honest disputes. Offense, mudslinging, reckless screaming, and filth on the loose are arguments only for moral lunatics, without intelligence or intellectual finesse.

The Ethical Problem

What characterizes cultured and civilized ethics is its foundation on prudence as a habit of repeated knowledge (virtue is a habit repeated and good), knowledge of principles, means and ends, and subordinately includes wisdom, science, philosophy, etc. It is based on moderation, maintaining oneself balanced between contrary excesses, since vice, as a continuous habit of what is bad, can also arise from a virtue taken in excess.

Moderation is temperance in passions, avoiding excesses, knowing how to maintain oneself in the just and good middle term. Therefore, moderation also demands justice, recognition of what is due to the nature of things, respect for their rights, absence of injury to the rights of others, knowing how to give each one what he deserves. And it also demands courage, strong spirit, the ability to know how to face the risks that doing good may require, without falling into the excesses of rashness and audacity. It can be seen that prudence needs the brakes of moderation, illumination, justice, and strength, courage, as moderation needs the help of prudence, the limits of justice, courage that makes it possible to overcome exaggerated impulses, and courage needs the knowledge of prudence, the brakes of moderation, the clear vision of justice. All of these virtues cooperate with each other to give the best results. Loose, they are incomplete; cooperating, they are powerful. The truly cultured man knows how to measure his actions. The barbarian, does not. He is carried away by the excesses of courage that lead him to recklessness, audacity; by the excesses of prudence, which make him cunning, sly; by the deviations of justice, which make him cruel, ruthless; by the deviations of moderation, which lead him to anger, wrath, destruction. What does today’s spectacle show us? Are there no vicious examples that repeat and multiply themselves? Barbarians within our walls… They must be pointed out, even within ourselves, because in our moments of weakness and faltering we are barbarians too. Let each one examine their conscience and understand that there is no greatness in these attitudes, for barbaric temerity and audacity are not manifestations of strength, but only of weakness in inhibitory capacity; they only reveal that the one who suffers them is weak in their will and intelligence. Therefore, they are easy prey to their passions and concupiscence. Only the strong, only the courageous are moderate and prudent, because such virtues require more intelligence and will than letting primitive forces unleash themselves.

Nietzsche said, and in this he was very Christian, that the man of real value is not the one who lifts the sword and strikes the blow, but the one who, being capable of lifting the sword, does not strike and forgives.

The barbarian’s ethics are the ethics of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It is the ethics of revenge, the norm of those who only desire punishment, of the sadist who is only satisfied to see the adversary bite the dust of defeat. It is not the one who wins and extends a hand to raise the defeated. It is not the one who seeks the solution that will make him a friend of his fellow men. It is not the one who loves, but the one who hates.

The barbarian threatens our ethics. He invades all paths, penetrates homes, schools. He wants to establish his greatness in his misery, proclaims his strength where it is not, points out his exaltation when it is depression, and when he thinks he is looking at his height he is only seeing the valley, in whose swamps he endures. His flights are only jumps of frogs, or bursts of a beast, never the flight of birds that invade the blue sky and are symbols of human greatness and intelligence.

The Problem of Blacks

At first glance, it may seem that addressing the problem of blacks here is trying to place a completely misplaced theme in an inappropriate place. But we will see that this is not the case, and that the issue of blacks is of paramount importance for the examination of this era that we characterize as a vertical invasion of barbarians.

Africa, especially black Africa, has been shrouded in mystery to Europeans for a long time, and its dark-skinned peoples have been used as slaves not only by the Europeans who dominated there, but above all by the Africans themselves, since black slavery cannot be attributed to the Europeans, but rather to the Africans themselves, since this institution is more of barbarian than cultured origin.

On the other hand, except for Egypt, Africa has always been immersed in barbarism since we have known it. And Egyptian culture is not properly of African origin; on the contrary, it is of European origin, as is a peaceful matter today among anthropological and archaeological scholars. Thus, Africa proper, that is, the black race, did not build any high culture.16

Now, the important thing when dealing with this topic is never to go beyond to fall into modern demagogy, which takes advantage of the conditions of Africans and their descendants for broad exploitations against political opponents, accusing them of the miserable conditions in which they left the peoples of Africa, and also their descendants in other countries, especially Americans. Now, those who speak like this are the children or grandchildren, or descendants of former slave owners, who claim to be friends of the black (as we will call from here on to simplify) and who now present themselves as their sincere allies and friends, in whose sincerity some Africans really believe, and some, more astute, pretend to believe.

The truth, however, is that those new heralds of black freedom17 are made from the same mold as their old exploiters. If the black race, through its representatives, seeks to find its friends, it will never find them among the political groups of all times, because today’s friends speak of friendship, freedom, self-determination, or similar things. These were also the same words of the old “friends” who, however, carried handcuffs on their backs to arrest their children, if they did not hide them in the backs of black allies who were more enslaving than European slaveholders.

Therefore, the truth for the black man is this: true white friends have never been those who make politics in Europe and on the part of blacks were their greatest executioners, black slaveholders of blacks, blacks capable of hunting blacks to sell them to whites, blacks who hunted blacks to enslave them and did not sell them to whites, but made them their own slaves. In short, blacks against blacks, slaves yesterday, enslavers tomorrow; slaves who only dreamed of being able to hunt blacks to enslave, blacks who desired to obtain freedom and incited their brothers to do so with the intention of selling them afterwards as slaves, or seizing them for their own benefit. In short, so much misery, so much so that the repetition of the aspects is the same, with variants just as sordid as each other.

And that has always been Africa, always, and it is also so today. Today, too, there are those who promise to liberate, but want to enslave.

Blacks have no friends:

  1. among their own kind;
  2. among whites;
  3. the only friends blacks have ever known were blacks or whites animated by a religious ideal, and only by a religious ideal, and nothing more. Even among these, there were those who failed, there were hypocrites, there were traitors.

Now, those who know Africa know that the incorporation of blacks into white culture and civilization is a challenging problem. It is millennia of wild life, tribal spirit, sectarianism, exclusivism, bloody struggles between peoples, much of it still anthropophagous and animalistically ferocious, entire populations primitive, with low cultural and technical levels, who have always seen in someone who has a similar physiognomy and body not their equal, much less their neighbor, but on the contrary, their current or potential enemy, someone who wants to exploit, enslave, dominate them. We repeat: those who have traveled to Africa, who have studied African peoples, especially blacks (for here we only want to deal with blacks) know that this is the case. We are not exaggerating anything, we are sober, very sober, just showing what is general, what is universal there, without emphasizing the excessive forms that even surpass the images in a nightmare of a tiger. We do not want to refer to exceptions, only to the general rule.

The conscious Africans, those who have already attended European universities, those who have received religious teachings (especially those) feel stimuli (vague or sincere) to be different. Note well, they feel vague and perhaps sincere stimuli to be different. We are not yet absolving them, we are not praising them, except within certain limits; we want to believe in their sincerity, but within terms, limits, with well-emphasized doubts, and requiring very robust and constant evidence that this sincerity is real.18

Blacks know this. They have no memory, like us [Brazilians] who also form a people without memory, but they know very well that friends have always appeared, many blacks and whites called themselves friends. But the true friends, those who fought for them, were those missionaries who penetrated the jungles, who faced all imaginable dangers to bring them a little well-being, instruction, useful knowledge, who lifted them out of the misery in which they lived, who gave them a little support and humanity, but who, in order not to fail in their good intentions, in order not to find themselves facing tremendous failures, were forced to adapt to the African scheme, to treat blacks with energy, to show themselves as superior, because, in Africa, say what they will about the pseudo-friends of Africans, only the authority invested with great force is respected, only he is respected who is capable of punishing. Himalayas must be removed to awaken in an African the sense of love and discipline, respect for his fellow man and his superior, and in this scheme the threat of violence and punishment is not added. Whoever wants to contradict us can roar, but that is the truth of the facts, and we call upon the testimony of all men who have really fought for the good of blacks, including Schweitzer, to cite a contemporary of great worldwide renown, and the same happened with the Jesuits, who still maintain their missions and grandiose works in Africa today. They always fought in the good missionary sense, wanted to found churches, that is, assemblies of God, bring together men of one tribe or several, in a human and Christian vision of life, that they no longer looked only as entities among entities, but as brothers before brothers, and they, every time they sweetened or softened their attitudes, and were not severe with them, demanding with energy and discipline, achieved nothing, nothing, nothing. Neither they nor anyone else.

The truth is that in Africa, everything that is intended to be done with a few soft words, with expressions of affection, in which it is not hidden or lightly given the impression that the wayward will receive the whip, nothing positive is achieved.

The black, almost entirely, does not yet understand any other voice. Schweitzer was forced to be firm. If he didn’t go so far as to use the whip, he had to make them believe he was capable of doing so. Because if he smiled too much, passed his hand gently on their backs, was benevolent, all his work would be lost. It was necessary to know how to “bite and blow,” as we say here, for the majority of the population. It is necessary to know how to jump from eight to eighty, as we say in our jargon, which is expressive and prudent. And it is truly how our public figures behave, and how they have to behave because too much benevolence leads to abuse; too much severity leads to apathy or to terror, to flight. To live the extremes. This is the great tragedy of the African people; it is also, to a lesser degree, our tragedy. The great misfortune of a people is precisely when it finds itself in this contingency.

Because living the extremes is a sign of barbarism. Barbarians are the ones who live the extremes. The cultured and civilized live between the extremes, without trying to reach them, doing everything to never reach them, to maintain the mean, nothing in excess, and in a higher degree, in the good and just mean, like the Pythagoreans. Now, this has been impossible to achieve right away, here, and even less so in Africa. There is no use in arguing with exceptions, because what interests us, in the first place, is the general rule. The exception is only the hope that there is a way out, because where exceptions can arise, these can at least multiply.

And precisely in this truth of practical life we can base ourselves to do something better, and also in it must be based those who truly want the good of the blacks.

There are exceptions among the blacks, may they multiply. If we only think of the general rule, or if we don’t think of it at all, we will fall into two errors with serious consequences:

  1. If we think of this rule, we will continue to do what we have always done;

  2. If we do not think of it, we will not take care of the exceptions, and nothing will ever be done for the benefit of the black.

Do not think, not even lightly, that an immediate collective redemption of the African race is possible. Whoever believes in this is either naive or malicious. Whoever preaches this as truth deceives with good or bad intentions, but deceives.

The elevation of Africa will be the most tremendous task of the end of the 20th century and of the century to come. Much blood will be shed by Africans, many African knives will pierce the bodies of those who seem to be their peers, many African daggers will sink into black-skinned backs, many ropes will hang beings similar to their executioners by the neck, many African skulls will be used for African banquets, and much African flesh will feed African bodies. There will be much human misery, much, much human tragedy, many unfulfilled promises, much malice, much infamy, much demagogy, much false friendship, much lying, mountains and mountains of lies, mountains and mountains of betrayal that the world will see, the world will suffer, until it is petrified, exhausted from its own terror.

But also, many victories, at first faltering, many Africans will learn to see in the black-skinned man something that, besides being similar, is alike, that, besides being alike, is close, that, besides being close, is a friend, that, besides being a friend, is a brother. Many will also reach out to others, many will stop seeing the black-skinned man as exploitable and will feel love for him, and they will feel, finally, love for the good of those they love, they will understand charity, they will know what charity truly is; they will free themselves from millennia and millennia of oppression and the schematics of the lord-slave polarity, which is a polarity that Africa has always lived with. They will think of liberation, but to be liberated, they know it is not only a matter of being relieved of some shackles and preparing to acquire others. Liberation will require victory over ignorance, passions, and prejudices. There will also be much grandiose things, and perhaps the exception will become the general rule, and then the light that will dominate Africa will no longer be the scorching and cruel sun, but the light of pure love, of free and purified will, of enlightened and strong understanding. And then Christ, the greatest human symbol of all time, the example of those three maximum capacities that the human mind reaches and that any intelligent being can reach, will reign in African hearts, and white and black arms will meet, no longer to destroy, but for the fraternal embrace that has not yet come.

And it did not come, because the fault is not only of the blacks, but especially ours, the whites, the cultured and the civilized. If their conditions were not favorable, our intentions were almost never honest.

We did not see Africa any differently than this:

  1. a land of barbaric and cruel people, stupid and unhappy, of wolf-like men to their own kind, tiger-men to their own kind, black-skinned hyenas and jackals with features similar to ours, more animal than human, perhaps a race that has descended from inferior species, whose kinship with us is distant.

  2. therefore, what should we do with them other than make them slaves, since they do not understand free labor, since they refuse to discipline themselves to live culturally, since they insist on keeping their barbarous customs and living them with the same intensity, immutably. Moreover, the slavery we offer them will always be better than the one offered by their sobas. The slave, treated by us, receives better food and assistance than he does from his black masters. In this there is a deep truth that the romantic abolitionist youth have concealed and almost all defenders of the blacks have forgotten.

Now, such schematic ways of considering the blacks are a faithful consequence of the way the blacks themselves consider themselves. They treated each other as the blacks treated themselves. There was an equivalence of attitudes, and only a divergence as to the beneficiaries of all this.

Are we exaggerating? All illustrious Africanists, all who have been to Africa and seen it with observant and fair eyes know that we are not exaggerating. They may say that we speak in a very high and vehement tone, but at this moment when a true and tremendous new exploitation of the black man is taking place at the expense of the black man, vehemence is necessary, and to say the things that must be said, although they do not please the whites who hide new shackles, and the blacks who are accomplices of whites, who hide behind black backs, and the blacks who wish to put them on other blacks for their sole benefit. These will not like what we say, these will say that we lie, these will say that we exaggerate. Not those who know how things work, not those who do not want the same things to happen again, not those who have taken the time to study African reality, which is stunning.

When examining such facts, it is necessary, as now, to take a little breath, because all of this came out in a jet, in a mixture of indignation and anger.

It is anger because we know that it is arduous, that it is tremendously difficult to achieve the opposite, to do the opposite of all this, that there are few elements available, and rare Africans for decent and truly beneficial work. For demagoguery, for agitation, for putting weapons in the hands of blacks to indiscriminately kill blacks and whites, for fomenting hatred, for growing prejudices, for frightening consciences, for blackening minds with darkness, there are thousands and thousands ready for this work, willing even to die to carry on what has always been done in Africa.

But the work of missionaries, going to Africans as true friends, for the love of the God of goodness, to really help them fight against difficulties, and really sow good, is still small, restricted. And it is natural that it should be so. We know that one of the most beautiful things about man is undoubtedly heroism, especially when it is wise and holy, but we also know that it is rare.

These heroes cannot be improvised, and it is difficult to find them among whites.

What is found among whites are false friends, those who talk about their integration into modern society and do nothing really useful to free blacks from a schematic that still dominates them. It is true that the African American, the Afro-American, descendant of those born in Africa, already presents new characteristics, and there are exemplary and noble figures emerging in him, capable of doing much for the benefit of his race brothers who still live in Africa. But there is still much to do here before African Americans can bring powerful help to Africans. Many blacks from here, who went to Africa full of goodwill, returned disappointed, and many desperate. Talk to them, and they will tell you the truth. Perhaps many prefer to remain silent, hurt by their disappointment. But others will say what they saw, what they felt, and the state of mind they live in today. It is difficult, and almost impossible, to awaken hope in them again. There are also many educated Africans in Africa who were moved by enthusiasm and faith that they would be able to do something great for other blacks, and today, desolate, either fall into apathy or despair, when, worse, they do not return to barbarism and treat their brothers barbarously.

Let us not prolong this part any further. What we want to emphasize is that the wrong way in which we understand the Black people and what we do here in relation to them benefits neither their culturalization nor preserves ours. On the contrary, we strive for their barbarization as well as ours. It is of no use to take their music and popularize it among us, thinking that with that we will make a better approximation; it is of no use to facilitate their entry into our society if we do not provide them with the means to avoid failures. What good does it do, as has been done, to say that the same opportunities are given to Blacks if that is only theoretical and not practical?

What good does it do to say that Blacks must rise to the highest positions if a large part of them do not even think of voting for a Black person, but only for a White? What good is it to fight for them when we help them to believe that it is more important to open samba schools than to open schools to teach their children? What good is it to fight for them when we incite them to waste their most powerful efforts in drums, congadas, samba schools, yards, carnival, and liquor?

There is a terrible intention behind this false benevolence of Whites. If it is not of everyone, it is of those who move our actions behind the scenes. In fact, as long as there is only samba and more samba, samba schools and carnival at will, the Black person will continue to be the same Black person as always. As long as it is affirmed in Africa that we want to liberate them by throwing them into the economic life for which they have no schemes, to compete in the markets without defense mechanisms, political slavery is replaced by economic slavery under the name of self-determination of peoples. Many of the free nations in Africa are in a worse situation today than when they were colonies. And to hide the truth of the failure, it is said that it is natural that it be so. Freedom is very expensive at the beginning, but then it pays with good interest (the Brazilian way?). But that is a lie, because the collapse observed in Africa is not the price of freedom, but the price of the inability to be free. Africans must be prepared for freedom, and no one has done that, not even the Africans themselves. We must no longer lie. The African problem challenges the minds of honest men who are away from politics and really have good intentions. It is necessary for those who intend Christianly the good of the Blacks to gather from all over the world and work, study, and promote measures that can really benefit them. We do not believe in actions organized by political States. These will always serve undisclosed interests.

We do not believe in friendly nations that extend their arms to other nations. States have always been selfish, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We believe, yes, in men, in groups of men who harbor honesty in their intentions, but it is not enough to believe in their intentions or trust them, they must also join serious study of the problem and gather with some Blacks who have the soul of neither slave nor slavemaster but of free and Christian men, and work with them to do something for their benefit, but whose path will be to awaken above all in them the conviction that it must be for them and through them, freeing themselves from all that is cruel and barbaric in them, that they will fight for the good of their fellow men.

Otherwise, let them continue drumming, swaying their bodies in their samba schools, making frantic and hysterical gestures in the streets of cities for the delight of Whites. Let them be, because then they have chosen their destiny and are responsible for what they do, because they know very well what they do…

Sectarianism and Exclusivism

This topic should precede the previous one. However, we have left it for later because we thus avoid repeating many important aspects, as they are already contained to a certain extent in what has been examined so far.

When a group of like-minded men who accept a certain doctrine or belief systematically close themselves off in groups, considering themselves absolutely masters of the truth of what they affirm, and refuse to participate more intimately with other similar groups, and do not tolerate friendly dialogue with opponents, also organizing themselves in a closed and authoritarian way, reacting energetically to even the slightest restrictions placed upon them, this group becomes a sect. The sect is tribalism in ideas. The same defects of tribalism are transferred to it. It is not blood or race that brings them together, but belief, doctrine; sometimes mere opinion. The sect is a barbaric residue that still survives in us, because the cultured and civilized converse, maintain contact, discuss, are humble. Above all, they are humble. They know how to assess their true value and also how to assess, recognize, and proclaim the value of others, which is rightfully considered. It is not enough to assess, it is necessary to recognize and proclaim, because many recognize the values of others, but remain silent, silent about them, because it suits them to silence what also casts a shadow on them. All of this is barbarism.

And this barbarism has dominated centuries and millennia, and is lost in the mists of proto-history. There have always been, there are always, and perhaps there always will be, sects, in greater or lesser degrees, and above all, the sectarian spirit. This is still the most important, because it consists of those who, although they do not belong to any organized sect, have the spirit of a sect and do not conceive that their ideas can be discussed. They oppose anything that puts their truth in a bad light or even slightly touches what they consider their truth.

Now, if it is a matter of speculative matter, demonstration is the only authority that resolves the validity or invalidity of a thesis; if it is a matter of practical matter, there are other means to evaluate the correctness and rectitude of a thesis. But for the sectarian, none of this matters. He covers the sun with his fingers by putting them over his eyes. The sectarian is an intellectual blind man, or at least shortsighted. Barbarism, again. From sectarianism to exclusivism is just one step, as almost all sectarians are exclusivists (“only we have the truth”) and despise all others. But if they are forced to prove their truth, they generally do not know how to do so and do not find demonstrations that are sufficiently apodictic. Now, in the field of speculative philosophy, demonstration is the only authority; and this according to the rigorous rules of logic and good dialectics. In the practical realm, since we are dealing with contingent things, demonstration is valid for the speculative part that can be extracted from it; as for the practical-practical part, it requires other rigor, but will never be valid to guarantee what will happen except probabilistically.

The distinction between speculative philosophy and practical philosophy is very important. It is true that modern authors do not study it well, so it is natural for them to confuse one with the other. Or rather, to confuse the speculative with the practical. Therefore, they accept as practically certain what they achieve speculatively and vice versa, and that is the reason why later facts categorically contradict them. Speculative philosophy is only directed towards truth and to eliminate falsehood; practical philosophy aims for what is right and to avoid what is wrong, for what is convenient. But many things that are right can be speculatively false. And those who believe they have surpassed these themes do not know this, as there are things that are speculatively correct but do not have the same rigor in practice.

With examples everything is clarified, as the subject matter is vast and we address it in our other works. Speculatively, the sum of the internal angles of a triangle will necessarily be equal to two right angles, but the triangle that we draw or can ideally establish between that star, the Sun, and the Earth will never have this number perfectly. The human being, taken speculatively, is a rational animal, but if practically so, it is with degrees of heterogeneity. In short, practical philosophy, as it has as its object human practical, active and factual life (technique, art), deals with what is contingent, what happens contingently. Speculative philosophy, as it is limited to the study of concepts, ideas, immutable and eternal schemes, is characterized by the absolute precision of its theses and results. To be unaware of this difference is to be unaware of philosophy from the outset, and even those who know it make mistakes here, confusing one with the other. Those who do not even admit these distinctions must perform much greater errors. Thus, for more than two millennia, philosophers (who really were) knew what would later be said in the conception of general relativity and was already exposed in their works. They knew that mathematics is speculative, but that in practice, it does not achieve the perfections that it achieves in theory. But they knew that the impressions of practice, in many cases, as in that of mathematics, were of lesser importance and could be disregarded, as they are technically.

Thus, there is knowledge:

speculative – speculative (or theoretical)

speculative – practical

practical – speculative

practical – practical

It is not difficult, for those who have goodwill, to distinguish them. Since we do not deal with philosophical matter ex professo, but only accidentally, it is not necessary to delve into the topic, just to point it out and, above all, to show that the confusion between speculative (theoretical) knowledge and practical knowledge is a fundamentally barbaric characteristic that reveals the degree of barbarism that modern philosophy has reached because practical philosophers want to establish speculative conclusions with practical data, which they naturally cannot do, as can be seen among modern existentialists and others who stem from vicious forms of Kantism.19

In short, another of the most terrible aspects of barbarism is this, whose consequences throw us increasingly into barbarism, as happens, for example, with modern philosophers, who are nothing but barbarians of the most elementary kind.

The Valorization of the Criminal

To conclude this first part, in which we examined, above all, the barbaric deviations that have their greatest roots and foundations in sensitivity and affectivity, since those found in the understanding will become the theme of the second part, we will close with an examination of the valorization of the criminal that is observed in our days.

For the barbarian, the criminal is viewed in two ways: whether his crime affects the tribe or someone in the tribe, or if it affects someone who is not of the tribe or is an enemy. In the first case, there is full crime; in the second, it is mitigated, and in the third, it is nullified. The crime is not conceived in itself or in relation to the community, but only in relation to the object of the criminal injury, the victim.

The same harmful act can be considered infamous or noble, depending on who or what suffers.

In general, the criminal is punished by the law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, in the first case, and that is all.

It is observed in the West, after what happened in past times, that we are now mainly turning our attention to the criminal. The injury itself becomes secondary, and so does the object of the injury. An increasing benevolence is surrounding the criminal, and there is a tendency to consider him only as a mentally ill person. Since the idea of freedom has been falsified, since those who speak of it understand little of it and even less do those who oppose it, since confusion reigns in this area, since there is a tendency to turn man only into a bundle of reflexes, a thing that reacts to other things, and not into a being that has intelligence and will, the latter reduced to mere reflexes and nothing more, benevolence towards the criminal has grown beyond reasonable limits, because there was indeed an exaggerated view of the criminal among our ancestors, to the point that the penalties were disproportionate to the actual harm of the crime.

Now, not so much to one extreme or the other. If a marked benevolence, within reasonable limits, was necessary, there was no need to fall from one excess to another. Today there is a vicious tendency to make the criminal more of a victim than a responsible person. And this has only served to stimulate crime. Crime has multiplied and reached frightening levels. There are already those who wonder if human society, within a few decades, will not only consist of delinquents and madmen, whose number is growing in overwhelming proportions. The number of those who are saved is decreasing alarmingly, despite police repression and all the propaganda of the friends of criminals, of those who advocate ever milder sentences, if some do not end up asking for statues to be erected to criminals, as has already been attempted for a criminal who skillfully shook many consciences.

Do not think that we defend excesses. We always want to remain in the fair and good middle, according to the great Pythagorean maxim. And here, good is just, convenient, seen with prudence and moderation, because there must be even moderation in benevolence. Magnanimity and clemency belong to moderation, yes, but they demand justice, prudence, and courage so that they do not become vicious. Magnanimity and clemency must manifest themselves contained in justice, so as never to offend it.

We must abandon demagoguery with criminals. They need our help, no doubt, but what is necessary on the part of society is that we do not encourage their multiplication. What would be the point of fighting to save those who suffer from a certain disease if we still strive to propagate it? We will save or improve individuals, but we will prepare the ground for criminals not to multiply.

And there is still barbarism here. Barbarism lies in exaggerated benevolence. We treat criminals like barbarians who believe that a crime committed against others, tribally strangers, is a lesser injury. Those who suffer the injuries are our brothers, and those who may still suffer are also. How to prevent the proliferation of crime, which threatens to engulf this society if it polarizes today in the most stupid of polarizations – police vs. criminal, and does not continue to advance, develop, dominate?

In crystallography, “pseudomorphosis” refers to the shapes of some crystals that are not peculiar to them, but are produced by gases escaping through openings in the rock of a specific configuration, ultimately adopting the shape of the rock. They are thus pseudoformations (pseudos = false and morphósis = formations), as these formations do not essentially correspond to what the crystal would have in normal development.

Similarly, in human society, there are many apparently cultured and civilized formations, but their content is actually barbaric, and so is their efficient cause. They are thus barbaric in their efficient cause, their material cause, and their final cause, but they have distinct forms. However, these forms are not substances, as studied in philosophy, but only accidents, yet giving the impression that they are achievements that naturally stem from a cultured origin. They are therefore pseudomorphoses.

We have already dealt with various aspects that appear cultured in society but have a barbaric origin. We will now look more directly at the manifestations of this kind, which are more closely linked to the intellectual part or have a stronger presence of understanding.

Part II – Barbarism and Intellectualism

Devaluation of Intelligence

There is no doubt that certain excessive ways of considering the possibilities of our intelligence, without considering the limits that are opposed to it, limits that it can only intentionally overcome with schemes of superior understanding, have led many to the opposite position, which consists in denying these possibilities and reducing our intelligence to merely corporeal material conditions, some explaining it through physiology, like modern behaviorists and reflexologists, others through the mechanics of the senses, like sensualists, etc. All these solutions that degrade intelligence have no philosophical consistency and can only be defended by pseudo-philosophers, and some scientists with some capacity in the field of science, but of complete philosophical incapacity. As modern ideas, suspended in the air, founded on various and hasty assertions, have been understood as philosophy, it is no wonder that some of the defenders of such ideas laugh at us for saying that they lack a philosophical basis, for them, a philosophical basis would be nothing more than putting their heads above the clouds since philosophers would be just dreamers and nothing more. This conception of philosophy stems from the excesses that modern philosophers have carried out, for although they are intelligent men, they are unprepared to philosophize and believe that to achieve something remarkable in philosophy, it is enough to let thought wander and make all kinds of assertions, relying on some arguments to support them, as if arguments alone were sufficient to give strength to an idea, when one can argue to support even errors. What is required in true philosophizing is apodictic demonstration, one that does not admit the possibility of errors, as judgments are universally valid, not because everyone accepts them, but because, having a necessary nexus between the judgment and the predicate, they cannot be distinct from what they are, which facilitates the attainment of logical and even ontological truth, as the case may be. However, none of these philosophies that we know, and which were noisily hailed as great achievements of the human spirit, can be reduced to apodictic postulates. They may present coherence, as some of them do, but the postulates, which are principles of their philosophizing, are false and do not withstand analysis. That is why such philosophies, sooner or later, collapse and disappear from the scene of philosophizing, where they once shone brilliantly, with the same disenchantment as fireworks when they suddenly go out.

For this reason, many scientists look suspiciously at philosophy because, in the face of the great publicity that some mediocre works receive, they believe that such authors are the pinnacle of philosophical intelligence and then feel aversion for what they do not know, as they think that the highest in philosophizing is what such authors achieved.

The barbarian, due to his conditions, has a true aversion to intelligence. His intelligence remains almost entirely within the field of cogitative sphere, which is a primary degree of that. His schematics are founded on the senses, and his thinking is situated only on the data of memory and on the material offered by fantasy, imagination, on which he works, constructing first-degree schemes of abstraction, since second and third-degree schemes require greater efforts, which he generally does not achieve in his noematic content, but only nominaliter. He uses the corresponding words, without precision in representation. The result is the difficulty he has in understanding such schemes and, like the fox with the grapes, he takes the attitude of contempt. He seeks to hide his insufficiency, denying value to what supplants him. The struggle against the high flights of intelligence then takes place. What we witness, with all the irrationalism that appears in all cultural cycles, and in all times, is an example. Romanticism has already presented undoubtedly elevated aspects, but was interspersed with barbaric manifestations. It was a true cultured pseudomorphosis, since it housed in its content the fundamental elements we have mentioned, eminently barbaric. In part, Romanticism is one of the greatest promoters of the barbarization that we are witnessing today, for it is now that we are reaping the fruits of the Romantic harvest, especially in the field of philosophy.20

The valorization of intuition was one of the battle horses of this movement. But what results has it offered us? Has intuition solved any of the great philosophical aporias? Well, the value of a philosophical doctrine can be measured by the large number of aporias, theoretical difficulties that it offers. The smaller the number of aporias, the greater value that doctrine will have. The fact is that everything that modern philosophy offered to replace genuine Pythagorean, Platonic, and Aristotelian thinking, which enjoyed great contributions from the medieval period, instead of decreasing the aporias that presented themselves in those positions, besides preserving them intact, without offering plausible solutions, added countless others, creating an aporetic jungle in which man has entrenched himself and does not find the path to his salvation.

It is certain that this theme cannot be examined here analytically because the purpose of this work is to show the general panorama of the vertical invasion of the barbarians that we are witnessing today. We can only say that the aporetic, considered as it should be, shows us that today, in philosophizing that does not follow the main lines of the Greeks, we are in full aporia, immersed in the greatest aporetic chaos we know, similar to what happened in Greece, in the final centuries of its decline.

What we want to clarify, corroborating what we said in the previous section, is that the devaluation of intelligence, the baseless doubt that they lend it, has led modern intellectuals to tend towards the mechanization of knowledge, to the protocolary, to the cybernetic, etc., with serious harm to the better development of human intellectual capacity. We will show the main promotions and measures for the barbarization of intelligence, which is one of the most constant practices observed today, under the stimulus, support, and complicity of those who should be at the forefront of knowledge, and vigilant should watch over the purification of our intelligence and not allow it to degrade to the point of prostituting itself in the hands of the malicious.

The Devaluation of Will

Just as speculative philosophy is a supreme realization of understanding (intellectuality), practical science is a realization of the will. In the speculative, one tends to seek truth and to move away from falsehood. The schemes are rigid, the ideas immutable, and their realization only requires the regular sequence of intellectuality. But in practical life, where man’s will reigns, in which his active and factual life always brings the direct mark of his will, those are directed, not properly towards truth, but towards good, towards what is beneficial, towards what is convenient, towards what is right, avoiding the wrong.

The will is an oréxis of the good, it is an impulse that seeks (ad petere) the good, that goes towards the good; however, it is already intellectualized oréxis. The will of man is not the mere appetite of the animal, it is this oréxis, which already distinguishes the proximate and remote good, and necessarily tends always towards the good, up to the maximum, final, ultimate good, the supreme good. To confuse will with desire, with volition, with the wanting used in popular language, was one of the serious mistakes that many made, and it is a truly barbaric position before this faculty of our mind to confuse it with the merely animal impulse.

The will is an intellectual deliberation, not a blind impulse. The barbarian does not understand this because his will has not yet blossomed to the point of achieving freedom. For the barbarian, freedom is only the exemption from bonds, and not the ability to choose between contingent futures, an ability that belongs to the will assisted by intellect. Thus, when certain psychologists and “philosophers” want to reduce the will to the merely animal impulse, they are barbarizing their conception and thus working for greater barbarization of psychology as a science and of man as a rational being.

Ridicularization of the Intelligent

It is not surprising that in certain movies we see the glorification of the student who is only interested in athletics, sports, and the caricature of those who really study and dedicate themselves to knowledge. Most often, they are presented as excessively awkward, ill-fitting, with a big head, huge glasses, thin chin, weasel face, who avoid entertainment, only interested in books, and when they speak, they are boring because they only talk about cultural topics.

Or, the wise person is a poor madman who builds an invention that endangers humanity, and the hero, of great musculature and agility, easily overcomes and dominates. Today, in short, the wise person is caricatured in the same way that the lords of the nobility once caricatured the businessperson, the merchant, the banker, the industrialist of plebeian origin.

Although many do not believe it, over time the wise person will form a caste, including the technicians, and they will form a kind of aristocracy of tomorrow, which will not be long in taking economic power, then aspire to political power, and ultimately obtain it. Then the technocrats and sophocrats of tomorrow will make plays, like the bourgeoisie did criticizing and caricaturing the nobles, but this time caricaturing the bourgeoisie, who will be shown with exaggerated and abnormal gestures and attitudes, capable of provoking delightful laughter from the audience.

But the danger of our time is that this devaluation of the will, as it should be properly understood, and also of intelligence, can lead to the barbarization of science and technology.

Barbarization of Science and Technology

Consequences that may arise from what we have said above, because by disconnecting the scientist from perennial philosophy,21 the wise man, thanks to this disconnection, thinking that philosophy is the mishmash that presents itself out there, completely despises it and, given only to the aridity of his specialty, disconnected from universality, may become a monster who sees everything through the lens of his test tube, within the narrow field that his visor allows him to see. And then he will be a natural candidate for barbarism. Imagine all the power of current science and technology in the hands of barbarians. It does not require much effort to conceive of the terrible things that would happen in the world. It does not require an overly fertile imagination to conceive of what would become of us if we depended on mere specialists who understand nothing beyond their specialty and who do not even know the principles of their specialty, because only philosophy can deal with those principles and, therefore, they do not even know their specialty well. All these beings, strange and unknown, ignorant and incommunicable to each other, serving some Caesar who arises from them, and who will necessarily be barbaric, would turn us into guinea pigs, experiment tubes, numbered and protocolized things. What a terrible world that would be! And that world is coming, gentlemen, it is approaching by giant steps. It is not for centuries, it is for decades. And all this was not prevented. Nothing useful was done to humanize these wise men, who have little or nothing of wisdom, because this is a practical virtue that connects us to the dianoetic virtues, but whose object is the knowledge of first principles.

And the study of first principles is banished from most schools. Skepticism and agnosticism have borne their fruits. There are legions of skeptical and agnostic teachers who say that we cannot know anything about first principles. We do not doubt that they cannot know, and we accept it as truth. But that no one can know is a lie. These gentlemen do not have the right to take their petulance and temerity to the point of judging that all others are like them. They do not have the right to make such categorical statements in a matter that, beforehand, they acknowledge they know nothing about.

Where is the proof that they have studied the subject? We know of none, nor does anyone know of anyone who has devoted their time to studying those who have truly dealt with first principles, as well as with the last. They are ignorant of the masterpieces that have dedicated themselves to this subject. They do not even know them by hearsay. They are unaware of the names of the main authors. They have never taken the time to analyze them, nor do we believe that they would be capable of doing so due to the weak philosophical mind they possess, which would not favor any progress. They would need to start from the beginning, with the ABCs of philosophy, because they are unaware of formal logic, material logic, demonstrative logic, dialectic in the good sense, mathesis, ontology, etc. They have not studied anything critically, because if they had, they would not defend false ideas that were already outdated millennia ago, completely refuted, and revived in their hands.

These men do not accept debate with those who could expose their palpable ignorance. And, if they accept it, they flee through the false doors of jokes or ridiculous excuses, deploring the weakness of the human mind to understand the highest, which is why it is better to suspend judgment, because we can never know anything, since the knowledge of first principles, whose laws govern all spheres of reality, is forever denied to us.

What these gentlemen do is simply this: they lie with every tongue, with every vocal cord, with every natural or false tooth, with their gums, with their breath, with their gestures, with everything. They lie and prove that they know nothing about the subject. But since they occupy positions that give the presumption that they are truly wise, they can, taking advantage of the natural and excusable ignorance of youth, instill their skeptical or agnostic poison. They thus pretend to forever close the doors through which young people, who will be the scientists and technicians of tomorrow, could embark and find solid support for their studies, and also find the universal language that would unite them with their companions, avoiding that, upon becoming specialists, they lack the necessary degree of universality that would allow them to be akin to those who follow other paths. In that case, the wise would understand each other. But what would happen if scientists and technicians understood each other?

This is the crucial point. The Caesariocrats of our time know very well that this danger is terrible. This is what we will develop in the following topics.

The Fight Against the Universalization of Knowledge

The Caesariocrats of our time (undoubtedly barbarians), lords of political kratos, are clever enough (cunning is also an animal intelligence) to know that scientists and technicians are the next candidates for political kratos, not the servants (proletariat), since they have never in history seized such kratos, nor do they have the possibility of doing so, at least as proletarians, despite Mr. Karl Marx having “predicted” this possibility.

The Caesariocrats know that the only way to reign is to divide. It is an old maxim of practical life that they have learned and use. As long as scientists and technicians remain only in their specialties, they will continue to be mere servants of the Caesars. If there is a language among them, so that they understand each other, the danger will become close, because, understanding each other in ideas, they will eventually understand each other in a social idea, which will no longer be the one offered by the Caesars, which can now be accepted as valid, because they do not have the critical capacity to analyze it, but which tomorrow will appear to them as it really is: a jumble of inconsistencies that only serve to justify Caesarianism, the arbitrary domination of mediocrity, which uses organized brutality to brutalize the disorganized majority.

Thus, any universalization of knowledge, a discipline that gives them a universalist view, that unites the mountain peaks and allows scientists and technicians to understand each other regarding first principles, will make the advantage disappear.

Therefore, the Caesars exclaim: “Forward, skeptical and agnostic professors, our good watchdogs, our faithful servants, our obedient and competent servants. Remain firm in your task of dividing, so that our kingdom may be eternal!”

We only hope that our words can allow certain eyes to glimpse some light that will enable them to emerge from the darkness in which they find themselves. It would be stirring up a painful wound if we continued to say all that we could say on this topic. But the reader will supply what is missing.

The important thing is to understand that the unrestrained valorization of specialty is the most skillful weapon employed.

A Valorization of Specialism

The argumentation in favor of specialism is undeniably vast, and seems to prove its point, but in reality it does not. Let us examine the main arguments and respond to them.

First Argument

If we compare the knowledge we had in the 19th century, in astronomy alone, with what we have today, it would suffice to say that with the number of planets, stars, constellations, etc. that we knew, if we wanted to make a map with them, they would all fit in a rectangle of about 1 meter by 1 meter, more or less, preserving the proportions. If we wanted to do that today, the map would be the size of the Moon or larger. It is clear from the outset that anyone wishing to study astronomy today not only has to devote their entire life to it, but also specialize in the various and numerous divisions that astronomical studies require today.

This argument is untenable for the following reason: if an astronomer wanted to know everything, only about our solar system, his life would be too short. But what do we mean by everything? It includes all things that can be the object of knowledge. But is it necessary that we know everything about the Earth to know that it is a planet? Do we need to know everything about the person in front of us to know that he is John?

Don’t cosmological laws also apply in the field of astronomy? If we know cosmology, won’t we be able to know what is essential in astronomy, and won’t we need some more specific knowledge to place ourselves with some confidence in this field, so that we can understand what is most particular that our astronomer friend can offer to the knowledge of the stars? Don’t ontological laws also govern astronomy?

Now, denying all of this is to be ignorant of what has already been done. An astronomer who is unaware of scientific cosmology, speculative cosmology, ontology, and even math will know less about astronomy, in its principles, than a philosopher. And if he knows all this, he can talk to the philosopher, and with quite some confidence. He can also talk to the physicist, because, knowing such subjects, he will also know the principles of physics, and can talk to a botanist, a mineralogist, a zoologist, an anthropologist, all scientists, in short, who also know the same principles.

Of course, in his specialty there are accidental, particular knowledge that others do not know. But these are not the most important or essential for us to be in the field of science, not just in the field of soccer.

Many are surprised that certain authors can deal with many and varied subjects, as happened with Aristotle, Pythagoras, Aristarchus of Samos, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Suarez, Benedito Pereira, Pedro da Fonseca, Baltazar Álvares, Saint Albert, Ramón Llull and so many others. But note that such authors dealt with the matters included in the universality of their knowledge because they were philosophers. If they specialized in any subject, they did so without losing the foundation in universality, which is philosophy. The subjects they dealt with were approached from a philosophical angle. They were not mere observers cataloging facts, adding files, or adding data. They were men who thought about some facts to draw secure conclusions. For the philosopher, there is no need to make long experiments to draw a secure conclusion. A simple fact of experience, if the philosopher is truly a philosopher, will allow him to easily classify the terms of the judgment he formulates antepredicamentally. He will immediately see whether it is a judgment of contingency or necessity, according to the way the predicate relates to the subject. He will know how to classify whether the attribute is a genus, a species, a specific difference, a property, or an accident. And he will not err, because he knows how to proceed with absolute certainty. He will conclude with absolute certainty that such an attribute belongs to the genus, to the species, or is a generic or specific property, or is a mere relative or absolute accident. He knows how to do it. He does not need to pile up sheets and sheets of knowledge to reach secure conclusions. And it is true that, when properly conducted, subsequent science has only confirmed the great conclusions reached by the philosophers mentioned above. Those that have been demolished, a tiny minority, if well examined, have proven to be poorly constructed. Of the approximately fifty thousand sentences these philosophers launched, only a few hundred still admit controversies due to insufficient data.

It seems as if we can see the doubtful face, or the aggressive gesture of many, who will say that our statement has no basis. So those who doubt should dedicate themselves, as we have done, to such studies. They should reduce their hours of useless walking and talking, watch less television, and waste less time on harmful and useless reading, and dedicate themselves to the works of the authors we have mentioned. We too, at a certain time, suffered from the barbarian virus of petulant ignorance. We would also laugh if we were told such things. That is why we forgive those who laugh today. But one day, fate put monumental works in our hands, and a new world unfolded. Fortunately, this was early in our lives, because we had German Jesuits to guide our first steps in philosophy, who knew the subject matter and immediately pointed us to the works that should be read. We did not read them immediately, but we waited for the day when they would fall into our hands. And that day came. Then we understood how ridiculous all this attitude of pseudophilosophers was. Overnight, we were freed from the foolishness of wasting time reading nonsense.

Therefore, what we must say is that the philosopher, who is truly one, is properly qualified to deal universally with various subjects, but the specialist is not, if he does not have the necessary connection.

Second Argument

The second important argument consists in affirming that the specialist does not have enough time for such studies. Yes, if he really intends to do them in extensity, we admit that he will not have it, but if he does them only in intensity, he can have it. It is not necessary for him to read the works of all the great authors we cited, as they would correspond to many thousands of volumes, since it would be necessary to read other works, parallel to these, by authors not cited, and of inestimable value, which cannot be relegated to the background. But he can, for example, devote himself to the study of concrete philosophy,22 as we propose, which will give him the fundamental bases of a concrete knowledge of universality and will guide him so that he can, with care, invade other sectors. The good study of logic can be done, as can the study of cosmology, ontology, and matese. With these foundations, including criticism, or the theory of knowledge, and a bit of solid dialectic, he can perfectly find the means for this foundation that he lacks, and this will not take up more than one or two hours a day.23

It is common to affirm that there is a lack of time precisely among those who have time but do not know how to use it. There is always time to study. We know people who work fourteen hours a day and still study. They know how to make the most of their time, all of it, for good knowledge, and they only seek to surround themselves with those who provide them with knowledge, not darkness or confusion.

In this way, we see that the specialist mania of our time has a disastrous and harmful function for both the specialist and humanity.

We strive to offer specialists a sequence of works that guide them on the path of universality, despite the irritation that this may cause to certain envious people who do not forgive us for being hardworking and productive.

Deformation of the University

It is unnecessary to give a history of the formation of the university here. In accepting it, Innocent III asked that it always be a source of sound ideas, and not the promoter of errors, which would have harmful results. If this were so, the university would not only falsify good intentions, but would become more harmful than beneficial.

Now, the great philosophical errors and all the subsequent confusion that undermined the solid thought of the medievals were propagated by the universities. They persecuted many great personalities of philosophy. They were silent about the greatest works and exalted complete mediocrities. It is enough to make a list of what happened and then see that all the spirits that were incensed by the universities in their time to the detriment of others were ultimately pygmies, while those who were passed over were giants.

It was like this, and anyone who wants to study history with an impartial spirit will see that this was the general rule. Let us not argue with exceptions. These are rare and often mere equivocations.

If we wished to relate the adventures, especially of the University of Paris, we would have an immense collection of facts, including those of our own day, when students of that institution booed and demanded the head of Pasteur, prevented Einstein from giving lectures there, formed groups in front to obstruct Freud from exposing his ideas. This is not to mention what happened with Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, St. Albert, St. Thomas, Duns Scot, Wading, with all those who were even passed over for mediocrity.

Now, the university cannot serve barbarism. If it takes the side of barbaric theses, it fights against culture. If it preaches specialization to the extreme and denies the possibility of universalist foundation, it fails to fulfill its true mission and will work, thus, for the increase of barbarization, which we must avoid if we want our culture to endure.

The Silencing of Those Who Can Think

As a complement to what we have said earlier, we want to emphasize that, throughout history, the great creators, those who knew how to think, those who raised human thought to its highest level, always suffered from what is called the “conspiracy of silence”. The mediocrities placed in high positions, and these were almost always occupied by mediocrities, took great care to silence all creators who could overshadow them. It has always been like this… We would fill pages with examples if we wanted to cite what happened to Dante, Camões, Cervantes, and even the great philosophers, etc. We refer the reader to the pages of history. You will see that only at the end of life, and in the most favorable times, when the avalanche of facts was so great that they could no longer hide a great value, and especially when new generations emerged, that these real values were partially understood, but not all of them were recognized by their contemporaries. The majority was only understood posthumously, and some waited centuries to emerge from silence. But their shadows now completely conceal those mediocrities of the past, who only have some renown because they opposed the great ones, and only appear in the pages of history, some with the stigma of indignity, and nothing more, and others only because they threw stones at the great values.

And many still continue after centuries and centuries, and there are even unrecognized values, except by a few, that have been silent for centuries.

We know that recognizing great contemporary values is difficult. The scholastics, by principle, did not cite living authors in their works. They waited for time to indicate their value. If they cited a contemporary, it was only in polemics, and almost always to highlight some serious error that threatened to gain followers. The criterion is not bad, although it is not the best. The ideal would be for humanity to be able to recognize its geniuses, but, as Nietzsche said, “only a humanity of geniuses would be able to recognize them”. We still have our doubts, because spite and envy do not only arise in the hearts of the mediocre. There were many geniuses unjust to their contemporaries.

However, what is clear is that the conspiracy of silence is still a barbaric act. The barbarian is incapable of Christian humility, but only of barbaric humiliation. He can kneel at the feet of the winner, but he is incapable of recognizing his true value, knowing how to evaluate it, and especially knowing how to assess that of others. In general, he is unfair and his injustice knows no limits.

The Tendency to Separate Religion From Philosophy and the Latter From Science

This tendency is observable in cultural cycles, as the priestly period is replaced by the aristocratic one,24 and above all in the period of political domination and criticism by the utilitarian entrepreneur.25 However, in this process of barbarization, it has a very important cooperative function. Without the need for extensive historical analyses, it will be sufficient to show the mechanism of this barbarization, which cooperates in the corruption of the cultural cycle.

It is common to understand that religion is something only of human feeling, and its origin can be found in affectivity, and not properly in sensitivity. It is also affirmed that religion has nothing to do with human reason. But the mistake lies in not understanding that wherever there is man, there is in his actions and in his psychic life no state that does not have the psychic presence, even if subconscious; there is always, in turn, the presence of understanding, even in moments when there is no awareness of what is happening.

If religion were not structuring the action of understanding and were, as some authors claim, a work only of feelings, animals would also be capable of creating religions, which is not the case.

In fact, religion hides a speculation around the great human themes, although this speculation is not common to all its followers, who accept it out of a sympathetic, affective nature when exposed, but which allows them, albeit vaguely, to touch and feel what was the product of speculation, carried out by more powerful minds.

If we take as an example the religious belief of our indigenous people, we see that they achieve the conception of a Supreme Being, all-powerful, omniscient, kind, who created the world and arranged all things according to an order and laws. Now, such a thought cannot be achieved through feelings alone. They already require speculations, which some have carried out or received from others, but which they understand, and not only feel.

In any case, even in so-called inferior cultures, religion implies a more complete speculation than is commonly believed, whose points many civilized people, who consider themselves cultured, cannot grasp.

One naivete, which made many intelligences in the West capitulate, consists in judging that religion is only the product of an still primitive intelligence, as if primitive men had not known among themselves minds of high power, capable of penetrating where only the refined analytical study of the great cultural cycles is able to provide.

The total separation of religion and philosophy is a violation of both, because if philosophy can to some extent proceed without penetrating into the religious field, and religion remain in the liturgical, ritualistic and ethical field, with some independence from philosophy, inevitably both meet on common ground, when they penetrate into the deeper analysis of their themes, for both will have to use what is peculiar to each one. Religion will find in philosophy arguments in favor of its judgments. On the other hand, philosophy, in reality, does not move away from science, because science, remaining in the field of the particular, needs the contribution of philosophy, which, working with the universal, is the only one capable of penetrating the principles of science. Thus, when in physics we seek to find the principles of physical facts, we inevitably have to philosophize. Science can remain only in the protocol, as is the ideal of some poor-minded scientists, unable to conquer more distant terrain. They may be satisfied only in recording the facts, noting them down, filing them, without attempting any interpretation or penetration beyond what they report. Now, a science of this kind is useful for providing data for more fertile authors, but it could never remain an ideal of science, because it is merely an archival ideal, since such a science would remain sterile for all time and would close the field of man’s creative possibilities in that sector. In this way, the protocol can satisfy those scientists with meager resources who feel impotent to soar and wish to remain safe with their feet planted on the ground. But it can never be an ideal for creators. Humanity does not take a step forward without these creators.

Science, due to its conditions, cannot go beyond the field of property and even lesser properties. Only philosophy can penetrate through the higher grade properties and species and genera to reach the transcendentals and prepare to reach the arkhai, the logoi arkhai of the Pythagoreans, which are the object of study of Mathesis Megiste (Supreme Instruction). Science, therefore, needs philosophy to become creative. Science, however, as only a means allied with technique for the mastery of things by man, can dispense with creation, but only as an instrument for directing, never, however, as a way to create. If there are many men who do science, we should never confuse the poor protocolaries of science, mere proletarians of scientific knowledge, with the masters, who are the creators, those who can take the great flights because they have wings to fly, eyes to see, minds to understand. The scientist with meager resources should only remain in research. Nothing suits him better. He should not try to do what he cannot, under penalty of reading, later, these piles of nonsense so often said by scientists, who understand nothing of philosophy, want to philosophize later and philosophize like a schoolboy.

Philosophy, as it is understood today by the majority of those who call themselves its cultivators, is partly responsible for the state of disinterest in its more serious study. The obtuse minds, incapable of sharper distinction, say that such distinctions are “mere academic curiosities.” Ignorant of what has already been accomplished, they believe that any proposal made by some improvised thinker, but that carries with it some high-sounding title, is a new truth that “surpasses” everything that has already been accomplished in the past. It is easy, then, to give the impression that some of those who do philosophy today represent the apex of human intelligence. All of this is a sign of barbarism. Philosophy is barbarized, as is religion, pretending to descend to the masses, and science itself by giving in to primitive impulses.

The majority, which today dominates the positions, in any of the sectors of these three great achievements of human intelligence, is composed of barbarians, who unearth old relics relegated from the past, as if they were unheard-of novelties, return to old errors already refuted, as if they were resounding truths, seek primitive ritualistic and liturgical forms, as if they were the highest symbolic gesture of man in penetrating the transcendental. And in science, a merely technical conception dominates. The barbarian keeps the technical way of making an instrument, but does not know why he should do it that way. If asked why such a curve, such an edge, such a figurative aspect, he will not always be able to explain. He will only answer that this is how his parents, grandparents, ancestors did it, and so will he, and his children and grandchildren will do it. The search for whys interests him little. It is enough for him to do what his own have always done and nothing more. The scientist who thinks that science is only a gathering of data, and a regular arrangement of technical and utilitarian processes, is a barbarian encrusted and obstructive of the development of the new cultural cycle, disturbed today almost definitively by the corrupting action of those who wish to destroy it with the complicity of the barbarians who proliferate in all sectors.

Religion, philosophy, and science must be integrated again. What we need are men who will do this task and not those who exclude themselves in a myopic and distorting specialization. What we need are strong minds, powerful minds, capable of accomplishing such things,

The Struggle Against the Creator

One of the other terrible characteristics of our time is the struggle against the creator. The creator is suspected, denied, anathematized. What counts is false creation. And this is characterized only by abstractly taking a value, which is part of a totality, and exaggerating it in such a way that it is thought to be creative. This is what is done in art. The composition is emphasized, and above all the composition, the construction is emphasized, and above all the construction, the geometric is emphasized, and above all the geometric, etc. In this way, we have a monstrous art, because it takes what is natural and exaggerates it excessively. This is what is done today, thinking of “discovering a new vein”, “creating an authentic work”, “bringing a message” and similar expressions, capable of dumbfounding boors. In truth, all this accomplishes the frustration of creation. And the poor naive artists who follow this path, dissatisfied and defeated, end up horrified to find that they have done nothing, that they were only deceived by empty promises. And many values are destroyed, thus falling, hopeless, into a tiresome and monotonous repetition, when not into the most complete sterility. All of this is still barbarism.

It is said that on a certain occasion, when he was young, Beethoven sought out Mozart to give him piano lessons. Mozart received him, played a musical phrase on the piano, and said to him, “Improvise!” And Beethoven began to improvise. Mozart withdrew to a room next door, where some friends were, and, drawing their attention to the sounds coming from the piano, said to them, “This boy’s music will revolutionize the world!”

We cite this from memory, because historical validity is not what matters here, but the significance of the fact. Today, a student who wished to seek out a master would be told, “Go to the piano and play a Chopin study!” For him, what matters is not the creator, but the repeater, and repeating, always repeating rhythms is characteristic of the barbarian, it is the most complete satisfaction of the barbarian. Today, creators are no longer desired, but repeaters. Do you want to see the majority of masters raised to the seventh wrath? Just let some student try out an original idea. But, Lord of the wretched, does not a young person also have the right to try to get it right? If he errs, what does it matter if the mistake arose from an impulse of affirmation? The role of the master is to correct, teach, support, stimulate creation, not to frustrate, create obstacles to creation, promote mistrust in one’s own abilities, promote incapacity. It is not, without a doubt, his true cultured mission; but the barbaric mission is to prevent creation.

Among the barbarians, innovators are looked upon as criminals, they are punished and expelled even from the tribe. Whoever proposes a new thought, strange to that accepted by the tribe, throughout the generations, is a dangerous innovator, a disturber, a corrupter, because the coherence of the tribe is threatened. But culture is a constant conquest of ever higher stages. What it desires is to raise man to the highest levels and not to make him stop on the plateaus.

For observe today what is done in universities. Is it not what we say? Is not the student energetically coerced not to try to prove something new, critically expose a thought, try out a new way of seeing things?

How far we are from that Middle Ages (which fools call the age of darkness), in which the Philosophy student was required to comment on the Sentences of Peter Lombard with his own arguments, and only the work that presented some originality, new arguments, and responded more firmly to false arguments, brought new demonstrations; in short, that he be a creator! Today, a student who tries to do that sins against the purity of barbarism, offends that new and false sanctity that is preached. The student is only a repeater, and is an object of ridicule from teachers when he tries to create, and soon comes the apostrophe: “Who are you to pretend to launch new thoughts?” What an unspeakable crime. Only those consecrated authors who are given as examples to the student have the right to launch new thoughts, and who most of the time were only proposers of musty errors or immense fatuities, which cause delirious aesthetic pleasure in some poor teachers with retarded minds.

The fight against creation is one of the most lamentable practices used today to stop creative ability. What the barbarian wants is tribal horizontality, flat homogeneity, the valley, the swamp, where there is room for all frogs and worms.

The Fight Against Creation

The fight against creation is not new. It has already been established for more than two centuries. And it has given its fruits: the sterility of our time. Let us see the parts. The fear of creating has led to the following situation: in these two centuries, self-taught people have created more than those with rigid schooling. It is not surprising that, in a survey carried out by a major American newspaper, it was concluded that humanity owes more to self-taught people than to men with rigid schooling. And this is due to the simple fact that the former does not have the “master” in front of him constantly warning him against the recklessness of creating. As he is the master of his will in the matter he is dedicated to, he is the master of his creation, and there are no obstacles to his activity. It does not cost him to experiment, to try, to err, and even to succeed. But before the “master,” the pseudo-master, he is immediately faced with either an ironic smile when he tries to create (“who are you to…”) or even an expression of ridicule or affront (“give it up, you fool…”), and then it is not surprising that it is self-taught people who advance the world. It is the “charlatans” Pasteur, Antonio Soro, Koch, Montgomery, Bates, Mach, Steinmetz, Edison, Piaget, Freud, Einstein, Fleming and hundreds of others who, outside their schooling, accomplished what the modern world achieved, men who were great where they were self-taught, not in what constituted their schooling (note for Marxists: Marx was great in economics, where he was self-taught, and not in philosophy, where he had schooling, and Engels, who had schooling in economics, did more philosophy, and what philosophy, Lord God of the Wretched!).

What is astonishing today is the sterility. When in music we turn our eyes to Lassus, with his thousands of works, and we move towards the modern era, we arrive at Telemann and Bach, with more than a thousand works, then Haydn almost as much, Mozart, a little less, Beethoven, even less, to finally, passing through the romantics, who were already not very productive, we reach the moderns, who are already exhausted in their first work, something startles us. When an author writes a hundred books of philosophy, it causes amazement, although there were authors in other eras who wrote material that would occupy not hundreds, but even thousands of volumes in the dimensions of what we usually publish today. The sterility is astonishing and, when there is any multiplication, it is repetition, as we see in certain modern painters. Now, the barbarian is sterile. Barbarism is the opposite of creation. We have, therefore, an astonishing similarity today: man, every passing day, decreases in his ability to create. The exceptions, almost all autodidacts, are no longer sufficient to carry cultural creation forward. It is not surprising, therefore, that there are authors who speak of our sterility as constitutive of the cultural period in which we live, as resulting from the culture itself, which has exhausted its veins. But it is not true.

Our culture has not yet exhausted all its possibilities. Men of prestige may claim that they have dried up all the sources, but they are mistaken. They may claim that we have nothing more to do than live in civilization, because culture is stagnant and dead; that we only have to take advantage of the technology and enjoy the goods created. It is not true. There are still many springs and there are many promises. It is natural that those who only have their eyes on what is degeneracy, abandonment, sterility, those who only direct their eyes to specimens that represent cultural desert, think so. But if they wanted to look in the field of philosophy, of science itself, for those who are opening new horizons, despite the tremendous resistance that the envious and sterile make to them, they will understand that there are still many dawns to shine. This is truly a topic of maximum importance and has served for further analysis in our works,26 where we study the possibility of creation in our cultural cycle, opposing the pessimistic view of Spengler, Toynbee, and many others, who consider us sterile, hopeless, except for vague and highly conditional prospects for new veins of creation, due to the barbarism that threatens us.

The Concept of God

Whenever we come across an atheist, it is enough to ask him what his concept of God is to immediately perceive what his atheism boils down to. We have always said that in philosophy there are no insoluble questions; there are poorly formulated questions. And we could even extend this assertion to the field of particular sciences. Every atheist has always put the idea of God in a wrong way. It was easy for him, then, to present reasons to fight it. But what he was fighting was the constructed caricature. We do not know of any atheist who has really dedicated himself to the study of theology. Those we know ended up becoming believers and converted. We do know an immense number of people who talk about what they do not understand. This number is especially the most arrogant, the most impudent, the most pretentious.

The barbarian is also religious. But his religion is characterized by the most distorted view possible of divinity. When he assumes all functions of barbarization, of promoter of universal barbarization, he does not understand deeply what divinity is. There are primitives who have correct thinking, but alongside it, generally hidden, when not distorted, what remains is the fetishism so common, which today invades the great layers of civilized world. These regressions are also found among primitives, who, after having achieved a high and correct thought, decay into primary forms, especially when the frenzy of barbarization awakens in them, as we witness today in our cultural cycle.

Magical thinking is characterized above all by the belief that there is a disproportion between cause and effect, between principle and principled. Magical thinking loses its strength as the human mind grasps that the lesser cannot generate the greater, that the cause cannot have less than the effect, nor the effect more than the cause. Once the proportion between principle and principled, between cause and effect, is understood, human thought begins to place itself within the realm of reason. Now, fetishism is a sensory-affective and intellectual process to a lesser degree, which stems from magism itself, since it consists in admitting that there is, in the lesser, the greater, that there are these disproportionalities. Every time capitalism believes in the infinite possibilities of money it is fetishistic (and here Marx is right), every time someone believes that a class can be the Messiah of humanity it is fetishistic (and in this point Marx was wrong, but his objectors were right). Fetishism consists precisely in judging that a particular thing possesses powers that are disproportionate to it. When the cyberneticist believes that it is possible to create a thinking machine superior to him, nothing to doubt, but superior to anyone else, it is fetishism. When he believes that he is capable of writing works tomorrow that surpass everything that has ever been done, it is fetishism. When he believes that he is capable of giving it even consciousness, it is fetishism, and very childish! We could multiply examples, but the reader is intelligent and can dispense with them.

Fetishism

In modern thought, there is a series of returns to infantile schematics, which are genuinely fetishistic. Let us look at some examples: from two to three years old, children usually give names to things. Their thinking is merely nominalistic. When the modern philodox who intends to do philosophy defends nominalism, he turns to an infantile and very fetishistic schematic. When the materialist admits that raw matter can be the source of all subsequent perfections, he is fetishistic. When the evolutionist affirms that the more comes from the less, admitting that there are subsequent perfections not contained in what precedes, he is fetishistic. That doctor who believes that public health is everything, and that with it all social problems are solved, is fetishistic, and so are those who believe that all that is needed is secret ballot, or literacy, or just technique, or just science, and so on. All are fetishistic and, therefore, barbarians; they suffer from a barbaric prejudice, because they abstract, separate, when worship consists in uniting, intertwining, connecting, concretizing.

There are men who say they only believe in what their senses can capture. As an opinion, it is correct to admit that someone might think that way, since there are incredible possibilities for humans to think about the most abstruse things. But when they want to transform sensory knowledge into the foundation of all knowledge, and that there can be nothing beyond it, they are exceeding their limits, extracting consequences from their premises that go beyond them, that transcend them. That is fetishism!

When the mentally alienated poor person affirms that there is nothing, that everything is an illusion, that truth is just a chimera, that God is a lie and that Satan is the truth, that truth is the absence of reality, that poor fool is just a fetishist, and one of the most complete ones, since they admit that order is created by disorder, more by less, regular by irregular, true by false. It is the inversion of the logical and regular order, and the only possible one, because how can these crazy magicians extract something from where there is nothing, how can they find the black cat in the dark room where the cat is not? They are undoubtedly geniuses, they are even greater than God, as one of them said in their insanity. That less should come from more is scandalous, said a poor devil with a beard at a conference, because the right thing is for less to produce more, for nothing to do something, to extract many units from zero. That is correct, that is the truth. But the poor devil couldn’t contain himself in his excitement, he denounced those who believed in the opposite (as if there were only a matter of belief, of opinion here), gritted his teeth, made his demonic little eyes shine sinisterly. And he exclaimed: the scandal is that things obey laws or proceed according to laws. Science is a scandal. It is trying to make us believe that reality obeys rules. It’s not possible. The cosmos is impossible. The possible is only chaos.

But the chaos was only him, chaos in the sense of pretentious and arrogant emptiness, chaos in the sense of arrogant idiocy, which wants to make its worst kind of counterfeit currency true.

This is already the summit of fetishism. It is full-on fetishistic madness. And what astonishes is that such idiots find followers, other poor crazies.

The Misunderstanding of the Difference Between Ethics and Morals

The misunderstanding of the difference between ethics and morals has led, as we have already seen in analyzing the previous aspects, to the most tremendous confusions of our time and also to a dangerous outcome that is leading modern man to an unsustainable situation.

It is not possible to have a social life without ethics and morals and yet there are many who believe that this is possible and that only the repressive action of the police or codes of laws is enough to solve the problem…

When a human society reaches this point, something very serious is threatening us once and for all, because it is impossible to admit that social life can be normal where human beings look at each other only as beings that are alike, without any similarity, much less proximity. Those who wish to corrupt cultural cycles, in all times, have used this tactic: to attack the bases of ethics and morality in order to convince, especially the youth, that the demands in this area are false and unjust. Thus, giving full vent to their concupiscent impostures, it will be easy to manipulate youth towards the destinies they intend. The first step is to affirm the relativism of morals, the second is that it is up to us to satisfy our desires, the third is that there is no prize, no punishment beyond this world, everything ends when we end.

To defend relativism, they allege the variances of norms employed in different countries, which, for them, definitively prove that morality has no other foundation than consensus. Since they are unaware of any serious investigations into the foundations of ethics, it is easy to manipulate the accidental to attack the substantial. Then it is easy to stir up passions, as if these, unbridled, did not find boredom, tiredness, wear and suffering in their own pleasure. Our senses have a capacity to suffer relative and limited degrees of intensity. Only our intelligence is capable of receiving the most intense degrees of knowledge and, instead of being dulled like those senses, it is stimulated for higher experiences.

Relativism and hedonism (the position in ethics that we should only satisfy our desires) are false and barbaric positions because the barbarian believes that only the norms of his horde or tribe are valid, and those of others do not deserve any respect. Only the barbarian can judge that we are only longing for sensual desires and that no superior oréxis animates man. As for the acceptance of a prize or punishment, it is enough to say that this same life offers us solutions. Those who embark on a life of pleasures live even more unhappily and increase the bitterness of the cup of their lives. It is enough to look at today’s spectacle of so many wayward people, given to narcotics and all kinds of drugs, dulled in their capacity, lacking impulses, things that move to the tune of environmental demands, given to the most torturous neuroses, to the most horrible inner conflicts, semi-crazy, frequenting psychiatrists’ offices, when they are not already interned in specialized houses and asylums, or at the end of premature deaths.

This situation leads us to examine the problem of wayward youth in our days.

The Strayed Youth

In all human epochs there have been wayward youth. But what is most concerning about our time is not the fact that there are young people astray, separated from all traditional moral principles, but rather the fact that their number is increasing to the point of creating a situation that seems to many as insurmountable, as corruptive currents that promote the progression and amplitude in terms of human calamity are also taking place.

The problem has become universal, for this youth abounds also in Russia, and is not just a prerogative of capitalist countries, and pseudo-socialism has done nothing to alleviate this problem, despite the excessive punishment it offers, much more intense than that of democratic countries.

Is it a degeneration of society? Is it the consequence of an increase in cerebral retardation? Is it the product of the progression of idiots, mentally weak and imbeciles, who are growing alarmingly? Is it the product of the impossibility of man living in society? Does it arise from the deficiency of religious education and the loss of strength that religions have been feeling lately? Is it the product of philosophical or pseudophilosophical ideas, more aesthetic, disguised as philosophy, that heterogeneously invade all sectors? Is it an act of rebellion against an outdated moral? Is it a promise for a great and profound revolution that will reverse everything that has so far been considered firm and lasting?

Various factors have come together to aid the outbreak of this universal problem. If in some countries, where condescension (and why not say cowardice) is the rule, their number increases alarmingly, as happens among us. In others, violence, repression, non-condescension in any case, have diminished its development, prevented its proliferation. But all these measures are not yet solutions, until the matter deserves better study. Now, such studies are being done, and many causes that have generated this situation in which we live are being outlined. Among these, there is the corruptive increase of morals in many parts of the world, confusion in the field of ideas, insecurity about the destiny of humanity, and, towering over all, pedagogical defects, from which neither parents nor teachers can exempt themselves, especially those who believed that young people should live today what they could not live, and who did not have the care to give them an education that would better develop their intelligence and will, giving them the healthy example.

For example, among us, a child at the age of three already knows what young people of fourteen and fifteen years, in past generations, did not know. But we want to refer to the malicious, not to culture. Today it is astonishing to see children who go out to a sidewalk, and who live with others, bring home news of certain knowledge that frighten. It is not possible that children of that age already knew such things. In fact, there are parents who are concerned with giving their children a “modern education”, teaching them right away what infantile curiosity has not yet questioned. One of the most serious pedagogical norms is never to overestimate the child’s desire to know, giving him knowledge about things before the time when they need to know them. It is not a matter of deceiving them, nor is it necessary to tell them everything, because they do not want to know everything. The answer must be contained within the limits of the question, since the human being is content to know only (we are talking here about themes, especially sexual ones) what is within the scope of his question and his curiosity. Why go beyond, imparting knowledge not yet desired?

Dedicating oneself to constructive, positive, and concrete pedagogy, free from the hasty norms of certain pedagogues who know little of the child’s soul, is an unavoidable requirement.

Each of the topics addressed in this work, due to its vastness and scope, would require a special work and some, a very voluminous work. Our intention is only to awaken the consciousness of modern man to the barbarization that threatens him. We do not pretend, for now, to do more than that. And it will already be a lot if we manage to awaken this consciousness, create in our reader a suspicion for what is barbaric, and prepare a defensive and alert attitude that prevents many cooperators of this process from continuing to fundamentally threaten our culture.

Dialogue Between the Deaf

Many observe that we are in an age of incomprehension, for people who accept different positions can no longer understand each other. And why? – they ask. Sometimes the ideas are the same, if well examined. Why do they not understand each other? Why is there so much incomprehension in the world? Is it so difficult to observe and understand a theme, so that there is no one else who can maintain intellectual relationships with those who defend different ideas? Well, such facts do occur. And they occur because the ideas are not clarified. The terms refer to distinct noematic (semantic) contents. What one means by the term a is not the same as what the other means. The intentions are diverse, the contents are various. And when this happens (and even Lao Tsé noted this calamity), no one understands each other anymore, because there is no more firmness in the noematic contents of the terms. What was an ideal (and a just and well-founded ideal) of the ancients has become despised by moderns, lovers of inconsequent novelties and various contents, like the hypoliterate ones (who abound today more than ever), who consider themselves entitled to give verbal terms the contents they understand. Then the dialogue between people of different positions is a true dialogue of the deaf. They are actually blind people trying to understand colors, for which they do not have images with which to represent them.

And the worst thing is not that! There are the satanic ones who do everything to make it so. There are intellectuals committed to this maneuver, who seek to further increase confusion. All this is part of a secret plan whose fundamental intent is to create a state of confusion, of darkness, so that the confused youth, amid confused ideas, becomes a mass of maneuvers of those interested in subverting our culture and establishing the era of new slavery, of the man-number, of the man-machine, of the man-instrument, of the man-piece, of the automated man, of the cybernetic man, of the man who renounces his intelligence and his creation to become a thing among things, a pawn in a tragic game at the whim of the interests of the new Caesars who intend to take over the world.

Nominalism and Realism

There are still those who affirm that nominalism, once and for all, defeated the realism of ideas. Such affirmations fill some philosophers with beatific joy, who remain satisfied and happy with the news of such great victory. First of all, those who think this way put all kinds of realism in the same bag. They do not distinguish between moderate realism and dogmatic realism. If for exaggerated realism ideas are understood as per se subsistent, for moderate realism they are not. What is only affirmed as real to universals is that they have their foundation in things, to which they refer. They are not entities that subsist per se, but only noetic-eidetic schemes that we construct, but that are really based on the things as we know them, according to the reality we give to these things. This does not mean that things are, in their onticity, only what we know of them. In our knowledge, there is no reality of things taken in themselves, our knowledge captures them as a whole; however, not entirely as they are; that is, it is a knowledge totum et non totaliter, as all the great scholastics affirmed, and it did not need Kant or his followers to make such a storm in a teacup to affirm what was already known, but which was also solved, which such marginal thinkers are unable to do. They attribute to positive and concrete philosophy affirmations that are false and, then, from the height of their daring ignorance, in works and lectures, they make baseless statements. It is no wonder that they do not know what they are talking about, because they have not studied these subjects. They are unaware of what has been done in this field; therefore, they can say what they say. But also, if they studied, we do not guarantee that they would understand the subject well…

Those who know the history of philosophy, not the one that jumps from Aristotle to Descartes, as is commonly presented, but the one that includes what was accomplished in the fifteen centuries that preceded the Cartesian twilight, know that nominalism was completely defeated through the long and extraordinary controversy of the universals. However, the “revenants” of nominalism, the “ghosts” that come from beyond the grave, now present it as the latest creative word of modern philosophy. It would be laughable, if it were not all eminently tragic. Tragic, yes, because it is painful to see the youth that so longs to take a step forward, and to whom it falls to carry the torch of knowledge forward, serve as material to receive false information about errors that have already been overcome.

It is necessary to warn young people against the intellectual damage that threatens them, due to the abuse of their good faith and undue trust in people who do not deserve it. However, with some simple comments that will be elementary, no doubt, but quite enlightening, we can give a clear understanding of what nominalism, conceptualism, moderate realism, and exaggerated realism are regarding universal concepts.

If we take the verbal term Volkswagen, it is only a breath, a flatus vocis in its syllabication. But what is intended to be conveyed by such a flatus vocis? With this term, the Volkswagen brand automobiles are being pointed out. In this case, there is an intentionality in this term: to designate all Volkswagen automobiles. Therefore, this term has a universality of meaning. Let’s call this stage A. But what are these Volkswagen cars? Are they completely heterogeneous things? No; they are cars that have many similarities that are repeated in them. They are produced according to predetermined standards, all repeating the same technical, mechanical, etc. characteristics. Anyone can understand this. Therefore, the term Volkswagen captures together (with-captures) a set of notes that constitute the Volkswagen. However, they are not just any notes. It doesn’t matter whether it is green or yellow, etc. There is something essential that must be present for a car to be considered a Volkswagen. All this that our mind intentionally says is essential for a car to be a Volkswagen is what constitutes, in its general lines, what was with-captured, which, from the Latin cum-capto, gives cum-ceptum, concept. So the term Volkswagen, which points to the cars, according to stage A, is now a universality of conceptualization, meaning a universal (concept) as well. Let’s call this stage B. But what real foundation does this concept have? On what reality is it based? It is based on the reality of Volkswagen cars, which gives them the real foundation, which is stage C. But is the idea of Volkswagen a subsisting reality in itself, independent of the human mind? If it is asserted that it is, we have stage D.

Well, the nominalist affirms only the reality of stage A, the conceptualist affirms, in addition to this reality, that of stage B, the moderate realist, in addition to these realities, that of stage C, and the exaggerated realist, in addition to all, that of stage D.

In elementary and even vulgar terms, this is what nominalism, conceptualism, moderate realism, and exaggerated realism are.

Empty Words

One of the saddest characteristics of our time, which has been going on for three centuries and is increasingly pronounced, is the emptying of words of their true etymological and intentional content, in order to more effectively disturb human consciences and cause confusion in the field of ideas, thus favoring ideas that serve unconfessed interests. The modern educator must understand the serious danger posed by this deleterious practice, for today there are few people who give the same content to terms such as eidetic, beautiful, homeland, nation, love, etc. The invasion of slang, the ideological divergences so typical of the historical period we live in, favors this growing distortion of the meaning of terms, which often acquire meanings that are completely opposed to the original ones, as was also seen in the Roman decadence and in low Latin, with serious damage to the cultural heritage of humanity. Where there are no terms with univocal meanings, but equivocal ones, there can be no secure science, solid knowledge, knowledge and communication between minds, but divorce of ideas, false oppositions, controversies only of words, in short, confusion and retreat from a degree of intellectual superiority to inferior and barbaric stages, as is happening today among us, despite the immense technical progress achieved. Modern man resembles a technologized barbarian, a barbarian who suddenly finds himself in possession of a superior technology that he does not always know how to use well, and what better fate he can give it. The modern educator has an immense role to play: to fight for terminology to always have a secure and certain content, and to teach those who need help how to proceed so that words have secure contents and do not stray from their true meaning, so that communication and understanding between men is as efficient as possible, because all pedagogy must have as its supreme ideal to help build men of sound mentality, capable of living fraternally with their fellow human beings.

Prejudicial Prejudices

Just as the modern cannot be accepted simply because it is modern, nor can it be despised simply because it is modern. Those who cling to the old, who reject everything that is modern, incriminating it as false, commit the same mistake as those who believe that everything that is modern is a surpassing of the old. It is clear that both positions sin by extremes. However, it is also evident that most intellectuals behave this way, affiliating themselves sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other. The excessively modern only accept from the past the nearest or the most remote possible past, because by opposing the past they deny, they seek the past already denied by those who are the object of their struggle. In turn, the antiqui reject the modern present, valuing the past they accept and denying the more remote past that their ideas reject.

Everyone finally forgets the most important thing: humanity is heir to itself and the cultural heritage of humanity is not anyone’s property, but everyone’s. Moreover, it is not justified that we renounce an inheritance that belongs to us by right, because we have a distorted view of the cultural reality of man.

Let us learn to appreciate what is valuable, regardless of time, because there are human achievements that are eternally current and are not classified by chronology, because they go beyond the limitation of external time, which measures things in their succession. Overcoming this prejudice is one of the first tasks that should interest the man of sound intellect. Let us learn to appreciate what has value. But how can we reach this stage if, like barbarians, we only mythically bind ourselves to the past and mystically to the future? May our eyes pass through the stages of human cultural history as participants in what man has created at his highest. Let us rid ourselves of the primary prejudices of a superiority that we do not have. What is positive and concrete accomplished by men belongs to the heritage of humanity, regardless of cultural cycles, eras, centuries, races, or anything else. What heritage has value if it is not made up of positive things? Chimeras, dreams, illusions do not constitute any heritage, let alone naive prejudices. We want these columns to be a repository of what is great. At least here, we want to chart courses that lead sound minds to respect everything great that man has accomplished and to incorporate into our cultural heritage what deserves to be preserved.

When we fight modern errors, false discoveries, and already aged novelties, it is not because they are modern, but because they are errors. We fight to ensure that intellectual garbage and the excrescences of the past are now presented with plastic packaging and colorful ribbons, as if they contained unexpected treasures, “unsuspected”, as some like to call them, but which are nothing more than old counterfeit coins, which are worth neither as currency nor for their novelty, nor for their age. We know that we will provoke repulsion from many who do not like to see equivocal personalities of the present day taken down from their pedestals, who receive the incense of the unaware. We want to denounce these false idols. We must be the new iconoclasts of the false divinities that they want to impose on us.

The Dehumanization of Man

This is not the first time in history that there has been a tendency to place man in a secondary position, to devalue him, to virtualize his significance, while valuing things. What we are witnessing today is not without parallel in history. This has happened many times and has caused the same opposing emphases and the same reversals in the way man values himself.

Dehumanization of Man

Since the Renaissance, it has been noted that, alongside a humanization sought in culture, there has been a constant dehumanization of man, in proportion as the feudal economy gave way to the mercantile, industrial, and financial economy, in which figures became the main thymological sign and movable monetary values came to signify possession of the highest social power.27 Since then, quantity began to predominate over quality, the quantitative surpassed the qualitative. Machinery, technical development, the loss of economic significance of craftsmanship, the industrial proletariat, large companies, powerful and monopolizing economic units, the loss of human significance, accompany parallelism, provoking natural reactions, because human history is always the field of an antinomic struggle between the positive and the negative, between the quantitative and the qualitative, between the sacred and the profane, between, in short, positive and opposing values, with the intercalary vicious sediments between them. It is not to be said that such events totally overwhelm the social sphere, but only that they become predominant in an active layer of society, which also has a role in orienting it. It is undeniable that the highest personalities, the most energetic cerebrations, do not enter into this dehumanization. Without a doubt, the apostles of inhumanity are always the most deficient, but also of a dangerously activity and capable of dominating vast social sectors, always finding docile adherents to their teachings.

The emphasis given to axiological studies in our days is a sign of the reaction to the excessive dehumanization of man in the century of the great dehumanizers: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and other minor figures, and a sequel of equivocal intellectuals, who contribute with the mockery of their phantasmagoric intelligence to work in favor of this dehumanization, which powerful technology, atomic disintegration, scientific achievements, the megateric construction of an economic and military power, which is a Moloch devouring lives and threatening final destruction, cooperate so that this dehumanization grows.

The artist, who is almost always a jester with serious things, also contributes ludically to dehumanization in art, which becomes quantitatively oriented, and also a platoon of pseudo-scholars, of postiche-intelligence minds, set themselves to cooperate through the cybernetism of intelligence, to the point of convincing themselves that man no longer needs man and can be a living thing, capable of enjoying the delicious narcotics that their false progress offers.

Here is a very vast field to investigate in the history of all peoples and in the present day, which is something that points to sinister signs of overwhelming nihilism. All announce the shipwreck, these Saint-John-the-Baptists of the catastrophe… It is necessary to denounce and fight them.

The Negativists

Every cultural cycle, such as the Hindu, Egyptian, Chinese, Greco-Roman, Muslim, and Christian, to name a few, is based on a religion that offers a religious conception of the world and is also based on a positive philosophy that starts from the affirmation of being.

This conception of the world gives cultural form to the cycle, imbues it with its significance, and sets its destiny. Universally accepted, followed, supported, defended, and propagated, however, it is not of total universality because there are always those who, opposing it, present reasons, arguments, offer new schemes, propose doubts, mobilize oppositions; in short, that threaten to jeopardize everything that is fundamental in this conception of the world. These then engage in attacking all aspects that are fundamental to this conception. In all cycles, there have always been such opponents: they are other passages, but the action is always the same, the tactic is the same, the way of conducting themselves is also the same. In our cycle, the same ones, always the same, with the same techniques, with the same practices, with the same processes, and even with the same arguments, act to corrupt our worldview.

We will not follow a chronological itinerary to describe their way of acting and the arguments, always the same, that they use with such monotony. We will only point out some of the links of the same path, some moments of the same script, some vicissitudes of the same sad adventure.

One of the first attitudes consists of affirming that this religious belief has no foundation. It is mere fiction, alien to the rules and norms of reason. And when the followers of the religion demonstrate that it has rational foundations, they affirm that reason is flawed, left-handed, and lame. And they set out to defend the irrational, only the affective intuitional.

When positive thinkers demonstrate that within the intuitive there are rigorous foundations in favor of their belief, they then affirm that our fundamental knowledge, based on sensory experience, has no value because our senses deform reality, and it is not perceptible to us. When others show that if something is hidden, it is something that exceeds our cognitive means, and that we can, however, investigate through thought, then they begin to deny value to thought, and all that has value is only pragma, what is convenient to our nature, and our truth is only pragmatic, what is useful to our interests.

And when positive thinkers show that, still based on this truth criterion, we also solidly base belief on rational grounds because this criterion is still positive, and they demonstrate that there is obedience to a vital norm, opponents deny the very foundation of pragmatics.

Thus, we can make a parallel where we will put, on one side and the other, the reasons presented by such adversaries.

NEGATIVIST ARGUMENTS POSITIVE-CONCRETE CRITICISM
In nature there is no free will. Everything obeys laws. There are indeed laws that order the universe, which proves an ordering intelligence.
Then,
there are no laws. Laws are just convenient formulas. Everything follows a sequence of cause and effect. Our discovered laws are convenient approximations of reality, which obeys the principle of causality, established since forever.
Then,
cause and effect are our concepts, not referring to reality. There is no absolute separation between cause and effect in nature. Yes, cause and effect are logical concepts, entities of reason; in truth, the effect is still its causes, or at least part of them.
Then,
cause and effect are concepts without any reality. Everything obeys an evolution. Things flow and take new forms, tending towards ever greater perfection. Yes, there is an evolution, everything tends towards an end. Every action tends towards something, otherwise it would not exist. Everything tends towards a term. It’s a universal law.
Then,
only reason allows us to know securely. All other means are worthless. Undoubtedly, by capturing the ideal connections, reason allows understanding the real connections.
Then,
but the true reality is the ideal. The world is a reflection of our ideas. The things of our experience are only valuable as reflections of these ideas. Yes, the world of our ideas, when clearly constructed, corresponds to the reality that in no way contradicts them. We can also start from the reality of ideas to understand the reality outside our mind.
Then,
only the reality we experience is valuable, which is captured by our senses, and the laws we discover. Yes, experience is the starting point of our knowledge, as it is by reflecting on it that we can reach the reasons and connections that link them.
Then,
everything is matter and nothing more. It is active and passive, and capable of evolving, reaching all possible mutations. Yes, matter is passive, but it is actualized in this or that way by an active power. This power is other than the passive, and distinct from it, which leads to postulate that matter would be composed and not simple, just one.
Then,
well, we don’t know what matter is in itself, but in any case, it is something that is not spiritual. If there is something active in it, which is other than passive, it is something that can accomplish, create, it is a power that is not passive while being active. And this creative power, which is active and chooses what it creates (intellect), is not matter, while mere passivity.
Then,
well, in truth, we don’t know if what we know is true or false. There are things that are beyond our knowledge. Yes, but at least we know that there are things beyond our knowledge, and this knowledge is already knowing something; knowing that we know there is something we don’t quite know what it is.
Then,
in truth, thinking well, evolutionism has no foundation. After all, there is no purpose in things. Everything flows senselessly. The flow is the flow of something that flows, that goes through stages of being; that is, ceasing to be this to be that. But there is always a dynamic tendency towards another term that is not the thing.
Then,
there is no dynamism at all. Everything is static. There is only our illusion that reality is fluent. The flow is just our illusion. Yes, but if there is no flow in things, there is at least flow in us who flow, and we live the flow. Something flows at least because otherwise, even the illusion of flow could not occur, and this illusion already demonstrates that something flows.
Then,
we are an illusion. We are not, in truth; we think we are. Our world is made up only of illusory schemes that we devise. Our words build the world, but this is worth as much as the sounds or gestures, or scribbles we make. If we are an illusion and everything we build is illusory, all of this is something and not just nothing, because the illusion of our words and our schemes is based on some reality.
Then,
(reaches the definitive gesture): there is nothing, everything is nothing. Nothing is everything. If there is nothing and nothing is everything, nothing is something, because this postulation of nothing is still an affirmation, a testimony of reality. Only the word “nothing” is pronounced; but it hides the reality we cannot conceal.
Then,
there remains the final, supreme, definitive appeal: Satan, for all the devils, help me, because I can’t take it anymore! And the other, with compassion, before the damned soul, can only ask the Supreme Being to enlighten it if it is possible to illuminate the hidden abysses of such a mind.

And so it was, is and perhaps will be, always the same ones, the very same ones, with the very same arguments, denying what they affirmed before, always negating and negating, obstinate negatives, until they plunge into the ultimate negation.

They are easy to find. They are everywhere, digging through all the garbage of human thought, looking for new arguments they lack.

The Isms

Throughout their passage through life, human beings gradually acquire a series of news about facts and use them to build knowledge. But this knowledge, at first, is only what is given to them by their experience, by their empiricism.

The Greeks called this knowledge doxa, a word that means opinion and is intended to indicate common knowledge that every human being has acquired through experience, contact with things in their world, and their adventures in life.

But from the moment that human beings begin to link facts with each other, as they discover the connections that link them together, as they discover what infuses them with being, which are their causes, correlating them in a way that perceives the subordination and subalternation of some to others, and thus obtaining a coherent knowledge through causes (which one must never forget are the ones that actually infuse being into their effects, being that in a certain way flows in the effects themselves), human beings acquire a connected knowledge, a theoretical knowledge.

This term, coming from the Greek, means vision, thus indicating that it is a knowledge that sees, correlates, links, and connects. Theory also means the long rows of faithful who followed to the Greek temples, which were linked by garlands of flowers, in such a way that the term passed into philosophy with the following notes: vision-connection-entanglement-subordination-subalternation.

Thanks to these notes, it was finally possible to signify this type of knowledge, which is a knowledge gained through comparisons, weighing, correlations, a speculative knowledge, in short, of speculum, which in Latin means mirror, because it is a knowledge that reflects, that reproduces the image in an imitative way, and what it says corresponds, with greater fidelity, to the reality of the thing itself, which is obtained through speculations, reflections, a reasoning of the mind from here to there, through comparisons, observations, whose reasoning gave rise to the term discourse: hence such knowledge is called discursive knowledge.

Theoretical, speculative knowledge is the fundamental knowledge of science, of epistéme for the Greeks, of cultured knowledge, of cultivated knowledge. In this way, in the term epistéme, the Greeks gathered all theoretical knowledge, distinguishing it from doxa, which was merely practical knowledge, which only knows that something happens, without knowing why it happens. The development of epistemic knowledge would have to be based, as it was, on the data offered by empiricism. But to remain only in it would be to stop, and the human mind, due to its intellectual properties, tends, as it tends, to advance in knowledge. Curiosity about what astonishes us leads man to ask, which is already visibly and extraordinarily manifested in the child, curiosity and astonishment which are the primordial elements that prepare mental activity for the construction of cultured knowledge, theoretical knowledge, of epistéme.

But the human being is not just a mind, not just intellect, he is also sensitivity and affectivity. There is a knowledge of the senses, a knowledge that we capture through our senses, such as fear, which is the apprehension of a possible evil (future or immediate) to the organism, or affective, through our sympathetic and antipathetic states, and finally, the rational.

For these reasons, it was not surprising that in human knowledge there were encompassed, amalgamated, often, intuitions of a sensitive character, alongside affective and other intellectual intuitions. But the normal and just tendency of the human being is gradually to raise his knowledge to the more perfective field, and the greatest perfection of man is in his intellectuality, because it is by it that man distinguishes himself from other animals.

If one observes the development of science, which is theoretical knowledge, knowledge that entwines, that knows through causes, one will easily observe that progress and the highest curves of knowledge are proportional to its rationalization.

As knowledge becomes more intellectualized, it rises to the high points it has already reached. Undoubtedly, however, what is affective is present in a large part of human life. One could even establish the following relationship, without the numbers we offer indicating exact quantitative aspects, but only to give an idea of human reality from the perspective of knowledge: we are 70% sensitive, 25% affective, and only 5% rational. That is, in our life, in the time it takes, we live sensibly much more than affectively and, thus, more than rationally.

Humanity is still a long conquest of man, because the animal still predominates in us, because where man is more human is in his affectivity and, above all, in his rationality. If one observes the development of science, in the sense that it is taken today, it is seen, from the outset, that it deals with sensible facts to treat them as rationally as possible, avoiding, as far as possible, the influence of affectivity, which is undoubtedly the source of most of our values, our axiological appreciations.28 It cannot be denied that the axioanthropological influences cultured knowledge. There is still a predominance of the axioanthropological in the sciences that belong to practical philosophy, such as ethics, history, morality, economics, politics, etc.

If it is admitted that there are two types of sciences, cultural and natural, the former interested in studying the various formal aspects where human activity is exercised or on things that bear the mark of this spirit, which are things created by human intentionality, and natural, those that study the facts of nature (from natura, past participle of the verb nascor, which means, therefore, what is born), of things that are born, which are artifacts of man, it will be easy to verify that the constant that predominates in human studies consists of removing the axioanthropological as far as possible so that science becomes merely speculative, for speculative philosophy is distinguished from practical philosophy, especially by the absence, in the former, of the axioanthropological. Natural science today sets aside values of affective origin. Botany will not examine this or that plant because it is more or less useful to man, more or less beautiful. The tendency of natural science is to move away from the axioanthropological.

Now, since human temperaments are diverse, and since affectivity is naturally heterogeneous, it is natural for human values to be distinct to some and to others, and for the degree of intensity they possess to vary according to the appraisal of some and others. While remaining in the field of the axioanthropological, there will inevitably be total divergences between men. And such divergences do not arise from observation or various experimentation, but from the various ways of appreciating values that man captures in things, or that he lends to them.

Therefore, human science will become increasingly cultured, more theoretical, as it becomes more speculative and moves away as much as possible from the axioanthropological that disturbs the wise man in his observations.

Why can’t we talk about Chinese, Hindu, Japanese, or Arab botany today, but about universal botany? The same is true on a larger scale with physics, anatomy, physiology, and mathematics.

Aren’t such disciplines universalized today? Do they belong to a country, to a people? Are they someone’s property? Yes, but to man, to man in his highest degree of mental development.

As science becomes more speculative, it becomes universal, understood by all, admitted by all, it becomes everyone’s.

It overcomes borders, surpasses the petty differences that men have established to divide humanity, it disdains political boundaries, ideologies, opinions, beliefs.

Science liberates man in man because it makes him not just a member of this or that ideology, of this or that particular way of seeing things, but of humanity.

Speculative science is thus a liberator of humanity.

It will free us from -isms, which are excrescences of a primary knowledge and the pretentious adverse positions that have done us so much harm.

It will prepare the way for us to understand each other and to establish a plan for transforming society, not from the affective and passionate perspective of -isms, which are axioanthropological and abstract and particular ways of seeing facts and considering man, ghosts of a period of deficiency that speculative knowledge no longer tolerates or admits, except as examples of human weakness, not greatness.

The Proletarian, a Theme of Ideological Exploitation

Throughout the ages of humanity, those who are only service providers have always been victims of cunning exploiters. This has always been the case, and still is.

The man who has no other income than his work, and whose only wealth is his children, has been called a proletarian because only his offspring is the good that remains for him, and the income he can have is the one his children can give him.

As his life is made of needs, as his table is almost empty, as his most basic needs are so many and demanding, it is natural that this man, this type of man, has immediate demands and needs immediate goods to satisfy his just needs.

His problems are always in urgent need of a solution, because he cannot wait, because his stomach demands food, his body demands clothing.

On the other hand, every man wants to prestige himself before his peers. Everyone wants to be, or at least appear to be, superior in something. There have always been, there are, and there will always be those who want to impose themselves on others with some superiority. One wants to be more sympathetic, another stronger, another more skilled, another richer.

Among those who cannot stand out by any of those paths, there are many who seek to stand out through political power, exerting that power over others.

Who are they? They are the hungering for prestige who do not know how to suffer their weakness, the power-complexed, complexed by inferiority, who seek to obtain a position that will make them great because they are not great.

Who is great does not seek to occupy a great position. Those who are truly great create their own greatness. They are great because they are great, not because they occupy a high position.

Those who truly rise are those who ascend on their own, through their actions and achievements, to the elevated position. They create their place, as Pasteur created his in science, as Aristotle in philosophy, as Camões created in literature.

Neither Pasteur, nor Aristotle, nor Camões were great because they occupied high positions, but they were great because they accomplished elevated works.

He who cannot stand his inferiority, he who cannot bear his smallness within himself, wants the high position because he thinks that, by occupying a pedestal and being higher than others, he is really greater than others.

And that is why the proletarian, in all ages, yesterday, today, and perhaps still tomorrow, will always be the sought-after, the great exploited by those who want to ascend to high positions, by those who cannot rise on their own because they are not truly great, but can rise on their emaciated backs to great positions to appear great.

And how did they proceed? They exploited their misery, their need, their good faith, their ignorance, they exploited the hunger of their children, the half-nakedness and rags of their companions, they exploited the urgency of their needs and then promised them:

  • that they would give him, already, immediately, what he needs already and immediately;
  • they exploited his immediatism, which makes him vibrate before the promise of a plate of food, a garment for his almost naked body, the humble house he does not have.

And as they received nothing better than they expected, they always justified their lack by blaming others.

They always found scapegoats to explain why they did not give him what they promised.

They are never to blame, but others. Who are these others? Are they so different from the first ones? They are not different from the first ones, they are others for the second ones? Some accuse each other mutually. Everyone, when they speak, are angelic creatures who only think of good. The others, yes, they only do evil. The proletarian who hears what some say about others, the insults and the injuries that some hurl at others.

Some are to the others the traitors of the people. They all accuse each other of being traitors. For in truth, they are all traitors of the proletarian, the eternal betrayed, the eternal exploited, the eternal sufferer of injuries and miseries.

But is the proletarian only a victim? Yes, he is a victim of his ignorance and his hunger, a victim of the urgency of his needs, a victim of his unrestrained appetite.

But he is guilty because he listens to those he should not listen to;

he is guilty because he believes in those he should not believe in;

he is guilty because he serves those he should not serve;

he is guilty because he follows those he should not follow.

Never in the history of humanity has he achieved a little more than not leaving his hands, because it is from his hands that all the world’s wealth comes out.

It was never the others who lifted him up, even those who come out of his midst to preach that they will help him.

Those who always, throughout history, proclaim themselves as the friends of the proletariat, have always been the richest, the most powerful, the ones with the most sumptuous lives.

His true benefactors never went hunting for high positions.

The majority are the same hypocritical Pharisees, those who wish to keep them in ignorance and poverty, because they know that if they have a full stomach, their body clothed, a humble and good home, their companion and their children smiling and happy, they will no longer listen to those who wish to ascend on the steps of their hunger and needs.

They will never give them the means to achieve well-being, because their well-being will lead to disinterest in politics and then, how will they rise?

As long as they are hungry, they will have a means of exploiting their needs, adding them in votes, which will raise them to the positions in which they are invested, because the positions, which man creates by his work and intelligence, those are prohibited to them, because they are not great, they just want to seem like they are.

Throughout history, the proletarian has only been able to rise a little above his poverty when, by himself, through his work, through his effort combined with that of his brothers, he himself created wealth for himself.

His true friend is not the one who asks for his vote, but the one who teaches him how to improve his life, increase his salary, but a real increase and not a fictitious one, true increase, and not just add a zero, when, in prices, the zeros multiply.

It was when he went to his companion and asked him: what can we do together to help us get out of the situation we are in? Can’t we join other companions, like us, and cooperate together to do something real that can improve our lives?

“Can’t you help build my house, and I’ll help build yours? Can’t we both help others, and they help us?”

Speculation on the Lowering of Values

We witness a real speculation on the lowering of values. Everything that is of less value is exalted; mediocrity is exalted, the inferior is raised. Many say that this was inevitable since aristocracy had disappeared, and the rise of the common man had taken place. “How can we avoid this if the villain is now the master?” they exclaim! “What can we expect from a society of ‘new rich,’ whose representatives have risen to power? What can we wish for in a humanity where the common people have equalized in positions with the highest? How can we desire good taste, culture, good manners, mental acuity to dominate when this flood has swept away everything noble and left as sediment the detritus of the sewers?”

And, discouraged, they exclaim: everything is definitively lost. With these people, nothing better will be done. We are reaping the fruits of what we have sown!

In the midst of the 19th century, Nietzsche felt the advent of nihilism, the deterioration of everything that culture had created of great value. The new scale of values that had emerged was the inversion of everything that the truly noble (not just the courtier) had created. What was being enthroned was vulgarity, vulgar values, fermenting and bubbling blood, the man from the swamp whose voice is a gurgle. Nihilism was advancing rapidly, and the nihilists, without realizing it, were fighting not to destroy what was wrong and false, but especially what was still worthy and elevated. Nietzsche was not a nostalgic, nor did he seek returns that he considered foolish. He longed to advance, to surpass man himself. He wanted what had been accomplished so far, which was the highest promise, to be considered only a promise of even greater advancements. What was to come was the superman. But the superman was not a new species. He was the still unactualized grandiose, the supreme possibility that we feared to realize in ourselves, and only a few human specimens, in some aspects, had lightly reached that stage.

He also denounced, and his denunciation is relevant today. The events of the 20th century have accelerated so rapidly that Nietzsche’s prophecies began to be realized soon after. His denunciation was true and proven by reality. The facts bore witness in his favor.

However, the superman did not come. Instead, cruel men came who believed that humanity would know its surpassing through brutality and not through love; through passions unleashed and not through the purification of understanding; through unbridled and concupiscent will, and not through free and just liberation; through unleashed hatred, and not through love. And so we witnessed what we witnessed: a nightmare of the tiger…

But the nobility of all epochs and cultural cycles also emerged from the lower classes. Not, however, remaining inferior, but exalting in man what man has highest: his understanding, his will, and his love.

There is also human greatness in meadows, in plains, not just in the mountains. But good legs are needed to climb them, and men of strong and good will. And that man is not an impossibility today. He also arises and can multiply. But how to reach that man if everything moves, arranges, and processes to prevent his advent?

The speculation in the depreciation of values is a sinister attack against humanity. It is the attempt to perpetuate the worst and truncate the highest possibilities, it is an act of frustration against the superior. If those who only look at what is low are free to propagate their appreciation, it is natural that the appreciators of such a species multiply. In fact, all pseudocultural promotion is compromised by less skilled hands. What may come is what comes, and nothing more. It is not surprising that advertising has fallen into less qualified hands. There are exceptions, but what can such exceptions do if those who predominate do not recognize or assist them?

What is astonishing is the constant failure of good measures. Everything that is proposed to be done better encounters greater obstacles and is always threatened by imminent failure. If well-intentioned periodicals emerge that actually intend to propagate the best, they are soon threatened with defeat. And it comes sooner or later. Only the bad seed thrives. Everything is arranged for it to multiply and overwhelm.

The great human deeds, the great gestures, are no longer news. They are not interesting, they do not spread, they do not receive praise. Everything that man does worst receives greater publicity, and this increases in proportion to the ignominy and indignity of the act. We have already cited numerous examples. It would be useless to repeat them. This is where the greatest speculation occurs. Above all, news, and only what has less value is news, what most traumatizes the vulgar man. It is not surprising, therefore, that the impression that the spectacle of the world causes us is horror. But this horror is not total. Those who act wrongly are always fewer in number than those who act rightly. Crime is always less than the act of charity.

More acts of mutual support and love are carried out than acts of exploitation. Rights are fulfilled more than they are violated, and duties are fulfilled in greater numbers than one would think.

The Unbridled Propaganda

However, the unbridled propaganda of what is bad gives us the impression that evil has completely dominated. There are no more hearts that exalt themselves, no more gestures of nobility, no more men who look upon their fellows as their friends. And this is not true. But the lie organized in periodicals gives the impression of the opposite. It is a constant stimulation to see the opposite, to do the opposite, to make the opposite the rule.

They may say that many contribute to this without being aware of the harm they are doing. They do not know that they are promoting evil, even though they wish the opposite. We believe little in this ignorance, so we do not shirk the denunciation that needs to be made. Others will say that the majority is more interested in the malicious than in the worthy and noble. But we reject this lie. If there is anything true in its support, if there are really twilight moments in us, when it is easy to open the way to bats and night birds, these moments should not be stimulated to repeat themselves. We can reduce them and even avoid them altogether. Good also spreads, albeit more slowly. There are also desires for frank smiles and happy faces, for sunny mornings and children’s laughter. Humanity has not yet completely languished. If there is a little light, it will illuminate the darkness, and lovers of light will create new hopes.

It is necessary that we accept the dawns, and not just the dusks.

The doubt about freedom, its devaluation, is one of the most outrageous errors of our time, because to deny freedom is to deny man. Whoever dedicates themselves to studying it, and does so with diligence, knows very well that being free does not necessarily imply a total absence of any determination.

Freedom is not absolute spontaneity, but only our ability to choose between contingent futures, preferring this one, rejecting that one. We always obey, indeterminately, a desire for good. We are determined to the supreme good. However, we can avoid the proximate goods, we can err in choosing them, we can frustrate ourselves with this or that. We can err as well as succeed. But if we choose this one instead of that one, we offend the cosmic universal order in nothing. Our freedom is not something that goes against that order, but within it.

Our freedom only testifies to our humanity, the fundamental characteristic of this being that can say yes and can say no, and that is not just a plaything at the mercy of its desires.

Primary Social Ideas

Another barbarous aspect of our time is the proliferation of primary social ideas, which promised the impossible to men and have only brought them, so far, the most discouraging experiences. The results did not correspond to expectations, and if there are still some hopes in many people that they may find in these promises the path to the desired achievements, it is due to the poor awareness of those who no longer know how to distinguish between what is chimerical and what is likely to be realized.

A revision of social ideas, made with the care they deserve, would avoid the repetition of so many errors and the perpetuation of so many failures. This world needs to be reformed, no doubt, but let us be careful not to exchange the bad for the worse. To prevent this, it is necessary, from the outset, to examine what is barbaric and what is cultured in social ideas, what they really offer. It is useless to dream that “tigers can give birth to doves”…

The reexamination of all of them is necessary today more than ever, when consciousness of absences, resentments, and feelings of frustration are exacerbated. Only our will purified by correct understanding can lead us to true and just love. For this true love, we must beware of falling into old errors with such disastrous results. It is not enough to love one’s neighbor. We must know how to make our love effective and practical.

Avoiding infantile reversions is another path that is incumbent upon us. We cannot retreat to the schematics of childhood. It is not possible that we understand the adult and mature man as if he were a child who suddenly grew old. It is not possible that we consider our understanding of science to be true that which a child believes is the word, as he conceives of number, how he understands cause and effect, how he judges the power of things, and how he believes in possibilities.

We need to accept our intellectual maturity once and for all and found our observations, experiences, and also our achievements on it. Returns here would be resignations and, even more, defeats. We will not feed humanity with defeats, but with victories, because these are the true nourishment of the spirit.

Naive Scientism

It is necessary to once and for all eradicate the errors of naive scientism, which believed everything could be explained in laboratories; naive sensualism, already banished to the museum of inconsequential relics, after the great discoveries of microphysics, which is an adventure for the aeons of tomorrow; vulgar empiricism, which subjects the more to the less, agnostic and even skeptical criticism, which denies the value of our knowledge, vicious positivism, which makes absolute assertions based on merely contingent premises, fictionalism which denies because it proclaims its inability to investigate, pessimistic nihilism, negative and passive, which denies because it falters in the face of theoretical difficulties, impotent in solving them, black Satanism, the final crowning of a total defeat, which seeks to subvert everything in unreason and madness, because it has completely failed. All this must be denounced once and for all. It is necessary to return to the great works of the past and review what needs to be reviewed. It is necessary to dispel foolish prejudices that make us renounce an inheritance that belongs to humanity, under the pretext that it belongs to a sect that is not ours. Culture and knowledge have no homelands, no classes, no vested interests. Culture is free by nature, it overcomes time, it overcomes contingencies, it overcomes prejudices. Every wise person who is truly prudent and is assisted by sound wisdom is a libertarian. He is no longer bound by prejudices, by ill-founded pre-judgments. He wants to overcome borders and laughs at everything that man has created to separate himself from his brothers. True science is ecumenical, universal, a victory over weakness, deficiency, and prejudice.

Every true wise person is a libertarian, advancing towards a tomorrow without fetters or commitments. He wants to realize man in his greatness, not in his smallness; he wants to exalt the superior and banish what degrades and diminishes us.

Every wise person is thus more than a promise, he is the most categorical and robust affirmation of a reality that man must conquer.

It is a hope that is strengthened by true faith and that will inaugurate true charity: the love for the good of man, without forgetting that this good lies in his greatness, not in his smallness; that this good lies in his exaltation, not in his depression; that this good lies in the victory over everything that separated, divided, and belittled.

This wise person will then be the affirmer of truth, because the true good is truth, because truth is the true good.

Final Discourse

It would be naive on our part to imagine that every reader of this work has fully agreed with the ideas presented here and with the denunciations made.

After we had written this work, we gave it to several people to read so that they could present their criticisms. They were chosen from various philosophical and even ideological positions, and we had the opportunity to know the opposition that was made to our ideas, from fundamental and substantial aspects to merely accidental or secondary ones. And we concluded that we should not modify the text, for if we could not convince everyone of the fundamentality of our ideas, at least we could contribute with a large number of people to exert some action of protest or obstacle to the development, which is now observed, of barbarism among us.

We will now analyze the various chapters, what objections were presented to us, how they manifested themselves, and also how we can respond to them.

Regarding the valorization of the animal part in us, it was said to us that this represented an inevitable consequence of the excesses practiced by Christianity, which excessively devalued the body, the sense of the body, the demanding ascetic practices, and the excess condemnation of things in this world that Christianity fostered, which provoked a revolt against these ideas because everything that is flesh in us, everything that is life, everything that is human protested against these exaggerated affirmations, and it is natural that today there is a constant march towards what is human and animal in us.

We must recognize that there is some foundation in these objections for the following reasons: we truly are citizens of two homelands, the earthly homeland and a heavenly homeland; at the same time that the human being desires to fully live his life, to enjoy the earthly fruits to the maximum, he also aspires to enjoy the fruits of an ideal life, of a superior and perfect life because our desire is not appeased, it is felt not to be at peace except in the full and integral possession of supreme happiness. There is in us an impulse towards supreme perfection. We are not satisfied with our limitations, but we do not want to abandon them either; that is, we want to be men, but also to be gods.

Now, in truth, Christianity, in its true sense, is this. If there were Christians who did not understand it, who took Christianity elsewhere, the fault is not Christ’s, nor of the Christian ideas, but of these Christians who judged that we were approaching Christ more and more in proportion as we moved away from earthly things, which as a consequence provoked vicious excesses, which ceased to be virtues and became true vices because virtue in excess is a vice. In this respect, there is indeed a profound reason. We could even say that there are two kinds of Satanism: one Satanism that corresponds to the sin of Satan, the sin of pride, that desire, not to judge oneself superior and to approach divinity, but that pride of judging oneself as having already achieved divinity, to the point that Nietzsche said with profound reason that if it were not for physiological and lower operations, man would proclaim himself as God.

This lack of humility, this lack of recognition of our true values, and to consider ourselves already deeply finished and full, already having achieved divine superiority, which is the Satanic sin, provokes another, also Satanic and inverse, which consists of totally despising this superior part and sinking into full animality, and even resigning from this participation that we have with the two homelands.

Now, Christ, in his true anagogical meaning, because we can set aside even his historical reality, which becomes disinteresting to us at this moment, because we could perfectly dispense with it, and only remain with his archetypal truth and his anagogical truth, Christ is a mediator. But a mediator of what? A mediator of two worlds: the earthly world and the celestial world. He is the one who simultaneously has two natures: the divine and the human, and who seeks to save man by making him also a participant in divinity, but promising him the terrestrial paradise, including the resurrection of the flesh.

Now, the genuine of Christianity is neither this excessive asceticism, which leads to the complete abandonment of the things that belong to this world, nor another asceticism, which would lead us to the total abandonment of the things that belong to the world of our ideas and supreme perfections to fall into what is inferior and petty.

This misunderstanding arises from not perceiving the mediator, which is Christ, who throughout his life showed concern for the deficiencies of this life and sought to heal them (He will give wine to those who were having fun at the wedding in Cana. He will heal those bodies that are sick. He will give better material conditions for those who are suffering, but also give the way to rise to the maximum that could bring them closer to Divinity). Christ is flesh and spirit, suffers as flesh, dies as flesh, but also rises not only as a spirit, but also as flesh, and this is the fundamental point that must not be forgotten, and that leads to such serious consequences, which are observed today, within the Church, in the philosophizing of truly anti-Christian tendencies. Humanity has always been in a state of perplexity because it is a participant in these two homelands, because it is a citizen of these two homelands. Man must clarify properly which path he should follow and where his truth would be, and it is very common that he thought it would be in one of these homelands to the detriment of the other, and not precisely in the genuinely Christian conception, whose truth is in both homelands.

Man has always found strange, when he exceeds in the spiritual part, the material things. Then he wished to give his mind the means to express only what exceeds materiality and to detach from a real content his ideas. Conversely, when he excessively values the earthly part, he will deny real content to his ideas, and two positions arise as a consequence: reality would be in ideas, not in things, or reality would be in things, not in ideas. Between these two extremes, the dispute took place throughout the centuries in philosophy, and this dispute, which had already found a genuinely Christian solution within scholastic philosophy, ends today by finding again those who seek to open the abyss between our two homelands, creating, thus, the following situation: our ideas only have value when they represent the things of our sensory experience, while the others are mere mental constructions, mere entities of reason, and some even go so far as to say without any real content, mere nothings.

Now, both philosophical positions are absolutely anti-Christian. The true position is the one that understands the mediation of Christ, and it is as follows: we have ideas that have a real foundation, some more and some less; that is, there is a degree of intensity in the real foundation of our ideas, but we can also construct others without real foundation, purely fictional and even absurd, without any ideal content, such as the square circle, which cannot be thought or represented. This would be the true Christian position, and this position is being shaken by new interpretations of false modern scholastics, who want to make a kind of reconciliation between Christian philosophical thought and the thought of empiricists, materialistic sensists, positivists, nominalists, etc., which corresponds, in the field of philosophy, to the same approach that is made in the field of political and social ideas, attempting to reconcile Church thought with false socialisms, with false socialist solutions, which are absolutely not Christian. Here there is a defeat of these Christians, but not of Christianity, because it cannot be blamed for those who, by taking such attitudes, are not capable of carrying forward the true and genuine Christian thought.

As a result of the excesses that occurred when valuing the heavenly homeland, to the detriment of the earthly homeland, because one should value the heavenly homeland without detracting from the earthly homeland, we find in the thought of Saint Francis a tendency to join with things: brother Sun, sister Moon, sister Earth. Saint Francis fights by all means so that we identify with the things of this world, without ceasing to also seek our identification with what belongs to the divine world. The Franciscan conception is a true mediation, a genuinely Christian position of mediation, to achieve this union in us, of the two homelands.

Now, what we have fought against in this book, since the first chapter, were precisely the deviations that lead to animality to the detriment of our intellectual and sapiential part, to the detriment of our spiritual homeland. We do not deny or want to combat the valorization of the earthly, what we do not want or can admit, and consider barbaric, is to destroy the spiritual and intellectual to value only the earthly and, consequently, we can respond in the same way to the criticism of other chapters, which have some analogy with this one.

Thus, the overvaluation or exaltation of strength, the marked valuation of agility and purely physical ability, the exaggerated valuation of the body to the detriment of the mind, the valuation of the visual over the auditory, the marked romantic overvaluation of intuition, sensitivity, irrationality, which we find among the romantics, which completely questions reason, the tendency, as a consequence of this animal overvaluation, to establish the superiority of strength over right and to give hegemony to strength over right, are terribly destructive; the unrestrained and tendentious propaganda of things that descend, such as the overvaluation of violent crime, violence, brutality in man; the valuation of mechanical memory, which brings us closer to sensitivity to the detriment of eidetic memory, memory of ideas, which belongs fully to our intellectuality, to our understanding, all this is a regular consequence of this misunderstanding of the true sense of man. And not understanding that man is a completely different being from other animals, because they do not have the power to frustrate their natural acts by an intrinsic power, by choice, by deliberation, by not having freedom. But human beings are beings who can frustrate their acts by intrinsic deliberation; and while animals do not say no to nature, humans can.

This is our original sin, our capacity for disobedience. In sacred books, original sin is presented through the allegories of the book of Genesis, but anagogically it means man’s capacity to say no and thus frustrate his acts, to choose between good and evil, to choose poorly or well between good and evil, often choosing evil at the expense of good due to ignorance, weakness, concupiscence, and even malice. Consequently, this original sin is of the species and therefore transmitted to all, with which we are all born, and from which we can only free ourselves with the commitment of our parents to educate and prepare us to choose well, as seen throughout the ritual of baptism. But the satanic sin is that of pride, of the creature who, being a participant in this divine homeland, thinks he is already God.

Because we have the ability to choose, we choose without adequately preparing ourselves to know how to choose well. Thus, we are subject to the consequences of the perfections and defects of our own nature. These are the two fundamental sins that, today, undoubtedly, are having their effects, especially those of pride, from which many cannot be rescued and still tend downwards, towards the satanic direction of the inferior, of hell, which is the inferior, that which tends downwards, which returns us to purely natural roots, to animality, to our purely physical part, and that distances us from the other that elevates us, that exalts us, that impels us to overcome ourselves.

Man cannot lose himself with his head in the clouds, nor can he bury it in swamps; he must have his feet on the ground and his head in the heavens. This is the true sense that even the upright figure of man is the best symbol, within our culture, which is genuinely Christian, because its foundations, its roots, its backbone are Christian and tend both ways. By moving away from true Christianity, one contributes to the dissolution of our cultural cycle.

Some allege that we have been unjust to radio broadcasters and politicians, accusing them all of being pernicious. It is not true. We have never said that all of them are. There are well-intentioned and honest politicians, and there are radio broadcasters who strive to raise the level of radio and television. But they are exceptions, not the rule.

It is also alleged that the football player is a national hero spontaneously chosen by the people, that we can respect sports. We have already written a lot about sports and elevated it to a point that very few of its followers have ever reached. But who can deny that an excessive propaganda of the football player, as of the popular singer, lately, has not put them on a pedestal? Does this excess have any contribution to give them a value that they themselves do not believe they have? And hasn’t it served to partially disturb their lives and turn sports and popular music into mere market objects?

Let’s see other aspects and the criticisms that have been made against us. Some claimed that cybernetics can perfectly replace human intelligence. In fact, it will never replace human wisdom, which is creative, profound, and leads us to grasp the first principles, the mathematical foundation. Cybernetics will never be able to give it to us because it will always be subordinate to the degree of our intelligence. We can, yes, expand the field of our thinking machines, but they will never surpass the depth of human thought. They may carry out certain thoughts that can be reduced to the merely mechanical with greater speed and precision.

Some critics have said that the valorization of the horde was normal because, in fact, in civilization, we entered the horde because we no longer have tribes, and furthermore, the family threatens to dissolve. Tribes have disappeared, and if we live in a certain way in the horde, we still retain some tribal adherences, which stems from not having yet reached higher evolutionary degrees. We recognize that in the modern city we live as in hordes, there is no doubt about that. We have lost the tribe, and we have not yet conquered the true people, we have not yet formed this unity, we are still strangers to each other, and the presence of the tribal part is just. We also acknowledge this, and anyone who reads this chapter properly will understand that we do not deny the reality of this aspect. We only said that the tribalism that still remains in us disturbs our development because it creates separations, distinctions, and unjustifiable distances that represent returns to barbarism and hinder our development towards achieving a greater congregation of humanity, which is the ideal that Christ preached, the Assembly of God, that is, the Church of Christ, the ecclesia (in Latin, church), the assembly, the meeting of brotherly men, who would be above races, tribes, nations, and everything that divides and separates them, to bring them closer together in what truly unifies them.

As for the exploitation of sensuality, some argue that the excess that exists is due to the economic exploitation of sex by certain press and theater entrepreneurs, which can be curtailed to some extent, with which we agree.

Regarding bad taste in art, some say that our accusation is not justified because the modern artist has gained a freedom that the artists of previous times did not have, as they were obliged to create within predetermined canons, which consequently limited their creative capacity. This is excessively wrong, because those canons never limited the creative capacity. Phidias did not cease to be who he was by remaining within his canon. No great painter or poet failed to create great works because they were “limited” within their canons, because these did not prevent creations of a more personal nature. Now, certain excesses of the canons, which even disturb creative impulses, as happened in Egypt and academicism, are condemnable. But who can deny that an artist cannot express his catharsis, his anguish, his feeling, without needing to fall into the horrible, the demonic, the satanic, or the inferior? One can even transform the horrible into the beautiful. It is true that such a feat requires talent. What many artists lack is that talent, which has been lacking for the past three centuries.

After the great flow of scholasticism ended, it no longer produced Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, or Suarez. Why doesn’t modern times produce the great poets and artists that the past gave us? Something must be missing, something must be disturbing.

Now, we cannot come and convince ourselves that a mediocre modern painter can put aside a Michelangelo or a Leonardo, etc. We have to make this distinction and recognize the differences in value, which are great. We cannot force, we cannot violate reality. Some say that man has decayed in his intelligence, in his creative capacity due to technique and science. But this claim is unfounded. Man has decayed precisely because he has chosen the paths that lead to the death of creative capacity. If he becomes aware that he has chosen the deadly path, the assassin’s path, he will be free again. It is impossible that, following these paths, he can achieve what others, following superior paths, have achieved. That’s just what happens. No one can work miracles in this regard. If modern art falls, it is because artists have chosen the paths that go down. Choose the paths that go up, and it will become creative again.

Regarding the acceptance of repetition at the expense of creation, some have argued that it is natural for man to like repetition because the primitive in us still exists. We do not fail to recognize this presence. What we do not want is for this primitive to predominate to the point where we only concern ourselves with repetition, with rhythms, and move away from everything that is superior. We do not want to deny the presence within us of what is inferior, what we do not want is for that inferior to pass, in the hierarchy of values, to a higher hierarchy, and the superior to a lower step, as has been done.

It has also been accused that we react against the introduction of new ideas. This has no basis. What we fight against are not the introduction of new ideas when they are really positive and well-founded, but rather old ideas, musty errors that were refuted centuries ago and that seek to force themselves as openings for new horizons when in fact they do not offer better perspectives.

Others have stated that our position regarding scholasticism, the fact that we admit new steps in philosophical knowledge, would be an affront to the authority of the great masters. But this represents a true inversion of things, because all the great scholastics never wanted philosophy to remain stationary and become stagnant in the mere repetition of what was affirmed by its great luminaries.

All the great masters of scholasticism were innovators. Therefore, innovations are admissible. This was the criterion followed by the great masters. But it is necessary to understand two things: first, that the great masters were innovators, they did not stop the philosophical possibilities of scholasticism. It was precisely the bad disciple who stopped, who became subservient and completely subordinate to the master’s thought and who wants to be just a repeater of the words of those he follows. Now, the great scholastics, like Thomas Aquinas, went beyond St. Albert, and Suarez advanced beyond St. Thomas, like Duns Scot also, by invading new territories. And this work had to be done. Scholasticism became stagnant because of the lesser disciples. If it became lost in sterile disputes, the culprits were these disciples who did not want or could not renew what was renewable in that current of human thought. Now, what cannot be done is to base oneself on scholasticism, which is a vicious form and has served as a reason for ridicule by its adversaries, with good reason.

A total revision of the scholastic foundations would not lead us, if well-oriented, to the admission of errors already overcome, but rather to the acquisition of new truths that were virtualized during the philosophical process. There is much truth in the works of great authors who did not have the emphasis they deserved, and there is much to do here for modern scholastics.

Some also believe that we do not see the development of science with optimistic eyes. This is not true. That is not what is exposed in our work. On the contrary, we believe that science, just as it has fallen into certain errors, has the possibility of achieving many aspects of superior value than it has achieved. Science has recorded an impressive progress and deserves all respect. The danger lies in falling into certain childish adhesions that constitute real prejudices and that prevent its normal and profitable development. What we cannot do is to transform or use the great scientific achievements so that they serve as a support in the defense of old, refuted errors because, in fact, the new conquests of science come in favor of all those superior aspects of Christian thought.

In regard to the university, we have been accused of valuing only self-taught individuals and denying all value to formal education. This is also not true. This is not what we express in this work. What we have said is the following: if the university continues, or if the spirit that impedes and obstructs the student’s creative capacity predominates, if we do not return to the practice of disputed questions and quodlibetal questions, which were true gymnastics of the spirit and developed creative capacity, then universities will only produce limited, restricted men who value quantity over quality and have no prospects for progress. The renewal we want in the university is only a return to its true sense of universality and university; that is, it must be a source capable of stimulating creators, not mere repeaters, not men who only take part in the choir, but who are protagonists of the great roles that history can reserve for them.

For those who affirm that it is absolutely impossible for religion and science to understand each other, we can only respond that they understand neither religion nor science, because true religion is in no way opposed to science, nor is true science opposed to Christian religion. Now, what cannot remain are these completely false representations of the religious sense, for which the blame largely falls on improperly prepared clergy. It is much easier to interpret the Scriptures by historical, literal, allegorical, and tropological methods than by anagogical methods. This already requires a superior capacity, without a doubt, but there is nothing to prevent us from gradually achieving the archetypes, which are the same as those of science and philosophy; and then, science, philosophy, and religion can meet in superior thought, in mathematical thought, as we have demonstrated in our corresponding books on the subject.

To say, as some do, that the creator is an impertinent, inconvenient, and disturbing element, that the homogenized man, the mass man, is more beneficial for humanity, is one of the prejudices of the modern era, because the great geniuses were not disturbers of humanity. Those who disturbed humanity were the great mediocre individuals considered geniuses. The fight against creation is truly absurd. One should not confuse creation with false innovations, which are truly disturbing, false geniuses, and false creators. What is needed is the ability to distinguish who is really a creator and who is not.

Regarding the concept of God, we have the following response: for us, atheism is always the product of a misplacement, a misrepresentation of the concept of God. We have not found any atheist who had a clear notion of God, because those who do not have a clear notion of God are not atheists.

Some argue that the presence of -isms in our time is a revelation of human heterogeneity and that, therefore, we must understand the presence of these -isms. Yes, of all the -isms that really correspond to heterogeneities, we agree; but there are -isms that do not truly correspond to the fundamental heterogeneity, but rather to merely accidental aspects and, therefore, are unnecessary, and have only served to create confusion, and not to give a clear and distinct view of reality.

Those who claim that we cannot escape the axioanthropological (our valuations) and that, therefore, our struggle is sterile, are mistaken, because we do not deny the presence of the axioanthropological among us, especially in the field of practical philosophy and science. What we want is that this axioanthropological does not predominate in the speculative part, because there we work with incommutable concepts, and not with commutable concepts, such as those of practical philosophy and science. If we work with incommutable concepts, we must use them independently of our valuations or devaluations. We must avoid them as much as possible and, as we can do it, we must emphasize more and more our liberation so that the precision of our concepts reaches the maximum clarity and acuity. This is what happens with science, and it is accomplishing this task every day with greater intimacy, and the same can be done in the field of philosophy. In this way, we respond to those who say that aesthetic value cannot be separated from philosophy. We affirm that it can be separated. We do not mean by this that there is no presence of an aesthetic value in philosophy, but what we do not want is that the aesthetic predominates over the philosophical, but that it is only an auxiliary element of the philosophical. We can treat a philosophical subject with a certain aesthetics, but with a superior aesthetics, but never subordinate philosophical thought to aesthetics, never sacrifice truth to aesthetics, as Nietzsche did. He justified that he preferred to sacrifice a truth for the sake of a lapidary phrase.

Others have argued that our current low speculation is normal because there has been an ascension of the man who was marginalized, and the ascent of this man in society had to bring about this lowering of values. But who denied that? Who fails to recognize that the lowering of values is a consequence of the incorporation of inferior elements that were marginalized in society? What we affirm is that this lowering of values is not absolutely necessary; it can be avoided, not by descending to the lower part of the masses, but by elevating the man of the masses to high values; that is, by freeing man from his mass situations. This is true charity because it consists, above all, in giving others the fruits of wisdom, distributing them freely.

Some have complained about the vehement tone of our words, but let us not forget that this work is a work of denunciation.

Let us fight for the concrete man. And the concrete man is the one who affirms what is greatest in him and that distinguishes him from animals; the just and cultured will, the clear and purified understanding, and the love that exalts itself in true charity.

And all this is truly Christ in us.

  1. These themes are developed in Philosophy and History of Culture (3 vols.) and Analysis of Social Themes (3 vols.). (Author’s note.)↩

  2. We have divided the work into two parts. In the first part, we preferred topics that are eminently more suitable for the sensitivity and affectivity of man. In the second part, those that refer primarily to intellectuality. The vertical invasion of the barbarians takes place in both fields, which is why we deemed it necessary to make this distinction for a better understanding of our thesis. (Author’s note.)↩

  3. Unfortunately, this is not an apocalyptic exaggeration. This dark picture was confirmed in a very recent past, when in 1995, in Rwanda, the Hutus massacred between 1 and 2 million people of the Tutsi ethnic group not with firearms, but with machetes, hoes, axes, blades, and hammers. Before that, 500,000 refugees who tried to take refuge in Zaire were returned to the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which killed them immediately. The women who survived the massacre were raped and 5,000 children born of this rape were also killed. Paul Rusesabagina, a black Rwandan, at the time manager of the Hotel Mille Collines, where he sheltered several refugees, and today a resident of Belgium, said that another genocide could occur if strong measures are not taken against tribalism in Rwanda. (Editor’s note.)↩

  4. In the original, it is written “factiva e activa”. As is typical of his method, the author makes use of emphasizing orthographic aspects, especially voiceless consonants, to return to the Latin etymology of the word and its conceptual content. However, to avoid reading noise due to new spelling reforms, we have chosen to standardize the language according to its content and to explain the original spelling in footnotes when necessary. In this case, therefore, the author refers to the active (practical) and factual (comprehensive/circumstantial) dimensions of human life. (Editor’s note.)↩

  5. Here is an example reported by Euclides da Cunha about the case of Pedra Bonita, in Pernambuco: “This place was, in 1837, the scene of events that recall the sinister religious ceremonies of the Ashantis. A mameluco or cafuz, an enlightened man, had gathered all the population of the neighboring farms there, and, climbing up to the stone, announced, convinced, the forthcoming advent of the enchanted kingdom of King D. Sebastião. The stone was broken, to which he had climbed, not by the blows of a hammer, but by the miraculous action of the blood of children, scattered on it in sacrifice, and the great king would burst forth enveloped by his dazzling guard, punishing inexorably the ungrateful humanity, but heaping riches on those who had contributed to the disillusionment. / A thrill of nervousness passed through the hinterland… / The deranged man had found a favorable medium for the contagion of his insanity. Around the monstrous altar, mothers squeezed their small children and struggled, seeking primacy in sacrifice… The blood spattered on the rock, spraying and accumulating around it; and the newspapers of the time affirm in such detail that, after that lugubrious farce, it was impossible to stay in the infected place.” In: Euclides da Cunha, Os Sertões. Francisco Alves Editora, 1979, p. 98. (Editor’s note.)↩

  6. Pseudomorphosis will be studied by us later, as it presents the most tremendous and astonishing indirect manifestation of barbarism. (Author’s note.)↩

  7. We mention Brazilian examples on these pages because they are more familiar to the reader to whom this work is intended. However, in the rest of the world, there are similar and even worse things. (Author’s note.)↩

  8. Cf. what the papal encyclical of 1907, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, elaborated by Pius X says: “Gregory IX wrote of some theologians of his time: ‘Some of you, excessively full of the spirit of vanity, with profane novelties strive to cross the limits traced by the Holy Fathers, bowing to the philosophical doctrine of rationalists the interpretation of the heavenly pages, not for the benefit of the listeners, but to show off their knowledge… And these, dragged by different doctrines, turn the tail into the head and force the queen to serve the slave (Ep. ad Magistros theol., Paris, July 1223)’”. (Editor’s note.)↩

  9. Christianity has had extraordinary social experiences, which it successfully employed in its early phase and later through the great Benedictine monasteries and other orders, and in the organization of groups and social forms that must be studied. (Author’s note.)↩

  10. Synonym for narcotic drugs. (Editor’s note.)↩

  11. The expression “white slavery” is of its time. It is the crime of dragging or inducing women into prostitution. (Editor’s note.)↩

  12. In the original, timós. We chose, only in a few rare cases, the most updated transliteration. (Editor’s note.)↩

  13. In Greek: value of things, which refers to what is intrinsically constituted; the use value is an axiós. Both this note and the following were extracted from the text. (Editor’s note.)↩

  14. In Greek: value of estimation, because to esteem has the same root as thymos. (Editor’s note.)↩

  15. An outdated term derived from Spanish to designate a homosexual. (Editor’s note.)↩

  16. The author will clarify his conception of African tribalism later. Although it may seem generalizing, it finds historical confirmations in the atrocities that later occurred on that continent, notably in the bloody struggles between tribes. It is also important to highlight some recent debates on the issue of the black, carried out mainly in Brazil. As Demétrio Magnoli, a USP geographer, notes in his work Uma Gota de Sangue, which traces a history of the racial problem and raised heated controversies, the very conception of “black” is an invention of the white colonizer, since the inhabitants of Africa see themselves as belonging to a tribe and an ethnicity, and never as members of a larger abstract ethnic unity that can be called “black”. (Editor’s note.)↩

  17. And here the mass we figuratively speak of refers to the same soul, or the same way of feeling and judging in intimacy. (Author’s note.)↩

  18. The author’s vision, however controversial it may be, and regardless of any criticisms that may be made of it, seems to aspire more to a radical realism, without any euphemisms or romantic mitigations, than to be properly prejudiced. (Editor’s note.)↩

  19. Cf. Mário Ferreira dos Santos, Filosofia Concreta. São Paulo, É Realizações, 2009, p. 175-232. (Editor’s note.)↩

  20. In some languages, such as Hebrew, the universal is often presented in the plural. There is no representation of connotative universal, but only of denotative (extension). Thus, instead of “humanity”, “men” is used to indicate human nature. (Author’s note.)↩

  21. And it is perennial because it is per annum and crosses the years, like Pythagoreanism, which still stands, like Platonism, and also Aristotelianism, Thomism, Scotism and Suarezism, Avicennism and Averroism, positive and seriously constructed philosophies. Note extracted from the body of the text. (Editor’s note.)↩

  22. Cf. Mário Ferreira dos Santos, Filosofia Concreta. São Paulo, É Realizações, 2009. (Editor’s note.)↩

  23. We intend to publish our book Matese da Filosofia Concreta soon, a voluminous work in which we condense all the positivity and concreteness of philosophy, in order to offer the reader the means to reach the metalanguage that unites all epistemic knowledge. (Author’s note.) [This project was not fully completed, but some of MFS’s most important works belong to the so-called mathetic philosophy phase, developed by him in works such as Sabedoria dos Princípios, Sabedoria da Unidade, Sabedoria do Ser e do Nada, Deus, among others. – Editor’s note.]↩

  24. Separation of religion and philosophy, or the growing independence of the former from the latter. [This note and the following one were extracted from the body of the text. – Editor’s note.]↩

  25. Increasing separation between philosophy and religion, between it and theology, and also between science, which become increasingly independent. (Editor’s note.)↩

  26. In Philosophy and History of Culture and in Analysis of Social Themes, we analyze the human possibilities that are still not exhausted. (Author’s note.)↩

  27. The author resumes the etymology used in previous sections of this work, using kratos in the sense of power (The Superiority of Force over Right), and relating timological to thymos, the radical of estimation, with the same value of estimation, because it designates a type of mesura more superficial than the axiós (Vicious Exploitation of Sport), which would be at the very root of the formation of values (axiology), a conception that will be developed in the following paragraph. (Editor’s note.)↩

  28. Now, axiós in Greek means value; therefore, the axiological is the character of what has value. As anthropos in Greek means “man,” axioanthropological is used when referring to what is valued, appreciated, or devalued by man. [Note extracted from the body of the text. – Editor’s note.]↩

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