Here I must stand

When I was reviewing books and other products on Amazon, a fellow reviewer whose moniker unfortunately escapes me at the present time, asked me to clarify my political and philosophical positions. This was probably back in 2016, but I still stand by most of the things in this little manifesto...I think!  

Your observations are interesting. When I began posting reviews on Amazon, I considered myself to be a moderate leftist (with certain similarities to the “decent left” in Britain), a feminist and a skeptic in matters religious, although not necessarily a “materialist” in the strictest sense of that term. If you´re right-wing, you´re not going to like my earliest material! Today, I´m less sure where I stand – I tend to take “liberal” positions by default, but I´m really a seeker both politically and philosophically/spiritually. One work that influenced me a lot is “The Long Descent” by John Michael Greer, a peak oil book about the inevitable decline of modern civilization. That decline makes the most optimistic strands of liberalism or leftism somewhat problematic.

While I can´t say I like or “support” Trump, I do believe he is a symptom of something larger, and this larger thing isn´t necessarily all-negative. The Donald is channeling real grievances with globalism, and so was Bernie Sanders until he sold out. Perhaps the “solution” (if that´s the right word for it) is to combine Sanders´ leftist sides with Trump´s nationalist sides? My impression is that “right-wing” neo-liberals and “left-wing” left-liberals have united and created a single globalist elite, which (bizarrely) tries to use “Muslim” fundamentalists as cannon fodder to further their agenda. We can see this in the Clinton campaign, which unites everyone from left-liberals to Neo-Cons around a globalist program that includes support for Al-Qaeda clones in Syria and elsewhere.

As for philosophy/spirituality, I have certain sympathies both for Christianity, Neoplatonism and evolutionary spirituality such as Theosophy. It probably makes no sense, but there you go. The book that awakened me from my dogmatic materialist slumber was Colin McGinn´s “The Mysterious Flame”. I was also influenced by David Ray Griffin´s “Whitehead´s Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy”. My ironic reviews about the paranormal are of course partly self-ironic – I´m actually intrigued by paranormal phenomena, but somehow can´t shake the feeling that the whole thing is crazy!

Thanks for making me spell out my thoughts, by the way. I may have needed it… ;-)