February 15, 2014

German exhaustion

Because we English-speakers won the Big One, we don't pay much attention to Germans anymore, although that wasn't true of Americans in the past such as Mark Twain. But the Germans still have much influence upon us. It was only recently, for example, that I noticed how much of the 1960s hippie movement was derived from earlier German sources.

Many fin de siècle Germans were indefatigably obsessed with their exhaustion, which they tirelessly combated with strenuous new "life reform" regimens. Anna Katharina Schaffner writes in the Times Literary Supplement on "German Burnout:"
Martynkewicz marshals an impressive range of evidence to establish that numerous German bourgeois and bohemians living around the turn of the twentieth century felt physically and emotionally drained by the demands of what they perceived as an ever more complex modernity. Perceptive case studies include the “tired colossus” Otto von Bismarck, the diet-obsessed Friedrich Nietzsche, the sharp and ascetic Cosima Wagner, the depressed Protestant Max Weber, and the fitness fanatic Franz Kafka, as well as Gustav Meyrink, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke and many other key figures of German modernism. 
Rilke’s famous dictum “Du mußt dein Leben ändern” ["You must change your life"]

I liked on the Larry Sanders show when Hank the sidekick says thankfully to guest Jeff Goldblum: "Jurassic Park ... that movie ... changed my life."
neatly sums up the resolute attempts of these characters to counter their exhaustion-related disease by subscribing to various tenets of Lebensreform (lifestyle reform). It is one of the many strengths of this fine study that the intricate connection between these salvation-promising reform movements and exhaustion is so cogently demonstrated: Martynkewicz shows that the fin de siècle did not just produce exhaustion, but also saw the advent of numerous strategies to counter and even to prevent its effects. “In times of weakness and illness”, he writes, “the longing for salvation and redemption, as well as for saviours, spiritual guides, prophets, trainers and dieticians, multiplies.” Among the prophets we encounter are the naturopath Ernst Schweninger, whose allegedly miraculous regime was said to have transformed the “obese and miserable dotard” Bismarck into a strong and “elastic” young man; the raw food advocate and deviser of Bircher muesli, Max Bircher-Benner; his colleague Heinrich Lahmann; and the endocrinologist Eugen Steinach, who performed and popularized dubious and later discredited rejuvenation operations. 
Other practices that were frequently mobilized to counter exhaustion include nudism, vegetarianism, macrobiotics, gymnastics, yoga, gardening and expressive dancing. Martynkewicz discusses the thriving sanatorium culture (famously satirized in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain), as well as a phenomenon called “Europe-fatigue”, manifest in an escapist idealization of the Orient’s exotic otherness, as seen, for example, in Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. Das Zeitalter der Erschöpfung goes on to engage with a range of famous declinist thinkers such as Oswald Spengler and, above all, Nietzsche, who articulated a sense of “belatedness” and bitterly complained about the decadence, degeneracy and weakness of their contemporaries.

I suspect you could add Hitler to that list as a late fin de siècle figure unflagging in his worries that race-poisoning was exhausting the Germans.

Of course, from the perspective of other times and places, late 19th and 20th century Germans seem notably inexhaustible. 

And that pretty much uses up my mental energy on the subject. Time to go watch some TV.
   

137 comments:

FredR said...

I picked up Nietzsche Contra Wagner the other day, and was shocked to see Wagner attacked as sick, degenerate, anti-life, and I suppose, exhausted. The roots of Nietzsche's anger are pretty obviously nothing to do with those ideas but rather some obscure personal resentment, but that's the language that was ready at hand for abuse.

Steve Sailer said...

"that's the language that was ready at hand for abuse"

It's kind of like James Cameron spending $250 million to make a breakthrough technology movie about how we ought to live in treehouses and paint ourselves blue.

Anonymous said...

I still do not think the Anglo-american victory of the great war was a good thing. Someday an American President will kneel before a descendant of the Kaiser and beg forgiveness for what Woodrow Wilson did.

At least Imperial Germany did not try to use NAMs in its army, although a renegede German general marooned in Tanganika tried to make blacks into german soldiers. In contrast the American doughboys who belately went to Europe to destroy the old order were driven to the battlefields by the Vietnamese who lived in Paris; their grandsons will fight the grandsons of their drivers 50 yrs later.

If Wilson let Britain taste the fruits of its folly this blog wouldn't exist and Taki would still be a nobleman in Greece with lots of servants.

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

They weren't entirely wrong.

Auntie Analogue said...


"Time to go watch some TV."

While you're watching TV, Mr. Sailer, won't you take down the 800-number for Ageless Male for yourself and the number for Okinawa Life for me?

Anonymous said...

The Prussian Eugen Sandow also pretty much invented modern bodybuilding during this period: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Sandow

Luke Lea said...

Don't forget http://books.google.com/books?id=ZMed6H54tDYC&pg=PA216&dq=Balfour+kaiser+and+his+times&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VjcAU528PM2LkAewz4CIAQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Nietzche&f=true, a kook if ever there was one.

Anonymous said...

"Of course, from the perspective of other times and places, late 19th and 20th century Germans seem notably inexhaustible."

It's like the double meaning of 'beat' in beat generation.

They were beat but full of beat.

Anonymous said...

"The light burns twice as bright burns half as long."

Anonymous said...

What are you watching on tv?

Mr. Anon said...

"German exhaustion

Because we English-speakers won the Big One, we don't pay much attention to Germans anymore,....."

Yes, well, after 1914-1945, a lot of the western world had "German Exhaustion" too.

"Other practices that were frequently mobilized to counter exhaustion include nudism, vegetarianism, macrobiotics, gymnastics, yoga, gardening and expressive dancing."

So we have Germans to thank for interperative dance? Damn them.

Ex Machina said...

Whenever I think of today's Germany (in particular; The West in general), the case of of Armin Meiwes and Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes) always comes to mind--one man who wanted to cannibalize another, and another man who wanted to be cannibalized. Why? I don't know.

Dave Pinsen said...

There was also Joseph Pilates, the creator of the eponymous form of exercise.

2Degrees said...

Sailerism is all about noticing patterns. Well, there are Krauts everywhere and you must have noticed. They’re all neurotic.

I have lived in Germany and I speak German well. I was really happy there, but the Germans are earnest nutcases, especially about their health.

Worrying about their Kreislauf while stuffing their faces with Leberwurst is one of their many charming national characteristics.

I remember saying to a couple of friends that we should go and play football. One said that he a shortage of cartilage in his knee and that, if he every played football, he would never be able to walk again. Considering that, only a couple of generations ago, they were busy invading Russia, worrying about a little bit of cartilage is a bit extreme.

Angst is a national sport, especially about the environment. One told me that, to save water, he used only one glass of the precious liquid while cleaning his teeth. I thought: For Christ’s sake, Fritz, live a little! The ecosphere can handle two glasses of water, and if you’re so worried about the environment, why do you drive a merc?

You can see German tourists at ‘play’ in New Zealand. There are really nice trains on the South Island that will take you through the lovely land of Gondor to the less than lovely town or Greymouth where culture consists of talking about rugby, drinking gasoline and then regurgitating it onto the street. Most people take the train, but they insist on cycling – not a smart move as the road is full of logging trucks. It’s pitiful to watch them wheezing their way over the Southern Alps on a tandem loaded down with a couple of backpacks.

There, I’ve said it, it’s a pattern, blacks are low on intellect and Krauts are high on neuroticism. Prove me wrong.

Oh, and one more thing. There was a nice park in front of the university in Bonn and when the sun comes out they rip off their clothes.

2Degrees said...

Sailerism is all about noticing patterns. Well, there are Krauts everywhere and you must have noticed. They’re all neurotic.

I have lived in Germany and I speak German well. I was really happy there, but the Germans are earnest nutcases, especially about their health.

Worrying about their Kreislauf while stuffing their faces with Leberwurst is one of their many charming national characteristics.

I remember saying to a couple of friends that we should go and play football. One said that he a shortage of cartilage in his knee and that, if he every played football, he would never be able to walk again. Considering that, only a couple of generations ago, they were busy invading Russia, worrying about a little bit of cartilage is a bit extreme.

Angst is a national sport, especially about the environment. One told me that, to save water, he used only one glass of the precious liquid while cleaning his teeth. I thought: For Christ’s sake, Fritz, live a little! The ecosphere can handle two glasses of water, and if you’re so worried about the environment, why do you drive a merc?

You can see German tourists at ‘play’ in New Zealand. There are really nice trains on the South Island that will take you through the lovely land of Gondor to the less than lovely town or Greymouth where culture consists of talking about rugby, drinking gasoline and then regurgitating it onto the street. Most people take the train, but they insist on cycling – not a smart move as the road is full of logging trucks. It’s pitiful to watch them wheezing their way over the Southern Alps on a tandem loaded down with a couple of backpacks.

There, I’ve said it, it’s a pattern, blacks are low on intellect and Krauts are high on neuroticism. Prove me wrong.

Oh, and one more thing. There was a nice park in front of the university in Bonn and when the sun comes out they rip off their clothes.

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

Are you watching 'Grease'? Because that movie pretty much represents everything you like to talk about.

CD said...

"Of course, from the perspective of other times and places, late 19th and 20th century Germans seem notably inexhaustible. "

Karl Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses. The truth is religion and religion culture lead to the greatest exertions - Dante, Newton, Bach, Michelangelo - along with countless missionaries spreading Christianity around the globe.

It is modern secular culture that acts as an opiate, draining life of all meaning, turning our culture and society into a soulless marketplace where we are all interchangeable (as workers and as citizens), turning us into mindless consumers of TV and PC.

etype said...

Your exhaustion is probably related to the fact Germany grows stronger and more technologically advanced then the rest of the world (the Anglo world relies on raiding German tech - though not one word is permitted to escape on this subject) while the Anglosphere circles the rim. Tying the 60's Hippie culture to German naturopathy is deflection, the two are in no way related - all aspects of AngloSaxon culture raid German culture - the modern world was designed in Germany.
Even the Anglos and Saxons are German tribes - not English.

Peter the Shark said...

I suspect you could add Hitler to that list as a late fin de siècle figure unflagging in his worries that race-poisoning was exhausting the Germans.

Very true. Hitler was notoriously obsessed with cleanliness - on racial, national and personal levels. His rejection of alcohol and abstention from meat and sex stemmed from the same search for "purity" as his anti-Semitism. Hitler seems to have really believed that he could become a transcendent human figure by denying himself base human pleasures. You could also argue that all this was just the Christian tradition of self-denial stripped of religion and transposed to an industrial society.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

Oh great, a Sonderweg thesis of vegetarianism

Anonymous said...

While Porsche was located in Austria at the time, it's still a testament of German prodigiousness that they were able to produce a car less than FOUR years after WWII. They turned out 52 of them.

"How," you may ask, "could Porsche manufacture a car of decent quality, so quickly, when their industrial complex had been effectively obliterated?"

That's easy. They did it BY HAND! In a sawmill in Austria, along with leftover parts from Volkswagen.

BY... HAND..

The body.. beaten into conformity of the engineer's vision using fricking mallets!!

Jerry Seinfeld can show one off for you:

http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/jay-leno-comedy-is-a-concealed-weapon

What other ethnic group do you know that could pull that off after an ass-kicking to end all ass-kickings?

Reg Cæsar said...

I went to a seminar in an undisclosed Scandinavian location… --Survivor

…and Breivik missed you. Wow! No wonder you call yourself "Survivor"!

Dave Pinsen said...

"What other ethnic group do you know that could pull that off after an ass-kicking to end all ass-kickings?"

The English, who were making Rolls Royces by hand after World War II, when their industrial base had been bombed by the Germans. Of course, today Rolls Royce is owned by the Germans.

Dan said...

Breaking News!

Bede wrote in Germanic! Anglo Saxon closely related to Dansk and German! Stop the fckn presses.

Dan said...

A High Anxiety People. It's true. I enjoyed the bit about
Worrying about the exact quantity of water used as a mouthwash. Low Flush toilets are the bane of plumbers everywhere too. They don't have enough pressure to do what plumbing was designed to do: flush.

Dan said...

Rolls Royce made advanced jet engines by war's end.

What the hell are you talking about? RR was state of the art space age by 1945.

Anonymous said...

Wow Reg Caesar, your comedy stylings are so fresh and topical. Got anything about Jamaican bobsledders?

Miguel S. said...

"What other group . . . ?" The Jews who--by the strong hand and outstretched arm of Providence--established Israel after the Germans failed to murder them all.

Anonymous said...

From what I understand our current medical/health system is about entirely borrowed in large part from the Germans, beginning with the Hopkin's medical center. Creepy.

josh said...

coming to a california near you

Engelbert Humperdinck said...

Berlin cannibalism restaurant was a vegetarian hoax -- there's kraut humor for ya

M said...

I don't know that the Great European Malaise of the 19th century was specifically German.

Fin de cycle Paris is of course famous, with Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Floubert, etc being far more famous examples of bitterness towards European culture and fatigue with life in general than anything from Germany. And fin de cycle Vienna is also more famous than anything from Germany (who ever heard of fin de cycle Berlin?)

Something went badly wrong in European culture beginning at the end of the 18th century and peaking in the late 19th, producing a giganic wave of melancholy, alienation, and angst and generations of really unhappy people who hated Europe and many of whom fled to other shores.

I believe these are the roots of the culture of self-hatred that is at the center of elite Western culture today. It all began in the early 19th century.

Something happened, some way of thinking or style of life that was profoundly maladaptive, arose in Europe, that was probably linked to the Enlightenment and the rise of science.

Its notable that no other civilization turned on itself in the manner of Europe - not the Chinese, not the Japanese, not the Arabic, not the Hindu.

Anonymous said...

"I suspect you could add Hitler to that list as a late fin de siècle figure unflagging in his worries that race-poisoning was exhausting the Germans."

He was post/counter-fin-de-siecle figure.

Dave Pinsen said...

Rolls Royce still makes cars by hand today.

Julian O'Dea said...

I was in Aarhus several years ago. The Danes do Cult of the Body too. It is a northern European thing, not just German.

Karl Kraus the journalist (Die Fackel) used to fuss about the tiredness of language It was a fin-de-siecle thing.

Jonathan Silber said...

Back in the fifties when I was a kid, nobody I knew took walks solely for the sake of their health, except the mother of a neighborhood pal of mine. She was a German Jew, probably thirty years old or so, and not many years moved away from the Old Country. She walked every day, in the comical style of competitive walkers. Others thought this behavior of hers odd, and nobody was inspired to adopt it.

Anonymous said...

herman hesse was totally a hippy, dude.

Anonymous said...

What other ethnic group do you know that could pull that off after an ass-kicking to end all ass-kickings?

Hiroshima's streetcars resumed service three days later.

Peter

Anonymous said...

I picked up Nietzsche Contra Wagner the other day, and was shocked to see Wagner attacked as sick, degenerate, anti-life, and I suppose, exhausted. The roots of Nietzsche's anger are pretty obviously nothing to do with those ideas but rather some obscure personal resentment, but that's the language that was ready at hand for abuse.

Nietzsche had no known biological children [and no firmly-established licentious encounters with anyone at all].

To this day, Wagner has a moderately stable family tree of progeny.

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On exhaustion in general, and life versus anti-life:

Oswald Spengler: It becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself". The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding." It is all the same whether the case against children is the American lady's who would not miss a season for anything, or the Parisienne's who fears that her lover would leave her, or an Ibsen heroine's who "belongs to herself" - they all belong to themselves and they are all unfruitful...

At this level all Civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile. At the last, only the primitive blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising elements. This residue is the Fellah type.


Fellah: Fellah is a peasant, farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa. The word derives from the Arabic word for ploughman or tiller.

**********
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Two final points about the rivalry:

1) Nietzsche had a rather close relationship with Wagner's wife, Cosima [which is never a good situation to be in - compare Brahms & Clara Schumann], and

2) There are available recordings of Nietzsche's music [here's a good list of what's out there], so you can judge for yourself whether Nietzsche had any actual musical talent.

For instance, here is an MP3 of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Nietzsche [scroll down to hit the play button and hear an excerpt].

And here is an MP3 of Wolfgang Bottenberg playing a piano piece by Nietzsche.

Conatus said...

I always thought Germany was the up-and-coming country at the turn of the century, the most literate population, home of Western music, the Christmas tree and kindergarten. They were on a roll, young as far as European countries go, only united in the mid 1800s. they were the teenager of countries with all the old middle aged European countries, old tired Spain and Austria, and old France and old Britain sitting around looking at the eager Germans like they were trying out for the JV team.
The Brits ended up not letting them play varsity.
As far as watching TV, there is a BBC hour long program on life as a middle class average German family nowadays, which is interesting. A kindergarten totally outdoors even in the rain(talk about Wandervogels, these are five year olds!), they don't use credit cards much and no noise on Sunday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bTKSin4JN4

Henry Canaday said...

Peter Watson argues in his “The German Genius,” that ‘Bildung,’ an inward drive for perfection, was a German characteristic since the mid-18th Century. Germans felt obliged to press on toward a better world or better Germany or just a better individual German long before exhaustion set in during the later 19th Century.

My own impression of the Germans I deal with today is that they are no longer prone to seek dramatic or revolutionary improvements in life, but do obsess a bit about doing everything as well as possible according to their current understanding.

Anonymous said...

Yes engines which the Russians mysteriously acquired for the MiG 15. It's almost like the British don't have our collective best interest at heart, or something.

Anonymous said...

Always interesting, usually wrong.

"It was only recently, for example, that I noticed how much of the 1960s hippie movement was derived from earlier German sources"

Nope. The American hippies were inspired by the 19th century New England transcendentalists. Boston is the seat of Yankee America, its ideas have gradually propagated outwards to the point where they have taken over the culture. Hollywood helped but the source is Puritan Yankeedom.

You really love the Germans, don't you?

Anonymous said...

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116487/monuments-men-review-clooneys-dreadful-film

"And certainly don’t raise the matter of how, in some cases, Jewish art dealers in Europe were exploited by dealers and museums in the Free World in ways that helped set up what is now known as the “art market.”"

Many of those in the Free World were Jews.

Anonymous said...

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116162/wolf-wall-street-martin-scorsese-reviewed

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115972/selfish-giant-clio-barnard-reviewed

Pat Boyle said...

I'm a little surprised that the connection between the Nazis and modern day environmentalism hasn't been mentioned yet.

I couldn't find the Nazi website that praises the party for all of its ecological concerns. Indeed the very term 'ecology' was coined by Ernst Haeckel the proto-Nazi of 'ontology recapitulates phylogeny' fame.

Leftists like to call conservatives Nazis. But both parties were for big government, centralized power and anti-democratic. Their real differences were in their views of nature. The Nazis had all these goofy 'nature boy' hang-ups while the Commies saw no reason for a pressure containment vessel at Chernobyl. Most of the biggest environmental disasters in world history were not caused by rapacious capitalists but by communists.

OTOH last week a lovely young girl came to my door trying to alert me against the horrors of 'fracking'. All I could think of was 'Hitler Youth'.

BTW 'hand built' is a sign of primitivism not quality. The Rolls Royce version of the Merlin was hand built whereas the Packard version that we built under license was more mass produced. The difference is in the machined part tolerances. The Brits wanted to use the American mass production processes that we pioneered in the auto industry. They knew that their hand built processes were too slow.

At Packard we tried to make every part exactly the same for interchangeability. We wanted to be able to assemble an engine from any old part in the part bin. The British craftsman tradition grew up because they couldn't machine parts to tight specifications. Their aircraft bits would be rather approximate so that the assembler would need to carefully match a too small convex part with a matching too large concave part.

The Rolls Royce Merlins were often sweeter running machines than were the Packards made with close tolerance interchangeable parts. But they took much longer to assemble and they were harder to repair.

Albertosaurus

Mr. Anon said...

"etype said...

"(the Anglo world relies on raiding German tech - though not one word is permitted to escape on this subject)"

That is, of course, nonsense. The english-speaking world, like the german-speaking, has produced plenty of technology.

"the modern world was designed in Germany."

Partly so, but not entirely. More chauvinist nonsense.

"Even the Anglos and Saxons are German tribes - not English."

And evidently you known little of which you speak. Yes, the English are largely germanic, and so is the very word "English", which comes from the name of one of those low german tribes who conquered that part of Britain - the aengeln.

Anonymous said...

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/02/11/feds_mexican_tycoon_used_super_pacs_to_influence_us_elections

super paco

Crawfurdmuir said...

"Krauts are high on neuroticism."

Perhaps this is why psychiatry historically had so many German and Austrian practitioners.

Anonymous said...

2degrees - There, I’ve said it, it’s a pattern, blacks are low on intellect and Krauts are high on neuroticism. Prove me wrong.

Not wrong, but what the Krauts have actually got is

- guilt (concern over the own doing wrong, which comes from within, not outside)

- not neuroticism (lots of random and odd negative emotions, mental illness stuff, sensitivity to what others think of them).

We blame this on WWII, but it may be a deeper rooted culture trait.

Anonymous said...

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/crimes-and-misdemeanors#When:18:40:43Z

"one of his comparatively fizzier self-conscious romantic dramadies"

dramady

Anonymous said...

. I was really happy there, but the Germans are earnest nutcases, especially about their health.

When visiting Karlsruhe a few years ago there seemed to be an Apotheke (pharmacy) on every city block!!

sunbeam said...

etype wrote:

"Your exhaustion is probably related to the fact Germany grows stronger and more technologically advanced then the rest of the world (the Anglo world relies on raiding German tech - though not one word is permitted to escape on this subject)"

News to me. Can you tell me more?

Additionally, I'm not really a fan of German engineering. At least not compared to some other countries that actually make things.

It's kind of hard to explain, but the refinement, the process, the design to make something durable and realiable at a low price is impressive.

To my eyes I look at a light Toyota Pickup and see something infinitely superior to a Mercedes.

And every militia or ragtag group in the world that wants to mount a 50 calibre or missile on something and get from point A to B, with 15 people and their AK's hanging on, agree with me.

Anonymous said...

Everything you need to know about the German psyche is right there in the monstrosity called the shelf toilet. The Germans put up with a stinky, inefficient, difficult-to-clean contraption because they really, really like to look at their own poop.

Anonymous said...

Sunbeam said ... "To my eyes I look at a light Toyota Pickup and see something infinitely superior to a Mercedes."

Have you ever driven a BMW?

German engineering put men on the moon and brought them home safely. Fathom that first and tell us again you're not impressed.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

German engineering put men on the moon and brought them home safely."

German AND American engineering. The german part was indeed significant, but it is often overstated.

Anon87 said...

WWT: Strapping senior calling himself female to play on girls’ high school softball team

Anonymous said...

The Germans are hard workers but without the Euro, an artificially weak currency, much weaker than a Mark would be, a mercedes would cost 1/3 again more and they would not be an export powerhouse. And of course they spend a fraction of what we do on defense, and we defended them for 50 years, free of charge. I will give them total credit for looking after their own interests though, unlike the US, which cannot even identify its own interests, much less protect them. But the Germans are not having children. They have a massive Turkish population which is having them. All that wealth, produced by all that work, will be inherited by someone else's children.

Anonymous said...

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/experts-concerned-that-advances-in-genetic-sequencing-are-giving-rise-to-neoracism/story-fn5fsgyc-1226828291896

LOL. Stick Hitler's face on whatever Libs don't like.

But 'neo-racism'... I like that.

Anonymous said...

"The American hippies were inspired by the 19th century New England transcendentalists."

Drugs and rock music helped some.

One huge difference between German nature-ism and hippie nature-ism.
Germans emphasized discipline, reverence, and responsibility in their approach to nature. They would never have gone for something like Woostock that turned idyllic farming community into a shitpile.
Some hippies may have read German novels and etc, but they were really into rocking out on drugs. That's why the movement burned out so quickly.
The German movement had something of the boy scout element to it. Hippies were just too lazy for anything.

Anonymous said...

"herman hesse was totally a hippy, dude."

I take it you're being jokey. He was bohemianish but led a rather bourgeois life. And he liked order. He wasn't into ACTING like a hippie. He was really turned off by the chaos of India. He was German after all.

Anonymous said...

"I don't know that the Great European Malaise of the 19th century was specifically German.
Fin de cycle Paris is of course famous, with Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Floubert, etc being far more famous examples of bitterness towards European culture and fatigue with life in general than anything from Germany. And fin de cycle Vienna is also more famous than anything from Germany (who ever heard of fin de cycle Berlin?)"

True, but the French and the Viennese had a longer tradition of that sort of thing, so they had a way of taking it in stride. It was part of the air they breathed. Of course, there were bitter passions in Paris and Vienna, but they had long traditions of bohemianism as a way of life.

Things were somewhat different in Germany as unified Germany was a much more recent phenomenon. Also, as Germany, which had been behind UK and France, suddenly surged into the front-rank of European civilizations, there was greater tension between tradition and modernity(as was the case in modernizing Japan). Unlike England, Germany didn't evolve into industrial modernity but leaped into it. Except for in music, Germany had been relatively backward in arts, culture, and letters compared to other leading European civilizations. But suddenly, Germany began to produce top universities, top scientists, great philosophers(in huge numbers), and big urban centers striving to equal Vienna and Paris as cosmopolitan centers. The contrasts were just more powerful in Germany because too much happened too fast. Prior to WWI, Germany was both the most advanced and the most reactionary of major Western European powers, the most rational in science and most irrational in passions.

Dan said...

Unless I'm very much mistaken Hitler was very early in his support for huge Autobahns.

This is hardly a back to nature design. Additionally his unbuilt capital Germania, was a mega-steroid-Neo-classical-atropolis.

TontoBubbaGoldstein said...

Obligatory Blazing Saddles clip.

Anonymous said...

"I picked up Nietzsche Contra Wagner the other day, and was shocked to see Wagner attacked as sick, degenerate, anti-life, and I suppose, exhausted. The roots of Nietzsche's anger are pretty obviously nothing to do with those ideas but rather some obscure personal resentment, but that's the language that was ready at hand for abuse."

Nietzsche loved Wagner's neo-paganism but hated Wagner's neo-Christianism in stuff like Parsifal. That Parsifal was hugely successful with the Establishment prolly made it worse for Nietzsche.

R J said...

In A.J.P. Taylor's biography of Bismarck there's a nice anecdote about Ernst Schweninger and his initial dealings with the famous German statesman. Bismarck was initially hostile to the whole concept of undertaking treatment, and announced that he would refuse to answer any questions which Schweninger might ask. Schweninger promptly retorted: "Then get a veterinarian." So impressed was Bismarck by this insolence that the two men became allies forever.

Anonymous said...

"Dave Pinsen said...
"What other ethnic group do you know that could pull that off after an ass-kicking to end all ass-kickings?"

The English, who were making Rolls Royces by hand after World War II, when their industrial base had been bombed by the Germans. Of course, today Rolls Royce is owned by the Germans."

An overpriced monstrosity for the aristocracy with a bad electrical system is no great shakes, particularly since the bombing the Brits took was incomparable to the bombing the Germans received, but thanks for playing.

Reg Cæsar said...

Got anything about Jamaican bobsledders? --my anonymous admirer, above

Uh, thanks for the compliment. Rastabogganing is OT on this thread, but I'll try to oblige you.

Jamaican bobsledders are analogous to Great Britain's pistol marksmen: they have to train abroad in what they can't do at home.

(Do you realize that a North Korean was allowed to possess and even fire a pistol in London in 2012? That would have got(ten) our good friend Simon a long term in gaol.)

Jamaicans should adapt the bobsled to a mudslide for use in the Summer Olympics. Which they can host in 2084.

Anonymous said...

M wrote:

"fin de cycle"

It's "fin de siècle", i.e. end of century.

Dan said...

Fin De Cycle is like our man from Kerry.

Anonymous said...

Josh above mentions California. It all reminds me more specifically of Big Lebowski. He had been a yippie, his landlord did interpretive dance, Maude did performance art painting, the criminals were German nihilists, and the other Lebowski comically believed in self improvement while his daughter revealed that he had never done anything. L.A.is about fighting ennui when every day is pleasant.

And the movie itself has becomea form of belief system! Hail the Coens.

Volksverhetzer said...

"Except for in music, Germany had been relatively backward in arts, culture, and letters compared to other leading European civilizations."

Yeah. For the Dutch and the other Low Germans, are are not really Germans, and neither were the Hanseatic league?


"Germany sings the blues."

The name blues comes from the blue hour, that is the very long, and very blue twilight you find in Northern Europe.

Photographers are also well aware of the blue hour, as the light has an increased blue to red ratio at dusk and dawn, that makes everything seem more beautiful to the human eye.

So the blues as a specific type of music, might originate in Germany, but the concept of the blues, is something Scandinavians, the Scots and the English share equal in.

I would not be surprised if the Russians, Poles, the Irish, Finns, etc, have a similar concept in their own language, that translated would be something like having "the blues" or singing blue-tones.

Before artificial lightening, the blue hour played a much more important part in peoples life, as it was to dark to work, but not so dark, that you needed a torch to socialize.

Perhaps it was because the South USA have no blue hour, but rater 5 minutes twilight, that they were free to use "the blues" for a specific kind of music connected to the blue hours in the old country?

Reg Cæsar said...

Anonymous said...
M wrote:

"fin de cycle"

It's "fin de siècle", i.e. end of century.


You're right, vous avez raison, but I submit that M's new construction has its own je ne sais Chua. (And poor M was framed-- no one in Berlin actually saw him kill that little girl.)

Anonymous said...

Fin de cycle would have worked for Vico.

Anonymous said...

Anglos/Saxons/Germans - Really, isn't everyone around there Germanic? The non-Celtic British peoples, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Danes, the Dutch, the Austrians, all these people are basically Germans at some root level. Heck, even Hitler was more or less down with that.

Of course, English is a Germanic language, and by that token, yes, the Germans are the inventors of the modern world.

Anonymous said...

"What other ethnic group do you know that could pull that off after an ass-kicking to end all ass-kickings?"

Austria and West Germany wasn't kicked as hard as Eastern Germany. Even after many yrs, East Germany could only produce the Trabant.

Oswald Spengler said...

Dieter, the uber-neurotic, avant garde host of "Sprockets" is a great fictional example of the exhausted German.

"Your story has become tiresome."

"Now is ze time on Sprockets vhen ve dance!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay6N33y_UG4

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9p5ey_sprockets-germany-s-most-disturbing_shortfilms

Anonymous said...

Germany paid a severe price for its rapid industrialization - it has one of the lowest levels of biodiversity in Europe which is unsustainable in the long run

Auntie Analogue said...



Yes, Germans are fanatical clean freaks. As soon as she booked into a hotel Marlene Dietrich, often dragooning her daughter to pitch in to help, herself got down on hands and knees and, using bleach, cleansers, and utensils she habitually packed into her vast array of baggage, obsessively scrubbed the entire bathroom before she would use any of its fixtures.

From a very young age Germans are taught to examine their stool for indications of health or dysfunction - a practice aided by the old "pan" style of European toilet (which commenter Anonymous 11:33 identifies as the "shelf toilet") whose center feature is an upraised pan, or shelf, where American toilets have their deepest section.

I think Jefferson Airplane nailed quite a bit of the German mindset in this weird put-on (it may help you if you slam back a shot or two before you listen, just so you might more easily slip into a mood of, shall we say, bemused irreverence): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fHJBGpJMr8

ricpic said...

Oswald Spengler, at 7:27 AM, is not only right, he is profoundly right. When women start to "think," that is see their biological destiny as some kind of an impediment and start endlessly yearning and agonizing toward something else, a something else they CAN'T really want, it is a civilizational catastrophe. And we're living it to the last bitter dregs.

Matra said...

German engineering put men on the moon and brought them home safely. Fathom that first and tell us again you're not impressed.

Yet today they can't design a car that works in a Canadian winter. Two ex-VW owners in my family have learned this the hard way.

Then there's the Berlin airport Clusterf***:

The airport fiasco presents a staggering picture of incompetence.

German media have tracked down a list of tens of thousands of technical problems.

Among them: Officials can't even figure out how to turn the lights off. Thousands of light bulbs illuminate the gigantic main terminal and unused parking lots around the clock, a massive energy and cost drain that appears to be the result of a computer system that's so sophisticated it's almost impossible to operate.

Every day, an empty commuter train rolls to the unfinished airport over an eight-kilometer-long (five-mile) stretch to keep the newly-laid tracks from getting rusty, another example of gross inefficiency. Meanwhile, hundreds of freshly planted trees had to be chopped down because a company delivered the wrong type of linden trees; several escalators need to be rebuilt because they were too short; and dozen of tiles were already broken before a single airport passenger ever stepped on them.

The airport itself points to problems with the fire safety system as the immediate cause of the delays: The fire safety system incorporates some 75,000 sprinklers, but computer programming glitches mean it's not clear whether all of these sprinklers would spray enough water during a fire. And the system's underground vent system, designed to suck away smoke, isn't working.


They'll eventually blame this on somebody else. Just like when my train from Prague to Berlin was late arriving by a couple of hours they blamed it on the Czechs even though the train didn't suffer any delays until we were near Dresden! Historian John Lukacs mentioned a similar incident in one of his books - German airline staff blaming (in German only) their supposedly inferior American colleagues for any inadequacies in service. The genius Germans can never be at fault.

And what's with most of their ATM machines only giving out 50 Euro bills? Don't the Krauts realise how dumb that is? Then there's the poor English (and French) in their tourist industry that causes so much confusion for foreign visitors. And let's not even talk about the tasteless fizzy piss they pass off as beer. Germany and Germans are totally overrated in America. White Nationalists are the worst offenders.

Whiskey said...

Hitlers anti semitism seems to have derived from pre War Vienna as an expression of Catholic passion play lumpenproletariat attitudes. It was more specifically Austrian than German and ironic given that Hitler spent a great deal of effort in 1914 to avoid being drafted by the inept Austrian army finally volunteering for German service.

Ironic given his commander was a Jew and many Jews went to the gas chambers wearing their WWI Ironcrosses.

Hunsdon said...

Could it be that the Germans: hippies thing is like elite debauchery and (forgive me) prole debauchery? Whereas it seems that the elites can debauch and carry on, more or less "disirrespective" of the consequences, when proles/commoners do it, the consequences come crashing down?

Maybe the Germans can get away with nudism and interpretive art, without turning into hippies?

But if less-Germanic tribes do it, they turn into dirty hippies?

Anonymous said...

germany has 7 gold medals (vs. 4 usa): are they exhaused yet?

theo the kraut said...

You're on to quite something. It's my personal pet theory that both 1968 and the Green lunacy is our revenge for WWI+II. Sorry guys.

===================================

From the German Wikipedia entry on Himmler's wife:

Beide verband [] das Interesse an Homöopathie, Heilkräutern und der Landwirtschaft.
[Himmler and his wife] shared an interest in homeopathy, herbs and agriculture.

===================================

From the German Wikipedia entry on the Dachau concentration camp:

Räumliche Struktur
(spatial structure)

- Prisoner-compound
- SS-compound
- Herbal plantation
- ...

===================================

The FAZ broadsheet once reported extensively on the Nazi's obsession with biodynamic agriculture, their health food craze and the Dachau herb garden.

Heil Kräuter
(Heil Herbs [ed: a pun; Heilkräuter = medicinal herbs--Heartiste might find this funny])

Auf der Plantage war Himmler gern zu Besuch und sah nach dem Rechten. Dort fragte er bei seinen Brüdern von der SS, ob alles in Ordnung sei im biologisch-dynamischen Kräutergarten.
(Himmler loved to visit the plantation and to keep a check on things. There he asked his brothers of the SS [ed: the SS was conceived as a blood brotherhood] if everything was in order in the biodynamic herb garden.)

...

Wieso war es ihnen so wichtig, was die Leute aßen? Es sollte regional, ökologisch, saisonal, wenig verarbeitet, vitaminreich und fleischarm sein, von bäuerlichen Höfen erzeugt, frei von Pestiziden
(Why did [the SS] care so much about what people ate? [Food] was supposed to be regional, ecological, seasonal, little processed, rich in vitamins and low in meat, produced by small farms, free of pesticides)

===================================

Don't know of good English language sources, this google search is helpful: heinrich+himmler+ecology

David Davenport said...

Something went badly wrong in European culture beginning at the end of the 18th century and peaking in the late 19th, producing a giganic wave of melancholy, alienation, and angst and generations of really unhappy people who hated Europe and many of whom fled to other shores.

I.e., masses of Europeans began to lose faith in God.

Death of [belief in] God -- One of Freddy. N.'s themes... Twilight of the Idols and the Antichrist.


Perhaps it was because the South USA have no blue hour, but rater 5 minutes twilight ...

You have obviously never been in "the South USA."

///////////////

Germany as the tekno leader of today: what contribution have Germans or German firms made to today's electronics, software, biotechnology and genetic engineering, or today's aircraft and missiles? Please, Werner Von Braun and his Project Paperclip cohorts are no longer around.

What has Germandom done to advance the Internet? Nothing.

Why is Toyota, not VW, the world's largest car maker, with BMW not far ahead of GM in sales?

If you kept up with cars, you'd also know car buffs judge the quality and technological edge of Merc. and BMW to be in decline... BMW is on its way to becoming Pontiac.

David Davenport said...

Heil Herbs

"Heil", "health," "hale" ( as in "hale and hearty" ), and "hail" ( as in "Hail to the Chief!") probably all stem from the the same word root.

theo the kraut said...

Here's a good source on German born ecofascism: ecofascism.com

The article is based on:
Raymond H. Dominick III, The Environmental Movement in Germany: Prophets and Pioneers, 1871-1971 Indiana University Press, 1992.
and
Lehming, Malte, The German Ecological-Industrial Complex, Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2010.

Malte Lehming is a respected German journalist

Dan said...

How many Jews who lived in the Pale would have been soldiers in the Imperial German army? Or French Jews? Was this something that Jews in what would have been Russian territory did? Fight for imperial Germany?

Peter the Shark said...

And fin de cycle Vienna is also more famous than anything from Germany (who ever heard of fin de cycle Berlin?)"

Vienna was still the most important speaking German city in the world before 1913, and "German culture" included most of Austria and Bohemia, not just the German Reich. It makes sense to distinguish between the geographic and political conceptions Prussia and Austria prior to WWI, but not between Austria and "Germany". There were no ethnic "Austrians" prior to 1945.

Dave Pinsen said...

I got 240k miles out of my 1995 Lexus ES 300 and it was a pleasure to drive.

Dave Pinsen said...

There is (or at least was) a British TV show in which a nutritionist intervened in people's diets. She would look at their poop too. Saw this show on BBC America a few years ago.

Dave Pinsen said...

"What has Germandom done to advance the Internet? Nothing."

A bit more than nothing. Berlin has become something of a startup hub in recent years (e.g., Sound Cloud). And one of the partners in New York's top tech VC firm is a German immigrant who earned a PhD in CS at MIT and was a successful start-up CEO before becoming a VC.

Anonymous said...

Heidegger

Anonymous said...

"Vienna was still the most important speaking German city in the world before 1913, and "German culture" included most of Austria and Bohemia, not just the German Reich."

Much of Vienna was German-speaking culture than German culture. It's like Mumbai and Hong Kong are part of English-speaking culture but not English culture.

Anonymous said...

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/17/3940963/ethiopian-airlines-flight-forced.html

Anonymous said...

Oswald Spengler, at 7:27 AM, is not only right, he is profoundly right.

Fertility rates are not the most important thing.

FERTILITY RATES ARE THE ONLY THING.

The last USA leader who gave a damn about this was Theodore Roosevelt.

In retrospect, it simply boggles my mind that neither Ronald Reagan nor anyone else ever spoke out about the collapse in White total fertility rates in the 1970s:

TOTAL FERTILITY RATE, White

1960-1964: 3.326
1965-1969: 2.512
1970: 2.385
1971: 2.161
1972: 1.907
1973: 1.783
1974: 1.749
1975: 1.686
1976: 1.652


BTW, the mainstream press is FINALLY starting to notice this - about 40 years too late.

Even the Darwinian Nihilists cannot argue with the fundamental tautology of it all: You can either get busy making babies, or you can get busy going extinct.

There is no middle ground.

Survivor said...

You ought to be very very very careful highlighting German inefficiencies. Someone might notice how complicated they make simple tasks. How they don't actually get things done, how grossly inefficient their systematic culture really is. Try not to notice how they come up short when they set a goal!

Anonymous said...

http://www.openculture.com/2014/02/jorge-luis-borges-chats-with-william-f-buckley-on-firing-line-1977.html

Peter the Shark said...

"What has Germandom done to advance the Internet? Nothing."

Where would the Internet be without Red Bull? (and yes, I include Austrians in "Germandom").

Anonymous said...

http://gu.com/p/3mz9j/fb

If 'racism' is to be blamed for genocide and slavery, how is that an ideology committed to equality and brotherhood of man killed the most people(Ukraine, China, Cambodia, North Korea, Ethiopia)and enslaved the most as well?

And why were race-conscious UK and US the most progressive powers?
Brits were the most 'racist' imperialists but ones who did most to end slavery all over the world. Hmm.
Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabs were less race-conscious but also less interested in ending slavery, and in fact, slavery in their regions came to an end due to British intervention.

eah said...

Bernd das Brot. Der ist auch irgendwie typisch Deutsch, oder?

Dan said...

Hamburg was vastly more interesting on all levels.

Anonymous said...

Yet today they can't design a car that works in a Canadian winter. Two ex-VW owners in my family have learned this the hard way.

I drive a VW. Hasn't been observably more failure-prone in the Canadian winter than any other vehicle on the roads around here.

And what's with most of their ATM machines only giving out 50 Euro bills?

Canadian ATMs (at least from my bank, anyway) tend to deal only in 20s.

Anonymous said...

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/experts-concerned-that-advances-in-genetic-sequencing-are-giving-rise-to-neoracism/story-fn5fsgyc-1226828291896

Funny but speaking of slavery and mass murder, the equality-obsessed communism created the biggest slave states(national prisons really) and killed the greatest numbers of people. Look at Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, North Korea, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Mengistu's Ethiopia, etc.

So, maybe we should be wary of the notions of racial equality since so much mass killing and slavery accompanied such ideas.

Also, among all the great European imperialists, the British were the most racially discriminatory and race-conscious. And yet they were the most progressive and did the most to end slavery all over the world, whereas the racially tolerant-and-mixed Ottomans, Spanish, and Portuguese were most reactionary and most resistant to abolition of slavery and the slave trade.

Maybe progress has something to do with order, cohesion, and stability, and the homogeneous-oriented societies are the most orderly, cohesive, and stable.

In contrast, diversity and mixing bring out the tribalism among various groups--the bowling alone syndrome--, and that retards progress. After all, the racially homogeneous American North and Canada were more progressive than the racially mixed American South and Latin America.
Hence the paradox. Homogeneously 'racist' settings produce more progress, whereas diversely multi-racial settings produce more resistance to change due to tribal lack of trust among the various groups.

Anonymous said...

Something went badly wrong in European culture beginning at the end of the 18th century and peaking in the late 19th, producing a giganic wave of melancholy, alienation, and angst and generations of really unhappy people who hated Europe and many of whom fled to other shores.

I.e., masses of Europeans began to lose faith in God.

This false "God" is whatever its worshippers want him/her/it to be. That's why Jesus Ben Yahweh's primary commandment was "love thy god". The abrahamic faiths are about ideological control and that's a two edged sword...Right now loving this wondrous god means embracing multiculturalism. If you don't believe me go into any church and see for yourself. If we re-embrace Christianity right now it would cement our ruin.

Luke Lea said...

Anonymous said...

"The American hippies were inspired by the 19th century New England transcendentalists."

Drugs and rock music helped some.

True. (acid more than pot) But the assasination of Kennedy followed by the Vietnam war -- plus the draft == didn't help any.

Another factor generally overlooked was a general disillusionment with middle-class life in suburbia (a ranch-style house and a full-time Mom who stays home with the kids. Instead of seeing this ideal as an historic achievement for ordinary working-class people, they took mass affluence for granted.

I think that is when our governing elites might have decided these spoiled children of the Greatest Generation had a little too much disposable income. It's when the 1965 Immigration was passed, soon followed by the start of a four decade decline in the average wage workers real hourly take home pay.

(But to be fair, modern home appliances were also at fault as tens of millions of stay at home moms started entering the workforce. They thought it would get them a bigger new house in the suburbs, not that two full-time paychecks would soon be required just to hang on to the old one.

Pat Boyle said...

Volksverhetzer made the case that 'singing the blues' stemmed from the phenomenon of 'the blue hour' - a twilight phenomenon seen in Northern Europe.

But in the American South there is another twilight phenomenon called 'The Green Flash'.

If he is correct, why isn't the crypto-Nazi ecology movement called the Blues rather than the Greens. And why don't blacks from the deep south - sing the Greens?

Albertosaurus

RAZ said...

"Austria and West Germany wasn't kicked as hard as Eastern Germany. Even after many yrs, East Germany could only produce the Trabant."

And you don't think the reason for this was that Eastern Germany was a communist run vassal state of the USSR??

Anonymous said...

"And one of the partners in New York's top tech VC firm is a German immigrant who earned a PhD in CS at MIT and was a successful start-up CEO before becoming a VC."

Peter Thiel, the ebay founder and conservative/libertarian donor, is German as well.

anyway, OT: Steve, have you ever written about why Argentina sucks so much? The country has an average IQ of close to the US--96 according to Lynn and Vanhanen--but is a complete economic basket case. Why is it such an exception to the general rule that high-IQ countries do economically well.

Dave Pinsen said...

PayPal co-founder, but right, Thiel is another example of a prominent German in IT.

Anonymous said...

"have you ever written about why Argentina sucks so much?"

Its southern Italian immigrants didn't have Wasps to show them the right way.

Anonymous said...

"But the assasination of Kennedy followed by the Vietnam war -- plus the draft == didn't help any."

Little more than 10 yrs between Kennedy's death and Nixon's resignation.
Maybe Nixon's resignation was a necessary purge in the mind of liberals.
Though Kennedy was killed by Oswald the commie, the libs had this idea that a vast dark corrupt conspiracy brought him down. Everything was corrupt about the US. Nothing could be trusted. And Johnson and Nixon were both seen as the dark forces within the system(that may have conspired to kill Kennedy). So, the ousting of Nixon was like a grand purge of evil for the libs. The cancer had finally been removed, and US could be free and true again. A myth, but people think mythicly.
As many libs felt this way, they have a religious mentality too.

And despite Obama's problems now, he will be sacramentalized and decades from now, young ones will see him as a 'great man' and messianic figure.

Cons may have lots of guns and bullets, but media and academia shoots mind-bullets like Cupid shot love-arrows. Movies, TV, music, education, and etc all aim their mind-machine-guns and shoot away, lodging PC bullets in the minds of young ones. They are all PC-braindead from lots of mind-bullets.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"The American hippies were inspired by the 19th century New England transcendentalists."

And the New England Transcendentalists were inspired by German thinkers like Hegel.

Anonymous said...

"FERTILITY RATES ARE THE ONLY THING."

The Jewish Israelis (not American Jews) understand this very well. They speak of it openly and that is why they have an average 3 children per woman, a rate that is rising - when the average German woman has one. The Israelis know that the future belongs to those who show up. And if you cannot bother to show up? Then all the Mercedes and SAP and machine tooling wont matter one bit.

Reg Cæsar said...

[Argentina's] southern Italian immigrants didn't have Wasps to show them the right way.

Northern Italians came first, and set the tone. It's somewhat analogous to German Jews preceding their Eastern brethren to America.

And there was enough WASP influence to make the country a world power in two flavors of English football.

Anonymous said...

A lot of Germans have that something I call the Oswald Krell look:

http://chechar.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/oswald-krell.jpg

So, we can see that German neuroticism goes back a while.

Steve Sailer said...

Oswolt looks like the captain of the bobsled team watching the video replay of how they lost 0.03 seconds in Turn 7.

Anonymous said...

"Except for in music, Germany had been relatively backward in arts, culture, and letters compared to other leading European civilizations."

The Hanseatic League was a cultural backwater. My German prof said their literature didn't really advance beyond the ledger book.

Dan said...

London, unless I'm very much mistaken was a party to the Hansard.

The main problem with literature in the medieval period is the lack of a vernacular written tradition. Too much Latin.

fondatori said...

Wasn't 'The Closing of the American Mind' largely about how the American masses had accepted a view of reality derived from degenerate German philosophy without appreciating the source of these ideas?

Dan said...

Argentina,

I will throw out a theory.

Chile and Argentina ought to be one state. Then you might see a more fully integrated economy.

However, Argentina does quite well. Your measure of a good economy is wrong. Argentina produces an agricultural abundance. It has good mineral deposits. When It accesses Antarctic wealth next door, it will be a Go-To area. Not that it isn't already attractive to some extent with certain industries. They live well, even if their ledger books are dodgy.

They have no NAMs to speak of btw, so their cities are habitable. I'd buy a cattle ranch there given half a chance.

AAB said...

'The Hanseatic League was a cultural backwater.'

The Hanseatic League was a commercial/trading union, much like NAFTA, CAFTA or any other modern trading bloc. It wasn't concerned with libraries, opera or anything cultural, only economic affairs.

Anonymous said...

"The Jews who--by the strong hand and outstretched arm of Providence--established Israel after the Germans failed to murder them all."

you left out massive subsidies from the West

peterike said...

Fertility rates are not the most important thing.

FERTILITY RATES ARE THE ONLY THING.


Only if you allow outside competition. It is insane to think the population must always increase. Was the United States of 1950 so much worse because there were some 150 million fewer residents? On the contrary, it was far better, less crowded, less stressed.

A declining white population would be a good thing, BUT only if the non-white population was kept in balance. Obviously, we have not done that. And THAT is the problem.

America with 100 million fewer people at 90%+ whites would be as close to paradise as we could get. The same is true for all of Europe.

Kylie said...

Survivor said...
I went to a seminar in an undisclosed Scandinavian location about that proto hippy life style improvement stuff and it's connection to The Nazis. The group watched a film about Garden Cities and outdoor hiking and then had a Lentil Porridge afterwards for lunch. All a bunch of dreamy looking Swedes, Danes and Norse...all liberals. A heavy and thick irony coated the proceedings. These people were hippy negrophiles and elfen sprites.

Personally, I didn't buy it. Hitler was a bit of a bookworm, he ran with the Thule Society. It was a simple recognition that Jewish populations were steadily making strides in power in German academia and media, he also recognized that the old Pale was now run by the Soviets and Jews were heavily over represented among the Soviet elite and the German communist party.

He simply noticed a pattern he did not like.

2/15/14, 8:03 PM

He did more than simply notice it. A lot more.

And to whoever posted the link to DFD singing something by Nietzsche, it's no worse than Pasternak's piano music.

Anonymous said...

"However, Argentina does quite well."

It's sucking badly considering it could be doing much much better. Imagine if Anglos or Germans ran it.

KFoy said...

I was just reading about that painting of Oswald Krell the other day in Kenneth Clark's now legendary Civilisation series.
He remarked of it,


"Oswald Krell is on the verge of hysteria. Those staring eyes, the look of self-conscious introspection, that uneasiness, marvelously
conveyed by Dürer through the uneasiness of the planes in the modelling—how German it is; and what a nuisance it has been for the rest of the world. "

Volksverhetzer said...

From wikipedia.

The blue hour is the period of twilight each morning and evening where there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. The time is considered special because of the quality of the light. Photographers call it sweet light

Influence in popular culture[edit]

As a result of the perceived specialness of this time, there are various restaurants, theatres and hotels called L'Heure Bleue located worldwide. There is also a women's perfume by Guerlain (1912) of the same name.

In English culture the term was used to describe the period of inactivity and uselessness a drinker encounters when pubs and other licensed premises have closed after the lunch-time session (typically 3:30 pm), but have not yet opened for the evening session (typically 6:30 pm). The blue hour has now been largely abolished in England, Scotland and Wales in favour of all-day opening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_hour

A picture that explains very well why twilight is called the blue hour up north, because everything really turns blue, and not just a shade of bluish.

http://svalbard.photoshelter.com/image/I0000en7paF9MFLQ

Anonymous said...

Steve this is OT,
but might be worthy of a post on your blog.

http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/70650/conversion-found-not-kosher-putting-aliyah-on-hold/

Anonymous said...

That guy Strubbe is a bit offbeat (Jewish Renewal, obsession with kibbutzim long after Israel has moved on). The American Jewish community is more accepting of pluralism, but a little bit of research could have shown him that the Israeli Orthodox religious establishment is not. I'm an ethnic Jew, but if I had to prove my Jewish status to the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate's satisfaction with documents from acceptable Orthodox rabbis, I wouldn't be able to do it.

David Davenport said...

A few nights ago, I said that BMW and Mercedes cars were on the way down. Here's Scotty Kilmer on Why Not To Buy a Mercedes.

Scotty can't understand the thought processes of the Merc. designers.

I've heard this more than once, regarding Porsche and Audi as well as BMW and Mercedes:

"If you buy a prestigious German car, expect to pay prestigious prices for dealer parts and service ... Which you'll probably need after the car's out of warranty."

David Davenport said...

Blues

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the music genre. For other uses, see Blues (disambiguation).
Blues

Stylistic origins African American folk music, work songs, spirituals
Cultural origins Late 19th century, southern United States

...

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre[1] that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States around the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads.[2] The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll is characterized by specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues chord progression is the most common. The blue notes that, for expressive purposes are sung or played flattened or gradually bent (minor 3rd to major 3rd) in relation to the pitch of the major scale, are also an important part of the sound.

...

Etymology[edit]

One explanation for the origin of the "blues" is that it derived from mysticism involving blue indigo, which was used by many West African cultures in death and mourning ceremonies where all the mourner's garments would have been dyed blue to indicate suffering.[citation needed] This mystical association towards the indigo plant, grown in many southern U.S. slave plantations, combined with the West African slaves who sang of their suffering as they worked on the cotton that the indigo dyed eventually resulted in these expressed songs being known as "the Blues."[3]

The term may also have come from the term "blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness; an early use of the term in this sense is found in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798).[4] Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition.[5][6] In lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood.[7]

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Hokum blues celebrated both comedic lyrical content and a boisterous, farcical performance style.[14] Tampa Red's classic "Tight Like That" (1928) is a sly wordplay with the double meaning of being "tight" with someone coupled with a more salacious physical familiarity. Explicit contents led to blues sometimes being called dirty blues. Lyrical content of music became slightly simpler in post war-blues which focused almost exclusively on relationship woes or sexual worries. Many lyrical themes that frequently appeared in pre-war blues such as economic depression, farming, devils, gambling, magic, floods and dry periods were less common in post-war blues.[15]

Author Ed Morales has claimed that Yoruba mythology played a part in early blues, citing Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues" as a "thinly veiled reference to Eleggua, the orisha in charge of the crossroads".[16] However, the Christian influence was far more obvious.[17] Many seminal blues artists such as Charley Patton or Skip James had several religious songs or spirituals in their repertoires.[18] Reverend Gary Davis[19] and Blind Willie Johnson[20] are examples of artists often categorized as blues musicians for their music, although their lyrics clearly belong to the spirituals.

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David Davenport said...

There's also A Car You Can't Check the Engine Oil On

Scotty Kilmer, mechanic for the last 45 years, shows perhaps one of the dumbest designs ever made in a car. Some newer BMWs have engines with no oil dipticks in them so you can't check the oil level in your car

Scotty is about 75 years old.

Anonymous said...

The Hanseatic League was a commercial/trading union, much like NAFTA, CAFTA or any other modern trading bloc. It wasn't concerned with libraries, opera or anything cultural, only economic affairs.

Sure, but the city-states that composed it could have northern versions of Genoa, Lucca, Pisa, Florence, and Venice - also commercial city states - but they weren't.

Anonymous said...

This false "God" is whatever its worshippers want him/her/it to be. That's why Jesus Ben Yahweh's primary commandment was "love thy god". The abrahamic faiths are about ideological control and that's a two edged sword...Right now loving this wondrous god means embracing multiculturalism. If you don't believe me go into any church and see for yourself. If we re-embrace Christianity right now it would cement our ruin.

Hush, child, the grown-ups are talking.

Anonymous said...

Concerning the IT contributions: Ever heard of MP3 et al.? Well, they were not developed in Silicon Valley, although there the people understood to convert that idea into green. In order not to confirm assumed traits, e.g. being nitpicking schoolmasters, I won't continue to list contributions to High-Tech in recent years and humbly stop here.

One thing about the "shelf toilet": I prefer sitting on a steaming dump for a few minutes, than scrub my bottom with disinfectant afterwards, because it's bespattert with urin and liquidized feces due to the combination of drop distance and the consistence of the landing zone...

Gruß!