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Tuesday, December 16, 2014

The Vertical Invasion of the Barbarians - Mario Ferreira dos Santos

Vertical Invasion of the Barbarians[1]

Foreword
The expression “vertical invasion of the barbarians” is not a creation of ours. The German politician Rathenau coined it, in the past century. However, the approach we intend to give is somewhat different from the one meant by that statesman. It behooves, then, to define our intentions, the elucidation of the concepts of invasion, vertical and barbarians.
Greeks and Romans firstly used the term barbarian as referring to all foreigners. However, later on, it became the meaning of what was not civilized, uncultured, of what fight or reject any expression of culture. That is the meaning taken within this work, but it is important to convey other aspects in order to facilitate even more the comprehension of the topic.
 The term barbarian – amongst the Greeks – not only referred to foreigners but to all non-Greek speaking people, or – for the Romans – those who didn’t speak Greek or Latin languages. Posteriorly, the Romans called barbarians those living outside Roman jurisdiction.
History has shown many horizontal invasions of the barbarians, i.e., invasions occurred with various degrees of pace and consisted of pacific or violent incursions of people into regions inhabited by others through the imposition of customs or violent power. But one can refer to the – not so bloody – invasion of the barbarians that took place within a civilized territory such as the Roman Empire – mainly in its final stages – in a gradual manner and most of the time with the internal support of the civilized people, already barbarized in many of its customs.
The gradual and wide invasion of the barbarians not only occurs horizontally through a territory incursion but also vertically all through the culture, undermining its foundations and preparing the pathway for an unproblematic corruption of the cultural cycle – as happened at the end of the Roman Empire and starts to take place amongst us.
This book is a denunciation of an invasion that, being prepared and developed throughout the past four centuries, has reached an unbearable and threatening stage. Aspiring this denouncement to reach a broader number of people, we avoided as much as possible the scientific technicism, even though its fitness to the discussed disciplines. Our language is as general as possible so to make clearer the undertaken aspects.
The facts, processes and events gathered to favor our thesis are not exhaustive but only sufficient to demonstrate it. At once the reader can notice that each subject matter could allow a more prolonged and exhaustive consideration, which was not possible otherwise becoming a bulky and restrictive book. We pointed out the barbarian aspect and allowed a long edge for the reader’s meditation.
To the Roman exclamation “barbarians outside the city walls!” one can, nowadays, answer “barbarians inside the city walls!”. The barbarians are already within the “city”, within civilization, taking on civilized garbs but, behind fine appearances, acting rampantly to dissolve our culture.
There are, notwithstanding, the corruptive predispositions within all cultural cycles, acting form the first moment with various degrees of intensity to destroy it[2].  
The corruptive elements, guided by an intelligence of malicious will, always knew how to utilize of the barbarism as a tool to undermine the culture. And nowadays they wield it with terrifying ability by printing to the corruptive work an intensity and scope never reached before.
Many can accept that as inevitable since no cultural cycle – they say – can perpetuate throughout time. But this argument, which seems true, is flatly false. If the cultural cycles are contingent, one cannot establish a required course in an absolute manner but only hypothetically. What can perish only “can” perish and its perishing is not absolutely necessary to occur early for there are possibilities to continue if a balance between the corruptive and the constructive elements is found. And it is also a possibility, as it is to the human life to indefinitely prolong. Man can perish, but may also persist. The subsistence of the contingent cannot find a definitive reason to the contrary, but only contingent. In addition, all life aspires to perpetuate. And this desire is not something that is opposed to life.
If, once knowing what corrupts things, one efficiently affixes it with conservative elements, the final destruction can be diverted to a more distant time. It might, then, extend the persistent being for an unlimited time and delay as much as one can keep the balance between opposites.
Therefore, is not a vain wish the desire to prolong our cultural cycle since what it brings with it are the supreme ideals of humanity, the rule of justice, moderation, wise and holy prudence, moderate and fair courage, elevation of women and children, equality among men, defending the rights and duties of everyone, the right of equal opportunities, the claim of freedom and denial of oppressive constraints, the love between mankind, mutual-aid, the development of science, democratization of knowledge and rise of the standard of human life. If our cycle, in short, brings together a happy synthesis of all the greatness long aspired by humanity and promise much more of what can be achieved, why would anyone desire the destruction of this cycle and would want to go back to the tooth for tooth, eye for eye, the polarities of master-slave, barbarian-civilized, oppressor-oppressed, believers-unbelievers?
If we have in our cultural structure as part of its superior ideas, all that most of humanity ardently desired and dreamed of, how to admit the destruction of what is fundamental for a more promising pathway?
Let’s reject the obstacles, fight against distortions, and strengthen what moves our march forward! But refuse the throwbacks and never retreat!
Fight for our cultural cycle and strengthen the positive aspects to prevent the development of what is negative, this is our duty!
We believe that the first step towards the fulfillment of our duty is to denounce what threat us.
That is the reason we denounce. That is the reason for this book[3].
Mario Ferreira dos Santos

Index

FIRST PART
Vertical invasion of the barbarians in sensitivities and affectivities
Exaltation of force
Exaggerated value of the physical body
Romantic overvaluation
The superiority of force over the Laws
Unbridled and biased advertising
The appreciation of mechanical memory
The appreciation of the horde, of tribalism
The exploration of sensuality
The spread of bad taste
The primitive creeds
The prominence of repetition
The reason and chaos
The appreciation of the lower
The influence of negative
The vicious exploitation of sports
Objections to Christianity
The blasphemers
The ethical problem
Sectarianism and exclusiveness
The appreciation of the criminal

PART TWO
The barbarism and intelligentsia
The devaluation of intelligence
The devaluation of the will
Barbarization of Science and Technology
The fight against universal knowledge
The falsification of the University
Separation of Religion, Philosophy and Science
The fight against the Creator
The concept of God
Fetishism
The misunderstanding between Ethics and Moral
The wayward youth
Dialogue of the deaf
Nominalism and realism
Emptied words
Harmful prejudices
The dehumanization of man
The negativists
The isms
Proletarian, the subject of ideological exploitation
Speculation in low
The rampant advertising
Primary social ideas
Naive scientism
Final words




[1] This book was originally published in May 1967, as the first volume of a collection called “A New Consciousness”.
[2] These subjects are well examined in Philosophy and History of Culture (3 volumes) and Analysis of Social Issues (3 volumes).
[3] This book is divided in two parts. In the first part we discuss about the themes predominantly related to the sensibilities and affectivities of mankind. The second part refers to the intellectuality. The vertical invasion of the barbarians processes in both fields, reason why we have made this distinction so to facilitate comprehension.

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