The Assembly of Sovereign Nations

The Anatolian Myth of Illuyanka
Text and notes: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/77487
Story and commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UqmQJ-VkbI

Last week, Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite his field and the cave of Machpelah that sat thereon to bury his dead for 400 shekels of silver, and so I figure this would be an opportune time to look at the Hittites. It is unclear if there is a link between the Biblical Hittites and the eponymous historical empire. The first are identified as the children of Heth (second son of Canaan, who was the youngest son of Ham, and who was singled out for a curse by his grandfather Noah on account of Ham's indiscretion), while the latter take the name from the Hatti people and the city of Hattusa in central Anatolia, and their identification with the Biblical Hittites in the 19th century because of the similarity of names (Hatti and Hetti). The Hittite Empire fell with the phenomenon known as the Bronze Age Collapse (c. 1177 BC), although a group of Neo-Hittite states survived in southern Anatolia and the northern Levant for several centuries into the Iron Age, which were Aramaean and Luwian in culture.

I think Biblical tradition places Abraham at roughly 2000 BC, which actually precedes the historical Hittite Empire (c. 1750-1178 BC), and moreover their occupation of the northern Levant, let alone their collapse and the establishment of the Neo-Hittite states. On the other hand, Israel principally emerges in the historical record during (or just prior to) the early Iron Age and these northern Levantine Neo-Hittite states would likely be relevant in the formation of any associated traditions during this period. Given how early in the project I am, I'd prefer to err on the side of older works, from which I thought I'd pull the stories of Illuyanka this week.

In these stories, the Storm-god of Nerik (in north-central Anatolia near the Black Sea) battles a great primordial serpent called Illuyanka as the central ritual around the spring festival of Puruli. Normally, the Hittite storm god would be Tarḫunna, although it is also closely identified with the Luwian Tarḫunz from southern Anatolia and the Hurrian Teshub; however, in this account, the only named identification I've seen is with Zaliyanu, which is supposed to be the name of a divine mountain responsible for bestowing rain on the city. The actual work is rather short. In addition to a transliteration of the Hittite text, and several pages of notes, the pdf available through the link only has about three pages of a translation that is highly fractured in places and split between two stories. However, I found what I think is a good podcast that discusses some of the nuances around the story while making a reasonable compromise between creatively filling in the gaps and staying faithful to the original work found in Catalogue des Textes Hittites (CTH) 321.

The Realist Polities wrote:

Tucker: Klaus Schwab, Transgenderism, and AI | Russian Philosopher Aleksandr Dugin
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1785066534995714067

On the big ideas, I think Dugin has a lot of it right. However, on the conceptualization of his terms, I've come to favor different models. His horseshoe theory of individualism sounds to me like an attempt by people to behave like individualists and who then fail to do so - that is instead of making decisions independently based upon reason and prudence, they make reflexive decisions that might be described as counter-cultural or anti-social; maybe a sort of hipster take on individualism.

With liberalism too, what's old is new again. The difference between classical liberalism and modern liberalism isn't the difference between the sane liberalism of yesteryear and the postmodern utopianism and/or nihilism of the present. Prior observers have already identified that classical liberalism has two faces. Hayek drew the distinction between the British tradition and French tradition, while Thomas Sowell would present these as the constrained vision and unconstrained vision, respectively. A more precise terminology is required than old versus new or classical versus modern liberalism because these are profoundly different ideologies sharing common labels, and a more or less coterminous history of oscillating prominence. I don't know if it's the best hill on which to plant one's flag, but I've heard James Lindsay go as far as to declare Rousseau was not even a liberal, which has some truth to it but which defiantly informs centuries of historical tradition that it's wrong. Whatever language we settle on, it seems to me that the classical liberalism which Tucker defends is of the constrained vision, while the liberalism towards which Dugin is hostile is the unconstrained.

As for Russia, it is my perception that a decision to return to tradition is a part of the animosity of the progressive West; however, I think Dugin got closer to the real motivation in his identification of Russia as a strong sovereign state. My principal lens for interpreting Western relations with Russia right now is globalism - namely, the chief globalist goal is to both consolidate power to globalist institutions and to simultaneously weaken any entity willing and able to resist globalist agendas. The end goal is a maximum entropy order where no state or any other entity has the wherewithal to resist domination by the collective. So long as powerful sovereign states are useful as leaders and enforcers of the globalist agenda they can remain stable, albeit very tightly controlled even as the underpinnings of their society are compromised, but when they seriously attempt to shake off globalist control, they must be weakened and punished. (I also entertain the idea that commies and fellow travelers are salty that the Russian people rejected glorious communism, and therefore now act out of a spirit of revenge.)

Genesis (Biblical Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית‎, romanized: Bərēʾšīṯ, lit. 'In [the] beginning') chapters 37 - 50
AudioEbook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgFT_IxwJJY&t=8597s
Text: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=1477

This concludes the book of Genesis largely discussing the story of Joseph, favored son of Jacob (Israel) who was hated by his brothers, sold into slavery, and rose to become the Pharaoh's most powerful and trusted official. As this book leaves off, the Hebrews are in Egypt, as honored guests of the Pharaoh, where they will remain for 430 years (according to Exodus).

A very interesting event is described here, which we would do well to heed. Beware spoilers:

Joseph, as Pharaoh's faithful administrator, directs a fifth of all the yields of Egypt to be stored during the seven years of plenty in preparation for the seven years of famine. And as the famine afflicted all lands, the food that had been stored was sold back to the Egyptian people as well as those from all other countries. In time, the money was said to fail in Egypt and Canaan, even as the famine continued and so Joseph offered to exchange cattle and other livestock for bread, and when that was exhausted, the people exchanged themselves and their lands for food. In this way all of Egypt, save for the lands of the priests, became Pharaoh's, and thereafter, a fifth of the productivity of the Egyptians was given to Pharaoh.

And so to recap, a 20% tax is levied on the Egyptian people in preparation for the coming famine. Meanwhile, it kind of sounds like the purpose of this is not public knowledge, so the people don't know the importance of saving and capital formation at this time. But assuming secrecy may also be reading too far into it. Then afterwards, the people are allowed to buy back their product that was taken through taxation, even to the point of selling all their lands and themselves into servitude. It almost sounds like some kind of big socio-economic reset powered by people's own expropriated productivity.

Of course, Joseph was a faithful agent of his benefactor, from whom he had been entrusted with this task, and in the process Joseph brought him great prosperity while saving the people from starvation. So there's that. Nonetheless, there's probably a lesson to be learned here about how to (not) set out upon the road to serfdom.

The Realist Polities wrote:

Carl Benjamin - Why Liberalism Leads to Communism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDqr6TxIKuY

Liberalism =/= the unconstrained vision

Hobbes, who preceded Locke, was of the unconstrained vision (at least as it pertained to the authority of the sovereign person of a commonwealth). Rousseau, who succeeded Locke, was of the unconstrained vision. As an intermediary of these social contract theorists, Locke's primary role is the rehabilitation of the state of nature (better considered as a thought excise than an pre-societal anthropological stage) from Hobbes's war of all against all to a state of nature that he explicitly differentiates from the state of war. In it, he posits an individual in this state of nature enjoys both freedom and equality. This equality is not a prescription, but an observation that those who are neither in a state of war nor in a civil society will be equally free to conduct themselves. It also does not imply that every individual will have the same material benefits, as this is the result of mixing one's labor with the provisions of nature, and constitutes property, from which another is proscribed from expropriating in the state of nature, lest one enter into a state of war.

Say what you will about Rousseau. He is for certain a paving stone in the road to communism. He had an irrationally romantic view of the state of nature and Man's goodness, and his theory of the general will can be used to rationalize virtually anything done in its name.

But I simply see no major errors in Locke's liberalism, save but for inspiring (but not causing) Rousseau's own errors. To blame liberalism is not productive. Locke isn't responsible for Rousseau, and the philosophers of the constrained vision for the most part aren't responsible for the abuses of the unconstrained vision, let alone these useful idiots who call themselves liberals today, but who are bereft of knowledge of their own purported philosophy. The problems we see today do not have their origins in ideology (not even communism). Their origins are with the cyclical nature of society and prosperity, an unmooring from the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of countless past generations, and the ease with which people can be enticed to foolhardy ideas that sacrifice long term well being for what feels good in the moment.

The Realist Polities wrote:

Obviously Benjamin is not condemning classical liberalism for being liberal. He is explaining why the very concept of liberty is a slippery slope for communism.

Okay. So, I think I'm having difficulty pinning down the meaning of 'leads to'. Did Marx and other communists use some of the theory and terms of the liberals, critiquing it and altering much of it to suit their ends and worldview? Sure.

So then, could it then be said that liberalism also leads to a Burkean articulation of conservatism?

The Realist Polities wrote:

That being said, I still am not a fan of Locke since his theory presupposes individualism and social homogeneity.

You're saying that his theory doesn't work when people aren't individualists or when society isn't homogeneous? Or are you referring to the end state it brings about?

The Realist Polities wrote:

I know he mostly meant equal opportunity but it is still utopian.

That's interesting. I tend to think of him as an optimizer. What is your measure of being utopian?