Rilke on the Transformative Power of Human Achievement

One of the most beautiful modern poems is Rainer Maria Rilke's Ninth Elegy. Rilke, who was Czech and wrote in German, died at age 51 in 1926. There is considerable mystery in the poem, which is the ninth of ten "Duino Elegies", his most famous work. The poem acclaims the transformative nature of the human mind and seems to be related to Kantian Idealism, the idea that the real depends on the construction of the human mind. In this article Jan Wojcik argues that Rilke was influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most famous American Kantian or "Transcendentalist". Although Kant was not a libertarian (he bases his philosophy of justice -law or right- on Rousseau's social contract), you can read Kant in a libertarian way. For the categorical imperative requires that each individual be treated as an end, and state compulsion treats human beings as means. The welfare state is inconsistent with Kantian ethics. To be fair, Kant held that it is required to obey the law and that revolution is immoral. He was not Lockean. I wonder if that's what got the Germans into trouble.

Notice the reference to laurel in the opening stanza. When a Greek athlete won a contest, an agon, he was awarded a laurel crown. So too, the poet. Thus, the phrase "poet laureate" was a medieval reference to the laurel crown awarded to poets in classical Greece. Note too that the poem refers to words, to "logoi", that are the poet's materials of transformation, as when he asks:

"Are we here perhaps just to say:
house, bridge, well, gate, jug, fruit tree, window--
at most, column, tower... but to say, understand this, to say it
as the Things themselves never fervently thought to be."

If words transform being, or create being as the reality of human experience, then might not human achievement be our ultimate purpose and the world's fulfillment? In my favorite passage Rilke writes of the angel who is more advanced spiritually and emotionally but is not familiar with achievement in the material world:

"Praise the world to the angel, not the unutterable world;
you cannot astonish him with your glorious feelings;
in the universe, where he feels more sensitively,
you're just a beginner. Therefore, show him the simple
thing that is shaped in passing from father to son,
that lives near our hands and eyes as our very own.
Tell him about the Things. He'll stand amazed, as you stood
beside the rope-maker in Rome, or the potter on the Nile.
Show him how happy a thing can be, how blameless and ours;
how even the lamentation of sorrow purely decides
to take form, serves as a thing, or dies
in a thing, and blissfully in the beyond
escapes the violin."


Rainer Maria Rilke (C. F. MacIntyre, translator)

"The Ninth Elegy"

Duino Elegies

Why, if it's possible to spend this span
of existence as laurel, a little darker than all
other greens, with little waves on every
leaf-edge (like the smile of a breeze), why, then,
must we be human and, shunning destiny,
long for it?...

Oh, not because happiness,

that over-hasty profit of loss impending, exists.
Not from curiosity, or to practise the heart,
that would also be in the laurel...
but because to be here is much, and the transient Here
seems to need and concern us strangely. Us, the most transient.
Everyone once, once only. Just once and no more.
And we also once, Never again. But this having been
once, although only once, to have been of the earth,
seems irrevocable.

And so we drive ourselves and want to achieve it,
want to hold it in our simple hands,
in the surfeited gaze and in the speechless heart.
want to become it. give it to whom? Rather
keep all forever...but to the other realm,
alas, what can be taken? Not the power of seeing,
learned here so slowly, and nothing that's happened here.
Nothing. Maybe the suffering? Before all, the heaviness
and long experience of love--unutterable things.
But later, under the stars, what then? They are better untold of.
The wanderer does not bring a handful of earth,
the unutterable, from the mountain slope to the valley,
but a pure word he has learned, the blue
and yellow gentian. Are we here perhaps just to say:
house, bridge, well, gate, jug, fruit tree, window--
at most, column, tower... but to say, understand this, to say it
as the Things themselves never fervently thought to be.
Is it not the hidden cunning of secretive earth
when it urges on the lovers, that everything seems transfigured
in their feelings? Threshold, what is it for two lovers
that they wear away a little of their own older doorstill,
they also, after the many before,
and before those yet coming...lightly?

Here is the time for the unutterable, here, its country.
Speak and acknowledge it. More than ever
the things that we can live by are falling away,
supplanted by an action without symbol.
An action beneath crusts that easily crack, as soon as
the inner working outgrows and otherwise limits itself.
Our heart exists between hammers,
like the tongue between the teeth,
but notwithstanding, the tongue
always remains the praiser.

Praise the world to the angel, not the unutterable world;
you cannot astonish him with your glorious feelings;
in the universe, where he feels more sensitively,
you're just a beginner. Therefore, show him the simple
thing that is shaped in passing from father to son,
that lives near our hands and eyes as our very own.
Tell him about the Things. He'll stand amazed, as you stood
beside the rope-maker in Rome, or the potter on the Nile.
Show him how happy a thing can be, how blameless and ours;
how even the lamentation of sorrow purely decides
to take form, serves as a thing, or dies
in a thing, and blissfully in the beyond
escapes the violin. And these things that live,
slipping away, understand that you praise them;
transitory themselves, they trust us for rescue,
us, the most transient of all. They wish us to transmute them
in our invisible heart--oh, infinitely into us! Whoever we are.

Earth, isn't this what you want: invisibly
to arise in us? Is it not your dream
to be some day invisible? Earth! Invisible!
What, if not transformation, is your insistent commission?
Earth, dear one, I will! Oh, believe it needs
not one more of your springtimes to win me over.
One, just one, is already too much for my blood.
From afar I'm utterly determined to be yours.
You were always right and your sacred revelation is the intimate death.
Behold, I'm alive. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows less...surplus of existence
is welling up in my heart.

UN Agenda 21

Sharad Karkhanis just sent me this video about UN Agenda 21. Not only do we need to worry about half witted legislators and politicians in New York, sucking our resources dry; not only do we need to worry about ignorant morons like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama at the federal level; but, as well, the United Nations is engaged in an ongoing attack on human civilization.

The video mentions that dumbing down of students is an intentional goal of UN Agenda 21. The UN argues that educated people consume more resources, so it is better that students be innumerate and illiterate so that they will consume less.

It is time for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations. An international league of states is useful to forestall war, but the bureaucracy of the United Nations has little to do with the avoidance of war. Rather, the United Nations is a agency that fosters totalitarianism.

Obamacare Unconstitutional, the United States Now a Tyranny

A reader makes the claim that Congress has the power to tax, and since the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act (Obamacare) is a form of taxation, that it is constitutional. This is mistaken. Obamacare is unconstitutional, as is much of the legislation that the federal government has passed since the New Deal of the 1930s. The Supreme Court has arrogated power to the federal government since then without concern for the Constitution. The separation of powers on which the Constitution is based broke down decades ago, as the Supreme Court is little more than a publicity wing for federal tyrants. The reason is that Franklin D. Roosevelt had threatened the Court that he would increase the number of justices and plant in the Court a large number of socialists who have no regard for freedom and the American way of life unless it declared several bills, including the National Labor Relations Act, constitutional. Before the threat the Supreme Court refused to do so. After Roosevelt's threat, they changed their vote.

Preferring power over legal concerns and decency, the Supreme Court since the 1930s has been willing to justify virtually any and every expansion of federal power, even those that obviously violate the Constitution. Internment of Japanese in concentration camps? No problem. Laws that cripple the American economy? No problem. Laws that allow government to steal citizens' land and give it to private developers? No problem. There has been scarcely an ugly, murderous expansion of government that the Supreme Court has not been willing to declare "constitutional".

The Supreme Court is not really a court in most peoples' understanding of the word. Rather, it is a propaganda agency along the lines of the Soviet state newspaper Izvestia whose aim was to justify tyranny.

Analysis

It is perfectly constitutional for the federal government to levy taxes on the states. This is permitted by Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, which states:

"The Congress shall have power To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."

Article I Section 9 clarifies the last sentence, restricting the power to tax quite specifically:

"No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken."

The capitation tax that Obamacare charges is not proportioned. The sixteenth amendment was passed to allow income taxation that is not proportioned. However, the Obamacare tax is not an income tax. It is an unproportioned direct tax. Therefore, it is unconstitutional.

The sixteenth amendment, which eliminates the apportionment requirement with respect to income, does not apply to a health care capitation tax:

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

Nor can other provisions of the Constitution be used to justify Obamacare.

The necessary and proper clause states:

"The Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."

Hamilton used the necessary and proper clause to justify the establishment of a national or central bank (the Fed). However, health reform is not relevant to the powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution. Fixing broken arms and knee surgery are not among the duties granted to Congress. Hence, the necessary and proper clause does not apply.

The Tenth Amendment is quite clear. It states:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Virtually all of the legislation that the federal government has passed in its history violates the Tenth Amendment, arguably including the Fed (in other words, many, such as President Andrew Jackson, have held that Hamilton was wrong).

Orwellian Claim of Interstate Commerce Regulation

Much of the federal legislation that has been passed since the 1930s has claimed to regulate interstate commerce, which is generally untrue. In other words, the Supreme Court and Congress have simply lied in order to justify passage of legislation that they deem expedient. Which is to say that the Constitution has been a dead letter for many decades, not that it is a living organism. The purpose of the Constitution is not to pretend that we have a legitimate government, but to separate and limit the powers of government so that the energies of the people can be directed toward progress. The federal government has been a serious impediment to progress since the 19th century, and in recent decades has been increasingly so. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has been eager to extend the powers of the state in every way inconsistent with the Constitution. Hence, the United States is no longer a Republic but a violent tyranny.

Stock Market Will Be Flat over Next Ten Years--Boomers Will Work 'til They Drop

The Great Depression lasted nearly ten years. The reason for depressions is that the Federal Reserve Bank creates excessive liquidity. The liquidity is used to stimulate the economy, but the stimulation is in the wrong place. For example, there may be no demand for an additional shoe store at 6% interest, but if interest rates are brought down to 4% then a new shoe store becomes viable. But the new shoe store will be sustainable only at 4% rates. If rates are kept that low, the amount of money created will exceed the value to the economy that the shoe store adds. The result is inflation. The public starts to realize that it is subsidizing businesses that cannot be reasonably justified. Everyone is paying out money through inflation so that the shoe store can stay in business. Better to make the shoemaker welfare payments and not waste so much money. The public starts to protest. The Fed then contracts the money supply, raising interest rates back to 6% or even 7%. The shoe store closes. In 1980 the prime rate was in the twenties. The higher interest rates throw more businesses out of business than were started due to the initial stimulus. A depression occurs.

What has forestalled the inflation is overseas sovereign investors' subsidization. Never before in history have other countries been willing to make themselves poorer by purchasing the additional liquidity that a country creates to keep interest rates low. This phenomenon will not last forever. It could last for 10 years, though.

Because there has been inflation in line with the past 20 years (eg., in the 3-4% range, and recently none due to credit contraction) there has been little impetus to raise interest rates. In fact they have been reduced in order to limit the effects of the bank credit contraction, which occurred for the very same reason as inflation. The Fed created excessive reserves, and mismanaged banks lent money via credit cards and mortgages that were unlikely to be repaid. When this pattern of lending had to change, there was a market collapse.

Because of these policies the country has been becoming poorer but not through inflation. Rather, the credit collapse caused people to lose jobs even though interest rates have not been raised.

Interest rates are now almost as low as they can be. If rates are raised significantly, additional businesses will be closed. If rates continue this low for long, the foreign subsidies to our economy will eventually end. The Fed has created an unsustainable system.

The period of time that this will take to clear up will be longer than the Great Depression. If you count the market decline of 2001 as part of this cycle, it already has been as long as the Great Depression. It may not be cleared up in the Boomers' lifetime.

That leads to the question of what Boomers are to do about retirement. The savings rate has been low, and few boomers have the assets to retire. A rising stock market such as existed up until 2000, ten years ago, would have subsidized the Boomers and allowed them to retire. As well, Social Security has been curtailed since their parents' day (the retirement age will be 67 or likely older), and anyway, Social Security is insufficient for retirement for all except the poor.

But the Boomers may be forced into retirement because of job losses due to the Federal Reserve Bank's being forced to raise rates. If the economy had been allowed to progress naturally there would have been better businesses, more innovation, less overseas plant transfers and a more dynamic economy. The misallocations due to the Fed would have been smaller.

If there were no Fed there would have been no problem.

In inflation-adjusted terms the stock market will not be able to advance until the misallocation of credit has been cleared up; the real estate market is stable and advancing; firms can be subsidized with additional Federal Reserve monetary creation; and inflation is stable. That is, for the stock market to begin advancing the basis for a new bubble will need to be created. This is what Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan did in 1979-1982 by allowing Paul Volcker to contract the amount of money and raise interest rates to very high real levels.

True reform of the American economy so that innovation is spurred in the way it was in the late 19th century will require major economic upheaval and abolition of the Federal Reserve Bank.

I doubt that either party has the courage to do this now. Hence, the stock market will not in the long term advance in real terms, although it might advance in nominal (not inflation adjusted) terms if the Fed continues to subsidize it through monetary expansion. In that case hyper-inflation with non-asset holders getting squeezed as real wages are further diminished is a real possibility.