Blog Archives

Website Problems

10/30/2019

A few readers have recently informed me that they are encountering the following message when they attempt to access this blog:

Your connection is not private

Attackers might be trying to steal your information from www.francisberger.com (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). Learn more
NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

I experienced this as well on Sunday, but have since had no trouble getting to the site. I have been trying to figure out what the problem may be, but have not succeeded in discovering the root cause. I highly doubt hacking is involved. I mean, you would have to be an awfully bored hacker to waste your time messing around with this meager blog. In any event, I will keep investigating the issue until I figure out what the actual problem is, but that could take a while as I am not the most tech savvy individual on the internet.

Any insights, suggestions, or advice concerning the error code above are welcome and would be much appreciated!

11 Comments

Revising Is Never As Satisfying As Writing

10/29/2019

0 Comments

For the simple reason that writing is raw creation while revising is strained crafting. Revision is a filtering process - a sifting to locate and remove perceived impurities. To revise is to clarify, rectify, and purify. Vital, yes - but how can it possibly compare to the sincerity inherent in creation?

I have heard many refer to writing as a craft. I personally find the term abhorrent. Writing a craft? Sure, like dancing. No, I beg to differ - the only crafting in the writing process happens during revision when writers stop being writers and instead become artificers.

0 Comments

An Interesting Take on The Family Portrait

10/28/2019

0 Comments

Before the advent of photography, portrait painting was one of the the only means through which individuals could preserve a likeness of themselves for posterity. Unsurprisingly, having one's portrait painted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was almost exclusively a privilege of the aristocracy and upper classes. Of these portraits, the vast majority appear rather stiff and lifeless. The subjects are usually rigid, and they almost always, without fail, stare out fixedly at the viewer in a manner that at once is both unnatural and, oftentimes, unnerving.

Henrik Weber (1818 - 1866), a Hungarian portrait and history painter who worked exclusively in the Realist style, offers an imaginative take on the portrait through the depiction of his own family. I am not very familiar with Weber's artwork, but I recently stumbled across this charming portrait of his own family - a portrait that flies in the face of conventional portrait composition. Not only does Weber succeed in bringing the personality of each of his family members to life, he also endearingly captures the essence of the subtle, loving relationships dynamically weaving through the family itself. Notice that none of the subjects are looking directly at the viewer, but rather at each other or at objects typifying their personalities. This choice on Weber's part, coupled with the clustered arrangement of the figures themselves, is both an engaging take on family portraiture and, in my humble opinion, a masterstroke of composition. Interestingly enough, the artist chose to depict himself with his face obscured and his back turned to the viewer - once again, a masterstroke.

The Weber Family - Henrik Weber - 1846

0 Comments

Old Women's Summer

10/26/2019

2 Comments

When I lived in North America, a longer stretch of warm, dry weather in autumn was referred to as an Indian summer. Although I enjoyed Indian summers, I never understood the term itself, and my attempts to discover why Indian summers are called Indian summers in North America have yet to yield anything meaningful or substantial. If anyone out there knows the origin and meaning of the term, please let me know.

Luckily, I have not had to ponder over the meaning of Indian summers since moving to Hungary nearly five years ago. Over here, longer periods of unseasonably warm dry weather in the autumn are called old women's summers. Here's the catch - like the term Indian summer used in the US and Canada, I have no clue where the term old women's summer comes from.

Hungary obviously did not have any Native Americans within its borders centuries ago (or proper Indians from India, for that matter), so it would have been ridiculous for them to call warm spells in the fall Indian summers. They did, however, likely have an abundance of old women. Or maybe old women has something to with time - summer starts as a child and becomes an old woman when the leaves start turning, or something to that effect.

Whatever the case, we have had an amazing old women's summer in Hungary this year. Over two weeks of bright sunshine and plus twenty-degree temperatures. It has been absolutely delightful. The only downside is I am still cutting the grass! But it is a small price to pay for the pleasant, dry air and wonderful sunshine we have been basking in for the better part of October.

But all good things eventually come to an end. Weather forecasters are predicting our old women's summer will come to an abrupt halt on Monday and be replaced by more seasonable under ten-degree temperatures and cold, miserable rain. The old women will reach the end of their time and go on to a better place. Unfortunately, they will take their fine weather with them, and leave us with . . . with what exactly? Grumpy toddlers' autumn? Mischievous grade schoolers' late autumn? Clinically-depressed, borderline-suicidal adolescents' early winter?

2 Comments

What Kind of Christianity Could Save the West?

10/25/2019

22 Comments

If religion – more specifically, Christianity – is the only thing that can save the West, then which form of institutional Christianity currently operating in West can we rely on to step forward and attempt the task?

The simple answer – none of them.

This is a formidable, seemingly insurmountable, dilemma. The West desperately needs to reconnect with Christianity to save itself from its current death spiral, but it cannot do so through the organized Christian churches operating within its borders because nearly all contemporary Christian churches and institutions operating in the West have been converged and corrupted, likely beyond any hope of redemption.

This begs the question – how can the West save itself through Christianity if it cannot turn to its churches for guidance and support?

I have no clear answer at the moment; all I can offer is speculation. I imagine any return to genuine Christianity will have to begin at the level of individuals and families and then perhaps extend to small communities. It will have to be an authentic, organic, bottom-up process that circumvents current channels of church authority. It will have to be a new and evolved form of Christianity, one that is both much more and, paradoxically, much less than the Christianity that has brought the West to its current stage of spiritual development (or degeneration). Over time, this bottom-up process may be able to influence organized Christian institutions and re-align them toward Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, but I would not hold my breath over that possibility, at least not in the short term.

Perhaps this bottom-up process of Christianity would eventually establish new churches. Then again, maybe the next stage of Christianity will not require churches at all, at least in the way we currently conceptualize churches. Perhaps something better could take their place.

Whatever the case, the best we can hope for at the moment is a mass awakening at the level of individuals. Sadly, I see extremely meager signs of anything like that occurring right now.

But one must remain hopeful.

In the end, it seems the only kind of Christianity that can save the West is a Christianity that does not yet exist, or, at best, exists only very faintly at the moment – like small points of light scattered across an otherwise pitch-dark landscape.

Note: To call this prognosis bleak would be an understatement, and I am fully aware that I have made some sizable sweeping generalizations in the above. For example, I do not believe that all priests and clergy within organized Christian churches have been corrupted. Likewise, I am certain there a few churches here and there that have preserved their integrity. But in my estimation, the number of priests/clergy and churches that have been converged far outnumber the ones that have not, to say nothing of the churchgoers themselves. I imagine some on the so-called secular right are apostate Christians who abandoned the faith because of the corruption and convergence they rightly identified within contemporary Christian institutions. All the same, I can't help but feel these individuals have done little more than, to borrow an old cliché, throw the baby out with the bathwater - something they themselves will eventually realize when their attempts to save the West without Christianity go nowhere (or, even worse, end up creating a hell just as bad as the one their leftist counterparts are currently constructing).

22 Comments

Only Religion (Christianity) Can Save The West

10/25/2019

17 Comments

Most readers of this blog undoubtedly read Bruce Charlton's Notions. As such, they have likely read the important post Dr. Charlton published on his blog yesterday and will find the link I share here superfluous and redundant. Nevertheless, I have decided to share Dr. Charlton's post from yesterday in the off chance that some readers of this blog have not read it. It is my sincere hope that those on the secular right encounter Dr. Charlton's post, and that it makes them pause and re-evaluate their own assumptions about the decline of the West and what it will take to save it.

Look, many blogs and bloggers, particularly on the secular right, are passionately dedicated to saving the West, but the vast majority of these blogs and bloggers fail to understand that religion, more specifically Christianity, is the only thing that can save the West. This is the crucial point Dr. Charlton makes in his post - a crucial point many simply refuse to recognize.

Without Christianity, the West is doomed. End of story.

No change in government, no return to tradition, no nationalism, no pursuit of ethnic cohesion, and no rehabilitation of conventional morals can or will save the West unless it is firmly rooted in Christianity first.

Simply put - anyone who believes the West can be saved without Christianity is deluded.

I first came to this realization after reading Solzhenitsyn, but Dr. Charlton's observations on the subject strike me as more pertinent because they focus specifically on the West - here and now. Sadly, the West here and now is even less interested in religion than it was when Solzhenitsyn issued his prophetic warnings regarding the dissolution of the West - prophetic warnings that have since evolved into tangible and palpable realities.

I have included a few excerpts from Dr. Charlton's post below, but I urge those who have not read the entire text to so by clicking here.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

The West is crumbling towards death.

There is nowadays a strong assumption against positive purposiveness. The modern mind wants to explain everything in terms of negative causes such as accident, randomness, incompetence, selfishness.

And this is partly true - this is 'natural' - and a consequence of the failure of cohesion. This is due to the loss of religion - specifically Christianity. Nothing has ever been found to replace religion as a cohesive motivation for any length of time. Without religion it is rational to live in a selfish and short-termist way because - why not?

Without religion people are crazy, psychotic, insane - that is they have lost their basic instincts for survival and (overall) seek their own death and also are actively seeking that which is false and which harms them.

It is the loss of religion, the denial of the spiritual, the denial that this is a created world with purpose and meaning, that has made Men seek their own annihilation, and consequently institutional annihilation, national annihilation.

That is the root of it all - that is the primary cause - and if it is not cured, then we will die with absolute certainty; we will die (en masse) physically but also (more importantly) spiritually - both by neglect of that which is needed to survive and by death being an expression of what people most deeply want.

17 Comments

Thoughts on The "Failed" 1956 Hungarian Uprising Against Communism

10/23/2019

4 Comments

Today Hungary commemorated the sixty-third anniversary of its failed uprising against the Stalinist Soviet regime in 1956. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the deeper implications of the 1956 Uprising over the past week. One thing I ruminated on was violence. Although I am not a violent man and generally do not condone violence, I do believe there are times when violence is not only justified, but needed. Though pacifism is currently being touted as a major virtue, I am no pacifist and I don't believe pacifism is a virtue. In fact, hold pacifism to be a sin, something to be equated with passive-ism; that is, an inability or refusal to stand up to aggression or oppression even when absolutely necessary. Sometimes things need to be defended; and sometimes things need to be attacked. I firmly believe the 1956 Hungarian Uprising was one of those times when standing up was absolutely necessary. And despite its ultimate failure and the death and destruction it created, I think the struggle was a virtuous one. It appears Hungarians feel the same way, which helps explain why they commemorate October 23rd every year.

Another thing I thought about was failure. The word “failure” is ubiquitous in Hungarian history. In fact, I can think of few countries that have “failed” as often as Hungary has. A mere three hundred years after its establishment as a Christian kingdom, the country and its people were nearly wiped off the European map by the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century. Three centuries later, Hungary suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Mohács and was subsequently occupied by the Ottoman Empire for nearly two centuries. After the Turks left, the country was essentially incorporated into the Austrian Empire by the House of Habsburg. The Hungarians revolted against the Austrians in the nineteenth-century, but the revolt, yes you guessed it, failed. Hungary was on the losing side of the First World War and consequently lost two-thirds of its historical territory as well as more than one-third of its population. When the Second World War ended, Hungary found itself on the losing side once again. Shortly after the war, the country was essentially annexed by the Soviets who quickly installed a Stalinist government in Budapest. A decade later, the Hungarians revolted against the communist regime. As mentioned above, the uprising ultimately failed, and Hungary endured communism for another three decades afterward.

Nevertheless, despite its failures Hungary continues to exist. Oddly enough, it has somehow managed to find success in this long list of failures. The empires and enemies it unsuccessfully attempted to defend itself against are all gone, yet Hungary remains. True, it is but a shadow of its former self, but the country continues on regardless, stretching its 1100 year history farther into the unknown future. The same cannot be said of the Ottomans or the Soviets, despite their many historical successes.

Perhaps there is something more to success and failure than meets the eye. Perhaps some failures in the physical world resound as great successes in the metaphysical realm. Conversely, some successes in the material world may actually mask tremendous failures in the spiritual realm. Whatever the case, it’s certainly something worth thinking about.

4 Comments

What is Missing From the Conspiracy Theories the Secular Right Promulgates?

10/22/2019

6 Comments

I am favourably inclined to conspiracy theories, which means I am, at the very least, willing to entertain or consider the claims most conspiracy theorists make. This willingness stems from being acutely aware of the Establishment’s strategy of branding as a conspiracy theory anything that challenges the official narrative, and the knowledge that the Establishment always employs the conspiracy theory label as a pejorative - as a means to discredit and ridicule those who dare to contradict mainstream accounts of current events or history.

Although I am open-minded about conspiracy theories, I must admit most of them leave me unsatisfied. I find many to be irrelevant. Some are simply outlandish or downright silly. Others, too messy and convoluted. Conversely, many are too neat and methodical. Nevertheless, a handful of conspiracy theories do offer helpful insights that are usually closer to the truth than anything the mainstream media manages to concoct. Some of the most plausible and believable conspiracy theories emanate from the secular right, but as plausible and believable as these secular rightist conspiracy theories are, they frequently lack the one crucial component that would make them virtually undeniable – a focus on the spiritual objectives behind the material machinations.

A big problem with secular right conspiracy theories – at least for me – is ultimate objectives. In other words, what do those on the secular right believe the conspirators ultimately want to achieve through their sinister plotting and scheming? Well, according to the secular right, the Establishment’s conspiratorial objectives are as follows: the destruction of the family; moral inversion (especially through sex); power consolidation; economic, political, and social tyranny; enslavement; disenfranchisement; civilizational dissolution; the abandonment of tradition; the eradication of nations; perpetual surveillance and spying; and the establishment of a globalist, one world government. The objectives themselves appear solid enough. One does not have to stare at the world too much to find evidence that the Establishment is indeed actively pursuing these goals in the world. But there’s the rub. What force, motivation, or desire drives the Establishment's conspiratorial objectives?

Let’s imagine the Establishment succeeds in achieving all of its objectives. One world government has been established. The Establishment owns and controls everything. People are family-less, impoverished pervert-slaves with no sense of identity and no place to call home. They can’t remember or are afraid to recollect anything from the past and are at the complete mercy of the Establishment. Great! Mission accomplished. But here’s a question – what does the Establishment do after that? Simply lord over everyone to ensure maximum misery is in effect at all times? Torture people for the fun of it? Conduct bizarre transhumanist experiments in an effort to create some kind of Nietzschean superman? Depopulate the planet and let it heal so that it becomes a global five star resort where the Establishment can enjoy a permanent holiday while being catered to by a select group of servants they spared from the sword or the gas or the virus? Nuke the planet and unleash the ultimate Gotterdammerung that consumes everything including them?

When assessing the Establishment’s plots and schemes, the secular right focuses exclusively on physical and material considerations in this world – and that is where their theories fall short. Above all else, the Establishment seeks to establish and maintain a system of damnation through which it can perpetually turn people away from Heaven and the Divine. The establishment works to create conditions in which people willingly reject God and actively embrace their own damnation. The objectives outlined above, such as destruction of the family and the dissolution of nations, are all simply means to that end. The Establishment does not wish to outright destroy us during our mortal lives; instead, it seeks to inspire us to destroy our immortal lives through the choices we make, the thoughts we think, and the actions we take in this world. That is what the secular right refuses to acknowledge and that is what their conspiracy theories ultimately miss.

It's a massive oversight - akin to thinking an iceberg is nothing more than what can be seen above the water.

6 Comments

Evil in the System or An Evil System? The Example of Hungary

10/20/2019

5 Comments

In my previous post I divided those who recognize evil in our current system into two distinct camps: those who believe the system can be saved by removing the evil that has corrupted it: and those who believe the system itself is evil.

In the following, I hope to illustrate the attitudes inherent in each of these "camps" as well as how these attitudes influence their approach to evil.

Contemporary Hungary, led by Viktor Orbán, is squarely in the first camp, especially when it comes to the European Union. The Orbán government is shrewd enough to comprehend the evil within the EU, but it has approached this evil as something that merely plagues an otherwise inherently good system. Current Hungarian diplomacy is based on the belief that the evil within the EU is a just stain on the system rather than the core foundation of the system itself. In a nutshell, the Orbán government likens the evil within the EU to a cancerous tumor, one that can be surgically removed through political action.

Hungarians who rose up against the Stalinist regime and Soviet occupation in 1956 were clearly in the second camp. Those who revolted in 1956 did not regard communism as an inherently good thing that had been corrupted - as something that could be saved by removing the corrosive elements within it. They saw the system for what it was - an embodiment of evil. Those who rose up against communism in 1956 were not interested in negotiating with the system, or finding common ground with the system, or winning concessions from the system. They wanted one thing and one thing only - the complete obliteration of the system. And many gave their lives in an attempt to achieve this goal. In the minds of many at the time, dying in a struggle against an evil system was infinitely better than continuing to live passively within an evil system.

The 1956 Hungarian Uprising ultimately failed, but it did leave its mark. Thirty-three years after the event, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe. On the surface, it looked like the red star had been destroyed forever. But the red star was not destroyed. It merely changed its form. The forces Orbán and his government are currently confronting are essentially the same forces Hungarians battled against in 1956.

The Orbán government needs to acknowledge this fact as it prepares to commemorate the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. And if it sincerely wants to honor the memories of those who gave their lives in the struggle against evil, the Orbán government will have to begin seeing the evil within the EU for what it truly is - and act accordingly.

5 Comments

Evil in the System or An Evil System?

10/19/2019

24 Comments

People who perceive the evil gripping the West can generally be divided in two distinct groups.

The first group believes the system has been corrupted, and they advocate for the removal of the evil forces and elements that have caused the corruption. Put another way, people in this camp believe the system is inherently good, or at least was inherently good before dark interests debased it. Purge the evil from the system, the first group argues, and the system can be saved.

The second group, on the other hand, sees the system as purposefully corrupt and evil. People in this group believe the system has been designed by evil for the purpose of creating chaos and promoting damnation. Evil cannot be purged from the system because the system itself is evil embodied. Purging evil from the system would result in the elimination of the system (which is exactly what most in the second group believe should / needs to happen).

So where do you land? Do you see evil in a corrupted but otherwise good system? Or do you see only an evil system?

24 Comments

<<Previous