Lindsay Perigo
The Politically Incorrect Show - 21/10/1999
Music - Die Fledermaus
Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Thursday October 21, proudly sponsored by Tuariki Tobacco Ltd, the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.
Music up, music down!
You know, when I use the word "sacred" here, I do so advisedly. I am an atheist, so the word for me has no religious connotations. I don't believe in a god, an after-life, or anything outside nature. As the Greek philosopher Parmenides said a long time ago, what there is is what there is, & there's an end of it. But accepting that fact doesn't mean I don't revere or worship anything. Quite the contrary. Reverence & worship are far too precious to be wasted on the non-existent. Reverence & worship must be reserved for that part of what exists which is worthy of such exalted emotions.
These days, of course, the "cool" thing is to revere & worship nothing. Everything is fair game for sniggering, unreasoned dismissal, deserved or not. To determine whether the sniggering be deserved or not would involve the use of the mind, & the mind, it is "cool" to believe, is impotent. The huge irony here is that the people who slavishly & mindlessly believe this for the sake of being "cool" are not "cool" at all. Lots of other Greek philosophers, called "sophists," spouted this stuff two and a half thousand years ago. How UNcool is that?! One of their devotees posited the following axioms: 1) nothing exists; 2) if anything did exist, the human mind would be incapable of knowing it; 3) if anything did exist & could be known by the human mind, it would be incommunicable. This, mind you, said by someone who spoke of things such as the human mind as though they EXISTED & who presumed he was COMMUNICATING something which he KNEW to be TRUE!
This ancient stuff is called the philosophy of "nihilism" - nothingness. Its devotees pride themselves on revering nothing, oblivious to the contradiction that "nothing" is what they REVERE. They are everywhere. When you hear what I call the caterwauling headbanging that passes for music in this day & age, realise that the principal problem here is not primarily music, it is philosophy. Nothing, says modern philosophy, is sacred - therefore, music, that most potent inducer of the sense of the sacred, must be brought down to the level where the world's leading cellist records duets with motorway traffic. The irony is that motorway traffic IS sacred, as a testament to the efficacy of the human mind - but it is NOT music, & only in an atonal, nihilist age would a talented musician like Yo Yo Ma regard recording duets with it as a legitimate musical enterprise.
Ayn Rand spoke of the "sacred" as the "total passion for the total height." Our age worships the "total passion for the total depth" (except that it is impossible to feel "passion" for such a thing). That's why we have Winston Peters, Jim Neanderton & Jenny Shipley - & punk rock.
Me, I unashamedly worship certain people & what they have achieved & created. As of now, this attitude is "uncool." That's fabulous. "Cool" is neither hot nor cold. It's a zero. It can't make up its non-mind. The future is with "hot." And there is nothing "hotter" than reason & freedom.
Politically Incorrect Show, the total passion for the total height - 309 3099.
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