The balance of the natural and social world
Apparently I missed this kind post by Jim where he calls me clever but pessimistic. Guilty as charged. I agree with his point though. Irrational optimism works. I'm just not very good at it. Which is why I've been reading and writing on how to generate it exogenously, i.e. for people like me.
The discussion there at Jim is uncharacteristically good. The main issue people ask is that you can't just make up a new religion. That's a good point. It's also a bummer, given that my shtick for 5 years has been that We Need a New Religion (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). But once you understand what religion is about, what it is for, it's obvious that you can't just make one up from thin air. Any coordination mechanism for groups, any set of ideas to generate loyalty is more likely to work if it feeds upon previous ideas which are out there, preferably for a long time. If only to make people not feel inadequate about their past ideological stances. If you want Christians to join your group you should make them feel good about having been a Christian; at least parts of it. Ever read the Quran? The writer was very, very familiar with Christianity and Judaism. Christianity was of course also based on Judaism. And Judaism on ages old tribal traditions of the Hebrew tribes. Hardly any religion has ever been produced ex-nihilo. Japan tried to make a religion out of the (purported) tribal traditions of the Japanese people but they just couldn't beat up centuries of Buddhist faith.
It follows that the solution would be to come up with a slightly modified version of Christianity. It would make it easier to get our natural allies on the right side of the Christian community to join the institution of a reactionary society. The problem is, as many correctly argue on the comments at Jim's, that Christianity is a leftist cult. The teachings of Jesus are pure and simple leftist agitation. The rich go to hell. The poor will inherit the earth. Prostitutes are as noble as any of you. If some white guy wrote a Medium long-form post talking on his experiences touching and healing lepers we would all call him a holier-than-thou virtue signaller.
Many argue that the teachings of the Church (whichever you fancy) are distinct from those of Jesus alone, and we just need to follow those instead of just reading the bible. And there's a point to that; but the teachings of the Church aren't particularly reactionary either. They haven't been for ages. There's plenty of exhortations to respect women and give to the poor and be a general Nice Guy. A guy like Donald Trump using his fame to grab hot pussy would have been busted in any Christian community in any time and space. Christianity just doesn't do that. It's a nice cult. The Romans knew that: plenty of Roman writers wrote about these meek Christians who sold feminism to their women, messing with good old classical mores.
So yeah, Christianity is leftist by nature. At least leftist indeed to not be very conducive to a hard move to the right as the West is sorely in need of. But... Christianity did beat the Romans, didn't it? And it's had a pretty impressive track record at least until 1965. Plenty of Christians do remind us that Christianity is the West, and we can't save one without the other. They have a point. What made Christianity so successful?
Well first of all Christianity wasn't successful everywhere. It certainly was in Europe. But not in the Middle East. Islam surely beat it there. And the few Christian communities that remained since antiquity until the 2003 Iraq War weren't anything to call home about.
It seems to me that Christianity as a mildly leftist, i.e. socialist and feminist cult, it had an important role to play in the ancient and medieval world. Especially the medieval world, where barbarians roamed Europe at will. The world of a barbarian is the complete opposite of a modern one. Barbarians are manly. Very much so. There's this Jack Donovan guy pulling a Yukio Mishima and translating his gayness into poetry about how cool the barbarian Way of Man is, how awesome are the men it produces. Which it is. We all love Conan. It's cool. It looks like tons of fun.
It's still messed up in many ways. In modern parlance, the barbarian world is a world of toxic masculinity. It's a world where men do whatever the hell they want. In my parlance, it's a world of bro signalling spirals. Which is a lot of fun for men. But it produces pretty crappy societies. It's stupidly violent. It despises menial, boring work. It despises family life for the pursuit of vainglory and pussy. It's nasty, brutish and short. That's what you get when men do what their feel like.
In that kind of world, having Christian institutions trying to get men to stop hunting for a while and just fucking till the land and feeding their children, is actually a pretty good idea. Shaming a man to sticking with his ugly and nagging wife even though she's a total bitch is a pretty good idea if you want children to survive and food surplus to get grown. Getting elite men to not shoot each other over stupid slights, to not drink too much and moderate their appetites, to don't spend their inheritance in women and parties... was pretty much hopeless for the most part. But to the extent it succeeded it had a civilizing effect.
So to speak in modern terms, if you have a society which is, due to its historical background or its technological level, naturally shifted to the right, having a pole of lefty ideas produces a pretty healthy balance, one where men get a bit of what they want, women get a bit of what they want, and we're all better off thanks to it.
That's obviously not what we got today. The situation in 2016 is one where feminism is the law of the land, men doing what men do by nature (cf. Trump) is illegal and strictly punished, and every single institution with some power just pushes the same leftist ideas. Women are better, open borders is good, everybody has the right to organize and fight for their selfish interests except white men. In this circumstances if we want to restore some balance, if we want civilization to work, we need the complete opposite of what Christianity was. We need a big fat magnet of rightist ideas, a rightist pole to exert the same influence on our feminized society that Christianity had on the manly society of the Middle Ages.
It seems to me that Christianity can't possibly be that. What could be? Your guess is as good as mine. If you've been reading this blog you probably know one answer. But again I like it as little as you do. For all purposes I'm still for a New Religion.
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[…] The Loudspeaker […]
Well, that's what you get for being a bunch of punks. There are more Han than Hui, but the Hui stick up for each other, right or wrong, and the Han do not. Same thing happens in the Russian army, where the Muslim conscripts abuse and torment the Russian ones, even though the Russians outnumber them.
By the way, the only source of cohesion available to normal people is either religion or grievance. The Hui are not much different culturally or genetically than the Han, but they believe that if you let heathens beat up Muslims, Allah will be unhappy, so are instantly willing to sacrifice safety to stand up for other Hui. The Han have no such beliefs and thus have a sheeplike mentality.
[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]
By now everyone must have read numerous times that Trump is done because he has said Bad Things. Why should this time be different?, His appeal is that he is an anti-establishement candidate and that he is not politically correct I find your writting about signaling very interesting. I'm convinced that it is descriptive of our present state, but I'm sceptic whether it is also predictive. Now you have made a prediction. We'll soon see in polls whether the tape has hurt Trump or not. Sure, we Need a New Religion. We still don't have it. But I see increasing rejection of the present pseudo-religion of progressivism. Trump is part of that phenomenon. The rise of "right-wing", anti-EU, anti-Immigration parties in Europe is another. How do you explain that? Defecting from the progressive narrative costs people status points. Yet still it happened and is presently happening.
It's a good question, one which I've discussed at length in other venues. I believe there's two issues with contrarianism. One is that the whole point of status is to get you desirable mates. And rampant feminism has made that very hard. Progressive status doesn't necessarily get you laid with desirable women. You might as well game them and stop playing the progressive status rat-race. The second is that the world economy is in shambles. The usual decline-and-fall cycle of rent seeking and demographics means that economic growth is dead. For decades. It's over. So competition for good jobs, i.e. places with high status, is higher than ever. That makes many people just give up and drop out. And if you drop out you might as well join some plausible idea system, i.e. a status ladder where you might get to the top before everyone else.
Yes, there is that. But there is also an increased cost of believing or even pretending to believe in progressivism. If the government builds a "refugee shelter" in your neighborhood, your quality of life drops. Significantly. Being on the top offers very little protection from such a change of your neighborhood, at least in Germany. Sure, people can argue that they are pro open borders, but against a "refugee shelter" in this particular place, but they all know that if the open border policy continues there eventually (well within their lifetime) will be a shelter everywhere. In any believe system there are the fervent believers, the not so fervent believers, and -if there are status points to be had- the pretend to believers. The costs of believing might not matter to the fervent believer, the potential martyr, but they do for anybody else.
[…] The balance of the natural and social world […]
I recently watched "Conan" for the first time, and it didn't make a lot of sense. How does Conan build huge muscles while pushing the Wheel of Pain? Are his captors feeding him protein powder, or is he eating his fellow captives, who disappear one by one without explanation? Then he's a gladiator, a slave forced to fight to the death for the amusement of crowds. Why doesn't he just slay his master and become a free agent? The star trio of warriors includes a Strong Independent Woman. They're attacked by ghostly supernatural forces but are able to fight them off. Their enemy is a white-robed suicide cult led by snake-handling magicians who haven't aged a day since slaughtering Conan's tribe 20 years ago. One bad guy is killed by luring him into a giant mousetrap -- if he were smarter than a mouse, he would have avoided or disabled it. And the heroes regale each other with comic-book theology, "I worship Ka'aa, because he controls the rain and the wind!"
Well that's bro culture for you.
The books were better, given you habe any appetite for pulp picaresque.
Nothing. We need a new religion; a new religion is impossible. The logical conclusion: we're utterly doomed.
You must get called to a lot of parties.
[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]
Behold the New Religion that is eating the inside of The Cathedral in the Pacific Rim! https://youtu.be/0qo78R\_yYFA Praise Be To The Techo-Prophets!
[insert Carlyle quotes about phallus-worship here] Space sucks, it's cold, there's no air to breathe. Nothing very interesting up there as far as I can tell that requires personal inspection.
What an uninspiring religion you are offering! Perhaps you will offer Aztec style child sacrifices as more inspiring instead....
In terms of social effectiveness for the masses human sacrifice is far more effective. I'd wager there are more regular women sharing selfies of abortion than all races who give a tinkers dam about space travel Anyway "progress" as a religion is at best stupid. At worst, its the cause of most of our troubles. My guess here is speaking for Western folk is out natural religion is closer to animism with deities than anything organized and that is what we will default to As far as building complex civilizations filled with people who have no particular reason to cooperate with one another so that everyone can live the merchant's ideal life, maybe we should reconsider the idea, A series of smaller volkish civilizations with some sort of defense pact might work for us. The issue we face isn't "Western Civilization" declining as much as foreign invasion That we need to deal with, the rest will self correct
This is basically right. Land is the prophet of the future. Not a mass religion, but a religion for the elite. Nietzschean glory and power seeking for those on the cutting edge. Oh right for the rest of the white schmucks stuck in middle america/europe, fucked. There is no new religion.
The obvious first step for anyone interested in having a new religion is to draw up a few core ideas and use them to start a mutual benefit society with a small group of like minded locals, and build from there. Even Mohammed got started in his garage, basically, with just a simple idea of smashing the idols around the Ka'aba - and that was after he'd been rejected for marriage by his first cousin and had to settle for an 'old lady' widower with children from two previous marriages. Hardly an 'alpha bro' beginning. Religions don't spring into life fully mature with texts, hymnals, cathedrals, etc. There's a lot of trial and error and evolution involved. But all of them do start with an idea and a gathering.
I'm going to catch flak from B, but the West's best bet is a restoration to the five books of Moses. The rabbinic and Christian modules both neuter the war status sectors in favor of material and holy, or just holy sectors. Religious leadership needs to be extremely vigilant and explicitly order oriented (right wing). I'm not sure it can work with the baggage of two millennia of plenty, but I know that only a very centralized religion will be successful in the information age. Decentralized religions iterate rapidly in the direction of maximum holiness, and partially centralized religions iterate at a pace faster than I suspect is sustainable.
@Jefferson: There is a big difference between the Christian and Jewish-Rabbinic signaling spirals: the former is inherently leftist. The latter is about following the letter of the law, which also can lead to excess. There is a brilliant essay by Moshe Koppel, which touches upon this type of excess (http://azure.org.il/include/print.php?id=588). Some excerpts: "The effectiveness of signals can, however, vary with time and circumstance. In the world of American Orthodox Judaism, the refusal to eat non-kosher meat or Hostess Twinkies was once regarded as sufficiently onerous, due to the dearth of alternatives, that it could serve as an effective signal. But then the easy availability of kosher meat and snacks rendered such signals ineffective, because they were insufficiently costly. As a result, the old signals were replaced by new ones that were onerous enough to serve as signals. Kosher was replaced by glatt kosher, which was replaced by hasidishe shechita, yashon, hydroponic vegetables, and so on up the ladder of costliness and strictness. The easier each of these becomes to obtain, the less useful it is." .... "For some Jews, the failure to obtain a secular education serves as a conspicuous bridge-burning signal. It is very costly to the signaler because it cuts off many options for advancement outside one’s sub-community and hence signals long-term cooperation within the community. But, unlike wearing a shtreimel, it is also socially costly, because it imposes a greater burden on those outside the community, who are more likely to need to subsidize the signaler’s income. Population growth and material success lead to a greater multiplicity of sub-communities, each with its own costly signals. Ease of assimilation gives rise to the need for more socially costly bridge-burning signals among those who do not wish to assimilate. And, in some communities, the plethora of arbitrary signals might overwhelm other norms more tightly tied to moral instincts." _____________ You are mistaken in your emphasis of centralization (as good) vs decentralization (as bad). In fact, Iran's arrangement is a good example of how centralized theocracy devolves into corrupt hierocracy (look up some of the episodes about imams' sons, their fancy cars and wild lifestyles). Either way, the usual Islamic signaling spiral, when not constrained by a strong despot/ruling elite tends to be more about old-fashioned "bro-ing" as per-spandrell, as is exemplified by today's Wahhabi/Salafi phenomenon in the Sunni world (which, really, is a recurrent one: e.g. see Qarmatians, Khawarijites, etc -- constant internal violent fracturing via ideology and along ethnic/clan loyalties). What matters more is not centrality of priesthood (in fact, centralization of [Temple] priesthood had been more of a remnant of old battles against and fear of old polytheistic practices), but the content (i.e. Law) of your religion. I think communal decentralization within a properly regulating macro-context of a strong state that monopolizes external defense and at least some of the internal policing, is a good thing. What I mean is something where you have a society with clearly-defined law (most likely, said law inspired by religious cannon), but within it, in a subsidiary fashion people belong to various communities, stratified by levels of religious observance, with their own (consistent) modifications and additions to law. For Israel, Moshe Koppel stated his vision here: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/symposium-part-3/ As to Five Books of Moses, Jews don't see anything wrong with other religions, as long as they follow the principles outlined here: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/The\_Seven\_Noahide\_Laws.html (Hence, this is the reason why it's permissible for a Jew to pray at a mosque, but it's usually forbidden to pray in a church: http://hashlamah.com/hashlamah-articles/can-jews-pray-with-muslims-can-muslims-live-in-eretz-yisrael-judaism-says-yes/) I've also seen it argued, on the basis of Mishnaic precedent and thinking, that (as long as Noahide principles are met), there is nothing fundamentally wrong with other covenants between God and gentiles, outside the Mosaic Covenant): http://www.thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/jewish-universalism Again, since in Christianity one is called (sorry for grotesqueness) to pray to a dead-man-on-a-stick (in addition to God), it's very hard to reconcile it with even early-form "universalist Judaism."
I've skimmed the links, but think you may be missing a dimension in the analysis. A centralized religious hierarchy is necessary, but not sufficient. Decentralized religions iterate rapidly (ie, push the holiness ratchet on kashrus), whereas a centralized religion with good leadership will make it clear that holiness is not an arena for status competition (or will at least restrict the degree and rapidity of the iterations). The content of the law can only be neutral or negative. Islamic law is terrible and always results in ugly violence, but even simple laws, like written Torah, can be a disaster if everyone and anyone can interpret them. Torah is full of warnings against idolatry, but there are numerous idolatrous practices incorporated into modern chassidic practice. If it were just a matter of law, the US would be a pleasant Republic today.
Just to clarify, I want decentralization to be the right answer for religion, but every time it's been tried since the printing press, the end result has been suboptimal. See Reconstructionist Judaism for a recent example.
@Jefferson: anyway, I do agree with you that decentralized religions iterate rapidly. Two things can move the point of equilibrium: reality and government. It works best if government is sane (i.e. the government is the instrument of reality). One of the things it can do is not to centralize clergy / priesthood but, in fact, make it dependent upon the populace. Given a modern industrialized state, it can close the loop by creating jobs for national research and defense, by employing smart men doing great things for the nation, where a nation is a set of communities sharing some basic principles, aligned with the main religion of the nation. Said men, in turn would be the ones sponsoring their synagogues and religious leaders.
Chassidism might seem to be prone to avodah zara, but only in a way. I'll explain after I reiterate Christianity's idolatry first. The concept of Trinity in most versions of extant Christianity (except Mormonism and modern Unitarian Universalism) is expressed thus: God is not One, it possesses 3 "forms," of which one is "father" and the other one is his "son" (Christ)? The more healthy Unitarian view (aka the Arian "heresy") was violently expunged, along with Peter's view that one can be a Christian only if he is Jewish (not a gentile). Who today knows of Ebionates? Besides most Christianity is no longer expressed as an orthopraxy, but merely (and superficially, if one is to judge by speeches of the current Pope) an orthodoxy. Back to Chassids: while I think that those who pray at the grave of a Rebbe (and/or hail him as a to-be-"revealed Messiah") are misled, I find Chassidism as a movement to be specifically tailored to the am haaretz -- i.e. the "simple Jews". Nonetheless, I hesitate to call what they are doing as idolatry: rather they are harnessing the natural human impulse for idolatry and redirect it towards fulfilling the Covenant (of which they are very strict!) all the while -- several times per day, in fact -- affirming that God is One. Although most Chassids that are visible online or on many cities' are Chabad, there are other Chassidic movements. But all of them emphasize the concept of mystical and soulful as the device to be motivated in fulfilling the Covenant (encoded via Halakhah/Jewish law). Chassidic mysticism involves panentheism. Spinoza was a panentheist. If one is very deep and smart, such view is categorically different from idolatry (and you can read his works to ascertain). When one is either unsophisticated and not bright or is dishonest, they can manage to steer that towards something on the crazier side. However, most "simple Chassids" cleave to their Rebbes, who usually attenuate such tendencies. Therefore, Chassids are a natural part of the Orthodox world and, albeit exhibiting some questionable practices and beliefs, they are not idolaters. If anything, Chassidism is somewhat like the Sufi movement in Islam, with the important distinction that Sufis don't view sharia as more important than mysticism and individual's connection with God (here it is somewhat reminiscent of Buddhism). Chassidic masters, on the other hand, view Halakhah and oneness of Jewish people as being the goal of mysticism -- as opposed to the "transcendence" by the individual of this world for the individual's soul sake. (Many Sunni Muslims, especially, today's Wahhabis, consider Sufism to be heretical, btw) Reconstructionists, Reform, and even Conservative movements in Judaism are on the way out. They've made too many doctrinal compromises, and are way too assimilated, becoming de facto just some "belief" systems as opposed to practice, which is now almost fully substituted by secular, Western "progressive" values and ways of living. This is, essentially, changing the Law, its nature and its meaning: e.g. women rabbis, divorce laws, acceptance of gays, lax sexual practices, demoting the value of Torah and Talmud study as guide to life and its values etc etc. Anyway, back to your suggestion about going back to the laws of Moses: check out Karaites. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/213816/the-jews-youve-never-heard-ofhttps://www.amazon.com/As-Written-Brief-Case-Karaism/dp/0976263718 I don't agree with many of their views and, more importantly, their group dynamics are not as prone to cohesiveness/non-assimilation in the age of either targeted anti-Jewish oppression or extreme material success in a secularizing state... Nonetheless, they do have good points.
I should correct myself: Chasids view Halakhah as the device for elevating their soul and connecting with God, not vice versa. Nonetheless, the argument still stands.
No, it isn't. The Nicene creed plainly says in the very first line, "I believe in one God". There aren't any "forms". God is One in three Persons. Here's approximately how Fr. Alexandr Men explained it in simple language (if memory serves - it's been 15 years since I read his book): God is One. Love is of the essense of God, and even before He created anything, it was always active, a perfect God couldn't have love and not exercise it. The Person who loves is God-Father. His love is so perfect and strong that it must have an equally perfect object; that is God-Son, the Person who is beloved. And the relation between these two Persons is so intense and alive that it is itself a Person, the Holy Ghost.
Read it again and again. "Plainly says?" Does not make sense to me. God is one, but it's not? Is "Person" = "subject"? Honestly, if it makes sense to you, please explain. Also, if you have time, address why is it that both Catholicism and Orthodox Church have a menagerie of saints? Is Jesus the God-Son, a dead person who (conceived by God's [sperm?]) was "resurrected" in spirit [?] to become God?
I'm no Christian, I believe in physics. I don't say it makes sense the way Maxwell's equations make sense or the way looking before you step into the elevator makes sense. As David Stove wrote a while ago, if you as much as find yourself seriously considering the question who or what the Holy Ghost proceeds from, your thoughts have already gone horribly wrong, and any answer to this question will share this quality. I only remark that Christians don't express the concept of Trinity the way you say they do. If these questions interest you, you should study theology instead of asking someone who hasn't to explain.
Koppel seems to be ignorant. In the mishna, there are long discussions of who is a "haver," meaning, someone you can eat with/buy secure in the knowledge that he tithed maaser from the food. It's significantly more complex than the requirements on food today. The Five Books of Moses are plainly not self-sufficient, which is why in them, as soon as Moshe gets the Torah, he finds himself answering practical implementation questions from morning to night, to the point that his father in law, Yithro, says "look, you're gonna kill yourself. Appoint a hierarchical system of people who know how to implement the law, with a Sanhedrin on top and yourself over that, and let them deal with questions at the lowest level that they can be answered." Also you have things like the commandment to slaughter properly-all that G-d tells Moshe is "slaughter like I told you," and there is no place anywhere else where details are given. There's a bunch more stuff that makes it obvious that the mikra (5 books) are not designed as a standalone guide. Noahides-the thing about being a Noahide and keeping the 7 Commandments is that you specifically have to do it because they are in the Torah and you believe the Torah to be true. Not because you think they are nice ideas and make sense or whatever. Finally, the call by alt-right people for a new religion based on neopaganism or space rockets or whatever is basically cargo cult religion. "Obviously, we need more of these funny metal birds that crap packages of salt, needles and hatchets. Despite the fact that we really have no idea how they are built, let's come up with a just-so theory based on our jungley priors, and go make some ourselves." "Since we all know that G-d does not exist and souls do not exist, and yet the worldview that these axioms inevitably imply seems to be killing us, let's figure out a way to fool each other into believing it anyway, but in such a way that it doesn't keep us from doing any of the things we currently enjoy doing, or make us do anything that would be too onerous. Hey, we can even do a Burning Man thing. And then eventually our C-47 made out of coconut palm will fly, guys!"
don't think it will hurt Trump as much as intended. Trump in fact grew with every "scary" thing he's said. short of assassination, don't think Clinton will be making the State of the Union next year. but if it makes progressives give up democracy, it was well worth it
neo Confucianism seems pretty right wing. maybe just importing it will do just fine (bringing an odd religion from the East isn't even something new)
Neocofucianism was right wing in many ways, but it was also an ascetic movement, much of it copied from Buddhism. Zhu Xi himself used to agitate to get ministers sacked because of sexual impropriety, in ways not that different from what we do today.
Some aspect of modern barbarism is around in the martial culture in areas where men can still be men. You won't meet guys like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq-hQYcoVmw unless you seek it out. They exist still in in male dominated areas - why is it so many in this space promote weightlifting? Once you get towards the higher end you start making friends with other men pushing the limits, for all the inclusivity of women today (and god there is a lot, thanks Crossfit) it's still male dominated. I recall reading a line from Roosh years back (before his ROK days, when he was firmly a PUA prick) when he basically was trying to argue the meaningful measure of masculinity today was the ability of a man to waltz into a bar and use 'pick-up' to leave with a girl. An entire generation of beta single mother raised men have bought into it. The irony being this is the acceptable feminine face of being a 'man' - yes they complain about it but really this is heading towards bonobo territory. Bro pick up culture combined with the general security and high technology of today is a disaster. Doubt you'll get your new religion or a fundamental shift unless things become: increasingly more dangerous. If I were a German man in a German city (Koeln for example) there has never been a better chance to be dominant and security providing - there has also likely never been as threatening group of people in my lifetyime (yeh when I lived there Turks were dicks but they still weren't that bad). In most of America today - you don't need masculinity let alone strong masculinity and so hopes of a new religion or a change without some form of 'collapse' seems unlikely. Maybe the accelerationists have something. Short term danger produces quick results.
Christianity will be back, after a new Reformation. Just wait and see. A lot of today's Christians won't like it much, though. It'll be more like 1065 than 1965...
Yeah, I think so too. I mean, Christianity is hardly monolithic - there are numerous valid interpretations of Scripture. It just happens that the dominant one (post-theistic feel-goodism) happens to be degenerate and wrong.
That's just brain dead bullshit of the highest order. You can't stretch things too much without breaking them. Christianity has been prone to leftist spirals since the very beginning.
And what, pray tell, is not prone to some form of leftist spiral? It happened in Pagan Rome, it happened in China, in Persia, probably many other places I don't know about. The propensity of men to become degenerate and engage in millenarian fervor seems universal, not particularly Christian.
First of all get a nickname. It isn't that hard. Even if it's anon10. Second, the propensity for leftist spirals of Christianity is an order of magnitude greater than anywhere else. China hardly had anything like it until the Russians brought them European communism. While Europe has had weird religious communes trying communism somewhere every few decades.
Christianity is basically the result of a bunch of proto-oncogenes in Judaism's thought-complex being knocked out ("oncomemes"?) The following mutations inevitably led to craziness, leading to various councils trying to freeze the process. Anyone trying to develop Christianity in certain directions inherent to it would have the Catholic church's immune system activated against him. Periodic outbreaks of mass Christian craziness (iconoclasts/Cathars/Hussites) were suppressed by the immune system until the Lutheran mutation broke through. You can't pick any moment in this inevitable process and say "stop, moment, thou art so fair," any more than you can say "I wish these metastases in my liver would go back to being that innocuous little polyp in my colon."
>> degenerate and wrong Any group that cannot reproduce—actually generate new human babies—is de-generate and wrong. PUAs, MGTOWs, Feminists, Priests, Nuns, Careerists, LGBTQWERTY, Fatties, Diabetics, Cucks, etc. Why can't the degenerate regenerate? They're crowded into cities like rats. These rats: http://nihrecord.od.nih.gov/newsletters/2008/07\_25\_2008/story1.htm A couple important quotes: "A large proportion of the population became bisexual, then increasingly homosexual, and finally asexual. There was a breakdown in maternal behavior." Sound familiar? Yet, there is hope: “Not all of Calhoun’s rats had gone berserk. Those who managed to control space led relatively normal lives.” Amish people generate. Volksich people generate. We blew up our TV threw away our paper Went to the country, built us a home Had a lot of children, fed 'em on peaches They all found Jesus on their own
[…] I came across this post from a blog called The Bloody Shovel, which I’d never heard of before. I won’t get into […]
I don't know how much of an impact this can have given restrictions because of criminal conviction. But the leaked video is going to play great with young black male voters. Has anyone asked Snoop Dog who he's voting for? If he hadn't made up his mind it's made up now.
In light of the post on right wing ratchets in China and Japan, this is quite layered. The elite have very few shits to give to the peasants.
I would've supported McCarthy and the John Birch society in the 1950s, Goldwater in the 1960s, beating hippies at Kent State in the 1970s, Buchanan in the 1990s, and now I support Trump. Looking further back I would've been against women's liberation, would've supported the south in the civil war (for reasons of states rights, not slavery). I'm not sure if I would've been in favor of the American Revolution (half of colonists supported the British). Be honest - if you're alt right ideologically instead of as a passing fad, you would've been on the same side as me. Leftism is disorder and entropy. It can't be fought using the tools of the left incrementally. It has to be imposed in a single stroke, usually by a strongman or military takeover.
Why are you saying all this?
Two reasons: 1. As reactionaries we've been on the losing side for hundreds of years, so it's best to have some perspective that we're going to almost assuredly lose with Trump as well. He is doing utterly terrible in recent polls, far worse than Romney was at this stage. With respect to the military, while most of the lower and middle military is reactionary, the top brass are all career globalist democrats, so nothing is going to happen on that front. Additionally soldiers get rotated every 2 years so there is no chance to build up loyalty to a Caesar type general. 2. To try to flesh out to people that there wasn't a golden age in recent times where reactionaries were happy and content and not losing. Lawrence Auster for example used the 1950s as the pinnacle of western civilization. Others use the 1990s. But it seems to me that reactionaries then were frustrated, angry and bitter then as they are now. The difference is that this voice is amplified over the internet.
I'm just wondering why you'd think I'd disagree with anything you're saying here. If leftism is entropy and reaction is by necessity a single-stroke event, well by definition reactionaries are always frustrated angry and bitter. At least unless we happen to live through the Restoration. But then entropy starts soon again so back again to be frustrated angry and bitter.
I didn't think you'd disagree with it, really. I guess I wrote it partially to try to manage myself and other's expectations for Trump losing (so we're not too let down too badly when it probably happens). I'm pretty bummed but I think we're at the expectation management stage.
Oh it's going to get so much worse before it gets any better.
[…] that will bury us all”. Also another diatribe on getting the “right” religion: The balance of the natural and social world. Here’s the problem: when religious autists, through no apparent fault of their own, think […]
What do you make of the historical opposition between the christian church and christian heresies (gnosticism, marcionism, millenarianism, and their various manifestations in ancient, mediaeval and modern times, progressivism)? Would it not seem as if the historical church, until ~ 1965, constantly opposed virtue signalling spirals, by declaring them heretical? For my part I think it is urban civilization which is inherently always on the verge of decadence, always one or two generations away from ruin and replacement by tougher, more high thymos groups.
>> urban civilization which is inherently always on the verge of decadence Indeed, as one famous American hick observed: • "When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe." • "I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man." • “The mobs of great cities add just so much to support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.” But the Federalists like Alexander Hamilton had their way, and we're now "piled upon one another in large cities," which turn normal people into Leftists by the millions. "The difference is no longer about where people live, it's about how people live: in spread-out, open, low-density privacy -- or amid rough-and-tumble, in-your-face population density and diverse communities that ENFORCE A LOWER COMMON DENOMINATOR OF TOLERANCE among inhabitants. The voting data suggest that people don't make cities liberal -- CITIES MAKE PEOPLE LIBERAL." http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/red-state-blue-city-how-the-urban-rural-divide-is-splitting-america/265686/ If you want the White race to survive, pray for (and prepare for) a Nuclear Winter that will mimic the evolutionary accelerator of the Ice Ages that forged our high-IQ genetics. Götterdämmerung will be the salvation of the Völkisch.
You can't have an industrial economy without cities. Without industry, a country is just begging to be taken over by someone with more blood & iron..
True enough. Yet, once you do have a city-slicker economy, the city-slickers, as Jefferson observed, "depend for it on the casualties and caprice of customers. Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." Instead of being invaded by other jerks , the industrial society "suffocates the germ of virtue" and decays from "ambition" of their own jerks. Catch-22. Or rather, as Peter Ward's Medea Hypothesis puts it, multi-cellular life is suicidal.
Ever heard of Athens?
Ever consider the sociopolitical implications of Dunbar's Number?
That guy Dunbar is working with atomized random particles. Not a real culture.
That's a clever way to frame it: the problem is achieving and maintaining 'optimal bro'. Golden Mean Masculinity. Getting cads to get on the road to civilization but get off the train at the patriarchal dad stop without degenerating into ... sads (in the Trump meaning as a ¡Jeb! beta loser). The cad-dad-sad! spectrum. You heard it here first folks! So, you don't want so much that you end up with, I don't know, Chechen pimps crossed with your Water Margin dudes. And you don't want so little that all but a tiny slice of the whole society is hopeless whipped betas who fail every shit test. The old high social capital Anglosphere system seemed to a rely on a "for every thing there is a season" philosophy. It escorted men in life stages through a alternating-bro-factor life script, and longstanding social institutions like fraternities, the military, and certain mens clubs could act as places in which men could both totally max out their bro while sowing their oats, while also being guided towards increasing maturity and career success until they were prepared to lower the bro and settle down and raise a family. Christian doctrine seems to have a built-in tendency towards decreasing the bro factor, and so it can do good, but it can also go too far if you're already below the optimal bro point. But I think Jim has said that fall of the Western Empire-era, leftist-cult suicidally-pacifist / xenophilic universalist Christianity was indeed tamed and transformed by the time of Charles Martel into something which still has some remnants today, but which of course is rapidly disappearing. That is, a Christianity in which certain points were dropped or subordinated in overall importance or made durable 'unprincipled exceptions', and which allowed it to tolerate just enough war and in-group solidarity and build-up of wealth inequality to put Europe on the upward path again, well, at least for a millennium or so. That's what a lot of the Alt-Right types seems to want today. A spiritually independent (in the Putin sense of the term) patriotic Christian country that is also simultaneously ethno-nationalist (if not militant then at least pro-defense isolationist) and tecno-capitalist. That is, that combines the branches of your trichotomy.
>> patriotic Christian The Alt-Kike movement's allegiance has always been toward the "Holy City" capital of a "better country" of self-chosenites. • "But now they desire a better country..." -Hebrews 11:16 • "I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem..." -Revelation 21:2 The Alt-Kike cult is little different, patriotically speaking, from that other middle-eastern cult that bows towards the Holy City of Mecca.
Letter-of-the-law Phariseeism shouldn't be the battlefield one lays one's ideology upon. Those were the fuckers who virtue-signaled out their ass. We Christians have understood that lesson the hard way and learned it well. So, Christianity isn't as leftist as Dark-Enlightenment would like it to be. '
>> Christianity is the West No, it's not. Christianity is Alt-Kike. Classical Greek philosophy—which precedes the Alt-Kike cult by centuries—is basis of Western thought.
I think Reactionaries see everything through the left-right political prism which is dangerous (not to mention the obsession with 'signaling'). I understand its just a blog post, but using modern political stereotypes is far too reductionist: To say charity is 'leftist' is absurd. Social engineered compulsary mass welfare systems, maybe, but not charity in principle. I'm sure you wouldn't consider Islam 'leftist', but one of the 5 pillars is Zakah (tax for the poor). Just becasue charitible people tend to get seduced by leftism doesnt make their charitibal instincts 'leftist'. Anti-rich = leftist Jesus said somehting bad about rich people, thereore Jesus = leftist or Barbarians rape & pillage Thereore barbarians are manly Manly = rightist Reactionaries should aspire to be barbarians (While you qualify this by admitting it would be fairly disastrous, too many Reactionary men think this way) To describe Christianity as 'leftist' is meaningless if you use 'leftism' in the proper sense of the French Revolution political division (supporters of monarchy vs democratic impulse). If it used in the wider sense as many Reactionaries do, to describe human civilisational entropy, then traditonal Christianity was its polar opposite. Christian theologians would call this entropy 'Satanism' - the polar opposite of what Christ stood for and what the Church fought against. I'm not denying the seeds of modern progressivism can't be found in Christianity or that history saw many descents/spirals (whatever you want to call them), but, as someone correctly posted above, these were always seen as heresis. Leftsim could be said to have its birth in the Protestant schism. Christianty claimed a monopoly on Absolute truth. Leftism is essentially relativist.
A prominent Jewish economist said this: "....primitive Christianity is Bolshevism." --Ludwig von Mises (Socialism) How well did he know the New Testament with such a claim? Let's see: (1.) Boshevists hate the successful: • "But woe unto you that are rich!" Luke 6:24 • "Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor." Matthew 19:21, Mark 10:21, Luke 18:22 • "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25 "...guard against all kinds of greed, life does not consist in abundance...fool..." (Parable of the Rich Fool) Luke 12:13-21 • "There was a rich man...in torment...agony...remember that in your lifetime you received your good things..." (The Rich Man and Lazarus) Luke 16:19-31 (2.) Bolshevists are collectivists: • "...each according to his ability." Matthew 25:15 • "...not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them." Acts 4:32 • "...and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need." Acts 4:35 • "...the daily distribution." Acts 6:1 • "...your liberal distribution..." 2 Corinthians 9:13 (3.) Bolshevists use coercive fear tactics to control money flows: • "Great fear seized the whole church..." Acts 5:11 Note that Marx's famous maxim is lifted almost word-for-word from a couple passages of the New Testament. (And if you imagine Leftism doesn't make "monopoly claims on absolute truth," look up Lysenkoism.)
I could say the same about the Christian way of seeing the world. What I don't do is go to Christian blogs to tell them they're obsessed with faith and doctrine.
Bullshit. You can too make up a new religion. Ever heard of Scientology?
It's not very big, is it.
Conversely, you can always take an obscure Eastern Religion like one of the branches of Hinduism and put your own spin on it. If its obscure enough no one will know the difference.
http://citadelfoundations.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/deconstructing-maoist-jesus.html?m=1 Christianity is nor left wing. You've bed duped by the (((devil ))) if you believe that. Jesus was all for good morals, as we're the ten commandments. But the language controllers have done a great job in turning biblical Christianity into modern Churchianity. I'm surprised anyone in the reactionary field believes otherwise. There's no point in reaction without God and Jesus. None.
Apologies for typos, using a phone that auto corrects everything.
Jesus' "good morals" include: (1) The first chapter of the first book of the New Testament glorifying cuckoldry. Christians worship cuckspawn. (Matthew 1:18) (2) Jesus banned normal male-female relations in his perverted paradise, in favor of angelic androgyny. (Matt. 22.30) (3) Jesus considered normal male-female marriage and the ensuing productive activities of productive activity like planting a garden and building a house for your family to be worthy of drowning and/or roasting. (Luke 17.26-29) (4) Jesus taught to hate not only life itself (John 12.25) but every single member of your family, including hating your parents. (Luke 14.26) (5) Jesus discouraged normal heterosexual marriage to the point his disciples concluded "it is better not to marry." (Matthew 19.10) And when a woman cheated on her man, feminist White-Knighting Jesus blamed the men and gave the cheater a free pass. (John 8:4-11) (6) Jesus' male converts were encouraged to transition to a less manly physique by castration. (Matthew 19.11-12) And if a male still had too much effect of testosterone production, he was to gouge out his own eyes. (Mark 9:47) (7) Jesus carried on with his Beloved in public like a pederastic San Francisco flamer. (John 13:23-25) Note that in early Christian art, Jesus is to John the Beloved what Zeus was to Ganymede. Go on, Google images of "Jesus John Beloved" and "Zeus Ganymede" and tell me if you can tell the slightest difference in the faggotry. http://google.com/search?q=jesus john beloved&sa=X&tbm=isch&gbv=1&sei=fN2aVeCzCJfcoAThkYzgAg http://google.com/search?q=zeus ganymede&prmd=ivns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=wt2aVYG7JpG0ogTU-ZfQDg&ved=0CAUQ_AU Sick shit, but not surprising from a Skype.
Q: How do you get people on the Dissident Right ready to convert to Islam? A: Follow the advice in this blog post.
I promise I didn't set out to do that when I started writing.
Now that you realize you did it though, I'm curious to see how you update your ideas.
Well it's hardly the first time that I say that. I'd rather we had something better but... we don't.
Within 1st world western civilization, where are things LEAST bad from a Dissident Right standpoint? Poland, Russia, or the non-densely populated areas of the United States would be three easy picks, I think. What is one thing those places have in common that the rest of western civilization lacks in comparison...? It's widespread devout Christianity. So, maybe you should rethink your premises.
What? Widespread devout Christianity? Have you been over there? People may go through the motions but how many Poles and Russians actually follow the 10 commandments? And anyway that's besides the point. Christianity might very well be what makes many communities be functional and civilized. But it doesn't follow at all that Christianity can become again a strong force with national influence, nor that in doing so it could curbe the influence of feminism and globalism.
You're making a "No True Scotsman" argument about Christianity in Poland and Russia. Christianity split from the 10 commandments when they decided God is a trinity, and if not then then definitely when they moved the Sabbath to Sunday. Leaving the 10 commandments aside, it seems safe to say it's a lot more devoutly Christian in Russia or Poland than in, say, England or Scandinavia. In fact, in general I'd say wherever places are more Christian, they are less feminist and less globalist. In your criticism of the western civilization in general, you might just not be looking deep enough. If the West is overly feminist and globalist it might be because westerners are largely descended from pagan tribes who were very bonobo-ish and egalitarian BEFORE they converted to Christianity. These guys worshiped trees and bunnies for crying out loud. (I remember reading somewhere that the Neanderthals were very docile and trusting of outsiders, too.)
I was told as a kid that the commandments were absolute norms of behavior and that I couldn't take communion if I had disobeyed one of them. Did my priest not get the memo? You're grasping on straws here. Nobody knows nothing about Neanderthal behavior. And it's a minuscule part of European genes. Don't believe the science press. Primitive societies tend to be egalitarian, if only because they're too poor to fund a fixed hierarchy. But they're certainly not feminist. They're egalitarian the way a football team is.
Yeah, your priest missed the memo. But that's part of an ongoing theological debate, so I digress. Pre-Christian Europe was all hippie-dippie. That's where hippie-dippie stuff (new age crap, Wiccanism, hippie-dom itself) comes from. Go read up on Europe before Christianity. Not all primitive societies are that way. (Most others aren't.)
What are you smoking? Who was it exactly that was hippie-dippie in pre-Christinan Europe? Romans? Norse? Germanic tribes? Druids? Ancient Greeks? Pfui. The modern hippie-dippie crap like Wicca and New Age has about the same relation to the old traditions, religions and societies as a can of toilet freshener to a flower bed.
Norse: very hippie dippie. Germanic tribes: they were hippie dippie too. Druids: the original hippie-dippies. Sure, these tribes occasionally fought each other, and when they did it was pretty brutal, but spears and helmets and swords make for cool retellings more than they represent reality. Pop history is a game of telephone where shiny pointy stuff gets amplified and sissy embarrassing stuff gets muted. Ancient Greeks and Romans were Mediterranean peoples, not really European except in the modern geographic sense. If you think I'm wrong, and Christianity really is what makes people all hippie-dippie, then you must perceive the most Christian parts of the West as also the most feminist and globalist. And if that's what you see, then maybe you're the one who's smoking something.
The Norse were basically bands of pirates who robbed, raped and pillaged where and what they could. Very hippie-dippie. Germanic tribes were sufficiently hippie-dippie that they punished homosexuals by drowning both guilty parties in a bog, and their women were so famous for chastity that Tacitus contrasted them to the widespread immorality of Imperial Rome. Druids were so hippie-dippie that they burned criminals in wicker cages as offerings to the god of life-and-death, and this included anyone who converted to Roman religion. Ancient Greeks and Romans weren't what we now call "Mediterranean", they were originally akin to Celts, and it was only after (as Juvenal wrote) Orontes flowed into the Tiber that Romans became Mediterranean. Look at Roman sculpted portraits.
Yeah. Because Christianity is a single thing like electrical charge, and is the only active factor in any society. My thoughts exactly. Oh, and if you believe Russians are in any meaningful sense Christian, I advise you to spend some time in the Russian internet, or just look up "вписка". Poles are the most traditionally Christian European nation at this point, but this is as much due to historical accident of being the only Catholic ethnicity of any size in the Russian Empire for a hundred years, and in the Soviet empire for another fifty after that, as to any other factor. In Rzechpospolyta times they didn't use to have bastardy laws, children fathered on your wife by social betters were accepted as your own.
Everywhere you look in the West, the most Christian parts are the least globalist and feminist, and the least Christian parts are the most globalist and feminist. Your argument that this is an accident in Poland is outweighed by the fact that you'd need to point to similar evidence everywhere else. As for the Norse, Germanic tribes, and Druids (ancestors of today's Scandinavians, Germans, and British, the most globalist and feminist populations in Europe and in the world in general), genetics doesn't conveniently stop becoming an important factor in culture just so that your dogpile on Christianity will be less illogical.
Dude, give it up. You don't have a clue and it shows.
The most Christian part of Europe is Germany, run by Angela Merkel, who is the leader of the Christian Democrats, daughter of a Lutheran minister, and member of the Evangelical Church of Berlin. Modern Germany is the best illustration ever of those who believe and practice the following: "Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." Angela Merkel is more like Jesus than you well ever be. But maybe the Swedes are more Christlike, i.e., self-sacrificing for some hare-brained idealism. We're seeing whole nations destroyed by fanatically believing a Skype.
"Some people on the left have hinted that democracy may not be such a good idea, given that someone like Trump could possibly win." Let me bring to your attention this someone: http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2016/06/24/ethicist-jason-brennan-brexit-democracy-and-epistocracy/ I think it remarkable that the Left turns nostalgic for the no-election times whenever and wherever polls don't obey their wish; at least in the West. You wouldn't find a time it has not been so: when the Left was socialist/communist, they had to be authoritarian by their very creed's dogmas. Today the Left has abandoned the abolition of private property: they have found other ways whereby to corrode Western civilization -- who knows if these won't meet failure. But they are a majority, at least a majority of the people of consequence. And perhaps majorities, specially majorities of people of consequence have it in their genes to be anti-democratic (of course not in their "public position", to quote Hillary Clinton). Given how all dominant groups must be against democracy, I wonder whereby democracy is born (but it doesn't puzzle me that it has always had a short life).
Yes I saw that article. How democracy came to happen is easy to see in the historical record. The king tries to go absolutist -> Parliament wins -> The authority of parliament is based on it representing the people, so the obvious way to gain status is to agitate for ever more people to be represented.
"Again Houellebecq is provided right all along" "I saw in a Chinese website" From linguistics to remaking grammar? lol
I write fast and generally don't bother to proofread my own writing. If you have a point, make it. If you're gonna be an ass I'll be a bigger ass and ban you.
"The problem is, as many correctly argue on the comments at Jim’s, that Christianity is a leftist cult. The teachings of Jesus are pure and simple leftist agitation. The rich go to hell. The poor will inherit the earth. Prostitutes are as noble as any of you." There, as expected. Caring for the suffering in the world, and being dismayed by the horror of its pervasivity, is "Leftist agitation". Prostitutes can be nobler than you or I. If we were to agree on a definition of nobleness first, that is. And if we agreed that it be possible to rank living beings by nobleness. Then we'd have to agree that a word, "prostitutes", can encompass many million beings; that many million beings are defined by their job. "Prostitutes", what does that mean? An alien could speak of "humans", and their nobility, and that would be an umbrella-term covering both you and I. Would that make sense? Figure these aliens saying "humans" are losers (or winners), referring at once to winners like you and wrecks like I. That'd be so illogical. Delete all my comments if you wish to, and try to see things from the viewpoint of losers from one second in your life, will you? If you observe "reality" from one point only, what do you get of it? Wins (I mean, human wins), if your standpoint is that of winners, but nothing else. P.S.: that civilizations' well-being depends on religiosity is agreeable. Without any collective religion, humans will turn to the religion of their self, and individualism will waste society and culture. This blog makes a lot of agreeable points, just coating the whole of them with a love for the strong and powerful, and a disdain of their subjects, that I find very hard to sustain. I come here to find shelter from Leftist sickly rotten cultural items, and your lack of sympathy and worship of dominators reminds me that the only choice in this world is between a wrong and the other, a wronger and the other. Right mercy, or Left - envy, those would be nice options. Of course they can never get available. Damn it, it's gloomy.
Well if I convinced you to curb your optimism about the human condition then this blog is doing its job. But please tone down the sophistry. Prostitutes exist. They have things in common. Those common traits are likely distributed in a Gaussian curve. The middle of that curve isn't very noble.
This may be the most Christian thing I've ever read.
I really liked the story. You're writing is really interesting.
Not convinced all human political movements throughout all of history fit on a right-left scale. Not even convinced America's antebellum Whigs and Democrats fit on a modern right-left scale. Far less the tripartite Huang-lao vs. legalist-lites vs. Confucian homebodies debates of the Early Han. That's a three way divide. This is probably my largest disagreement with the Neoreaction. The NrX impulse is to extend the 1960s millennia into the past.( It's better than what the multi-cultis do, I suppose, thinking that history actually started in 1965). But the most important thing to be learned from the past is just how unlike the 1960s most of human history has been. In any case, there is an easy stand in for exactly what you are looking for, at least for Americans. You'll probably reject it though and Jim certainly will. Republicanism. You already have a scriptural nucleus, sacred ideals, and all that. Most importantly, republicanism was, in both its ancient and modern variations, a philosophy of manhood. For about 300 years of American history it hit the exact spot on the cad-dad-sad spectrum you are looking for. Folks can lament how the Puritan version of republicanism was the first step on the road to Sodom (a claim I'm not sure is true), but hey, even if that is true that road was four centuries long. Reclaim republican manhood; if it really always does degrade it into inchoate leftism by design, at least you won't have to worry about it doing so until you are long dead and gone.
Everything fits on a right-left scale, because "a" right-left scale is just a convenient way of explaining a conflict within two sides, which is how human conflict tends to happen, at least over time. Of course past conflicts don't fit to what we in 2016 understand as left vs. right, but my understanding is a bit idiosyncratic, and I'm preaching to the choir here. My generalization of "left" is virtue signaling, virtue being whatever is considered virtue at a certain time and place, which is why I can say Confucians were in a holiness spiral when they chastised the King of Chu. As for Republicanism, I don't really know what you mean here, but surely it isn't enough of a religion. Certainly it isn't enough for you and your family, is it?
The Quran is very familiar with Christianity because it was originally a Christian lectionary. "[T]he Quran derives from a Syriac Christian lectionary." The Christian Origins of Islam by Peter Leithhart | First Things http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2012/12/the-christian-origins-of-islam________________ CCP comment: "Without any collective religion, humans will turn to the religion of their self..." Already done. What else is Christianity, other than selfish, individualistic status-whoring for a ticket to ride to a fantastical Skype capital city floating in the clouds? Salvation isn't about nations or races of people in the New Testament, it's about atomized individuals.
pretty much the standard muslim attitude towards all non-Muslims. Muslim can do anything he likes to non-Muslim, non-Muslim so much as raises an eyebrow in protest and it is pretext for Jihad.
I'm a bit late to this discussion, but I'm a bit surprised to see with so many comments that no one pointed out that the three teachings cited as those of Jesus are (perhaps to the modern eye) subtlely incorrect expressions of those teachings and consequently massively misrepresent those teachings as well. It doesn't speak well of general catechising when you get a beatitude wrong. Those of you actually quoting Scripture manage to get the meaning of it entirely wrong. It's as if Nietzsche's idiot 5yo. cousin taught you all about religion. No wonder you have no luck figuring out how to found a new religion,you don't even understand the old ones. Stick with talking about Flying Spaghetti Monsters, it conceals pig ignorance better.
You're stupid and ignoble, unworthy of a White man's attention. Don't blame me for such an opinion, St. Paul said you're stupid and ignoble trash. You gonna disagree with him? "Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth." (One Corinthians 1:26) Cuckianity is the original "Low Lifes Matter!" movement started by "Jews First!" (Romans 1:16) Sound familiar to anything today, huh?
I guess being a Slav makes me Asiatic, and consequently yellow. You must've been raised some sort of snake-handler to prooftext so poorly, real top-notch theologian he. I gave you a general characterization of your error and you think you are contradicting me by exemplifying it? Let me be more precise, though your mental illness may still make it hard for you to grasp: You are distorting meanings which when contextualized by text (let alone understanding of history or broader early Christian thought) have clearly different meaning. To be honest, I can't see how any one who has ever read a book in English could think the first and third parts of your reply have anything but a duplicitous relationship to the second.
I haven't made any error. You, however, like a typical Christcuck, wave around the term "context" as a magic wand for protesting portions of scripture that don't meet your tortured interpretation of them. To be honest, all you're doing is gainsaying, without the slightest evidence for your retort. Again, typical. But then, you're stupid and ignoble, as St. Paul wrote. It's one of the few parts of the Bible I believe. You gonna knock me for that, huh?
What is there to offer in retort other than gainsaying to a man who seriously thinks: "Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth." = "St. Paul said you’re stupid and ignoble trash"? "Think of what you " Past tense. Do tenses matter to you? Not "wise by human standards" = Stupid? Since when? "Not . . . influential" = ignoble trash ? I guess you've just, apart from St. Paul, defined yourself as ignoble trash without realizing it. I can only wonder if you know the English language. Certainly some of its subtlety is lost on you.
It's not just Paul seeking retarded followers, the Magic Skype also demanded that his adherents deliberately retard their intellectual ability to a level of childlike credulity. "Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." Luke 18:17 "At that time Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children." Matthew 11:25 Just like the Google race today, the Magic Rabbi deprecated the wisdom and learning of high IQ humanity, probably because he regarded it as too "Acting White." But you've fallen for the Magic Merchant's "Low Lifes Matter!" swindle. Time to Get Smart. Thinking like a child is for Googles.
There's God and then there's "Church". God is an all-knowing all-powerful being who wants and needs nothing from you. You are his handiwork and like a Father, an All-Father he cares and gave you the way to a better life. Church is a business. The priests do not work, but live better than you. How? By telling you that you must "help" the needy and the poor. The money feeds them well, and their house is bigger and better furnished. The poor get a handout and get shooed away. The Meek shall inherit the Earth. Meek means mild or moderate. Jesus said the poor will always be with us. He didn't tell you to feed them. God needs not your money. The temple priests need to feed themselves with your charity, because they do not work and keep you away from God's word by telling you tales they make up. Like movies they are based on the book, just not accurately.
> Church is a business. So? That business is still in the Bible. "On this rock I will build my church." Matthew 16:18 > He didn’t tell you to feed them. Wrong. "But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind." Luke 14:13 The above demonstrates that the version of Christianity acceptable to the alt-right seems to be a Christianity stripped of nearly everything Jesus taught. If you're going to worship the Alfather, why not drop the Jew imposter and worship the original real thing? Why would a European man need a swarthy middle-eastern Jew to "save" him anyway?
Ancestor Worship, its the only way
China has that; but it left a vacuum that was soon filled by Buddhism and their moral tales of asceticism and life after death.
I trust we can do better than China there (plus, I doubt that ancestor worship had much to do with that, it seems that they just think that way)
I don't appreciate you not making an argument and just implying the Chinese are dumb.
Not what I meant, i apologize if that's what came through. I simply state that there might be certain spritual/philosophical preferences in the East that are not shared in the West and that every system there will develop along somewhat different lines. In short, ancestor worship doesn't have to leave an ill developed philosophical milieu or create a general feeling of pessimism.
Well a better developed ancestor worship which a workable theory of the afterlife which allows for non-malignant signaling would be very useful. But that implies a pretty complete religion. You can't get there just through ancestor worship. Chinese ancestor worship was a pretty simple Neolithic idea: Dad is over there watching, we wanna keep him happy, else when we join him up there he's gonna be very pissed. It's a pretty good idea and it works very well; Buddhism didn't quite kill it, it's still around. I wouldn't say traditional China had a general feeling of pessimism at all, though. They're just not into Messianism.
The way I see it, ancestor worship has a proud tradition in every human society (although it tends to be surpassed in many) and has some very practical benefits too: *it really takes almost no convincing, almost everyone believes in ghosts or the supernatural, deep down. So, you're just formalizing what we're all afraid of. This allows for a hard takeoff out of nothing, which would not be possible with a more complex religion. *it appears to be inherently eugenic: believing that your ancestors watch over and judge you really makes one think of posterity and what could be done to further one's genetic interest; this is exactly what is needed of a religion. *taken in a wide genetic sense, it is actually true. *there a proud history in Rome and the germanic tribes *although a simple system, it can be developed in time towards a more complex system of norms, beliefs about the afterlife and so on. If consciously directed, like some party doctrine, maybe there'd be a chance to escape the fate that befell ancestor worship in the past: extinction. All in all, it'd be worth a shot.
I very much agree with that; and note that in China (or Japan) it never went extinct. You see ancestral shrines in people's homes in this very day. But of course as I was saying it didn't protect against malignant memes. So as you say it needs to be further developed so that it doesn't die off or shrink as it did historically. The question is how, though. Universalism sells very well.
I disagree that Universalism (or plain Christianity before it) sells: it is furthered by the elite and we all go along because we know our place. So, the "solution" seems to be to convince the elite (or part thereof) to push for this. A shorter-term solution could be to just create a group (para-party) around the concept and just push it as you would any other program. Who knows, maybe those who made Trump happen will lend an ear?
I guess it's worth trying out. Let me try to think up a post about it. Incidentally, what are the prospects in Albania?
There's folks sleeping in the next room and I'd rather not wake them, so please do not make me laugh.
Chinese Buddhism was big, though never overwhelming, for several centuries (just enough to transmit itself to Japan, which is if memory serves the only country that preserves Ch'ang dharma transmission from the Great Patriarch, Bodhidharma) but eventually it died out, dissolved in Taoism and folk religion, just as it had dissolved in Hinduism and died out earlier in India. So there was enough religious or quasi-religious stuff around in China besides the foundation of ancestor worship to overcome Buddhism. Also, you remarked yourself (the Bow of the King of Chu) that there was quite enough moral posturing and signaling in China long before Buddhism was heard of there.
Well it "died out" like Roman paganism died out; the State cracked down on the monasteries, took their money, and made sure they couldn't make money ever again. Of course moral posturing wasn't brought by the Buddhists; it's human nature. But once Shang Yang raised the game in Qin, the other states were busy enough building their war machines that humaneness signaling died out pretty quickly. And I don't recall the intellectual landscape between the unification 200 BC and the introduction of Buddhism 300 AD (more or less) being particularly religious in that way. Taoists and folk religion was just some run of the mill superstition system. I'm not an expert on the period, but if you look at Yang Xiong it seems it was a pretty pragmatic atmosphere.
Um. Roman paganism was in zombie mode -- like Buddhism in modern Japan? -- for centuries before Christians got around to burning the temples. If it wasn't for the fact that Roman religion was intertwined with the legal system, it might have collapsed a lot earlier. In fact, non-belief was fashionable already in I B.C - I A.D., with philosophers abstracting traditional deities into complete nebulosity. That's one reason commonly given for the introduction of various foreign cults into Imperial Rome from Egypt and Asia Minor. So maybe Henry VIII and Oda Nobunaga's suppressions are closer to what you're saying happened in China.
Well I guess; but you can hardly say that unbelief wasn't fashionable among elite Chinese. It's not like Confucian mandarins were devout Buddhists. But yes, certainly Buddhism was probably more institutionally strong during the Tang than Roman paganism was in 200 AD.