FRANCIS BERGER - Francis Berger - Berger's Blog

A Return to Deep and Consistent Reading

14/12/2018

I have been a terrible reader these past two or three years. Not only have I read little, but I have read poorly.

I have blamed my work and the time I have invested into renovating the old house I bought back in 2016 for my lack of reading, but I know these are merely an excuses. In all honesty, I have wasted the little free time I do have by substituting the reading of great books with the browsing of internet media nonsense. Rather than read one of the thousands of books I have yearned to read, I perused newspapers, blogs, and YouTube videos online instead.

Needless to say, my reading muscles have grown quite flabby and atrophied as a result. Perhaps this is part of the reason I have been so horribly fooled by some rather mediocre books in the past few years. Regardless, I will build my reading muscles back up again, starting today. The one-to-three hours I had spent browsing online content will now go toward books. I am certain the change will improve the overall quality of my life and return to me, what is slowly becoming, an almost forgotten pleasure.

Jordan Peterson: A Mirror and A Black Hole

12/12/2018

A black hole because of the odd gravitational force Jordan Peterson exerts on people with his uncanny ability to draw people in through words. For me it was his pronoun warrioring, his anti-communism, his respect for Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, his seeming interest in Christianity, and that he was from Canada, the country where I had spent my formative years. For others it may have been his self-help tripe, or his Jungian archetypes, or his free speech rants, or his rabid defense of men. Others may have been drawn to him out of disagreement and outrage. Regardless of the reason, like a black hole, Peterson possesses strong gravitational effects.

I surmise Peterson is able to pull people in because the manner in which he presents his ideas acts as a kind of mirror. An actual mirror reflects what is placed before it - albeit reversed in the direction perpendicular to the mirror surface, but Peterson's mirroring technique is a little different. He seems to possess a manner of communication that is both exact enough and vague enough to reflect back what the viewer wishes to see rather than what is there. He also has a way of expounding certain thoughts, and then walking them back or tempering them somewhat when he later revisits them. He is extremely conscious of his intended audience, and carefully crafts words to please whomever sits before him. Put simply, Peterson seems to have mastered an almost subconscious form of pandering (all definitions of this final word fully intended).

As mentioned above, I was drawn to Peterson when I heard him ranting on about the dangers of communism. I not only found his words refreshing, but they seemined reflected my own abhorrence of communism. Then he spoke of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and I began to regard him as a kindred spirit. When he gave lectures on the Bible, I presumed he was finding a way of reintroducing Christianity to the secular masses in the West. Yet as the months passed, the reflective surface of Peterson's mirror grew distorted. I began to pay closer attention to what he was actually promulgating and then compared these re-evaluations to an ever-increasing list of his inconsistencies and sophistries. His mirror losts its allure when I attempted to read his 12 Rules for Life, which happened to coincide with the media's initiation of him into the Intellectual Dark Web.

Now if you are a JBP devotee who does not intend to re-evaluate Peterson, peace be with you.

But if you have been dedicating a considerable amount of time to Peterson's work, are well-disposed to what he preaches, but have never really thought about why, do yourself a favor and take a cold, hard, objective look at what might actually be happening as you read or listen to him.

Are you really hearing his words or are you only hearing the words you want to hear?

Keep one thing in mind irrespective of the conclusions you ultimately draw - black holes are peculiar things.

No light escapes them.

Somehow Not Asocial Enough

11/12/2018

And that is the realization I have come to when I evaluate most of the artists, thinkers, commentators, writers, and other assorted platform builders currently infesting the internet. They are far too eager to be social.

Now, I am a fairly sociable person when I am out in the world, but I am averse to social media and the kind of online sociability that now seem almost mandatory to anyone creative.

Try this little test . . .

Next time you go online to search for your favorite online personalities, take a moment, lower your head towards the monitor, and inhale deeply through your nostrils. You may detect a faint, yet pungent odor wafting up from the screen. That sickly sweet smell is an unholy combination of sharpened eagerness, blind earnestness, raw ambition, and cold greed, and it emanates from every platform builder caught up in the pursuit of wealth, fame, and recognition. They want you to befriend them on social media and become their facebook pal, these materialist strivers. Go ahead, follow them on Twitter, subscribe to them on You Tube and, most importantly, send them money through Patreon. Receive their monthly newsletters. Watch their latest video. They are so social; so connected; so in the loop. I guess they have to be because it seems that is what it takes to make it these days. And don’t kid yourself, what most people online want above all else is to make it, and they will make almost anything To. Make. It.

Of course, you must be online. You must have exposure. You must find your niche. You must build that platform because you know that subscribers and followers are a new, faceless digital currency you can exchange on the open market. Without them you have nothing with which to trade, no validity of which to boast, and no latent power to yield. So you must dedicate yourself to increasing your numbers and going viral. With any luck, you could land in the mainstream media, which you publicly scorn and claim is dying. Yet you secretly hope for the day you can ride that dying dinosaur and really hit the big time.

And if that is what you truly want, I hope you do.

Me? I’m not interested in any of and I never really ever was. My infrequent attempts to engage in social media in an effort to build a platform always made me uncomfortable and I have vowed not bother with it again in the future beyond this site. I have a social life in the real world, one that needs no supplementation from the web. If using social media is what it takes to make it these days then I guess I just won’t make it. Besides, I got my sights set on deeper things. Higher things. Regardless, I will keep writing, and I will keep focusing on salvation, and by doing so I strive to truly make it by not really making it all.

My Blog - A Series of False Starts

9/12/2018

When I look at this blog, one thing springs to mind - it has been little more than a series of false starts.

My primary reason for setting up this website and blog was to build a platform for my self-published novel. Originally, I intended to use the blog to promote the novel and my writing, and for the first couple of years, I focused almost exclusively on writing-related themes like self-publishing, creativity, editing, and book marketing.

As the years passed, I occasionally dabbled into politics and social criticism by writing vitriolic rants railing against some political or cultural event or other, but I had no overall motivation to become a full-time political blogger or social critic back then. Hence, those kinds of posts appeared in fits and starts and were often followed by extensive periods of silence.

Every now and then I wrote about writers and thinkers I admire (or had admired), but my experience doing this has often inspired regret (see the Jordan Peterson posts in this blog for cringeworthy examples of this).

There were times I approached the blog with the cold calculation of a marketer, writing posts I hoped might get views or trend online in some fashion. I regard these posts as my worst and most regrettable as they are both ingratiating and insincere.

In retrospect, it is painfully obvious that I never possessed any clear notions concerning the nature of this blog, which is why it is literally been nothing more than a series of false starts.

Over the past six months, I have contemplated abandoning the blog altogether, but something prevents me from doing so. Though I doubt it will lead to much, I have instead decided continuing the blog, but only after I establishing a clear sense of purpose.

What is this purpose?

Truth. Beauty. Goodness.

The posts following this one will focus almost exclusively on the transcendentals.

Jordan Peterson - The Smoke Cloud After the Fireworks Show Has Ended

17/10/2018

I admit it. I had high hopes for Jordan Peterson. I went out of my way to laud him many times on this blog, but I must confess that my admiration for the man has waned considerably in the past two or three months.

I won't go into the reasons why at the moment; all I will say is this - for me, Jordan Peterson has become nothing more than the faint cloud of smoke one sees dissipating into the air immediately after the fireworks display has ended.

Hungary Will Survive

19/9/2018

For days I have been mulling over the EU's recent decision to trigger Article 7 proceedings against Hungary, the country I now call my home. I have been entertaining notions of writing some blog responses about the matter, but I have decided against this for now. Perhaps I will address it all in the coming days and weeks.

The EU's decision did not surprise me. It is all part of an extremely old war that Hungary has been embroiled in for the better part of a century. Article 7 is merely the most recent battle. Rather than wade into all right now, I will leave you instead with small, but uplifting excerpt from my novel The City of Earthly Desire that confirms my heartfelt conviction that Hungary shall prevail against the EU regardless of what the eurocrats do.

Enjoy.

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Taken from the final chapter of The City of Earthly Desire -

“Boy, this white stag is like a movie star around here!” Béla said sarcastically. “Well it doesn’t matter. A herd of white stags couldn’t help this country. Hungary is a trap. It’s cursed. What a place! Always overrun and conquered by some outside force or other, and when it wasn’t, the people turned against each other. There’s no hope for anyone here. There never was – there never will be. It probably would have been better for the world if Hungary had been completely wiped from the map at some point.”

“But it wasn’t,” Brigitta said coldly. “And it never will be. It’s true - we have a tragic history, a history of defeat. Unlike you, I believe this gives us strength. The Tatars killed nearly everyone, but Béla IV rebuilt the ravaged country. Hungary remains, but where are the Tatars now? The same could be said of the Ottomans, the Nazis, the Soviets – they all conquered us, defeated us, but in the end, we have survived them all. Where are the Ottoman, Nazi, and Soviet empires now? They are all gone, but Hungary remains. Hungary survives because it understands the nature of defeat; it understands that, when all is said and done, we are all defeated. But Hungary never lost itself in defeat. The Hungarian spirit survived regardless of who lorded over the land. That is the only victory that counts. That’s how I approach life. When I was younger, the communists defeated me, but they never managed to completely conquer me. I maintained my integrity and survived them. I will do the same against the forces that have invaded Hungary now. They may defeat me, but they will never conquer me. One day they will dissolve, and I will remain, my head held high.”

Rest Assured, I Am Still Alive and Well

6/7/2018

Due to my lack of activity over the past few months, some have likely assumed that I have abandoned this site, blog, and writing. Rest assured, I have not. Truth is, I have been busy with other things, but I have vowed to become more active again in the near future after my vacation time starts. In the meantime, I will provide more proof that I am still alive and well. Here's a recent and rather silly photo of me hanging out with some friends and enjoying the warm weather near Sopron, Hungary.

Change of Focus - Not Interested in Platform Building Anymore

14/5/2018

From here on, I will treat this blog more like a journal and abandon any ulterior motives about platform building and other such rubbish I may have entertained in the past.

Intellectual Dark Web, My Ass

14/5/2018

These Dark Web guys, Jordan Peterson included, are apparently mainstream now.

A Distinctive Wine Region - A Longer Translation

26/3/2018

It was a pleasure and honor to translate the second edition of Ferenc Horvath's Különc Borvidék (A Distinctive Wine Region), which covers the history of Sopron's wine culture. Unfortunately, the printers omitted the article "A" on the cover, but the rest of the translation turned out quite well, in my humble opinion.

The book will be in Hungarian bookstores soon.