Desiderata For Our Time

A few inspirational thoughts from our English correspondent Seneca III for this, the Winter of Our Discontent.

Update: This post was made “sticky” at popular request, and was on top all day Sunday. Later posts appear below it, including:

Desiderata For Our Time
by Seneca III

Go with stout heart amid the noise and turmoil, and remember what peace there may be in victory. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with your own and forgive them their timidity for they do not understand what is upon them.

Give neither time nor succour to those loud and aggressive people who are inimical towards you; they are vexatious to the spirit and a threat to your person. If you compare yourself with them you waste your days in needless introspection.

Enjoy your achievements and those of your forebears, and stay true to your past. Keep yourself interested in your freedom, however demanding; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your governance, for those who would presume to govern can often be full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtues there are amongst your own; many people strive for high ideals, and everywhere the lives of your brothers and sisters are full of quiet heroism.

Speak truth unto tyrants and listen to others who do the same. Speak of this even to those of your gentle neighbours who stand confused amidst the tumult; they did not ask to be defenestrated and consumed in an inferno of treachery.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection for those who hold none for you. Neither be cynical about your love for your own; they who do not possess this gift are in all their aridity and disenchantment as sterile as the sands of their deserts.

Take wisely the council of the years, gracefully surrendering the naivety of youth; it is not ordained that your bloodline be scoured from the pages of history nor that your lives and livelihoods be torn asunder on a rack of barbarism.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness, but if you are joined each with the other who stands beside you, fatigue will not bring fear as its handmaiden.

With a wholesome discipline be firm with yourself and ruthless unto those who would destroy you. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; in absolute, you, and you alone, have the right to live safe in your ancestral lands all according to your ways.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is not unfolding as it should. Therefore be at ease with those actions you must now take in order to gift to your children a future free of chains, and give no mercy where none is due.

Hence, whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, gather together, keep your wrath quietly within and your swords close to hand then let those instruments fall heavily upon the heads of those who seek to take from you your birthright and cast it amongst swine.

Even with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, this world can be beautiful again. Be cheerful; be courageous. Strive hard and strike firmly; stride boldly into the encroaching darkness, for thus will you soon pass through it into light.

— Seneca III, Middle England, 28th of January in this the year of our Lord 2016.

For links to previous essays by Seneca III, see the Seneca III Archives.

54 thoughts on “Desiderata For Our Time

  1. THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON
    by Rudyard Kipling

    It was not part of their blood,
    It came to them very late,
    With long arrears to make good,
    When the Saxon began to hate.

    They were not easily moved,
    They were icy — willing to wait
    Till every count should be proved,
    Ere the Saxon began to hate.

    Their voices were even and low.
    Their eyes were level and straight.
    There was neither sign nor show
    When the Saxon began to hate.

    It was not preached to the crowd.
    It was not taught by the state.
    No man spoke it aloud
    When the Saxon began to hate.

    It was not suddently bred.
    It will not swiftly abate.
    Through the chilled years ahead,
    When Time shall count from the date
    That the Saxon began to hate.

      • America’s Ground Zero was shouted from the rooftops and there are annual remembrances.

        In numbers the ruined lives of the victims of Rotherham are close to the deaths of 9/11, but there is no outcry beyond the families of the children. People who dare to speak out are at risk.

        Similarly, England does not even memorialize the victims of 7/7…it is as though it never happened. It was so dispiriting to search the media for some mention in the following years. Nada…at least in the UK msm.

        That’s for 65 people killed and 700 injured.

        There is one hideous memorial “sculpture” in Hyde Park, dedicated in 2009. Why did it takes a full five years for this ‘thing’ to be erected?

        And why so stark and ugly?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings#Memorials

        • That “memorial” is so understated it is an insult to the memory of the dead. The people of Rotherham have been threatened into submission by local authorities as well as local Muslims. Some citizen had better rediscover his dormant Anglo-Saxon virility or they are done for. London will sit idly by. Soon enough, people will rise up…fast I hope.

        • Also you may remember it was quite recently desecrated by Roma homeless vagrants who were using it as a camping site and employing the commerative plaque as a table. There was only a hurried clean up after a public outcry.

          • The English seem completely inured and accepting of the status quo. Astonishing.

            And this from the country that survived the blitz?

            That said, we in North America seem to be travelling the same road, and without Stephen Harper, this country (Canada) will now become a prime moslem target under the leadership of our new ‘mosque-hopping’ PM.

    • When will the ghosts of our great past come to save us from the treachery of our post-World War 2 political classes who peddle ‘multi-culti’, and the neo-liberal economists who argue in favour of unfettered mass immigration from third world Hellholes to make the rich still richer? This is the alliance we need to defeat before we can deal with burgeoning Islam/sharia in Britain. The battle will come in the medium-term future, and those who are traitors will answer for their treachery.

      • Mr Angry and Robert: People will remain silent because of cowardice, apathy, and do nothing like they have been for sometime,. This is why the invaders are taking over and soon to control the countries of Eurostan. If rumors get out about any deportations, war will break out and mayhem unleashed in the EU. Civil war will last until many are killed off and full shiria law rules. Beta males seem to be well over ninty eight percent of European men refusing to stand up for their future. The leaders that sold out their country will be long gone by then.

        • Laura m…What then has happened to these “males”. We have a natural instinct to protect and defend our women and land…at least my generation does- I’m in my mid 60s.

          • Robert,
            This process of emasculation has been ongoing since your father and his generation defeated the Axis. Post-WW II, it was no longer polite to be overly masculine in part because of this fluff called “women’s equality.” Women are equal to men in certain ways, but not in hand-to-hand combat with physically dominating rapists who, in turn, are protected by an agenda-driven regime. Men are now confused even as to their own sexuality. An excellent video by Stefan Molyneux explains this nicely. Men need to recapture what the Greatest Generation created, and then take to the streets with sticks and stones to break some bones.

          • Robert: I think we have the same problem in the U.S. Canada has the problem now, as Muslims are moving in and the Marxist leader Trudeau is pushing the agenda full speed. The younger men today I know of aren’t like the ones decades ago, seem to be more sissified, politically correct leftist types. By the way folks, on todays news go to: thewashingtonstandard.com (click on world news) Sweden has been over run, train station taken over. Where are the real men in Stockholm and why do they refuse to act? Cowards indeed.

        • Don’t be so sure these reprobates will be “long gone”. Do we really know what happens after the body dies?

          • They will be long gone to S. America to live out their lives after being paid off by globalists for trashing their countries, then end up in hell forever when their lives end. Another possibility is that they have already converted to Islam and will lead the countries under shiria law.

      • Not if they drag you over the cliff while you protest loudly. Shouting while being kicked over the cliff is only a noisy death versus a silent death.

  2. I truly wish you could feel how we do when we read this Seneca. Your words are a sword in our hands, tears in our eyes, bravery in our hearts, wisdom in our minds.

    • That’s a beautiful and powerful text. Just as ‘never surrender’ phrase.
      Yet positive thinking and raising awareness together with stopping the insane immigration is not enough. I don’t think there’s any solution to the catastrophic reality of muslims breeding like rats.

      Here’s a fresh proof – some stats from the UK Office of Nat’l Stats.
      25 years ago the total of muslims in England & Wales was 950,000 (1.9%, 1 in 50 of the total population). In 2014, they already had 3 mln (5.4%, 1 in 20). Half of muslims are born abroad; 1 in 4 muslims is aged under 10 (number for the country is 1 in 8 children under 10).
      They are quickly taking over “through the wombs of their women”, just as promised.

      • I don’t think there’s any solution to the catastrophic reality of muslims breeding like rats.

        We can’t know the future. It has a way of producing singularities which overcome our “realism”. Read the war accounts of 1942-43 and it looks certain the Axis of Evil will triumph.

        Look at this brief cellphone video of a woman beating the tar out of an innocent migrant.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JBmIRqbf60

        Here’s a strategy to consider for all y’all strong guys out there: take a page from the taqiyyah notebook and dress like women, only in Western clothing. Carry heavy purses and hat pins. I would suggest groups of three or four so as to be prepared for whatever you meet.

        A variation: groups of burqa-clad Western men attacking the enemy.

        That is one satisfying video…

        I remember reading a study about having babies in which the author noted that two adults could have a combined IQ of say, 250 or so. Introduce a 3rd member to the group – a new-born baby, with a functioning IQ of zero. The group has just gotten dumber. As the child grows and his IQ increases, so does the acquired “IQ” wisdom of experience of his parents. It’s not until 18 years on that the IQ of the group really increases to its early levels.

        There is time to make plans…is there a will? Fortitude? Faith in your project? Belief that it’s worth sacrificing for? T

        hose are the key questions…because where there is a will, there is a way, in fact our western way of working through problems will present any number of ‘vias’…it’s not a dead aphorism at all.

        Refuse to believe the doom ‘n’ gloom stories the socialists are selling about the whole ball of wax – i.e., man’s great sins re the environment (Ma Nature is much worse than anything we can do one way or ‘tother), poverty, injustice, grievances, etc. When was the last time you read any good news in the MSM? I mean significant good news.

        I had an appointment with my cardiologist this past week. My atrial stenosis is the same or slightly worse. Since he knows I will never ever submit to by-pass surgery (NO ONE with PTSD should have their heart lifted out of their body), he says tht the technology is advancing so fast they’ll probably have a remedy for my stenosis when it worsens to the point of actually needing remediation. That’s encouraging, but I’m prepared to not have a solution. No one lives forever…all we can do is make what time we have left possess as much “heart” as possible. One way to do that is to refrain from thinking (a) in a linear fashion about history; and (b) letting the Left’s Henny-Penny-the-sky-is-falling kind of ‘fenking’ take over.

        FENKING: An attempt to think using one’s faculty of Reason but being diverted by habit and by despair’s familiar tropes, and by the press of public discourse into Feeling instead. Reason eventually atrophies. Read any Telegraph opinion piece to see a case in point.

  3. Very encouraging. I hope Baron, that you will keep this at the top a few days so that everyone may see it.

  4. Well said Seneca. It is truly sad that it has come to this, a Desiderata of war through which it is hoped that peace will emerge.
    “and so they worked and carried on, with a sword in one hand to defend against the enemy who opposed them and a trowel in the other hand to build the wall to protect them and their families.” Nehemiah

    • A war hoping for peace is a long jump. Wars are usually fought over freedom. Justly fought to the end, peace follows.

  5. Words of wisdom. Europe will fail first. Government is the root of evil. I talk to people who want more than anything to be totally dependent on the GREAT GOVERNMENT GOD. They have zero concept about financial reality. They think the potentates in Washington are all knowing and all seeing. They don’t want to be free , they want to be taken care of.

    • Sharon, you have hit upon the problem…the infection of welfare state liberalism. America or Europe, both have the virus. As long as benefits flow even though bullets fly, people want to be cared for just long enough for them to die when their time is up.

      • Sharon and Robert, I have read articles on various sites detailing USA collapse by year 2020, from excess debt, welfare causing this country to collapse financially and/or by civil unrest. Over half population will be gone from civil war, lack of food, medical care, etc. to incl. diseases, some from poor sanitation. If enough invaders are here by then, some cities will be taken over and run under shiria law. People will go into hiding and have to live off the land or hunted down by the bad guys and taken into slavery or killed.

        • laura m,
          Then again, it might not come to the scenario you predict. Imagine progressive women forced to wear burquas and hijabs; imagine homosexuals put to death on the streets; the clothing industry is changed overnight; “liberated” women are forced to cower to their rapist masters.

          There is nothing sweeter than seeing a progressive admit defeat and beg for mercy. Then again, liberals carry a highly contagious disease called madness which they carry to the grave. So, you might be right.

  6. Taken out of context but a sentiment that might apply in other times, this one especially:

    There is sobbing of the strong,
    And a pall upon the land;
    But the People in their weeping
    Bare the iron hand:
    Beware the People weeping
    When they bare the iron hand.

    From Herman Melville “The Martyr”

  7. Dymphna, I don’t know. I think it’s ugly (perhaps I jumped to the conclusion that it was ugly on purpose because the attack was horrible). But I don’t suppose that you can prettify something as terrible as terrorist attacks. I suppose only the friends and family of the victims could make that judgment. sorry.

  8. Comments of George Young, SIS Station Chief Middle East 1950s

    “I discovered the pattern of minds so different that I would have to abandon completely, the verbal descriptions we use automatically in European discourse.” He believed that the Arabs suffered from that ‘perpetual neurosis…which makes words like ‘truth’, ‘falsehood’, ‘sincerity’ and ‘treachery’ such inadequate descriptions when our ambassadors report on their dealings with Middle Eastern rulers’.
    He wrote that men in the Arab lands had not evolved ‘from a tool-making animal’ into one conveying meaning ‘by conceptualized systems of symbols’ and thought that no matter ‘whatever wealth or material welfare they may acquire, either by their own acute intelligence or by the fruits of Western development and commerce, a point will always come when the discrepancy between their dreams and the reality becomes too great to bear and there will be a desperate effort to find relief in a new focus of hate’.
    Young later told his officers that the Arab’s chief characteristic ‘is a simple joy in destruction which has to be experienced to be believed…There is no gladder sound to the Arab ear than the crunch of glass and his favorite spectacle is that of human suffering…While the European has been building, the Arab has looted and torn down’.”

    • arabs/moslems, the most useless of people, and look what has happened to any and all countries which have let them in….

      Now, nearly the entire western world has invited the moslems in–as honoured guests, plied with benefits, housing, women, children even! There is no boundary to the lunacy our so-called leaders are exhibiting!

      Two men I knew who were stationed in the ME during WW2 had similar views:
      “The most useless, dirty, lazy, devious liars on god’s green earth!”

  9. We have a lot of hard work to do if we want to survive: How to overwhelm our own detractors and critical theorists; how to fight a world guerrilla war against hundreds of radical Muslim groups, not only ISIS and yet be able to wage a conventional defense against other groups such as China or Russia; how to destroy or nullify Iranian or Pakistani or North Korean bombs and missiles and other WMDs; how to protect our electronic infra-structure from EMP; we have to help Europe clean up its refugee disaster; we have to start cranking up our economy and GDP and improving our health care so that we are financially strong; we have to be mindful of the west’s diminishing fertility rates and maybe some policy is needed here; we have to keep listening to ALL scientists about our climate and de-politicize all fanatical views–true science is never settled; we have to be sure that our politicians are thoroughly educated about Islam and its history; and we have to continue internal housekeeping–controlled borders and healthy immigration policy, drugs, mental health.

    We really cannot fail at any of these.

    • At the risk of radical oversimplification, our troubles have arisen and grown under the umbrella of Political Correctness, or smog, as R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. calls it. Dissipate the smog and light breaks through, rational thought recovers, problems can be addressed and then solved.

      In this respect, faults and all, I think Trump has rendered a signal service. The issue of the invasions of America, plural, would not have been addressed, too un-PC, had not Trump boldly declared that he would build a wall and then in light of the San Bernardino attack, called for a halt, if only temporary, to admitting Muslim “refugees.” And when the inevitable smears of “racisss bigot!” were thrown at him he dismissed them for the nonsense they are. He made a clearing in the smog. He took the first step. What follows we do not know. But perhaps the journey back to light has begun.

  10. Thank you for a splendid article, Seneca III, I bow my head in admiration. If only we could all live up to your ideals!

    • Ah, but that’s why ideals exist, Mr Lexow: we aim for them even as we know our outreaching desire will always exceed our grasp. Otherwise, why bother getting up in the morning?

      PS That was the difference pointed out in the Christians’ early on theological conflict between the perfect and the good-enough.

  11. Things are never as good, or as bad as we suspect. But it’s always been true to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

    If you live in Europe and have the means to move to the Americas – don’t wait.

  12. seneca III is always a pleasure to read.
    D’s rapier point prose is ‘penetrating’ to say the least ..
    a workout to read the posts printed here.

  13. Balkinization and partition is now a reality for all Western Europe countries – as an interim measure before eventual conquest by someone or other.

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