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Notes -
Kurt Caz: The Physiognomy of Colonization
I don't follow travel vloggers in general, but there's one who is more anthropologist than tourist, documenting a phenomenon that no modern academics would dare acknowledge in this day in age. Kurt Caz, the Aryan Wanderer, mostly travels alone, sometimes accompanied by a beautiful woman of the local variety. He only visits non-tourist locations, strides the peasant countryside like a colossus, shows up uninvited and unannounced where the locals have likely never seen a tourist, and is instantly treated with respect by the men and admiration by the women. This is a pattern which is perfectly consistent in his videos across all continents and villages he has traveled through.
Once he visited a village in Papua New Guinea, and I'm not sure how to describe what happened other than they started worshipping him, declaring his visit as the fulfillment of some local prophecy of a white man coming to the village.
Kurt is clearly aware of the racial dynamics at play (and drops hints that he's secretly Based), but he leans into them in the best way. He uses his physical presence and charisma to engage with the locals, who immediately show admiration and respect, and Kurt reciprocates with a genuine racial tolerance that is more real, but completely unlike, what passes for it today.
You see, today "racial tolerance" means fixing the dynamics which are obviously at play in Kurt's content. Don't believe your lying eyes, beauty is relative and the engrained reactions we seem to have is a conspiracy of White Supremacy. Body physique is just a trait with an attractiveness that is brainwashed into us by an intolerant culture; the indigenous reaction to a White Man showing up uninvited and unannounced is just an artifact the legacy of colonization.
And to be sure, there are many factors at play here. Conventional wisdom would likely point to these factors exclusively:
These factors surely come into play, but they also beg the question. White Colonization could not have happened in the first place without a much smaller number of White Men subjugating a much larger population of indigenous peoples in all cases. India, relative to its population size, was controlled by the British with an extremely small elite pool. Much ado is made about technological supremacy and the violence of colonization, again there's a lot of truth there, but the uglier reality is that the colonization was in many cases more peaceful than existing cultural practices and conflicts if the locals had been left to their own devices.
There's a myth that the Aztecs interpreted the arrival of Spanish Conquistadores as fulfilling a prophecy of the return of the Aztec's gods. That dynamic can be seen as a microcosm in Kurt's interactions throughout his travels. In general, the phenomenon of a race of people regarding another race as divine is much more common than we would expect at first glance. Many people who would laugh at the idea of the Aztecs believing the conquistadores to be emissaries of the Aztec gods also themselves believe in the literal truth of the Jewish covenant, that Jews are a people Chosen by god and they are a race of god-creators vis-a-vis the ancestry of Jesus Christ.
This dynamic also serves an important counterpoint to IQ supremacy. Imagine being a short, weak, ugly nerd with somewhat higher IQ than Kurt. The Rationalists would tend to regard that person as the Superior Being, taking for granted the relativity of Beauty and dismissing the importance of a Noble physiognomy and charisma to civilizational achievement.
This dovetails with @naraburn's post about the Pokemon Go avatar changes being designed, apparently, to challenge conventional beauty standards- especially the sub-question in that thread regarding a conspiracy to promote ugliness. That conspiracy exists, in its declaration that there is no Noble Physiognomy, and our attractions are just manipulated by White Supremacy. Whereas Kurt can just show up and use his physical presence and charisma to exert command, they are trying very hard to engrain - "don't believe your lying eyes, ugliness is beautiful." But in the same way educational interventions constantly fail to close the IQ gaps, these cultural initiatives will also fail because our brains have been tuned to perceive a person's physical attractiveness as a proxy for genetic fitness.
While they will never make Ugly become Beautiful, they absolutely can and will destroy Beauty through Ressentiment. Culture War has fomented a large amount of hostility towards White People from non-white people in the West, but it will never be able to reproduce the racial dynamic that Kurt is able to tap into in his content.
I wondered how long it would take for this to be about Jews. You never fail to disappoint.
As far as I can tell, you are upset that Rationalists regard high-IQ Jews as superior to Kurt, despite his noble physiognomy and the fact that they are 'short, weak, ugly nerds'. Am I getting that right?
I would worry about this being an uncharitable take, except for the fact that you cannot stop posting about how Jews are bad.
Have I misinterpreted the post? Could you summarise your thesis in a sentence?
You are highlighting one passing sentence of his out of a ~100-sentence post about something else. The highlighted sentence is a bash against Christians too. In any case his bash is incorrect; traditional/historic Christianity believes God simply chose to begin his revelation via a covenant with the nation (not an ethnicity yet) of Ancient Israel, and that this covenant is cut off with the induction of the Christian Faithful (with the exception of a remaining few who were yet to convert). So, traditionally speaking, Christianity does not hold that Jews are privileged by God in any way.
Depends on how "traditional" you want to get. St. Paul was pretty clear that God had not abandoned his covenantal promises to Israel.
Romans 11 says that the “natural branches” have been broken off due to their unbelief, and that there is a small “reserved” remnant who believe by faith. That reserved remnant are the Jews who believed / will believe in Christ. I don’t believe any early Christian theologians interpreted this differently
Paul appears to believe that in his infinite mercy, God blinded the Jews and caused them to reject Jesus en masse so that the gentiles would have time to believe and be saved before the imminent judgment. But this apparently was only supposed to be temporary, until "the fullness of the gentiles" had come in, and then "all Israel" would be saved. Paul even says in Romans that an important goal of his ministry is to make Israel jealous of the gentiles and thus spur their repentance.
“All Israel” in that passage does not mean something like “literally every proclaimed Israelite”. In Romans 9 you find:
These are instrumental to understanding what Paul says in Romans 11, preceding it in the same epistle (an epistle without original delineations nonetheless). Israel != flesh, and Israel = a saved remnant. If not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, then when we read in 11 that “all Israel will be saved”, we must take this to mean the aforementioned real Israel rather than descended Israel by flesh (otherwise there would be no point in making the distinction beforehand).
This is why there’s a theme of a remnant Israel and a “broken off” Israel. Consider how pointless Paul’s effort would be to “save some” of his brothers by preaching if, at the end of the day, literally all of them are saved regardless of his preaching.
This may come off as mere miscellany to any non-Abrahamist readers but the consequences are serious for keeping the gospel stable. If every Jew is saved at the end of days, then there is no reason to convert to Christianity as a Jew or to preach to Jews (which the original apostles did). And Jesus’ threats of hell make no sense. It destroys the integrity of the Gospel in the same way that someone saying “you don’t have to follow the mitzvahs to be rewarded and saved” would destroy the integrity of Judaism.
When Paul says "all Israel will be saved" he is referring to ethnic Israel, since in the sentence immediately preceding he explicitly contrasts "Israel" with "the gentiles." This does not necessarily mean every single Jew but it does mean corporate Israel, not just a small remnant. Paul doesn't seem to think that God has voided his contract with the Jews, but that he is including gentiles in the promises to Abraham, which is different from creating a new covenant where the distinction between Jew and gentile is entirely obviated. Paul obviously doesn't think this since he states that when/if Israel is "grafted back in" it will be much easier for them who are "natural" branches than for the gentiles who are not. The mission to the gentiles is framed largely in reference to God's dealings with the Jews, "Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so also they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, [the Jews] may receive mercy."
"What's the point of evangelism if God already knows who will and who won't be saved" is a general problem for the coherence of Christianity, not just in this particular instance.
The mass conversion of the Jews at the end of days is an ancient Christian eschatological belief that endures to this day.
We can read until that sentence starting with 11:20
Who are the natural branches that are not spared, which causes gentiles to be afraid lest they share the same fate? If all are spared, then there are no natural branches who are not spared. The phraseology explains that the verdict on Israel is more severe, hence “fear, for if God did not spare natural branches he will not spare you”, but your reading has it that Israel’s verdict is less severe. If gentiles fear a loss of salvation, and Israel’s verdict is more severe, but all of Israel is saved… this is a very silly interpretation which is all over the place.
Just continuing the reading, gentiles must fear God’s severity toward those who have fallen.
This supports my view given the conditional if. We are now back to talking about the grafted in Israel, the Israel by faith, which was defined two chapters ago. If Paul believes that they will all be saved, why is it if and not when? Why is it “God has the power” rather than “God will”?
Finally we have
The key to understanding the above is clearly the sentence that makes zero sense in your theology: “It is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel”. This makes no sense in your theology because it necessarily implies that not all of born-Israel are saved. There are (A) those descended from Israel, who (B) are not Israel, (C) which is important to know for the purposes of salvation, and we know (D) all of Israel will be saved. Your theology requires something that conflicts with (B) because you allege that all descended from Israel are Israel, whereas Paul specifically denies this. (C) is also a stumbling block to your theology because Paul specifically mentions (A+B) in the context of salvation and in the context of understanding the prophecy of saved Jews. An additional point (E) is that Paul writes “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved”, which against conflicts with an all-inclusive salvation. If all are predestined to be saved then never can there be only a remnant saved.
That’s just saying that the natural branches would have an easier time fitting into Christianity than a Pagan Greek, given the monotheism and the shared scriptures which they are familiar with
So which ones aren’t?
Then why does he specifically mention a remnant?
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