Opening the abstract door closed to Godhood

Abstraction and universality are definitions and denotations of real things, or often times unreal things, and they should not be worshiped or idealized, as they often are.

This describes the belief in supermaterial Godhood, where abstractions and universalisms are finally grounded in real life. Although the supermaterial properties of Godhood remain unknown, this is not a definition of God beyond nature and materiality. Go ahead and use spiritual abstractions when you must, but call then that, see them as that, refrain from calling them God.

Religion can open its virtually closed door to the material world, science and evolution, with Godhood realistically remaining as supreme materiality which we evolve to by way of refining material evolution, not blocking it or killing it. 

The Twofold Path includes the largely abstract God-Within of tradition but transforms it into real Godhood in the outward path of evolution. Opening the abstract door closed to Godhood can also help save dying religion.

Ordered evolution rather than ordered liberty

The term “Ordered evolution” opens the door to the future without closing the door to the past, whereas the term “ordered liberty,” which is often used by conservatives, seems to discourage the Faustian view of man conquering nature and prefers instead an Arcadian happy view of the past, or sometimes a more pessimistic view of this world of woe. “Ordered evolution” actually opens the door to the future, to science and so on, without closing the door to the past.

These terms seem to be grounded in how we define God, nature and man. Man seems no less free or more determined with either term, but the choices we do have within determined paths seem to be evolutionary or devolutionary. When freedom is centered on an unchanging order of God beyond nature, then liberty seems more like an after-thought. Order in evolution needs to be seen as necessary to our ongoing evolution toward Godhood.

If unchanging order essentially defines God then“ordered liberty” looks more oxymoronic. When Godhood is understood as the supreme cosmic goal we evolve to in nature, then the phrase “ordered evolution” is more the reality. Ordered evolution defines the reality of our freedom and is not radical revolution. When order is seen as vital in evolution, the past is not extirpated, the future includes the best of the past.  This defines a revitalized conservatism or an evolutionary conservatism.

It's inevitable now, so how do we manage our decline?

We have allowed hedonism to set the ethics of our internal national values, with federally legalized gay marriage, the wide open immigration of millions of immigrants, rampant pornography and drug use, and on and on. What this means is that since our internal ethics are degenerate we will be subject to between-group selection, that is, we rot internally and fall externally, which has happened to countless past civilizations.

This means we must prepare for the consequences of a nation splitting apart, and the best way I can see to manage this decline is by affirming the separation of powers written in our original Constitution. This means the near-independence of regions and states, where local values may legally prevail, with small states, even virtual ethnostates, entitled to consider their own survival. Reality says that educational culture has little impact on changing the differences that immigrants bring with them, especially when they are distinctly different from the natives---they do not assimilate and require or demand their own culture, which is only natural.

Even given our hedonistic times, which have almost gleefully destroyed healthy human values, I believe traditional ethics eventually will prevail because they are derived from real, innate, human nature---the question is how to best manage it. If we remain mushy and morally weak to this Constitutional solution we may not prevent a revolution, which modern liberals, or conservatives for that matter, would not like at all.

Man in Evolution: The First and Second Experience of God

Traditional religions, west and east, had the First Experience of the Inward God, after mystics learned to block or stop all material desires so that they could see the Inward God, or the Father Within. The Second Experience of God includes but transforms the Inward God to Outward Godhood, not by blocking material desires but by refining and cultivating material drives, by ever seeking such Godly traits as truth, intelligence, beauty and goodness in upward evolution. Our duty appears to be to help life and evolution along the path to Godhood, because it is not always conscious or direct in doing so.

It seems to me that the universe is both linear in material life evolving to supermaterial Godhood, and cyclic when life does not make it to Godhood there are recurring chances to do so in endless universes. That is, all of creation may not commence with perfection and then move toward decline before it rises to perfection again, as is thought in the traditional east. It is Man In Evolution, not man trapped in cycles, even though history tends to retell similar stories. Life may continuously evolve to Godhood with starts and stops along the way with no end or beginning.

Progress Versus the Resignation of the Traditionalist School

Great frustration has much to do with the doctrine of resignation to fate seen in the revival of the Traditionalist School now popular in the far right. In effect they give up on the possibility of progress and are highly negative about the Western adventure of science and evolution. Nietzsche and Raymond Cattell wrote about how early Christianity made pity and resignation their way to deal with the great frustrations of the middle-east of the time. This seems to be a more eastern than western way of dealing with life.

In the West we don't reject progress in that way, we look forward to the adventure of evolution, even to our evolution to Godhood, which is almost the opposite of resignation and pity. For example, it seems that the more courageous wing of sociobiological studies is finding that the societies that endure and don't destroy themselves somehow mold genetics toward a reduction of the genetic lag between IQ's, and in the way people have or have not emotional control. These frustrations can lead to revolutions, or to the philosophies of resignation and pity. This assumes, backed by more and more research, that there is strong genetic component to IQ and to emotional control.  It's time to stop blocking this knowledge.

Looking further ahead toward our future evolution, we will either change consciously or unconscionably and it seems far better regarding the rise and fall of societies to consciously try to moderate this process than to have it unconscionably moderate us. This should be thought of as compassionate in preventing the suffering of a dying society. Hardin and Cattell called this “discriminating altruism.” The Faustian spirit of the West doesn't resign its fate to hopeless cycles---most seriously, we may not evolve to real Godhood if we do.  The God-Within, the Father-Within of Tradition needs to be included but transformed into the real Godhood we evolve to in the cosmos.

The modern evolutionary political position

The modern evolutionary political position seems to be this: the state does not provide for our life and our evolution toward Godhood, it can restrict itself to providing protection against external and internal forces, and “protection against the protectors” as someone once put it. Then it is religion and science which can culturally aid in our evolution, voluntarily, with institutions that can be both privately and state funded if we choose to do so. My point is that any given political system is contingent upon the religious ethos.

There need not be a conflict between evolving talented individuals and less talented majorities when these are seen in a reciprocal relationship, the individual needs the group and the group needs the individual.  To honor the talented, the beautiful, the good, is to honor the sacred goal of evolving to the zenith of these things. Envy needs to be understood in light of advancing evolution. Those who seek to create a wedge between this reciprocal relationship, like the Marxists, should not be indulged.

As to modern liberalism, real “progress” is defined by both cultural and biological evolution. As to conservatism, sociobiology defines human nature as innately conservative, so an ordered evolution among small largely independent states within light federations seems most harmonious. Libertarianism and neoconservatism seem as internationalist as they are individualist, in effect they tend to be against the love of ones own nation, the love of ones own people, and against economic nationalism, at least partly due to an overreaction to the brutal and imperialistic world wars of the twentieth century. The same overreaction to the past misuse of science by nationalism and communism seems to have blocked the renewed science of sociobiology from political science and the humanities, where it is needed most.

In the end, man is more homo-evolutus than homo-religiosus, or rather, religiosus is evolutus. Material power is essentially acquired for this religious purpose. The Inward God or Father Within of tradition is included but transformed by the real Godhood we evolve to in the cosmos. It is religion that can hold this all together in strong community, in seeing something higher and sacred which the modern world can strive for.

The denial of human nature

Human nature does not change much if at all and has not changed since the ancient hunter-gatherer times before large civilizations began. This means we can understand human nature and we can represent human nature in philosophy, politics and art and in our daily lives. Human nature is both atavistic, present and future.

It is astounding how distorted this has become, with modern philosophy even saying there is no human nature, no essence, only changing outer existence. By calling human nature “relative” and not fixed this tends to make life seem meaningless, which is a state actually championed by some thinkers. Even some religions have had problems with human nature calling it evil.

According to sociobiological studies and according to historically observation, human nature is innately conservative and we developed traditional values because these helped us survive and reproduce more successfully than not having these values. But human nature is also more deeply evolutionary, which suggests an Ordered Evolution rather than merely unchanging ordered tradition. There is an underlying telos to human nature and existence, we are evolving to Godhood in the cosmos.

How can you build a culture that ignores what we are, that ignores human nature, and why would you want to ? Modernity doesn't seem to like what we actually are, or they want to distort it so they may advance some other agenda, at least for a time, because then, often after much trouble, societies and human beings go back to what they are, which is not merely “going back” but living in the present and evolving forward.

Successful societies deflect selfish impulsive goals

Evidence is being compiled by sociobiology but it seems likely that successful societies deflect ergic (instinctive) goal satisfaction from selfish impulsive goals, and this seems to happen both genetically and culturally. When this doesn't happen societies tend to destroy themselves by a dysgenic process. Could this genetic/cultural process be made more conscious in our social philosophies?

We can see that it is selfish to talk about individual civil rights without including the rights of the group, and the the state, because individual rights are determined by the survival of the group and the state and the circumstances of the time. Raymond Cattell thought this process was related to vanity and the failure to escape selfish instinctive impulsive demands, which are not appropriate to advanced cultures.  Libertarians take note.

Jung thought that our preferred paths toward a given goal are instinctive, he also thought that the more intrafamilial archetypes were innate. It would seem that the sublimating deflection of selfish ergic goals after centuries would lead to humans who innately find the adjustment less difficult. Expanding this forward into future evolution and one sees how evolution slowly progresses toward civilizing of the beast. We can perhaps see an example of these civilizing genetic/cultural changes happening in the way that the glands governing fear and pugnacity are larger in wild than domesticated animals.

I am not irrationally afraid of instinctive drives overcoming the civilizing ego because I coined the idea of a Super-Id, in the form of the activating material Spirit-Will within material life that is shaped by outside evolution, which can be mediated or harmonized by the mind and the ego. But this process of civilizing ergic drives does seem opposite the barbarian instincts of war, which is the usual accusation hurled against the subject of appling sociobiology in our social philosophies.

If we ever want to actually do something about the suffering people in this world, rather than just blaming the downtrodden on the evil rich, we will need to look at these genetic/cultural dynamics.  

What Nietzsche and Cattell pointed toward

I affirm much of Nietzsche and much of Cattell in this blog. Nietzsche was not the libertarian individualist and Cattell not the racist that political correctness or cultural Marxism distort them as. Frankly, I believe Cattell improved on Nietzsche and I believe that the evolutionary religion I espouse improves on Cattell.

We need to evolve and improve both our given genetic nature and our acquired cultural nature, which Nietzsche called our “second nature.” Culture should not be a perversion of our genetic nature. Our actual human nature, where the individual is instinctively tied to ethics naturally created by his specific group-selection, would then tend to lead to many naturally occurring small states or ethnostates, protected by a light federalism, each evolving with variety, and having cooperative competition as the international goal.

But that is not enough. We require a transcendent ideal, beyond the individual, beyond the group, beyond the state, an evolutionary conservative ideal that includes but transforms the old order, and which has as its sacred and transcendent goal our evolution to Godhood in the cosmos. I think this is what Nietzsche and Cattell pointed toward.

Cattell's concern about the entropy of human beings

Raymond Cattell's decades long studies in the psychology of measurement and mathematical modes taught him that IQ differences are not merely culturally connected but are genetically connected. This led to his understanding that IQ differences, as well as emotional control from ego strength, lead to such things as the incapacity to concentrate, which is a poor fit indeed for our complex culture, and this in turn leads to psychological and social problems. However, Cattell recognized that even the criminal element may be with us for the reason that certain traits of criminals, such as self-sufficiency, dominance and fearlessness are also valuable in trail-breaking scientists, inventors and creators. This is bold thinking, backed by science.

Cattell recognized the great value of competition and worried about the “entropy” of human beings in the rush of modern liberalism to end all competition, which would be the worst thing for ongoing evolution. Freedom from all wants and concerns? That “surrenders the ego to the id.” Freedom from fear ? (eg. Roosevelt) That ends the use of the frontal lobes and mankind's progress, since “foresight is substantially fearsight.”

This is courageous thinking in today's world of entropic hedonism. What we need is cooperative competition, ethically directed individualism, ethically directed societies, with more impulse control, and not a state-sponsored forced end to competition. This means we have to deal with nature and genetics, at least as much as we do nurture or culture, and for this we very much need the aid of sociobiological studies from more men like Cattell and E.O. Wilson.

Transcendent evolution as the cultural pivot

We may center on evolving great individuals but Nietzsche didn't emphasize enough the idea that individuals live within groups which are even more vital to our transcendent ideals. Nietzsche's program was therefore more revolutionary than the evolutionary conservatism of this blog.

We need to have our eye on our own age, and we shouldn't live in the past or the future, but we require the broader mission in accord with a transcendent ideal. Evolution is the cultural pivot. But this is not the basis of our artificial culture today, we have no culture in this sense, but it needs to begin, even if the first generations are ridiculed by the philistines and pedants. Such is reality.

Culture can either enhance natural human nature or warp or block it, but first we need to define human nature. Sociobiology stands on the shoulders of past great biologists and social psychologists and it defines human nature more accurately than it has ever been defined before. We are here to survive and reproduce successfully and are cultures rise from this motive---but this is not the only motive.

Evolving to Godhood in the cosmos is the transcendent religious goal which needs to be attached to the science of sociobiology. One might ask, if nature is capable of evolving higher men then why is education or culture needed? Nietzsche pointed out (“The Republic of Genius,” Quentin Taylor) that nature has its purpose but nature can be wasteful, nature does not always proceed wisely, man needs to help nature work toward his own perfection---we have become conscious of our unconscious evolution. I see this in terms of the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood which activates material life from within to Godhood, but then life is also shaped by a far less direct outside evolution.

Nietzsche thought that human existence stands in need of “justification,” with Christianity fading. and with secular creeds inadequate to the task. Our evolution to Godhood is the sacred justification, and with the Twofold Path it can work in conjunction with traditional Christianity.

Intelligence alone is not enough

Intelligence alone is not enough, and beauty, truth or goodness, alone, are not enough. Together they are complete, especially when we evolve to the zenith of these qualities, which is Godhood. This also helps define why intelligence or beauty alone are not enough in defining an elite.

Evolutionary religion finds the ends, science and politics the means

An occasional scientist-politician wouldn't hurt rather than so many lawyers, but politicians can mainly use scientists and scientific institutions for research into sociobiology and social psychology, which have substantial knowledge that has been overlooked or buried by politicians, mainly due to political correctness or cultural Marxism. In democracies the people vote on ends which scientists and politicians can find the best means to attain. This also adds meritocracy and slows demagoguery in democracies.

Sociobiological research can help save the population from decline or even disaster. For example, IQ studies have found the law of regression to the mean of the group. A parent with an IQ of 110 will tend to have a child with the IQ of 105 if they are living in a group with a mean of 100. This sort of thing needs to be taken into account with the immigration of large groups of people with lower IQ's than the inhabitants of a country, which eventually has a big effect on the culture and leadership. As the people change the culture changes.  Examine the facts and motives of those who deny this.

However, alone, the science of sociobiology is not enough, it can find the means to the ends that evolutionary religion and politics decide upon. Evolving to Godhood in the cosmos is the primary end goal of life which religion and culture can affirm, as we move, hopefully, to the next level of civilization.

Harmonizing Religion and Science

The highest goal of politics and culture is more than survival and reproductive success, important as these are, and more than the classical goal of peace and justice. What is missing from science and sociobiology are the more holistic trans-political and religious goals. Science doesn't give a whole enough account of life, but then religion also needs the insights of science.

The science of sociobiology says to me that science can define values, it is not really blocked by the “fact-value distinction,” sociobiology has brilliantly told us about ourselves and why we do what we do, but also sociobiology attaches value to the survival and reproductive success which primarily drives our biologically and culturally behavior.

Modern science is the technical version of old classical reason, even if traditional theology doesn't agree, and science helps us understand the natural laws which can give us universally valid ends. When faith, intellectual intuition and practical thought are allowed into the dynamic of science and natural law, then we can affirm nature evolving materially and supermaterially to Godhood in the cosmos. The “font” of natural law can be seen as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood which activates life to evolve to Godhood, shaped by outside evolution.

Without revelation, intellectual intuition and faith, science can in fact lead to such things as communism and fascism with life reduced to earthly survival of the fittest, selfish imperialism, or one-race nationalism, because whether it uses science well or not it sees nothing more than the truths that it uses science to discover. Liberal humanism also uses science as its foundation but with with less rationalizing of brutality.

When sciences such as sociobiology are attached to evolutionary religion then the goals of life are transformed from mere survival and reproductive success to long term evolution in the cosmos. This is how evolutionary religion can harness the tension between religion and science, revelation and reason. It can be seen that our evolution requires more than one-race nationalism or egalitarian imperialism. The reality of our populated planet says if we are to survive and evolve out into the cosmos we all need to evolve in our own distinctive ways with cooperative competition between a variety of states and groups. Our goal is Godhood, which ultimately means we are evolving far beyond even the human species or the present races of man.

Man and Godhood in Nature

How dangerous it has been to human history, and human evolution, to give such power and right to a non-material, non-object, beyond-nature, misinterpretation of God, which often led to hating nature and material life.

Both Godhood and man bend to the laws of nature. Godhood is not seen as beyond nature, which could imply beyond good and evil. The imperatives of nature, the right, power and might of nature should not be seen as evil if even Godhood is subject to its laws. Nature does not overthrow morality, nature created morality.  A higher level of Godhood might monumentally manipulate nature but that is not creating nature.

This perspective gives more weight to investigating nature, and the laws of nature.  Rationality, science and philosophical naturalism can enter religion. Theological materialism says that we evolve to Godhood materially and supermaterially, and the mystery of defining Godhood is gradually resolved as we evolve higher and higher intelligence, truth, beauty and goodness.  This is honorable to life, truth, and evolution. It is respectful of Godhood itself not to make of God an airy nothing.

Living in accord with nature and the future

Living in accord with nature also means human nature as was developed in the Hunter-Gatherer age, a nature which we certainly still possess. This harmoniously tracks, more or less, with traditional conservative values. To our inborn nature, or what we inherit, is added the second nature, our upbringing, our education (ie. nature/nurture), and the second acquired nature must not be a perversion of our inborn nature, as it has largely been in modern culture. More deeply and religiously this means living within an ordered conservative evolution activated by the Spirit-Will which internally activates material life to evolve toward Godhood, shaped by outside evolution. This is fully living in accord with nature.

As to the future, as Nietzsche suggested, the development of great people and not merely cultured people, is the supreme goal of education and culture, this is the political, artistic, and religious goal.  In today's language this means the development of great people sociobiologically. And not just one people but many people, grouped in small states and regions of distinct variety, and within the groups great individuals, the Republic of Genius, as Schopenhauer called them, calling to one another across time. If we can survive the present, this is our future, this is fully living in accord with nature and the future...Given who we are, is there a better way?

Admit our modern perversity and the past isn't so shocking

Looking backward in history things which appear shocking to our modern political correctness seem almost necessary when we admit our modern perversity. Modern culture, especially pop culture, seems unable to recognize anti-social talent from socially-redeeming talent. Ex-drug pushers, nihilists, anarchists, less obvious cultural Marxists, rapacious self-seeking businessman, and so on, are heavily promoted by modern culture financially and culturally.

What are some of the results of this anti-social promotion? Economic nationalism doesn't seem so shocking now that globalism has destroyed the manufacturing base and jobs in America, and greatly widened the gap between rich and poor. And “minding our own business” doesn't seem so shockingly “isolationist” now that our meddling in the world has cost us so much and brought nothing but trouble to most Americans. Preferences for ones own kind, recognized in the past, does not seem so shocking now after the great trouble caused, without success, in trying to make us all the same. And certainly without condoning the huge number of rapes in the military, perhaps keeping women largely out of the military in the past now seems not so shocking.

All the traits of human nature as defined by classical conservatism (not neoconservative) and by the science of sociobiology do not seem so shocking when we admit the modern perversity which has all but buried real human nature and healthy culture. Who are the promoters and why have they so maliciously promoted this perversity? Is it ignorance? It seems to have simply been the will to power of the promoters, who sought power by way of weakening traditional culture.

This has predictably led to much lower morale in the population, more alcoholism and drug addiction, more law breaking, more prisons, more egoistic consumption of luxuries, which has weakened the nation and denied money and effort needed for self-defense, research, health, and so on.

And thus a nation and a people decline... It needs to be turned around, perhaps beginning with the promoters of our decline.

Toward evolutionary conservatism

Nietzsche thought the aim of education was not merely to “know” the past but to produce and cultivate individual greatness in the present culture, which is what the ancient Greeks did so well. But now we need also to be concerned with developing great individuals sociobiologically, not merely culturally. This sounds shocking to modern minds because we don't admit the modern perversities. For example, such things as demanding absolute equality of conditions for all people is now politically correct, a perverse twisting of the idea of the equality of opportunity. This is perverse when compared with real human nature in human history. The frustrating thing is, these modern perversities were often pursued not with real moral concern but as methods to power for those seeking to rise in more fixed cultures.

But history has a way of snapping back to what human nature actually is, as sociobiology and a few courageous historians have taught us. We need a revitalized conservatism, we need evolutionary conservatism, and we will probably get it, if we can survive that long. A nation and even a world of thousands of mostly independent small states or ethnostates protected by a light regional federalism is what humans form into, if natural human nature is allowed to come forward. And this time with the important addition of cooperative rather than uncooperative competition, which humans are capable of if we try. This will also better permit our continuing sociobiological and sacred evolution.

I agree and disagree with both Burke and Strauss

After reading the thoughts of Jack Kerwick (Modern Age, Spring 2013) comparing forms of conservatism here are my thoughts on the subject.

I tend to agree with neo-conservative Leo Strauss that natural law (natural right) has a rational purpose but I take the essential purpose to be material life evolving to super-material life and Godhood in the cosmos, and Strauss does not go there. I also tend to agree with classical conservative Edmund Burke who suggests we need to live according to the tradition and order of the time and place we live in, which does not have a universal rational purpose other than living. However, Burke does seem to see a universal purpose which only God knows.

I remain grounded in universal evolution and the universal purpose of our eventual evolution to Godhood, where the “particular” group, time and place is affirmed in its unique path to the “universal” Godhood of material-supermaterial evolution. “Rights” seem to get complicated or obfuscated and move away from simpler definitions such as, “Natural law derives from the nature of man and the world, just as physical law derives from the nature of space, time, and matter. “ (James A. Donald)  But then, philosophical naturalism will not go beyond empirical proof to see the teleological and sacred goal to evolution, but I do with theological materialism, hoping science will find proof for this in the future. 

Considering future first principles of government

In its essential social aspects human nature seeks survival and reproductive success in the world. This behavior of human nature is derived from the laws of nature and the task of government is to protect this natural behavior as much as possible.

When there are large groups of people, and with not all of them culturally and genetically similar, with all  seeking to fulfill the natural imperatives of human nature, a civilized way has to be found to reduce the chances of conflict, since war, especially modern wars, often damage success in survival and reproduction for both winners and losers.

Regions and states for this reason need to be protected in their differences and allowed as much independence and freedom as possible so that the people may fulfill the essential imperatives of human nature. Government as a whole is the recognition of this natural behavior, or natural law, and the need to protect and allow it. It seems to me that the original Constitution of the United States could more or less affirm this light federalism.

In the ancient past different groups, or races, were formed mainly from geographical isolation, and ethnics such as altruism were formed in isolated groups to help the groups bond for success in competition with other groups. But in the very populated world of today, present within-group ethics need to adapt to a between-group ethics which affirms our differences. Differences need to be acknowledged with courage and truth; the almost diabolical practice of promoting strong ethnocentrism for ones own group while disparaging and ruling out ethnocentrism in all other groups needs to cease.

In the future, in accord with nature and human nature, I believe we will be more consciously involved in our evolution, in shaping patterns of the distribution of cultural and genetic traits related to our needs and goals, and for this we will need the protection of differences. Religion helps bond people in the deepest way and sets sacred goals with values, morals and rituals. I think governments and religions of the future will apply evolutionary philosophy and sociobiology, with the sacred goal of evolving all the way to Godhood in the cosmos.

Non finito evolution

It seems to me that Socratic and post-pagan philosophy and religion developed too much in cities, too much away from nature, and they had a too abstract, almost anti-nature ethos (art too). The re-purposed or revitalized religious philosophy and cosmogony I write about in this blog is the evolution of life to Godhood, a recurring cosmos, beginning in primal matter, activated from within by the Spirit-Will, shaped by natural evolution, falling back, then beginning again with big bang creations, endlessly, no final mover, a recurring endless evolution, no beginning, no end, non finito. We humans are part of this evolution, and our values and morals, and our cultural structures need to proceed in harmony with this endless evolutionary song, not with one song but with a harmony of songs, all evolving, all moving toward the zenith of intelligence, beauty, and noble character, or Godhood.

Can we outlaw war without curtailing evolution?

Raymond Cattell thought we may have reached the level of civilization where we can outlaw war without curtailing evolution.

True there have been many inventions brought about by war, rocketry etc.. which eventually landed us on the moon. Cattell thought that we might think of war as the lower level of testing the power of a group and that groups might assert their power at a higher level of competition, with technology etc.

Sociobiological research institutes could be set up to examine the problems of nations and states, regarding the various stages that societies go through, like the age-categories of individuals, to help us not only outlaw dysgenic wars but insure the future evolution of culture and genes.

Cattell's important hope was that we can outlaw war without curtailing evolution. Can we really civilize the beast to this degree? Perhaps if we are to survive and evolve out into the cosmos we must.

Educational philosophy and future evolution

“We want to serve history only to the extent that history serves life.” (Nietzsche)

Pro-social and anti-social genius needs to be distinguished in relation to advancing evolution. I affirm some of the early Greek philosophers, perhaps Goethe, Schopenhauer and later Nietzsche and Cattell in seeing a graded reality from lower matter all the way to Godhood, a dynamic natural world with all forms striving upward, all levels of nature directed toward compounding consciousness, all evolving toward the zenith of intelligence, beauty and noble character, which is Godhood. Natural evolution may be beyond good and evil but not beyond good and bad---it is not value free.

Finding and assisting genius needs the help of our institutions. Working in isolation happens in any case, but genius and the works of genius lead human culture, culture follows genius and lags behind both culturally and genetically, and it is the task of culture to manage the under-emphasized cultural frustrations which are caused from the lag. This can anchor educational philosophy which has all but abandoned these ideals in regressively centering on the less talented rather than the most talented. Culture needs to promote the greatest number of exceptional people whose inventions can help the less exceptional. The great culture of the Renaissance was developed by only about one hundred men!.

The idea is that we don't study for the sake of studying as “idlers in the garden of knowledge” (Nietzsche), we study as the attendant of the great current of evolving life. Life precedes knowledge. We study past greatness to help ourselves become great.

Philosopher Frederick Nietzsche and psychologist Raymond Cattell more or less agreed with this assessment of future education, two outstanding masters, although neither essentially acknowledged evolving to Godhood in evolution, and certainly not in terms of transforming the God first seen inwardly by the great religions to Godhood evolved to outwardly. What is vital is faith in evolution, in its continual possibilities. 

The outward evolutionary religious age

The modern world asked the question, should we try to revitalize the collective, or try to heal far fewer individuals? It was predicted that an inward spiritual age was coming requiring near-total libertarian freedom for the individual.

Modern psychologists and philosophers, in line with Eastern religions, largely dismissed the collective modern world as hopeless and they centered on the individual, especially following the second world war. This was mainly the Involutionary Inward Path to the God Within which says there is danger in applying myth-religion politically. But there may be more danger in not doing so.

Sociobiology, a universal science, has overcome the fragmentation and individualism of postmodernism in defining the group as the main unit of selection. Even individual genius, which has been so vital to human progress, must harmonize with the group to have any affect. The evolutionary metanarrative has a universal theme of evolving to Godhood, with particular cultures and people as the central units of selection.

Science examines the world while religion unifies the world.  Science for a time buried myth-religion but it can now be an aid to religion in the myth-religion of our evolution to Godhood.

Theological materialism harmonizes religion and science and can make religion accessible to the modern secular mind. Humans are capable of universal evolution toward Godhood, along with the parallel evolution of a wide variety of individual small states or ethnostates, protected by a light federalism, and with cooperative competition affirmed.

I see an outward, not inward, evolutionary religious age coming. Religion, influenced by the East, has gone inward for most of its long history, mainly denying the material world. In the future we may see the material world as evolving outwardly to supermaterial Godhood, the Godhood first glimpsed inwardly. This is creative myth-religion as cosmic salvation, which can heal both the individual and the collective.

Nietzsche and Godhood

The supreme goal of education and culture for Nietzsche, especially early Nietzsche, was the genius, and the works of genius, including noble character. The more individualistic superman later was the culmination of this philosophy.

The supreme goal of the Twofold Path and the EC is primarily the evolution of life to Godhood, and it follows from this that the evolution of genius, the works and noble character of genius, and the genes of the genius, can help us along in our evolution.

Nietzsche might not have approved of the goal of Godhood as understood through intellectual intuition and proportion, which he might have called an illusion, however necessary, but Nietzsche might have acknowledged the grounding of Godhood in in material-supermaterial evolution, and philosophical naturalism.

Sociobiology (E. O. Wilson) has affirmed group-selection as the primary unit of selection, with the individual relating primarily to group selection. The academic world now needs to have a more transformable cultural role for sociobiology, which could then influence high and low culture.

Cooperative competition in evolution in a world of variety and evolving small states, while affirming ones own particular people and state, might not have been highly valued by Hellenic-loving Nietzsche, but the world was smaller then.

Long term evolution will need the help of international institutions working with national institutions. We can surpass the Ancient Greeks, which might have made Nietzsche happier. But we will need cooperative competition and not imperialism to do it.

Can we have proportion and beauty in the political as in art?

If it is possible to have proportion and beauty in political order as it was conceived in classical architecture then political order is not only an empirical thing, it is also art, and seems to also call for the eye of the artist, at least the kind of artist who sees beauty in proportion and proportion in beauty.

Proportion and beauty are the blending of opposites and the ordering of different things, not merely by empirical mathematics but by artistic proportion. Although proportion has its own numbers, classical architect's adjusted proportion to fit the eye, not to fit the abstract facts in building the structure.

Thinking of a nation or world containing small states, or ethnostates, protected by a light but defensive federalism, with a variety of different groups and environments, and with the universal goal of materially evolving toward ascending levels of Godhood in their own particular ways---this seems like beautiful proportion to me, even before you track it down empirically, which you can also do with the science of sociobiology, which defines real human nature as primarily kin and ethnic centered.

Beauty and proportion are related to aesthetics whereas you track the good in the moral and philosophical fields, but if you think of Godhood the the zenith of beauty, truth and goodness, which we evolve to in the cosmos, then Godhood is where truth, beauty and goodness attain their connected proportion, blending together in absolute beauty. We head toward that in art and in politics.

The artist's eye

By seeking beauty in art affirms Godhood. Also evolving increasingly beautiful, intelligent and noble beings is closer to Godhood, which is the evolved zenith of these things. We materially evolve to Godhood in the material/supermaterial world.

Frederic Turner wrote, “ ...the artist must sail into the unknown, cutting blazes as he or she goes along, blazes that consist of a combination of some symbols already known and some open to question, a grotesque paradox, that opens up the new territory of perception...”

Turner also quotes Shakespeare from “A Midsummer Night's Dream”:

“The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

  Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.

  And as imagination bodies forth

  The Forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

  Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

  A local habitation and a name.”