Theos-Talk Archives (July 2003 Message tt00196)

Pendragon wrote:
> I always felt the most comfortable when reading the old original edition of
> the Theosophist or Lucifer. Just to hold those old volumes in hand, with
> their yellowish paper half falling apart, gives you quite a different force.
By not-so-strange coincidence, that was my intention in looking up the 
original quote (for some reason, I thought that it wasn't in the CW) in 
the Beller Library of the New York Theosophical Society. However, as the 
librarian of that library happens to be Michael Gomes, and I needed to 
get his permission to look through the old magazines (they have them in 
bound collections), I strongly suspect that he would have given me the 
information without my having to physically go into them.

I looked up information on the Communards, and found that there are a 
lot of parallels between them and many branches of Communism, which is 
why Zirkoff substituted the word. I have not looked into the other 
mentions of Communism as based in Blavatsky.

In any case, if one looks at the works of Engels, and the works of the 
Institute for Marxism aka Institute for Social Research aka The 
Frankfurt School, and the writings that led up to the creation of the 
latter, it looks like much of what became, in the 1960's, "the New Left" 
is based on total fictions; things like a matriarchal society in the 
past that lived in total peace, that cultures are invented and imposed 
upon people rather than evolving, and that anarchy inevitably leads to 
Communism. This is largely based on extreme postmodernist concepts that, 
because we cannot perceive reality in an entirely objective manner, then 
there is no such thing as objective reality, and that reality is 
whatever the majority believes it is (socialist George Orwell took this 
point of view to its extreme in his work, "1984").

Note that this is not the case with the entire Communist movement; by 
the 1970's, the Soviet Union had largely disavowed the Frankfurt School 
philosophies (as did, to a lesser extent, China after Mao Tze-Tung's 
death). There are many who would be considered to be on the left, even 
the far left, who do not accept this point of view either (notable 
examples include activist lawyer Ron Kuby, political humorist Michael 
Moore, and past presidential candidate Ralph Nader).

In the Quaker Church, there is a concept that they call "consensus". 
They meet together to discuss a problem, and they do not come to a 
decision until everybody understands everybody else's point of view. 
Note that agreement is not necessary; merely understanding. When one 
reaches a point where one has to change the facts in order to justify 
one's opinion, or say that the facts are not facts, then one is blocked 
in reaching the truth. Also, when a truth is reached from the wrong 
direction, it is like creating a skyscraper with no foundation. I have 
no problem with criticism of the United States; it is when this 
criticism is founded on lies and half-truths that I have a problem. But 
once one is willing to start with the conclusion, carefully select the 
evidence that leads up to it, ignore any evidence to the contrary, and, 
if the evidence does not exist, make it up, then it becomes hard to see 
the other's point of view. That, in my opinion, goes against the 
principles of Theosophy, as I see them; it is creating a skyscraper with 
no foundation. Other's mileage may vary.

Bart Lidofsky