Trans-valuing the Great Spiritual Blockade

We have been warned for centuries by religious mystics not to equate the spiritual with objective things because the spiritual than becomes an object, an “It” rather than a “Thou.” This is the Great Spiritual Blockade against material-supermaterial evolution to real Godhood. Godhood is an object, a supermaterial object.  The “It,” the supermaterial object, not the Thou, is what we seek when we seek the Divine.
 
“Thou” requires the nonmaterial perspective of the Inward God, which is really the desire-free experience of bliss, or nothingness, attained from being desire-free, and then defined as God or the Father-Within. The God Within needs to be retained but put in its place and seen as a symbolic-experience of the real object Godhood reached through material evolution.  This is the Twofold Path.

Does seeking Divine Objects lead to “idol” worship? We want idols, material and supermaterial idols, real living objects, which help us along the way as we evolve to Godhood in the cosmos. The Pagans were wrongly condemned for worshiping idols by those who worshiped nonmaterial “nothing,” or by those who made idols of texts and definitions of God.  
 
Philosophers and theologians have tried to save religion by including real living people, by cleverly finding some value (reluctantly) in actual life, but the real goal for the religiously serious has been to rid the body of all natural desires so as to experience the Father-Within.
 
A trans-valuation of the Great Spiritual Blockade is needed in religion to save religion from fading into the nothingness which it essentially seeks.

The continuum of faith and science in theological materialism

Many years ago Nietzsche pointed out that human morals and valuations had lost the preservative function which animal instincts have, creating missing or chaotic value systems. Sociobiology tends to agree, saying human valuations in reality preserve the individual, community, state, culture etc. The almost experimental morality of modern life has all but lost its preservative instincts and lost the preservative function of values.

The evolutionary perspective of theological materialism adds the end-goal of evolving to Godhood to our valuations and morals . This necessitates preserving individuals and cultures, but it offers a continuum of valuations all the way to Godhood in the cosmos. Theological materialism follows science all the way, particularly sociobiology, but unlike Nietzsche, it also includes Jesus, Plato, Kant and Hegel in that their philosophy transcended science with the belief in a romantic “beyond.”  This beyond applies even when the beyond is truncated as an Inward God.

What theological materialism adds is the belief that science will one day affirm our evolution to Godhood, so that Godhood will then be located both in faith and in science. Virtues are looked at as evolutionary conditions. The highest beauty, intelligence, truth and goodness is attained when Godhood is attained in evolution. To adapt a phrase of Nietzsche, this is the way all the chords in tragic being can ring in splendid unison.  This path of our evolution to Godhood isn't seen as a contradiction between faith and science but as a continuum.

Branching causes with no first cause

I see the cosmos something like the way Frederick Turner sees time, “cause and effect is not a chain but a branching tree in both temporal directions.” The same cause can have many different effects and the same effect can result from many different causes.

I avoid the metaphysical and theological hairsplitting about “first causes” by not seeing a first cause. I see an endless branching of cause and effect.

This worldview harmonizes with the belief that we evolve to Godhood materially and supermaterially, a Godhood which is not the first cause.

There are always cosmos arising from a Primal Material and the activating supermaterial Spirit-Will within the primal material, never separate from it.

Religion, Godhood and even science can survive and prosper without a first cause.

There are only real objects and secondary definitions of those objects

Unreal names and concepts are worshiped, this is oddly called philosophical “realism.” This unreality has hypertrophied into an idolatry of definitions and names for God. God or Gods become a name or names only and not a real object.

In understanding Being, philosophical nominalism is primary, realism is secondary. There are only real objects and secondary definitions of those objects. “Universal” definitions and concepts are secondary to the real objects they try to define.

Godhood is an object, a living object, not a non-object, not a non-material thing, not a name only, not a text, not a blissful feeling only, not a spiritual concept only. Godhood is a real material or supermaterial object, or objects, which we evolve to become in the living world.

The Great Spiritual Blockade seen in the idolatry of names, and the blissful experience of the Inward God, have blocked our evolution to real Godhood. Should we therefore throw out religion for promoting this false idolatry of names and feelings? That would be too radical or revolutionary for practical human life.

The God of names, definitions and feelings, the Inward God, can be saved or revitalized when the feelings and names for the Father Within are understood as a symbolic-experience of the real Godhood reached by material and supermaterial evolution. This is how the Twofold Path synthesizes old and new religion.

Life itself declares its own morality

For example, life says it's good to survive and reproduce successfully, whether we acknowledge this as good or not. Contrary to Nietzsche and his postmodernist followers there is a moral phenomena within the very nature of life, which means that moral phenomena are not merely interpretations of phenomena.

The so-called “naturalistic fallacy” deriving “ought” from “is” is not a fallacy. We cannot act in a way that we are not, without having imbalance problems, physiologically and psychologically. Our actions can only reflect what we are, we are restricted by what we are. We can lead with what we are and then gradually, with ordered evolution, change. Unnatural laws offer only short-term success in the long-term evolution of life, and when unnatural laws become culture it is usually only to the selfish advantage of the promoters of the unnatural laws and doesn’t last long because the laws go against actual human nature.

Sociobiology needs to enter the humanities, the academies, and the media. Political correctness and cultural Marxism, which now dominate our cultural elites, are an abuse of human nature and an abuse of philosophical naturalism. A few gain temporary benefit for their own survival and reproduction at the expense of all the others. Human nature is the human nature as defined by E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology and not as defined by Marxism.

I believe when human nature is allowed to be itself it leads to the cultural and political configuration of ethnopluralism, where each distinct group has its own small state or region protected by a light federalism. Real human nature is kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

But in a seemingly contradictory direction, I also think we need to go beyond present naturalistic empirical science and affirm the material Spirit-Will to Godhood within life as part of life itself, activating life to evolve to Godhood. This belief in the beyond is accomplished by synthesizing other fields and intuitions into present empirical science. It is freely admitted that the belief in the beyond, like faith or theory, is necessary for the morality and values of our evolution to Godhood---science will find proof later.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

How we can all (mostly) get along

The great falsehood of modernity denies the antiquity of human nature or even denies that there is a human nature. So we can begin to solve the problems of modernity by first admitting and then affirming our real human nature, which was largely formed a million to 15 thousand years ago in the hunter-gatherer times of the Paleolithic, and we still have that human nature.

I repeat it often in this blog, human nature has throughout history been kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This nature has not changed, but modernity has culturally tried to change it.

“Multiculturalism” made an attempt to affirm human nature but took a wide left turn by demanding that we all get along in equality while living within the same territories, even as we try to express our distinct differences. This often led to civil disturbances, even civil war, or the loss of variety and distinctiveness. Government has even been used to try to force distinctly different people to all get along in equality, but this didn't work, as was seen in the short social experiment of the Soviet Union.

Ethnopluralism can correct some of the mistakes of modernity and multiculturalism by affirming our differences within small states and regions, by allotting territorial space where variety and ethnic differences can naturally live and be championed by all. Even the original U.S. Constitution could adapt to ethnopluralism because it originally allotted power to individual states and regions and protected them with a light federalism. Europe, Russia, even China could do the same thing---empires eventually fall and return to these small ethnic states in any case, as human history has shown time and again.

The task would be not to promote only egalitarian cooperation, and not to promote only capitalist competition, but to promote “cooperative competition” between distinct states with a variety of distinct ethnic groups. International research centers can be used by all to help in our continued evolution toward Godhood in the cosmos.

During this holiday season this is the politically incorrect way I think in terms of how we can all (mostly) get along in the future.

How women tend to be conservative

The political correctness of gender neutrality which rules the media doesn't want to hear it, but during this holiday season I have again seen that women tend to be conservative in this way: women closely examine character, behavior, etc, more than men do, perhaps because women have to invest so much of their bodies and time in child-rearing. Women believe in their man, they believe in the qualities and character of leadership, they give attention to the looks of a man, and then they tend to secondarily (but not unimportantly) consider the person's ideology or abstract philosophy. I use the term “tend” here because there are obviously many exceptions to any rule about this behavior.

Women will tend to support their children more even when they violate the values of the family, whereas men tend to think more in terms of unemotional abstract justice. A good balance seems often to be achieved in traditional marriages between paying attention to people and paying attention to values, which can be applied to political philosophy. Of course we need both. Not giving full attention to ideology first but giving more attention to the actual behavior of people is the way most conservatives define real Conservatism.

I'm not against intellectuals, I am one, but both liberal and conservative intellectuals tend to think too symbolically, which often separates their ideas from real life. Even religion, which pays more attention to behavior, can go too far in its abstract definitions losing sight of actual human nature. Perhaps it would make more sense to distinguish between intellectuals and behaviorists rather than liberals and conservatives. Human kind can get in a lot of trouble trying to create cultures that do not reflect real human nature and real human behavior. Left more to their own natural devices it seems to me that women tend to be more realistically or at least biologically grounded, but then intellectuals and ideologies often turn women---and men---away from natural behavior, especially during these times of political correctness.

Restoring order

By rejecting religion our culture was for awhile down to thinking that it is merely art which could provide or restore order---even the courageous Nietzsche had this perspective.

But postmodern art no longer even wants to play the role of creating order in a chaotic world, it wants to reflect the chaos, or often doesn't even want to reflect that much. Now so-called high art is down to nothing, nihilism.

Nietzsche at least never lost sight of our biological nature in relation to the creations of man and culture, but modern philosophy with its arcane definitions and ideologies, and with less courage, tried to move beyond the foundation in nature.

Science also tried to find order, but science will not fill in the blanks outside of empirical facts, so science reflects a half-ordered world.

For most of human history it was religion and philosophy that affirmed order. Our Ordered Evolution to Godhood can restore religious order, an order that includes both art and science.

Nature and human nature are in accord with the Ordered Evolution of material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood, which is also the zenith of success in survival and reproduction---this can order our cultural creations and our behavior, for the long term.

Two roads diverge in transhumanism

The first road biologically and genetically modifies natural evolution, the second road moves beyond what we are to join with machines or become artificial life. I affirm the first road of conscious evolutionary modification of billions of years of unconscious evolution, from the simple to the complex, using many forms of biological enhancements.

The superstructure of genetics and bioengineering needs to rest on the evolutionary base of biology and genetics, and not become a new artificial structure without a natural base. We can enhance our genetic and biological capabilities endlessly as we evolve toward Godhood, but if we upload ourselves into silicone chips we could end natural evolutionary life, which is a diabolical end.

There seems to be something almost paranoid about those who see racism behind any talk of the improvement of hereditary qualities, which is taken to the point of preferring artificial evolution to biological evolution, as with many transhumanists. A very cynical reading could also see those who wish to stop the evolutionary biological improvement of hereditary qualities as an underhanded way to enhance their own genes, consciously or unconsciously, by stopping the advancement of others.

Ethics can be inferred from evolutionary history (what else?) otherwise we attempt to go beyond nature itself. This does nor mean we will not move beyond the human species, ethnocentrism, for example, has been a stopping off place to secure beneficial mutations before moving on to the next stage, the next pause, the next species.

Vulgus and Virtus

Let me try to broadly define vulgus and virtus. Devolution defines vulgus, and evolution defines virtus. Cultural values stem from this base, and both sides need to be addressed. Religion is traditionally the primary teacher of these things and other cultural institutions follow.

As actual history has shown us, all great civilizations develop out of a religious base and when the religion falls the civilization falls. But religions are primarily promulgated by people, specific people, and when the people change, or fall, the religion and cultures change, or fall.

As ethnopluralism develops naturally across the world in the future, in small states and regions, these definitions will be better attended to, for long term success in general. Change by way of evolution becomes the mold or form, not change merely seen as the ordered liberty of conservatism, but conservative change as Ordered Evolution, an evolution which practically deals with both vulgus and virtus for all groups.

And where is evolution going?  Toward higher and higher truth, beauty, intelligence, power and goodness, with the goal of Godhood as the absolute zenith of these things, the Godhood first partially seen as the God or Father Within.

The Twofold Path supersedes the blissful but dead end of Nirvana and Inward Heaven

According to Buddhism (Sthiramati) true reality is emptiness, which we can only see when we do not “cling” to self and phenomena, and thus see true reality. This is called “liberation” from bondage. The goal is to feel neither attachment or aversion to the world. This is called liberation and nirvana.

This is also hedonism, this is the description of the bliss felt (however great) from freeing the mind and body of all material desires. This project indicates hedonism only, and it is not the goal of the Evolutionary Outward Path to real Godhood, it is the goal of the Involuntary Inward Path to the nirvana of the Inward God or Father-Within, the Heaven-Within which Jesus Christ also sought, and found.

We can have both, but the Inward Path applied exclusively stops all life, progress and evolution in the world in the interest of bliss. Northern India, the home of Buddha, was very good at doing this, and Christian monasticism also was good at this same deep ascetic procedure (the beatific vision), which was not unlike dying. But bliss can be gotten both from having no desire, and from completely fulfilling desire.

It is time to evolve out into the cosmos toward real Godhood by way of material and supermaterial evolution, while keeping the Inward Path as a first symbolic-experience of what real living Godhood may be like once we attain it. This is the Twofold Path.

Being as Thou, It, or as Object?

We are told to consider things as Thou, not It, not as Objects, but this theology has been abused. We try to stretch our “love” beyond natural limits, beyond our natural love for self, kin, extended kin, and ethnic community, because in reality love naturally decreases as we get further away from our biological-genetic connections, which is perfectly natural.

The theologians and philosophers have attempted to save the Thou-attitude toward All by misdefining God as beyond nature, beyond the world---they do not define Godhood as a supremely evolved supermaterial Object in the cosmos, as we do. Defining God as beyond nature and only spiritual sets up a false ontology that leads to trying to emulate a way of living and loving that is beyond our natures, and beyond the real world, even beyond real Godhood.

If we can first admit our natural connections and boundaries then we can have a better chance of finding realistic ways to try to get along and respect those who are not close to us, for example, by affirming ethnopluralism. When we try to demand that we love equally those close and those far away we demand actions that have never really worked. We can all evolve to Godhood but we first have to admit who we actually are, and what Godhood really is.

Answering Nietzsche

Nietzsche thought Christianity ruined mankind for the benefit of creating the good meek man, and as a consequence mankind was in danger of perishing, owing to an ideal that was hostile to life. The demands of the species were ignored in affirming the weak individual, leading to the ruin of the species. The unnatural became law. Nietzsche asked the question, was Christianity really worth anything, and his answers was “no.”

Nietzsche believed that Christianity reverses the principle of natural selection, but I see this as exclusively confined to the Involutionary Inward Path to the God or Father Within, which requires the blocking of all material desires---this does not apply to the Evolutionary Outward Path of material-supermaterial evolution to Godhood. This is the transformation seen in the theological materialism of the Evolutionary Christian Church.

The ancient Inward Path can be included in the ancient Outward Path. The symbolic-experience of the Inward God becomes the real Outward God of evolution. Nietzsche's philosophy helped lead to the horrors of World War Two, and the nihilism of post-modernism, rather than the health and strength Nietzsche wanted. Religion can be conservatively transformed in the Ordered Evolution to Godhood, the golden alchemy of the Twofold Path transforms the material and the spiritual, science and religion, and brings them together. Goethe's Faust and Nietzsche's Superman might have hoped for such a transformation.

The embarrassment of Sweden's gender neutrality

Political correctness (or cultural Marxism) has gotten so bad on the gender-neutrality front in Sweden that I could even be banned in my grandfather's homeland for merely saying that I am embarrassed by it! Have they never heard of the science of sociobiology?! Science has found incontrovertible evidence of the biological origins of much of cultural behavior, including gender differences! Sweden might have been better off imposing the “other feminism,” the Camille Paglia version celebrating gender differences and even considering the female superior.

Sweden has virtually dropped “He” and “She” (Han and Hon) for the pronoun “Hen”! Gender neutrality is now virtually the state religion! They have a “Minister for Gender Equality” and it is not a Monty Python sketch! Your career can be ruined if you openly object! The government and other institution are legally imposing the the destruction of gender itself! Sweden is not seeking equality it is seeking to erase the male gender! As James Kalb wrote, erasing the real distinctions of human nature, such as gender, culture, family, ethnicity, religion, leaves only the far more superficial class, money, style, occupational level, and educational certification to define or identify who we are.

The Nordic brain is magnificent, Sweden of all country’s should have been able to develop a solid meritocracy letting gender, race, etc, go where they naturally go. But the Nordic brain is also capable of exaggerating the neo-cortex, the newer rational brain, over the other two parts of the brain, the ones that are involved in gender differences, hierarchies and even xenophobia. Whole people learn to harmonize the whole brain, otherwise they are half-people. Real human nature is still there, as Jung said, the river-bed can only temporarily dry up.

There is a Swedish word called “jantelagen,” the ingrained aversion to standing out (North Asians seem to have it to), which has perhaps helped them sacrifice themselves heroically for the good of the larger group. Maybe the best that can come of Sweden's immolation of itself is that they will serve as an example for other people who might want to impose the same dangerous absurdities on their people.

Two kinds of overcompensation

I've wondered if Nietzsche realistically realized the savageness of the noble barbarian warriors which he championed over the taming of them by Christianity, and if he might have been overcompensating. When Achilles dragged the dead body of Hector around the walls of Troy, Achilles was civilized compared to the usual scalp-taking savage barbarians. They did need taming, but I would agree that the taming should not have been to the degree that the Inward Path of the great monotheistic religions tried to tame them, in ridding the body of all desires to see-experience the Father Within.

Rome did fall at least to some degree from having accepted the non-warrior humility and individualism of Christianity, although there was passive martyrdom, the individual was made to be so important that he could not be sacrificed for the demands of the group, which is the base of the heroism often needed to defend the group. This was done in the face of group-selection being the primary unit of selection for survival and reproductive success, which is to this day still true (see the sociobiology of  Wilson)

Ordered Evolution toward Godhood can tame or civilize mankind more realistically and less harshly than the barbarian-yet-culture-creating-beast of Nietzsche on the one side, or the ascetic denial of nature and human nature by religion on the other side. Ordered Evolution can retain the Inward Path to the God Within of the great religions but transform it to the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to real Godhood--- which is evolutionary not revolutionary, and actually conservative.

The whole man in political philosophy

Here is a thought experiment in political philosophy applying the use of the three brains of humans, the reptilian, limbic, and new mammalian brain including the frontal neocortex. The far left and modern liberals want to use only the newest neocortex in their egalitarian idealism, virtually ignoring the other parts of the brain, the far right want to apply only the primitive territorial reptilian brain, ignoring the other parts of the brain, and the Burkean conservatives and perhaps centrists tend to include all three brains.

So what happens when the whole man is not utilized? As I have written before in this blog, physiological psychologists like Cattell and Eysenck talked about the difficulties caused by our triune brain which evolved in stages, with all three brains still working almost as complete brains in themselves.

As Eysenck saw it, modern neuroses arises when there is conflict between messages from the primitive brain and the less powerful second neocortex system---the rational neocortex recognizes the “inappropriate” nature of the feelings (anxiety, fear, anger, etc) but it seems powerless to override the primitive system.

Modern cultural/social schemes seem to want to drop the primitive brain entirely which then allows the neocortex to think up all manner of cultural/social schemes which may not relate to real human nature or the three brains. Biologically based traits such as gender differences, age-grading, marriage-making, hierarchy, ethnocentrism, religion-making, group-selection, which help define a more whole human nature, seem to derive mainly from parts of our brain that are millions of years old---trying to ignore them creates a general modern form of neuroses.

Reality has always been difficult to see or face for humans. The denial of the three-brained human nature becomes a modern neurosis, the affirmation of whole human nature becomes the way to health. What to override and what not to override is the cultural question. Coordination of the three brains seems important to our health. We want to continue evolving and improving, watched over by the rational mind, but we can't ignore what we still are and be healthy, or even survive, as we evolve. This seems to affirm the conservative way of evolving, that is, with Ordered Evolution, taking into account the whole man, and not with radical revolution using only selected parts of human nature.

Beauty and Godhood

We may not want to center only on Beauty as the best metaphor for defining life evolving to Godhood when we have the other fundamental qualities of the highest truth, intelligence, and goodness, etc., but beauty needs to be brought out more than it has been. Truth is powerful yet somehow beauty seems more basic to our material-supermaterial evolution to Godhood. The sense of beauty seems like a more directly understandable metaphor for Godhood than truth or goodness, which are more abstract.

There was always something appealing and real about the attitude of the Ancient Pagan religions toward beauty, think of Greece, and much of this was lost when the monotheist religions concentrated on the Inward Path and the desirelessness which was necessary to experience the God Within, which is a blockade of the senses. In the theological materialism of the TC, the Godhood first seen in the Inward Path is attained in the Outward Path, at the zenith of evolutionary survival and reproduction, and this is definitely related to the real world of the senses.
 
Godhood can be seen as the zenith of beautiful living objects, the best of the world, not outside the material world but at the zenith of the supermaterial world, even as Godhood is also defined as the most intelligent, truthful, powerful etc. This is how beauty can be centered on.

Toward the healthiest means of taming the beast

“...the last step was reached, and this was the absolute demand to deny nature.” (Nietzsche)

Is there a need to tame man as Nietzsche thought Christianity did? Nietzsche spent much of his life studying the pre-Socratic heroes which he thought of as magnificent beasts not in need of taming. But Nietzsche seems to have gone too far in defending untamed man---did Nietzsche consciously overcompensate? Nietzsche in fact preferred the pre-Socratic heroes to the Christian martyrs.

The way to civilize the beast can now be seen in our Ordered Evolution toward Godhood, taking into account the conservative wisdom of bringing the new into the old, in the manner of natural evolution. What we now know about evolution and real human nature---which is among other traditional things, kin-centered, ethnocentric, and altruistically group-selecting---points toward a world that can no longer proclaim one noble nation or chosen people over all others without initiating constant civil strife or war, which brings human evolution and perhaps human life to a halt.

We need now to think in terms of ethnopluralism with distinct regions and small states for distinct people, which people tend to naturally gather into in any case. The “higher spheres” we may postulate for mankind need to first sanction real human nature. Then we can all get on with the religious mission of evolving to Godhood, with variety, which is the healthiest means of “taming the beast.” The Inward Father-Within of Christianity, or the God Within of other religions, is brought along and transformed in the Godhood reached by Ordered Evolution.

Why we need wisdom

The conservative message is that we do not have the wisdom to order the world and so we should not declare absolute ideologies. But we do have life, which deterministically wants to at least find ways of living successfully in survival and reproduction. So we try to order the world using whatever wisdom we have, and if not direct wisdom we use probabilities of wisdom. This is how we develop our cultures.

Where do we look for wisdom to try to order the world? Conservatives tend to look to religion, modern liberals look to science and perhaps philosophy, but we need all of these. What often happens, however, is that power orders the world rather than wisdom, because power can lead to success in survival and reproduction. But without wisdom, power often offers only short-term success.

I define the longest-term success of all as evolving to Godhood in the cosmos, which is where evolutionary religion enters the worldview regarding how to order the world. The abstractions of the inward religions distance us from the concrete and they need to be transformed into real life and real objects evolving in the world. New culture forms around the synthesis of the traditional Inward Path of religion and progressive Outward Path of religion and science.

What can be shared among distinctly different people and cultures is not absolute sacred dogma but the shared practice of evolving. For this we can apply the wisdom of religion, philosophy and science which can helps us negotiate the ambiguities of our evolution to Godhood. Projected international research centers come from this perspective.

The unworkable utopias of both modern liberalism and modern conservatism

Modern conservatism and modern liberalism make the same mistake of trying to impose one culture on diverse people. Even the paleoconservatives want one English-speaking, religion-oriented traditional America, no matter how diverse the population may be. And modern liberalism wants one politically-correct or culturally Marxist creed promoting a Utopian kind of diversity and multiculturalism where all people, no matter how diverse, live happily together happily tolerating one another. Given human nature, both ways have proven to be virtually unworkable in the varied populations of the modern world.

One-world, one-people creeds or philosophies seem to have kept mankind from seeing the real dynamics of human history, where small natural ethnostates and ethnopluralism always decay into imperialism and multiculturalism. So why not try to maintain ethnostates and ethnopluralism in the first place? To do this the Left would have to adopt the real unwritten traditions and unwritten natural behavior of the people, and the Right would have to adopt the Enlightenment view of a human nature which does not show a divine preference within human nature for one religious creed, or one people.

The United States seen as a Republic with largely independent small states, and a limited federal government designed to protect those small states, internally and externally, could lend itself naturally to ethnopluralism, which could then harmonize with all we know about general human nature, which is, among other things, kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. One-world creeds, Left and Right, need to adapt to a real world of cooperative competition between distinctly different people living in different regions, with small states protected by some sort of light federalism, rather than deadly imperialism.  Radical revolution, which otherwise seems more likely, needs to be avoided. Then perhaps we all can get on with the sacred mission of evolving toward Godhood.

Avoiding the death of the West while retaining tradition and modernity

“...Last year's words await another voice.” T. S. Eliot

Conservatives are for God, Family and Country, but how and why we are conservative is important. Do we harken back to the Classical and Christian heritage only, as most conservatives do, or should we go back much farther to the Paleolithic?

By studying the Paleolithic and its importance in forming the human nature we still have to this day we can better deal with modernity, which began around the time of the Enlightenment in the 18^th century. Science, modernity, sociobiology, have affirmed the conservative view of human nature, but minus the religious perspective---no small minus. This sociobiological affirmation of the conservative view of human nature is important, as often listed on this blog, human nature is kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection, among other things.

The next step comes with retaining the Inward symbolic-experience of the Father-Within but transforming it to the real Godhood reached in the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution. This can bring the Classical, Christian (and other religions) and Modernism together so that we can go on affirming Godhood, Family and Country (or ethnopluralism), and we can also affirm at least some of the science, evolution and culture of modernism.... Without basking in the incomplete metaphysics of sin and guilt, the death of the West can be averted.

The differing proofs of hedonism and evolution

Happiness as proof suggests hedonism. Success in evolution is also proof which can be rated higher even than successful survival and reproduction, although they are connected. We need to do more than merely survive and reproduce, more than science has so far affirmed, we need to evolve higher toward Godhood. This is the evolutionary base largely missing from traditional religion and largely missing in modern culture.

Evolution is the primary dynamic of the Evolutionary Outward Path toward Godhood, the Godhood first experienced in the Inward Path, and here evolution ranks as a higher proof than the happiness of hedonism. To adapt a Nietzschean idea, evolution is in danger of perishing do to an ideal which is hostile to life. We don't want the brute or the beast back but civilizing the beast does not mean destroying the passions and motivations of life itself.

It is a tricky business to know the difference between refining mankind and subduing mankind. The Twofold Path points out that there is a difference between refining mankind in the Outward Path of evolution and suppressing mankind in the exclusive Inward Path of traditional religion. The Father Within of the Involutionary Inward Path is a taming process of subduing all desires, which is necessary for the hedonistic bliss of experiencing the God Within. But the experience of the Father Within is then carried forward in our Ordered Evolution toward real Godhood.  The old is not rejected it is conservatively carried forward with the new.

Compassion and otherworldly religions

Abstractions have of course allowed us the brilliant technology which improved our world, but abstractions can limit concrete compassion when built into an abstract view of God. Making God an abstract definition or occult equation beyond or unconnected to the material world can distance God and religion from people.

Seeking salvation from the world seems not as physically and psychologically healthy as seeking harmony with the material world. To advocate ending suffering by the extreme measure of ridding the body of all desires seems inherently unfair and deceptive to real life. If your left hand offends you cut it off?!

When Godhood and religion are seen in and of the world, at the evolutionary zenith of the world, and not seen as a religious abstraction or occult definition, this can bring more real compassion to concrete life. We evolve to Godhood by way of the material world, and cutting out the material world can cut out real compassion, and more importantly, it blocks the attainment of real Godhood. That kind of salvation almost seems diabolical.

But rather than the extreme, uncompassionate, measure of cutting religion out entirely, as Nietzsche tried to do, the God or Father Within, which is reached by a few people in all the great religions by way of the ascetic discipline of ridding the body of desires, needs to be seen as a partial symbolic-experience of real Godhood reached through material and supermaterial evolution. This is the grace of the Twofold Path.

Immanentizing the Spiritual

The primacy of culture over politics in a world that now places politics over almost everything? How about the primacy of biology over culture and politics? This takes it deeper, although culture and biology are co-evolutionary. Turning around the old conservative cleverness, we in fact want to biologize the eschaton, contrary to Voegelin, since it is biology and evolution that take us to the end-goal of Godhood, rather than burying biology in wordy asceticism, which is where the great religions in reality are most comfortable. We can have both the Inward God within as well as the Outward Path of evolution to real Godhood. Religion needs to stop looking down its thin nose at the very evolution which brings us to Godhood---the Inward Path to the Father Within has only partially seen or symbolically experienced the real supermaterial Godhood reached through evolution in the Outward Path.

The perfection of faith?

I like to think that science can be the perfection of faith. We usually hear from religious thinkers that faith is the perfection of reason, rather than seeing reason as the perfection of faith. I see religious faith as resembling hypothesis which science can later verify. This is how I think of joining religion and science, which gives respect to both approaches to knowledge and wisdom. Science also creates hypothesis of course and religion can affirm scientific truths.

Again, it is the false duality between spirit and matter which I think sets up this tension. Religion tends to want to make the material essentially spiritual and science wants to make the spiritual material. I see the spiritual as supermaterial which helps relax the tensions.  Then religion can enter the real world again, legitimately and not begrudgingly, without rejecting it, especially as we evolve to Godhood by way of material and supermaterial evolution.

The basic philosophical-religious framework

There are material Objects, some alive some inanimate, and there are non-object definitions or abstractions of objects made by material human minds---I think in these terms rather than “thing-in-itself.” Each object is only as “free” as it can be within the determined choices of its nature, and this largely defines the object.

Human nature also has freedom within determined choices. Human nature was developed in Paleolithic times, and modern human cultures developed out of this Hunter-Gatherer human nature interacting with the environment. Human nature is therefore kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This human nature seems to be the most harmonious in survival and reproduction with some form of ethnopluralism in political philosophy.

Godhood is also a material-supermaterial Object (or Objects) but a supremely evolved Object. Godhood has the most freedom, intelligence, beauty, power, etc. of all objects and these superior traits were developed in the evolution of the material object to supermaterial Godhood in the cosmos.

The great religions discovered the symbolic experience of seeing-experiencing Godhood inwardly, in the Inward Path, and the actual life of objects were unfortunately sometimes thought of as not much more than an illusion. Jesus Christ was a martyr for the ascetic cause of bringing the Inward Father to the people, whereas Buddha, who lived a full life, taught more or less the same Inward God. The Twofold Path helps us resolve the metaphysical nearsightedness of seeing only a God Within at the zenith of the human mind, by also affirming the Outward Path of the evolution of material life to the real supermaterial Godhood.

The Dynamic of the Paleolithic and the Problems of Modernity

Thinkers on the conservative Right advocate going back to the Classical and Christian heritage which created the West to solve the problems of modernity which was initiated by the Enlightenment, but that does not go back far enough in our recovery. We need to go back and study the Paleolithic where human nature became what it still is today. The long Paleolithic period not only gives us insight into modernity and the classical and Christian heritage, it gives us insight into the human nature which helped create and develop these things.

The Right often makes the recovery of the Classical and Christian heritage seem like the solution to all are problems, period, but this heritage also has problems which the Paleolithic can help us solve. Sociobiology has studied the Paleolithic, among other things, and revitalized the idea of human nature being truly kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

This points toward political and religious forms that can harmonize with real human nature and nature itself. This calls for a sacred which is really not foreign to nature and to human nature. This does not suggest radical revolution---the classical, the Christian, and modernism can be revitalized---each of them alone is not enough. Real conservatism does not throw away the past as modernism has more or less done, but conservatism also would not throw away modernity as the traditional religions more or less do. The great error comes from separating the city of God from the city of man, but this derives from the other great error of separating the material from the spiritual. We evolve in the material world to supermaterial Godhood, which is expounded upon in the religious philosophy of this blog.

In America we were a continental Republic which made a great mistake in becoming a global empire. We need to get back to a continental Republic. Power needs to be given back to the states and regions and the central government needs to be shrunk to being mainly the protector of the states, internally and externally. Furthermore, we need to eventually acknowledge the distinctions between different ethnic groups in America and orient ourselves toward regional ethnostates, protected by a light federalism. This is what can calm present and future civil disorder, and this is what can harmonize with the Classical and Christian heritage to help solve the problems of modernity.