#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
Tonight’s Open Brainstorm session features author John C. Wright. We
will be discussing his new novel SOMEWHITHER, the new fantasy series he
is in the process of writing for Castalia House, his record-setting Hugo
nominations, and the Phil Sandifier debate concerning ONE BRIGHT STAR
TO GUIDE THEM. The session will run from 7 PM to 8:30 PM EDT on
Thursday, July 16, and there will be a Q&A session following the
interview.
To register to attend, click here.
The next Open Brainstorm session will be with author John C. Wright. We will be discussing his new novel SOMEWHITHER, the new fantasy series he is in the process of writing for Castalia House, his record-setting Hugo nominations, and the Phil Sandifier debate concerning ONE BRIGHT STAR TO GUIDE THEM. The session will run from 7 PM to 8:30 PM EDT on Thursday, July 16, and there will be a Q&A session following the interview. To register to attend, click here.
The Brainstorm July session will be Tuesday, July 21st, from 7:30 to 9:00 PM EDT. The topics will be the idea of designing a superior alternative to Wikipedia, the possible implications of the resolution of the Greek debt crisis, and updates on applied Life Design, the Tor boycott, and the Hugo Awards. If you’d like to take part, you can acquire either a monthly or an annual membership.
If you’re an Annual member who has a question you’d like addressed, please email me at least a day before the event. Let me know if you’ve got a mike and would prefer me to call on you so you can ask it or if you’d rather that I just directly address the question.
People are still registering, but I’m going to cut off the monthly option in one hour, 30 minutes before the event starts, so I can get the registration information out in time for people to join us. The chat is already live, so if you’re a Brainstormer feel free to hop in whenever you like.
I’m told Nate is busy swimming in his Scrooge McDuck-like pool of gold coins in preparation for his pitch for fire. If you haven’t had a look at the Inflation/Deflation debate on the left sidebar, you might want to get up to speed now.
See you soon.
VOX: Now, recently you’ve begun talking a bit more about spirituality, which I have to say strikes me as a little strange coming as it does from a notoriously hedonistic agnostic individual. What is the source of this shift in emphasis? Is it related to what you are talking about?
ROOSH: The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, and only by crossing the line, by going way beyond my sexual and entertainment needs, have I seen where the line is. Most of my life I have based on the scientific way, facts and logic, but it wasn’t giving me the answers. I don’t see the answers and I see some of it is wrong. People are structuring their life on science that in 100 years, 500 years, 5,000 years, will be shown to be a joke. Just like how humans used to think the earth was flat. People right now think that just because a study came out that this is fact, but it’s not. So, what can we learn, or what is the best way to live? I think the best way to come up with that is to look at how humans have lived for thousands of years. A book like the Bible was a guide that was a manual for billions of people and it still is. It has been used for so long that maybe there is something in it that I should look at. So, I am reading it now.
VOX: It will probably astonish thousands of people to hear that! Whether you are talking about the Bible, the Ancient Greeks, or Heian Japan, there is an awful lot of wisdom to be found there simply because they lived. We don’t need to reinvent every single thought about the wheel.
ROOSH: What I don’t get is why modern Western culture has been so quick to throw all that away. Throwing everything away for this experimental way to live. I am reading some of the old stuff and it makes sense. It makes sense! And I look at what the media and the universities are showing us now and I see Bruce Jenner being celebrated for being mentally ill, and I think I am going insane here! It doesn’t make sense why this is happening. We are living in a weird time and it scares me. I’m not even there in the USA and I am thinking that maybe on the ground it is not that bad, but then I go there to visit and it is that bad. People are now reciting talking points that five years ago I would have said are weird. Now it is part of the general audience and in how they act. Now people are calling everything sexist. I remember in the US last year, I heard a woman use the word microaggression and I thought that was a joke the first time I heard it. Now it is becoming common and I am thinking, man, I don’t know how it is getting here and I wish I could stop it but I can’t. (Laughs) What we have to do as men is hold on. This is not going to end well.
If you’re interested in obtaining a copy of the transcript, it is now available at Castalia House. If you are interested in attending tomorrow night’s member’s only event, you can sign up as an annual or monthly member.
The next event is for Brainstorm members only on 24 June at 7:30 PM EDT. We’re going to be discussing three subjects:
If you’re interested in taking part, you can sign up as either an Annual or Monthly member. The Roosh transcripts are still being put together and we should be able to get them out by the end of next week.
It starts in an hour. There are still more than 100 seats left, so if you’re interested in sitting in on it, you can still register.
From last weekend’s Brainstorm event with Dr. Martin van Creveld, Israeli military historian and the author of The Transformation of War and A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind:
VOX: Speaking of the US, I am curious to know what the general opinion in Israel is of the American neocons who, like you said, have been trying to overthrow Assad. They have overturned the Ukrainian government, the Libyan government, the Iraqi government, etc. What is the general view of the neocons in Israel?
MVC: Oh, we love them. The Israelis are very happy to fight the Arabs and the Iranians with American blood. During the first Gulf War, Israel was then under Yitzhak Shamir and did whatever it could to encourage an American invasion of Iraq. I wouldn’t say that this was decisive but they tried. It was the same when the Americans invaded Iraq for the second time. It was the same when Americans clashed with Iran over nuclear weapons. Each time you can see this very consistently. You can see the Israeli Right and, to some extent, even the Left say okay, this is lovely, we are going to let the Americans put the chestnuts in the fire for us.
Myself, I must say, that I dislike this policy very much. But certainly most Israelis like it. They like to be on the side of the strong as I see it. They push America as much as they can into these ventures. Just today I saw a famous t-shirt that says “Don’t worry America, Israel is behind you.” I also know that some Americans, like Pat Buchanan, have been writing that these lousy Israelis have been trying to use American for their own purposes and have unfortunately they have succeeded. So, personally I am not happy about this policy. I think that it may well one day act as a boomerang.
VOX: Do you think it is bad for Israel to be dependent in that way?
MVC: Yes, because, as we say in Hebrew, “the one who’s got the money has the say.” It’s bad in several ways, it is bad in the sense that we are tilting too much in the Republican direction. That is a bad thing in my view. It’s not bipartisan. There is a danger that one day support for Israel will probably fade and people will say enough of this. They will say Israelis are exploiting us with American-Jewish help. They are exploiting us for their own purposes. Let them go and fight their own wars. I have been warned more than once by my American friends that this is one day going to happen. It hasn’t happened yet but it is going to happen one day and it worries me. Frankly, it worries me.
VOX: Yeah, you don’t want to use your allies on a war that you don’t need and then not have their support when you actually need it.
MVC: Exactly.
In the event you are not a Brainstorm member but happen to be interested in obtaining a transcript of the interview with Dr. Martin van Creveld, it is available in EPUB and MOBI format at Castalia House.
We haven’t scheduled the times yet, but William S. Lind has agreed to do a future event, as has Dr. Helen Smith. I’ve also contacted Ann Coulter’s publisher and am expect to arrange an interview with her at some point about her new book, Adios America. If there are others you might be interested in seeing on Brainstorm, feel free to make suggestions here. The objective is to maintain a consistently high level of intellectual discourse for the open and closed events alike.
You can join Brainstorm as an Annual or Monthly member
to receive free transcripts as well as taking part in the closed
events. Now that we have 500 seats in the virtual auditorium, there
isn’t much risk of not being able to attend the open ones. On which
note, I should mention that there are still 240 seats left for next week’s event with Roosh V.
On June 10 at 6:00 PM EDT, Brainstorm will be featuring a 90-minute online event with the notorious ROOSH V to discuss his 2015 World Tour and the gradual transformation of his intellectual focus from pick-up artistry to neomasculinity.
There are 500 275 seats available and seats can be reserved here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5402452949014075905
The interview went very well. A transcript will be provided to all Brainstorm members when it is ready and will be available in various formats on the Castalia store.
I’m sorry, but it looks like Sunday’s Open Brainstorm event with Martin van Creveld is not going to be as open as I planned. Thanks to corporate bureaucracy, it appears that we’re not going to be able to increase our current limit of 100 participants to 500 until sometime next week.
Emails have been sent out to a) the Annual Brainstorm members and b) the May Brainstorm members. Members have 24 hours to register for the event. If you haven’t received an email – and please check your spam filters – email me tonight and let me know if you would like to attend. On Saturday morning I’ll post how many open spots remain. Those remaining spots can be claimed by those signing up for c) the June Brainstorm or an Annual membership.
If there are any spots left after that, they’ll be first come, first serve after I post the link on the blog about 15 minutes before the event. I’m sorry that it’s not possible to provide for any more seats, but we’ve been trying to order the upgrade for over a week now and it simply could not be done. We will keep trying, but at this point, we have to assume it won’t happen before Sunday.
Transcripts from the May session will go out to May and Annual members late tonight; I’m still cleaning it up. A transcript from the open event will be sent free to all May/June/Annual members, and since there will be people who won’t be able to attend who were planning to do so, we’ll make it free for a week for everyone else on the Castalia store.