I will have to check this out. Seems like something out a Star Wars movie.
Star Wars is a fiction, but it was based on the galactic history.
There’s no doubt that ancient civilization existed on Mars, with pyramids and all the weird artificial structures. Two gigantic nuke bombs eradicated all that.
Dr Brandenburg says the nuke bombs exploded somewhere upwind from the Mars cities, with the intention to kill all the living things with the bomb impact and then with radiation.
These massive explosions evaporated the ocean and blew away the atmosphere. (After so many years, the atmosphere returned to Mars but the ocean is no more)
Other sources say it was part of the long-standing war between reptilian races and humanoid races, and it was the lovely Pleiadians who assembled the huge bombs (the size of the Empire State Building each, according to Brandenburg) in space and dropped them on Mars.
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Napoleon was a master orator But we would NOT know this without Balzac In 1838, Balzac went through all of Napoleon speeches And saved his best insights in a book 10 bangers from the king!
1/ “I found the Crown of France lying in the gutter, and picked it up with my sword.”
1/ Napoleon on freedom:
“If one analyses it, political freedom is an accepted myth thought up by those governing to put the governed to sleep.”
Power is always concentrated at the top -
Different political systems and doctrines are merely different ways of hiding this fact
2/ Napoleon on Equality:
“Equality exists only in theory.”
No man-made political programs can reverse the innate inequality of nature:
“Social law can give all men equal rights. Nature will never give them equal faculties.”
3/ Napoleon on being too precautious:
“The torment of precaution is worse than the dangers it seeks to avoid: it is better to abandon yourself to destiny.”
The compulsive need to preempt and predict all problems is its own type of hell
Over preparation is cowardice by proxy
4/ Napoleon on the French Revolution:
“The nobility would have survived if it had known how to master the writing desk”
Public opinion ended nobility as much as violent force
The nobles failed to convince the public that they served a valuable role
Media always matters…
5/ Napoleon on how to POLICE:
“The art of the police consists in punishing rarely and severely”
Power should mostly be invisible from people’s everyday lives:
“Authority should make itself felt as little as possible and should not weigh on the people needlessly”
6/ Napoleon on how logic bros lose wars:
“There are men who, because of their physical and moral constitution, tend to schematize everything: whatever their knowledge, intellect, or courage, nature has not brought them here to command an army”
Don’t get lost in abstraction
7/ Napoleon on genius:
“Misfortune is the midwife of genius.”
No training module or a certified program can pull out a person’s best like a brush with tragedy can
8/ Napoleon on Democracy and Despotism:
“Democratic governments border on anarchy, monarchy on despotism. Anarchy is powerless; despotism can do great things”
Napoleon believed in the madness of crowds, as opposed to their wisdom:
“The people must be saved against their will”
9/ People think the powerful are evil but THIS is the real motivation behind men who get into history books.
Power is not the end point but the beginning. To have power is to have the space, tools, and time to be creative. To birth something from nothing. Napoleon said it best
10/ Napoleon on Courage:
“Courage can’t be counterfeited - it’s a virtue which escapes hypocrisy.”
You can pretend to be kind
You can pretend to be intelligent
But you can’t pretend to be brave
Courage is unfakeable
I sometimes think “The Young Napoleon Bonaparte Studying At The Military Academy” is the hardest painting of all time
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If he had known a little bit more about conspiracy theories and satanist conspirators behind the scenes, the European history would have been different (and better).
Or simply the Rothschild’s evil plan to rule the world through banking.
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Balzac is a brilliant example of human expression as an expedient measure of consciousness to communicate efficiently and concise. There are more quotes from this collection but these are most salient to meditation upon
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What would I do without my Balzac?
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No joke! Essential reading suggest by Musk himself.
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Satanism is a religion.
No more, no less.
Incidentally, Buddhism is atheism. This is not meant to be a put-down. (Early) Buddhists strove to attain enlightenment through their yogic exercises and meditation. There was no room nor time to be spent praying to various gods. The light was to be found only “inside.”
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This I am going to disagree agree with you on. Atheism is having no belief in anything. People who practice Buddhism believe in what they are practicing and that is not a good example of atheism.
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I love this line because it’s cut and dry and the truth. Maybe that is why it’s so easy to identify the fake politicians today because all of them are cowards!
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Yeah its a poignant statement. Courage can’t be faked. Interesting times we live in to actually see humanity attempt to revert back to the mean during a crisis only to continuously fail.
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This post is credited to “The Culture Tutor”
What is most interesting about this thread is the fact that Art tells us a lot about civilizations and what they projected to be or what they possible were in contrast to beauty verses reality. As you will see the differences in Greek and Roman art as well as the evolution of culture as its expressed in art.
We begin in Ancient Greece, with an Athenian statue from the 5th century BC.
Here is the victor of an athletic contest. What do we see?
This is not a specific individual; it is a generic, idealised face and body.
The same is true for many Greek statues from the 5th and 4th centuries BC.
Their faces and bodies are not intended to be those of real people. Rather, they represent the Greek ideal of what a human being can be, and what a human ought to aspire to become.
And even when a specific person is portrayed, and we can clearly see the features of a recognisable individual, they are still idealised.
Lysippos’ bust of Alexander was praised for how it maintained his appearance and personality while also giving it a god-like countenance.
Now, for contrast, look at statues from the Ancient Roman Republic, in this case from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.
The difference is striking. There is no idealisation here, no attempt to portray human beauty. These are the real faces of real people, warts and wrinkles and all.
And this makes sense. For the Ancient Romans poverty was a virtue. They thought of themselves as hard-headed, honest, vigorous people.
To have a weatherbeaten face, worn with age and work, was a sign of wisdom and of virtue.
The ideal Roman was simple, not beautiful.
And so the Romans were uneasy about the Greeks.
When Ancient Greek art first arrived in Rome, along with Greek philosophy, many people called it decadent, luxurious, and corrupting.
But, in the end, Greek culture won and the Romans were thoroughly Hellenised.
It may be true that the Romans weren’t actually the sort of honest, down-to-earth people they wanted to seem like in their art.
But this makes it more interesting: these statues reflect what they wanted to be, even more than what they really were.
And this doesn’t stop with the Greeks and the Romans.
It has always been true that we can trust a society’s art more than what they said about themselves to figure out who they were and what was important to them.
The art of Ancient Mesopotamia was filled with bulls and sheep; we may conclude that this was an agricultural society.
In Ancient Egypt, meanwhile, we find monumental statues of Pharaohs; it seems clear that these were figures who possessed almost unimaginable power.
In the lead up to the French Revolution there was a major shift in French art.
Throughout the 18th century it was rather frivolous, hedonistic depictions of the aristocracy that had dominated art, as in the work of Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
But soon it was scenes from Ancient Roman history that became popular, as in the work of Jacques-Louis David.
Notice too the stylistic shift: from bright colours and loose brushwork to harsh lines and more severity.
Times were clearly changing — revolution followed.
It’s no coincidence that Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington, made in 1832, portrays America’s first President as a Classical hero.
The Founding Fathers saw themselves as the inheritors of Greece and Rome.
Art, once again, expressing self-perception.
In the 19th century it was normal to make statues of politicians and generals — consider Nelson’s Column in London, built in honour of Admiral Nelson.
This might either tell us politicians and generals were held in higher regard back then, or simply indicate who held most power.
In the 21st century? Statues of sporting stars are far more common than statues of politicians or generals.
Perhaps it indicates how much more democratic we have become, when the real heroes of the people — rather than those who simply hold power — are revered the most.
What did Soviet art depict? One of two things: either the political leaders, as in this colossal and now-demolished statue of Stalin.
Or the workers, as in the huge Worker and Kolkhoz Woman statue.
Art and artists in service of the state.
The portrayal of working people in art was nothing new — the difference came in how they were depicted.
Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners, an early example of Realism, portrays workers in a wholly unidealised way.
As opposed to Soviet art, in which workers were heroised.
Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance there were endless paintings of Mary and Jesus.
That these were deeply religious societies is clear, but look at how much these paintings differ stylistically.
Art also tells us how a society sees and understands the world.
Medieval art was much less “realistic”, but this changed during the Renaissance.
One style represents a more distant and symbolic understanding of the world, while the other suggests a proto-scientific one, in which the world exists to be investigated and understood.
Much Western art of the 20th century, from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism, seems to indicate an uncertainty about the world, about reality, and even about humankind.
Strange, incomprehensible, discomforting.
An accurate reflection of how many feel about modern life?
Of course, the most popular art forms of the 21st century are cinema and television, and most popular of all are superheroes.
Is it a form of honest escapism? Or do we want to believe that, like our superheroes, we are in some way special and different from everybody else?
And so art also expresses social anxieties.
19th century Romanticism was a reaction against the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
The Romantics preferred mystery, emotion, and nature to science, reason, and industry — they feared the effects of the latter.
Whether a renewed focus on the beauty of the natural world itself or a fascination with its cataclysmic power — which we, however clever we think ourselves, are helpless to resist — the message is clear.
Horror at the ongoing destruction of nature, literally and spiritually.
Actions speak louder than words, because actions result from choices, and choices are a consequence of priorities and intentions.
Art — making it and consuming it — is action. And so through art we can read into those choices, priorities, and intentions.
What a society believes in, how it sees itself, what it wants to be — art tells us all of this.
What a society feared, how it worked, who held power — art also tells us this.
And so, if we want to understand the 21st century, art might be the best way to do so…
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Human notion of beauty seems to change over time. What was beautiful in the past may not be beautiful today. By the same token, what is beautiful today (or what we think is beautiful) may not be beautiful in the future. As you say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Stone age art from Germany
This figurine from Ubaid (Iraq) dates back 7,000 or so years.
A mother nursing a child has been a religious motif in the Near East and Europe for thousands of years. But why is she a reptile?
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Indeed. What is interesting however while looking at history through the lens of Art is how some cultures produced art based on how they wanted to be perceived verse the realistic aspect as exemplified in the contrast of Roman and Greek art. Also Roman art evolved to be what they want to be perceived verses how their non sentimental approach to art was in the past to a more simplified air.
Another interesting perspective for me in this presentation is how modern art is filled with chaos and less reverence for the human form or life for that matter. The Heroes are sports icons and Marvel Universe (imaginary ones) but not politicians of the modern age. While also modern culture is obsessed with tearing down statues and virtue signaling and not producing anything of importance while pertaining to beauty and art. How will future civilizations best remember our current time?
There certainly won’t be any memorialized political leaders for they are all liars and thieves and that is reserved for when there was such a time where such leaders had virtues.
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The European Middle Ages are dubbed “the Dark Ages.”
Were they really?
I absolutely agree. I can’t think of any period of human history and prehistory darker than the 20th and 21st centuries. This applies to art and politics.
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Is it fair to say that humanity in all its forms lost its will to create meaningful art anymore? Does it get worse with the arms race of AI? Man or human figures lose their importance and are no longer revered is expressed in a cultures art. Maybe that is why we have such horrible art today?
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