Nietzsche's bias against altruism

I have a problem with Nietzsche's often brilliant individualistic psychology: he seems wrongly biased against altruism, even if he says that he allows altruism for the “herd,” but not for the superior "creators of values." The social foundation of human nature and evolution is almost dismissed by Nietzsche: sociobiology had not come into existence (although Darwin had). Nietzsche preferred cynicism and egoism and he virtually hated the revealed religions as a consequence of their herd altruism which he said was designed only to help the average and the weak.  (Libertarian Ayn Rand seems to have followed Nietzsche in this bias.)

But this psychology can be turned around: if values and morals are relative to the perceived power (survival) needs of those creating the values, as Nietzsche contends, then individualism and egoism also fall in this category, and Nietzsche himself perhaps unconsciously promotes that which best helps his own personality with his particular strengths and weaknesses (and will to power)---even if Nietzsche was more self-aware than most philosophers, as Freud suggested.

Human nature and human behavior say that we need both the average and the superior if either is to rise in the world, and we need to distinguish the superior-social from the superior-antisocial. This is how the same values can apply to Ordered Evolution for all groups.

The religious or philosophical outward map to nowhere

Jesus constantly warned against centering on the text and neglecting the spirit, the letter had replaced the spirit with the Pharisees. But then theology went on to neglect the living material object in the name of the abstract spirit. The constant push toward the word, the symbol, the idea as a nonmaterial abstraction then continued on toward the biggest abstraction of all: defining God as having no materiality, not even supermaterial objecthood. Religion and theology (and philosophy) now need to return to the object, the material object, and to the supermaterial objects of future evolution. Godhood is reached through material and supermaterial evolution.

The traditional Involutionary Inward Path leading to the God or Father Within, which is the same in all the revealed religions (a reason for ecumenism) can be retained in the Inward Path, but even this blissful symbolic-experience of the God Within takes place at the zenith of the material-supermaterial, biological, living-object, mind. Here is where the spirituality of the Inward God becomes misdefined. It is in the Evolutionary Outward Path of material-supermaterial evolution where true Godhood is attained, the Inward God is a blissful symbolic-experience of Outward Godhood.

Supermaterial Godhood is of course also an abstraction in the form of faith, but it is based in the objecthood of materiality and natural evolution. For example, we can see the physical record of evolution from the simple to the complex, and this is not based in spiritual, nonmaterial, nothinghood. It is more like the abstract-faith one has in reaching the material destination of a road map on a long journey. The Inward Father-Within can be experienced with much ascetic discipline, but it is not true Godhood reached through evolution. Although  the Inward God is not nowhere, it has to be called tragic for the world to follow a religious or philosophical outward map to nowhere.

Reestablishing religion in nature

In basic terms, the value of an action is judged by its biological value and its evolutionary value. Becoming conscious of these unfree actions then brings the free choices we have, but the choices are limited by biology and evolution. Some think this is too “reductionist” but it is often the idea that upsets people and not the reduction.

Morality became “denaturalized,” as Nietzsche called it, from biology and evolution. Naturalizing morality leads to philosophical naturalism. But then moving beyond philosophical naturalism we arrive at theological materialism, which is the naturalistic way for religion to return to the real world from which it has been receding.

Theological materialism brings forward the basic values of biology and evolution in the sacred evolution of life to Godhood. It is not Nietzsche's will-to-power, it is the will-to Godhood, or more formally the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood in nature that we affirm, which has driven life from the beginning of the cosmos to seek to survive, unceasingly, no matter what the obstacles, always shaped by the outside forces of selection and evolution, seeking ultimately, inherently, the zenith of success in survival and reproduction, which is eternal representation, or as near to it as possible, which is Godhood.

Unlike Nietzsche's will-to-power, the Spirit-Will-to-Godhood is related positively to the revealed religions, that is, to the Inward God, or the Inward Father-Within of the revealed religions; this was the first symbolic-experience of the real Godhood which can be reached through material and supermaterial evolution. Retaining the old in the new is evolutionary, not revolutionary, it is both conservative and progressive. Ordered Evolution is affirmed, not anarchism or rootless modernism. This is how we reestablish religion in nature.

The Mass of Evolution

Modern religious rituals, and even the more violent pagan rituals of old, were not about the literal trappings and accouterments of the rituals alone, they were about how the rituals effected the people, bonded them together, inspired them, even put fear into them, which led to success in the life of the group, that is, success in survival and reproduction for the practitioners in the religious rituals.

The Theovolutionary Church will be bringing the ritual Mass of the Outward Path more in line with the real living purposes behind the old religious rituals. The Mass of Joy or the Mass of Evolution will be used in conjunction with the traditional Mass of Sacrifice of the Inward Path, although perhaps not at the same event. The Inward Path to the Father Within celebrated in the Christian Mass of the Sacrifice of Jesus is seen as one of the first symbolic-experiences in the West of the real Godhood attained through material and supermaterial evolution in the Outward Path.

The Mass of Evolution will help to make religious rituals come alive again, they have in most cases become lost to the people in distant symbols and words, even to the point of  the idolatry of symbols and words, and removed from the living objects of our sacred material and supermaterial evolution to real Godhood.

A few comments on the decadent Grammy Awards

Low art is not as subtle as high art but true low art reflects the same themes and values as high art. This has been true, or was until recently, throughout the history of mankind. So what would the Grammy Awards be like if they were healthy and not decadent and corrupted?

High art would be featured, with big production numbers for best classical composition, best chamber group, etc, and for low art, big production numbers for such things as best folk or best blue grass, or best regional composition...you get the picture. If that sounds boring you can see how far we have come from expecting cultural health. It wouldn't have to be boring if it was produced and valued the right way. But what was featured?

Raw sexuality, no subtlety, censored (at prime time) filthy and childish lyrics, glittering prostitute and pimp "culture" glorified and imitated, and gay and straight weddings officiated by Queen Latifah while a hit song about equality was performed by a rap duo with Madonna.

The producers and promoters of this garbage are not fully aware of the seething anger felt for them between the coasts in middle America, or they know and simply don't care, as they go about consciously destroying Western culture. It may be difficult one day to hold back the revenge against these producers and promoters, but revitalizing Western high and low art will be the best revenge.

The base of cultural and genetic evolution

Does the average, the herd, hate the truthful innovating man, as Nietzsche believed they did? Nietzsche thought the average, the middle-class, defend themselves on two sides, against decadence and criminals, but also against those who rise superior to the average level. Nietzsche claims his philosophy is not individualistic but aims at an order of rank where the herd keeps its rule within the herd but the leaders have a fundamentally different valuation of their actions. I don't agree with this Platonic sort of perspective, which the Straussian neoconservatives also seem to have. I think both Nietzsche and the neoconservatives could have used a good dose of the science of sociobiology and the bio-cultural advantages of altruism.

As I have said here before, the middle needs to defend itself against decadence and criminals but it also needs to drop its objections to superior people---but it needs to be able to judge when superior people are decadent and criminal and when they are not. The average conservative position is “experience must be our only guide, reason may mislead us” (John Dickinson, Founding Father), which shows a fear of superiority. We need both the experience of successful survival and the innovative reasoning of superior thinkers.

How do we do this? Raymond Cattell suggested that the middle conservatives need to obtain the services of psychometrics, sociobiology and genetic specialists to help us distinguish between good genius and bad genius. Good geniuses (and good leaders) use their superiority to help the average as well as advancing superior people with superior innovations. Group selection is the continuing natural law, individual selection follows. For those conservatives and liberals who are concerned about how we might define the direction of our upward genetic and cultural evolution, this defines the base of an Ordered Evolution.  When Godhood is the goal of evolution this worldview can be based in the sacred.

Revitalizing the states, light federalism, and the Republic, with de facto ethnostates

A nation usually centralizes or is forced to centralize because they are surrounded by threats from outside, but that wasn't the case with the United States, although the cold war presented a bit of a problem. For about 200 years the United States affirmed the separation of powers, giving states control of the larger parts of life and leaving the central government for defense, tariffs, etc. Our creeping centralization happened from inside, promoted by people who benefited, at least in the short term, financially and otherwise, from the centralization. Our imperialism, our border-less consumerism, and our hedonism is a real corruption of the United States. In an excellent review of the work of John le Carre in Chronicles (January 2014), Wayne Allensworth quotes le Carre as saying, “ if the West chokes on its own materialism, then it may turn out to have lost the Cold War.”

I think of revitalizing the separations of powers in the United States (and perhaps elsewhere) with states and regions that are, or become, de facto ethnostates, which is making what is usually inevitable (and healthy) our conscious choice---all empires devolve into something like ethnostates. Our Constitution can even accommodate this reality. Ethnopluralism relates most harmoniously to actual human nature which has been and remains kin-centered, gender defined, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things,with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This kind of change for us, which is, and needs to be, a legal revitalization, and not revolution, could save our now centralized and corrupted nation. This could give us all, all ethnic cultures (who in reality have not melted) another 200 years, or more.  Human beings are capable of cooperative competition between the states, if protected by a light federalism. 

This perspective remains politically incorrect, the academic world continues to prefer cultural Marxism (political correctness), and the media slanders this idea as malevolent. But over time I think this perspective will gain ground here, and perhaps in Europe, Russia and China as well.  There are hints of it now here and there.

A key understanding of inward Christ, incomplete without outward Godhood

Sadhu Sandar Singn said “to live in Christ is already heaven.” This is a key understanding of Christ, which also connects with Eastern sages. This is how Christianity affirms Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. This defines the Involutionary Inward Path to the Father Within, or the God Within, which is the central goal of the revealed religions.

To identify with Christ one needs to block out material life in a Great Spiritual Blockade. When successful this brings the religious feeling of being “complete,” with no lack, no desire, the feeling of fulfillment---but this is not the God or Godhood far beyond the feelings of human beings. This desire-free feeling is the result of the strict ascetic discipline of ending all desires.

The best way to utilize this ascetic, involutionary feeling of desire-free bliss, is to see it as a symbolic experience of what Godhood may be like when we reach Godhood in evolution. Our evolutionary destination is far more than this Inward Bliss.

Martin Buber's “It” and “Thou” is misleading. Buber fears making God an object, an It, but Godhood is an Object or Objects, the highest evolved Object, at the zenith of material and supermaterial evolution. The spiritualism of objects has led to an idolatry of definitions, words, ideas, texts, rather than belief in the actual supermaterial object of Godhood, which we reach through evolution.

The Twofold Path can apply both the Involutionary and Evolutionary Paths. The transformed theological materialism, which includes evolution, is synthesized in the older spiritual theology of the West and the East.

Compulsory and voluntary movements

Does the commitment to compulsion indicate the truth of a religious or political movement? Not likely. How much of their actual success was do to being compelled by law to join them? Think of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the well known surrender-or-die of Islam, Stalinist Marxism, Nazism, etc etc.  James Madison and the Founders instituted the separation of church and state to avoid the ceaseless wars “that soiled the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”

Even if a religion or political philosophy had the whole and absolute truth, there are practical reasons in the modern world not to institute compulsion. Modern movements of compulsion are snuffed out before they begin, and the world gangs up on single-issue dictators and imperialists. Ordered Evolution, not revolution, is the long-term way to go. War tends to stop evolution in its tracks, often for a long time, war can even sweep all evolutionary gains off the table.

A movement needs to be voluntary, reasonable, legal. This may be the slower way but it can be deeper and last longer... But I'd like to see some studies on the actual success, sociobiologically, or lack of success, of compulsory and voluntary religious and political movements.

Bieber and our identity-less white youth

Justin Bieber, 19 years old, belligerent, apparently stoned on a mixture of beer, pot, and prescription drugs--cursing out a cop who had stopped him---represents what has happened to our identity-less white youth. Bieber will no doubt brag to his sycophant friends about his arrest but we all know Bieber wouldn't last five minutes in real jail. What he probably needs is some tough-love from real convicts to remind him of how tough and cool he really is.

The problem is, who are white youth allowed to look up to? Who is cool?  Black hip-hop stars are cool, with their substance-abuse, their women-degrading, and in many cases their actual black racism, that is what is cool.  Certainly white racists aren’t cool. White Country singers used to be cool, at least to Southern whites, but now they too are increasingly screaming like black gospel singers and non-stop partying, just like the ghetto.

I don't blame black hip-hop stars, they are insisting on their own identity, their own culture, they will seek to rise out of vulgarity, it's whites I blame, or white youth, who do not have the pride or identity to keep from trying to be bad copies of black hip-hop stars. And white youth have so much to be proud of, basically the whole of Western high and low culture, if they were allowed to do so. This isn't equality working, this is the loss of white identity working. 

Defending the Middle

Middle-class values preserve the average, the group, the “herd,”and what is wrong with that? Nietzsche didn't like this arrangement (The Will To Power). But the problem can be resolved by finding ways to advance the exceptions, the gifted, in pro-social ways, while not championing the anti-social, individualistic, evil geniuses, as Nietzsche in effect did.

Leadership can be understood as the gifted helping the group, the herd, advancing the average while at the same time advancing the gifted exceptions, with an Ordered Evolution that allows the preserving conservative values of the middle. This involves qualities that Nietzsche disliked or hated such as peacefulness, modesty, fidelity, justice, generosity, industry which help preserve the herd.

To help prevent the stagnation and devolution of the average, which is an important thing to prevent, the brightest, the gifted, can be identified, with various forms of psychometrics and genetic technology, but then the gifted need to actually help the herd advance along with themselves, rather then attacking the middle-class, as both the revolutionary left and right tend to do. I am not talking about demagogic leadership here that tells the herd what the herd wants to hear to advance the demagogic leadership only.

I don't think the middle, the average, hate the exceptional, as Nietzsche seemed to believe, I think the middle hates the anti-social evil geniuses who are in fact out to harm them. When the gifted use their gifts to advance the average along with advancing the gifted then the middle loves the gifted. We rise together over the long term, group selection is the primary unit of selection, and this has been true for humans since before we became human, although in a culture where only individualistic hedonism and consumerism are allowed it remains politically incorrect to say so.

Human Nature Remains Paleolithic

To change an old saying of Thoreau's, the preservation of of Paleolithic human nature is the preservation of real humanity, because paleolithic human nature continues to be our real human nature, modern cultures are hypertrophied versions of paleolithic cultures (see E.O. Wilson's sociobiology). Human nature is as sacred as Thoreau's nature itself, but it hasn't been treated that way.

Real human nature has been separated from our hearts and minds due largely to that part of human nature which seeks individual power while neglecting the other parts of human nature. Demagogues and cash hogs have tried to tell us to behave in unnatural ways that enhance the demagogues and cash hogs, such as the egalitarianism of cultural Marxism, or the consumerism pushed by cash hogs.

And ethnocentrism, kin-centeredness, heterosexual marriage-making, even xenophobia, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection, among other traditional things, do not go against real human nature. These are basic parts of human nature which were largely formed in the hunter-gather times of the Paleolithic and are very much still with us, but lately banned by political correctness. (Some of us have even embraced the Paleo diet, or as close as we can come to it, and have gotten rid of many of the diseases and problems caused from modern diets which conflict with our paleolithic bodies.)

It is overdo time to get back in harmony with real human nature. This will result in many old traditions and values being revived, along with new versions of old ethnopluralism, such as the devolution of imperial power to small states or ethnostates. The one new thing we add is our consciousness of and our aid in upward evolution, which was formerly unconscious. But it will need to be an Ordered Evolution, not revolution, conservatism has taught us this. Our evolution may, seemingly ironically here, eventually move us toward new and better versions of human nature, even new subspecies, as we evolve out into the cosmos toward Godhood.

How do we find the best way to proceed in the world?

Nietzsche seems to have thought that people define “truths” to make life easier and not necessarily because they are actually true. But I think the truths of human nature are derived from biology and are physically easier than the untruths and lies of metaphysics and philosophy, which are tiring---energetic people can be good liars.

How we apply the foundational instincts of biology and how we relate them to human nature and morality determines our culture, our religion, and our success. We need to take our answers more from biology and less from metaphysics and philosophy which grow out of biology.

There also seems to be “courage” involved in finding and telling the truth, not necessarily connected to intelligence. Highly intelligent people can be highly wrong. But courageous people can be wrong too, so it seems to require a combination of courage and intelligence to find and state the truth at any given time.

How do we find the best way to proceed, given our now crowded world of distinct people and states? History has shown us that Imperialism of various kinds does not last and eventually breaks back down into regional states or ethnostates. This seems to suggest that ethnopluralism with distinct regions and small states for distinct people is both the rational and instinctive way to go---but independence would need to be protected by at least a light form of federalism.

We are all more or less infused with the desire to succeed, or the desire for distinction, the idea of actual equality is opposed to common sense and seems to be rather insane. But the natural desire to succeed needs to be based in the sacred, essentially, that is, not on Nietzsche's goalless will to power but in the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood that activates material life, which is then shaped by natural evolution.

If there is a  better way than this to proceed in the world and out into the cosmos I want to know about it.

Restoring Beauty

In response to “Beauty: Siren or Savior? ” in the American Conservative: the religious worldview of material life evolving to supermaterial Godhood---and not merely involution to the Inward God---gives a different perspective on the old formula of truth, goodness and beauty.

When beauty becomes connected to the traditional Logos, beauty moves away from the material world and this creates the naturalistic problem of beauty entering a transcendental world of a nonmaterial Spirit, which then leads to the worship of the idol of ideas, definitions, words, and the idol of beauty, and not the real object of beauty as Godhood.

In relation to material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood, beauty is not separated from goodness and truth, but a separation tends to happen when the spiritual dimension of goodness and truth in reality blocks out or even excludes real beauty from the trinity of truth, goodness and beauty, because the nonmaterial is worshipped.

In relation to material-supermaterial evolution, beauty does not separate itself form truth and goodness, which are values and traits that need to be included in upward evolution, because any one of these alone is incomplete.

The world of beauty is not leading us astray as a siren or temptress (see Dante and others) as long as truth and goodness are included on the path of our evolution to Godhood, which is the zenith of theses things.

The Twofold Path rescues and restores beauty, the real object beauty, to the old trinity, and even places beauty as the leading player in our progressive evolution toward the truth and goodness of real Godhood.

Belief in the natural order includes progressive evolution

Human nature and nature itself can be models for both the moral and social order. The problem for modernity seems to come in defining human nature and nature itself.

The fact is we are not free to act in any way we please, that is license, which Claude Polin called the lowest form of freedom. Modernity often denies that there even is a human nature. Libertarians tend to think that the only law is not to harm others, but everything else seems to be permitted.

When we try to go against what we actually are, that is, against human nature, we tend to cause the general decadence we see of modernity, committing unnatural or unauthentic license rather than real freedom. Even the smallest change in human nature and our DNA structure, for example, in our immune system, takes hundreds of thousands of years, we remain kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

There is a continuity between the sciences, religion and nature which needs to be acknowledged, but not in the closed way that tradition and conservatism often does. Human nature and nature itself includes the progressive freedom to evolve---but not with an unfettered license---we evolve within the ordered structure, or Ordered Evolution of human nature and nature itself.

Believing in evolution, progressive evolution, does not mean that human nature is denied, on the contrary, it is an affirmation of human nature and nature itself. Life is activated from within by the Spirit-Will to Godhood which is then shaped by natural evolution. Alas, science has yet to find anything other than entirely random evolution, and has not seen material life gradually evolving to supermaterial Godhood. And, alas, religion has put up a Great Spiritual Blockade against material and supermaterial evolution.

Thoughts on Sri Aurobindo and Yoga in relation to the Twofold Path

After reading the introduction to “The Conditions of the Synthesis of Yoga,” by Sri Aurobindo
I have the following quick thoughts:

Aurobindo writes well and I would recommend him to anyone wanting to be apply themselves to Yoga, but you will not be surprised to find that I also find the highest possible anthropomorphism involved in his finding the highest evolved being possible in Man, by man identifying Godhood with the God Within, which all the schools of Yoga of the East do, and which pure Christianity does as well, with the Father Within preached by Jesus Christ. The material world must be ascetically cast aside or blocked (or “surpassed” in Yogic terms) to see the God Within. This is a very old tradition.

But real Godhood is evolved to materially and super-materially, and Man must be surpassed, far surpassed. The God Within as seen by the Yogis is not the Godhood of evolution but is “only” the ascetically derived hedonistic condition of internal bliss, however profound, defined anthropomorphically as “God” by the Yogis---this can be an arrogant assumption and even dangerous if it blocks (as it has done) mankind’s actual path to real Godhood through material-supermaterial evolution.

We need to move beyond such anthropomorphism of God. The way we can retain the blissful Father Within, and not cast it out as a wasteful game of hedonism, is to identify the God Within, and its bliss, as an involutionary, not evolutionary, symbolic-experience of what real Godhood will be like when, and if, we evolve to real Godhood in the cosmos. This is the Twofold Path, which doesn't reject the involutionary inward path of Yoga but applies it in the evolutionary outward path to supermaterial Godhood.

Can we make the inevitable our conscious choice?

It is still considered intolerant to say that people are not equal. Expensive social programs to change disparities and inequalities have not worked and will never work because people simply are not equal.  When we blame income disparities merely on single-parent families or out of wedlock births we play into the idea that the market determines all value, with cash as the ultimate goal. We should be centering more on preventing the plutocrats from gathering all the cash, which has now happened and all but destroyed the middle class, as well as the lower classes.

Do we really want to respect our differences and our variety and not have our differences exploited by demagogues and money-hogs? Can we stop distorting reality? The melting pot did not melt. Our Constitution can even accommodate this reality with its separation of powers, people, and states. We need to welcome the the fact that our empire, like all empires, will inevitably break down into a diversification of people, cultures, and states, or virtual ethnostates. Our light federalism can hold us together.

Ethnopluralism is always the future because it relates most harmoniously with real human nature. But it will happen in any case, so if we really want to prevent much pain and suffering we will make the inevitable our conscious choice. Will enough of us have the courage to face this reality? With our differences championed in this way we can then get on with the business of really helping one another in realistic ways.  Humans are capable of cooperative competition, which may be the only way we survive over time. We are all evolving in in our own unique ways toward Godhood.

Defining the Spirit-Will

The wiseguys chuckle condescendingly at any claim of vitalism, but I don't. I ask why does “life” “live?” Why is life animate rather than inanimate? Why does life have metabolism, growth, reproduction? Why doesn’t life just sit there doing nothing? Why has life persisted time and again in evolving from the simple to the complex under the most extreme conditions? Why?

Finding no activation, no force, no direction to life seems too limited, too carefully, too empirical. This is where I see the Spirit-Will-to-Godhood in evolution activating life. Not a nonmaterial Spirit-Will, but a supermaterial Spirit-Will very much in the material world of nature, still to be defined by science.  I see a  simple Primal Material at the beginning of life, with the Spirit-Will never separate from it, continually beginning and evolving, not a First Cause, not God---Godhood is what we evolve to.

The activating Spirit-Will is not amoral or blind, it has a goal, it seeks Godhood by riding within the vehicle of life which it activates, all the way to Godhood by way of evolution. But the path to Godhood can go backward, sideways or wherever, shaped by natural evolutionary conditions. Evolving all the way to perhaps the eternal representation of Godhood in the cosmos is defined as ultimate success in evolution, whether all life is conscious of this goal or not.

The religious affirmation of the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood activating material life gives us more of an answer to why life developed from prebiological building blocks, rather than merely the how, which science continues to try to define. This is where religion and science can one day come together.

The biological base

It seems to me that Nietzsche dismissed morality and “the herd” as being only the machinations of the herd against the elite, saying such things as “the more dangerous a quality seem to the herd, the more completely it is condemned.” (The Will To Power). But is that not a healthy response to something that is dangerous to ones existence? The altruism of the herd has a definite biological foundation, selection takes place primarily at the group level, and secondarily at the individual level (see E.O. Wilson's latest). Yes, it is very important to find a way for the best to become creative leaders and not to be lost in the “herd,” but the elite only survive within a group.

So what social morality or political philosophy does a biological orientation best affirm for groups and individuals? If we try to examine our answers not first with metaphysics or politics---because these things do grow out of biology--- then we may see that small states, or virtual ethnostates, and nearly independent regions, that is, ethnopluralism, seems to best fit human nature.  We are still kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, this has not changed even though political philosophy has tried to ignore it. Common sense tells us that even supermen can't accomplish these things alone.

All groups and states need to be included---time and again the world has moved against and often destroyed any group claiming to be the only noble or chosen group. We all can rise together in the most natural  ethnostates, protected by some sort of light federalism. Cooperative competition is not only possible but necessary. Then evolutionary religion can ground this worldview in our long evolution toward Godhood in the cosmos. It's not merely the will-to-power of lone geniuses that needs attending, it is the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood activating all of us that needs attending.

Theological materialism rather than monistic pantheism

In the monistic pantheism of the Stoics, the substance of nature is the substance of God, and I can agree with that in the sense that nature evolves to Godhood. But nature itself is not God as the Stoics and pantheists suggested, since we evolve to Godhood in nature. I can see how God could almost be thought of as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood since the Spirit-Will is inside nature activating the material world, which helps create and sustain the world, but Godhood is what the Spirit-Will seeks by activating material life to evolve to Godhood, so the Spirit-Will cannot be God.

The Divine can be found in nature, even as the Pagans suggested, but the Divine culminates in or is found at the zenith of our evolution to Godhood in nature, yet not in a transcendent God outside of nature, even as we do affirm the God-Within or the Father-Within of traditional religion, experienced within the mind-soul of man, which is a symbolic-experience of real Godhood attained in material and supermaterial evolution, and not a transcendence beyond material or supermaterial life. In this sense the Divine is only immanent and not transcendent other than as the dynamic of higher evolution transcending past lower evolution as we evolve to higher beings.

Is the Spirit-Will identified with "reason" as the Stoics believed? The Spirit-Will activates material life toward the evolution of reason as a tool to help in our evolution to Godhood, so in this sense reason is secondary to the Spirit-Will, and reason isn't the Spirit-Will or God. However, Godhood once attained would have the highest level of reason and truth possible in the cosmos...  This view of nature and the substance of nature  leads to theological materialism rather than monistic pantheism.

What we need to do to save ourselves

When we changed from a continental power to a global empire in the years following WWII this began our destruction. Now we need to get back to being a continental power, but also further back to being a Republic with largely independent states, virtual ethnostates, and regions, with a small federal government to protect us externally and internally.

This is the sociopolitical structure most in harmony with real human nature, which developed many thousands of years ago. Even the smallest change in human nature and our DNA structure takes hundreds of thousands of years, we are still kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things,with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

At this time, for example, the greatest influence dealers in Washington are the Wall Street lobby, the fossil fuel lobby, and the Israeli and Saudi lobbyists, who often pay off and threaten corrupt government officials and representatives to get them to take actions that are completely against the interests of our nation. All this has to be curbed if we are to save ourselves. Can it be done? I hope so. If not, we may end up with a radical socialist or fascist revolution, invoked in a vain attempt to bring order to the chaos of a corrupt civilization.

Other intelligent life in the cosmos

It seems likely that in the cosmos of billions of galaxies there is other intelligent life, and some life would be more advanced than we are. I doubt that they would want much to do with us, unless they needed something we have. But then, who really knows what an intelligence far greater than ours might want?

I think that the misdirection of technology would probably be defined by advanced cultures as when technology is not concerned with advancing life in evolution toward Godhood in the cosmos. Would advanced life in the cosmos affirm the theological materialism of the Theoevolutionary Church.?

Life in the cosmos has been evolving since its latest beginning, which is a dynamic that can be known or unknown, and affirmed or denied, but advanced cultures would not deny it. I would think that the central dynamic of evolution in the cosmos toward Godhood would be an important part of the basic values of science and theology in advanced cultures.

Nietzsche and the herd

Perhaps had Nietzsche seen a direction, a teleology, to life related to our biological evolution toward Godhood, rather than the goalless will-to-power that he saw, he might have then seen the long-term importance of the herd even to the exceptional individual. The leading edge in evolution can and should be singled out, but they can't go forward alone biologically and socially.

The key is to find a way to tell the difference between positive, forward, evolutionary traits in exceptional individuals and negative anti-social traits, or to tell the difference between the evil genius and good genius. Nietzsche concentrated on the damage the herd does to the superman. Human beings are social beings, it is written deeply in our biology, and the individual needs the group as much as the group needs the individual.

Nietzsche was on the right track it seems to me when he spoke from the biological perspective and not from metaphysics, but he didn’t seem to see the real biological advantage behind altruism and the herd mentality, or rather he didn't think the herd morality was healthy or important and he saw it only as blocking exceptional individuals, which seems to be behind his hatred of Christianity, which he saw as only loving the inferior herd.

Altruism has given problems to many thinkers over time, even Darwin.  But I think E.O. Wilson has the best insight on it so far: ..."One of the key ideas to explain this has been kin selection theory or inclusive fitness, which argues that individuals cooperate according to how they are related. I have had doubts about it for quite a while. Standard natural selection is simpler and superior. Humans originated by multilevel selection—individual selection interacting with group selection, or tribe competing against tribe. We need to understand a great deal more about that."

Now if we add evolutionary religion to that we are on the way.

On Ayn Rand's Libertarianism

I don't enjoy saying negative things about Libertarianism because I like their anti-state independence, I would probably vote for Rand Paul, but libertarians rarely say anything about big business taking away the freedom of small business, they tend to not like anti-trust laws. But the Constitution splits the powers of government and it could have been more explicit, rather than implicit, about not allowing big business to dominate both small business and big government.

The Goddess of libertarians, Ayn Rand, chose not to see the deeper motivations behind individualism, that is, that selection takes place ultimately at the group level. In the long run if the group doesn't survive and prosper the individual does not. The “tribal premise”and altruism do not automatically lead to statism, as Rand suggested, the individual and the group tend to advance best in small states, virtually ethnostates, with a limited federalism mainly to protect the independence of the states.

The animus Rand feels toward “tribalism” and group behavior cannot be underestimated in her philosophy. Her experience of Soviet Russia and Fascist Germany seemed to have biased Rand's judgment against group behavior, a big mistake in someone who so loudly affirmed reason. Sociobiology didn’t reach her, and sociobiology had been around for a decade or so before she died.

The limited view of the spirit, the heart, and the neo-cortex

I think the Pagans were right in seeing the sacred within natural phenomena. The Spirit-Will is immanent and is only transcendent in relation to Its immanent evolution to Godhood within the material world.

Appealing to the non-material Spirit or the heart exclusively in religion is like modern intellectuals appealing only to the most recent neo-cortex of the human brain, attempting to ignore the more powerful deeper parts of the brain and human nature.

The problem of course is that science doesn't even acknowledge the Spirit-Will, and religion defines the spirit as essentially unconnected to the material world. So we end up concentrating on the non-material spirit, the heart, and on the neo-cortex, which leads to a truncated and limited view of human nature, religion and culture.

Morality, immorality and evolution

Immoral is not only “that which brings about ruin” as Nietzsche put it, it is also that which devolves, or that which does not evolve. This valuation brings us back to the real material object in morality rather than a morality completely divorced from the material world, as religion and philosophy have been too prone to be.

Nietzsche rightly asked the question, “whose will-to-power is morality?” Morality can even be the work of immorality when it is not attached to the real world or to the rising and falling of evolution. This can lead to the corruption of human physiology and psychology, and to inauthentic culture.

A problem comes when Nietzsche makes a God of brilliant individual power rather than long-term evolution toward Godhood, which requires the group as well as the individual. The libertarians make this same mistake in making the individual the all. The challenge, as Raymond Cattell pointed out, is for society to tell the difference between positive social creativity and negative antisocial creativity among exceptional individuals, who tend to be the leading edge of culture, good or bad.

The herd-mentality, as Nietzsche called it, is not necessary out to rid society of exceptional individuals, altruism takes place in group selection, which is the main unit of selection in evolution---social altruism in this way is needed for long-term evolution to take place. Nietzsche was right to try to bring morality back to reality, but it takes more than brilliant individuals to make it happen when long-term evolution is the goal.

Tradition this way can be harmonized with the progressive change of evolution, which is what a  revitalized conservatism does. Nietzsche's radical aristocratic individualism for this reason is not the best way to go.

The Struggles to Overcome the Great Spiritual Blockade

The Great Spiritual Blockade gained momentum around the time of the great sages, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Christ, and Socrates (who made a spiritual God of reason), that is, more or less around the Sixth Century BC. Since that time some men have tried to to rise up against the Blockade, to save the material world from being disparaged and slandered.

There was a rising at least during the Enlightenment of the 18^th century, and Nietzsche and a few others also rose up against the Blockade, usually rejecting or throwing out the great sages in their attempts to unblock the Blockade. Wagner might have revived Odinism, Nietzsche nearly created a new religion of the superman based on his version of presocratic culture. And science, carrying on from the Enlightenment, bonded with a strict Godless naturalism or materialism. Hegel and Marx also tried to unblock the spiritual blockade with their versions of philosophy and materialism even though they created spiritual utopias in the process.

The grip of the Great Spiritual Blockade remains, although the religions and philosophies of the great sages have been slowly fading in the West, replaced not with another religion or political philosophy but with the great license of libertarian individualism, or the nothingness of hedonistic nihilism, or in the middle-east with a fundamentalist Islam. Science has tried to remain materialistically neutral which has led to a general social impotence.  Modern versions of evolutionary religion or spirituality are often updates of Buddhism dealing with or dismissing the material world from the old perspective of so-called non-material inward bliss, e.g Ken Wilber.

The theological materialism of the Theovolutionary Church overcomes the Great Spiritual Blockade with the Twofold Path, by including the great sages of the Blockade in the Involutionary Inward Path to the symbolic-experience of the Father Within, even as it affirms the Evolutionary Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to real Godhood. The old God or Father Within experienced as bliss is conservatively included but seen as attained in reality through the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution. Science and religion can even join forces as we unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade so that we may evolve toward Godhood in the cosmos.

What can we do?

I don’t think we can put Western Civilization back in the bottle after it has been poured out, our decline seems inevitable. Almost all elements of our civilization and culture have fallen or are declining---even if modern technology seems to continue to be creative, technology is often used in frivolous or damaging ways. Traditional religion, art (both high and low), trade, the military, family, gender differences, etc etc., all have declined or fallen.

Most of the decline has been related to the false and impossible attempt to move away from real human nature. The newest neo-cortex part of our human brain has overestimated itself and its freedom in relation to the deeper and more powerful parts of human nature, which has caused physiological and psychological regulation problems, and cultural neurosis.

Human nature has historically and sociobiologically been defined and affirmed across the world as being 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 traditional things. We can see by this how far we have attempted to move away from real human nature. What can we do about it?

Here are some basic things I think about and build on. Existence is identical with the material and supermaterial object itself. There is mainly a biological origin to social behavior, although there is also co-evolution between genes and the environment. Group-selection is the primary unit of selection, which seems to mean that ethnopluralism with small states and regions protected by a light federalism is the most natural and long lasting sociopolitical philosophy. Life evolves materially and supermaterially from simple life all the way to supermaterial Godhood in the cosmos, and our religious mission is to help life along the way to Godhood.

We can try to live well even in the midst the cultural Marxism that surrounds us which is destroying us. For example, stay out of trouble, do nothing illegal, stay conservative, build our religion. No civilization has risen or sustained itself without being based in religion.

Idolatries

Theology has often become an idolatry of words, ideas, definitions and worshiping texts. Philosophy has done the same. The Object fades away, and since Godhood is a Supermaterial Object, Godhood fades too. Were the Pagans better at finding the Divine without texts?

Science can help bring us back to the real Object Godhood, the supermaterial object first seen without science. Science has not yet acknowledged the evolutionary goal of supermaterial Godhood, which is evolved to in the very material world that science examines.

This is the way science and religion, the material and the spiritual, can finally be brought together, this is the way the Great Spiritual Blockade against the divine material world can be unblocked.

Life flows opposite the Clinton worldview

I felt the usual frustration listening to former President Clinton's preachments at the commencement ceremonies of the new mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, because life flows opposite the Clinton worldview.

The Clinton's are all about the convergence and equality of all life, but in reality life diverges and is unequal in its flow. Modern liberalism, with its culturally Marxist base, goes against actual human nature which 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.

Variety is good, differences are good, but these things don't easily happen in “multicultural” cities where everyone is told to live together in the same space and love one another equally. The kindest and most humane thing to do is to affirm actual human nature and allow people to form into natural ethnopluralistic  states and regions. To force cultural Marxism on people, as the Clinton’s are always trying to do, ends up causing civil disturbances or even civil war. The various drives for the rights of minorities usually turn out to be drives for superiority, not equality, which causes more social problems for everyone than it solves.

Revolution is not necessary. Ethnopluralism is revitalized conservatism. Unfortunately modern conservatism (neoconservatism) has often encouraged the forced convergence of people and the breakdown of natural boundaries to better enhance universal consumerism, where only money matters. The original separation of powers of the U. S. Constitution can be revitalized to allow states and regions to form into the natural sort of ethnostates which they tend to flow into in any case. 

Cooperative competition with variety and natural divergence is what we require, not competition alone, and not cooperation alone.  Light federalism can protect the regions internally and externally. But when will this happen? The time-line is difficult to predict, the media, which is probably more influential than politics, is now on the side of the Clintons. But human nature is on the side of ethnopluralism. Empires always break down into ethnopluralistic states and regions, so why not stay there or go there in the first place?

Happy New Year