Nice Brazilian Surprise - Olavo de Carvalho


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Nice Brazilian Surprise - Olavo de Carvalho

While I was in Brazil, I kept seeing the name Olavo de Carvalho on news articles and around and about. But I never got into him for some reason.

In my perception, he was a political and cultural pundit of the mainstream back then. Neither perfume nor stink.

But now I see I should have read him. Like David Horowitz, he started out as a Marxist, rejected Marxism and gradually evolved into adopting the conservative-libertarian kind of views I hold (with some differences, as always). 

He has become one of the intellectual forces behind Presidente Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil's more-or-less equivalent to President Trump).

What's more, he now lives in Richmond, Virginia. Just recently, Dr. Steve Turley interviewed him. This is a very interesting conversation and is more about philosophy than Brazil, especially about the nature of modern philosophy. There's some focus on the Frankfurt school, which I remember was a big thing in Brazil among the intelligentsia.

But speaking of that, there is one comment Carvalho made about communism in Brazil that I witnessed. He said communism (in academia) was not preached so much as protected. Nobody really read the books or understood it in depth, but it was a no-no to bash it. This is 100% in line with what I experienced. Even with the famous leftie singer (Geraldo Vandré) I once produced.

If you are interested in a clear but different discussion of philosophy that is quite compatible with most Objectivist ideas, watch these videos and enjoy. I certainly did.

 

Part 1.

 

Part 2.

 

Part 3.

 

Part 4.

 

I'm going to get some of his books, but unfortunately, they are mostly in Portuguese. I kinda like the title of one (translated): The Collective Imbecile. You can read a translated excerpt on his site: An essay from The Collective Imbecile.

It starts out discussing intellectual things in Brazil, but as it goes on, I swear I see modern academia in the US in it, especially the social and fine arts humanities departments.

Here is an excerpt. He is discussing the similarities in ideas between two intellectuals who are influential in Brazilian academia. See if this doesn't describe modern American higher education in the social sciences and humanities, from which springs BLM, MeToo, diversity qua diversity, multiple gender movements and all the rest.

Quote

The most significant of these similarities is the denial of objective knowledge and the consequent reduction of intellectual activity to propaganda and conscience manipulation. Both Gramsci and Rorty deny that human knowledge may describe the real, and both declare that the only objective of our cultural and scientific efforts is to express collective desires. Also, for both of them, there are no universal concepts, nor universally valid judgements. But we can “create” universals through propaganda, making all people share in the same beliefs or, better said, in the same illusions. The function of intellectuality is therefore to create those illusions and, as Rorty says, “gradually inculcate them” in the mind of the people. They disagree only on the identity of the intellectual: for Rorty, he is the academic community, while for Gramsci it is the Party or the “collective intellectual”.

These two ghostly entities, whose task is to direct the consciences of beings without a conscience, are formed by individuals who, by themselves, do not have any conscience at all. They also share the utmost disregard for arguments and proofs and display an exaggerated taste for the psychological action that shapes the feelings of the mass without allowing for any discussion and without being accountable to the requirements of “truth”. In both of them, the shrewdness in manipulating the real substitutes the intelligence of knowing it. Manipulating the real? No. Manipulating its image in the mind of the public.

Michael

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