How Nietzsche's immoralist is not valid

When virtue is related to sociobiologically defined human nature then Friedrich Nietzsche's project of affirming the immoralist is not valid. By “conforming” to the real structure of human nature one is not mediocre, one is a natural man conforming to what human beings actually are. The affirmation of immoralism by Nietzsche was mainly his attempt to affirm superior men who stand out from the “herd,” but this is best done by way of evolution, bio-social evolution, and not by moving outside the bonds of human nature, not by revolution, but by Ordered Evolution---this relates best to a revitalized conservatism and not anarchy or aristocratic radicalism.

As the intellectual father of modern libertarianism, anarchism, and nihilism (in spite of Nietzsche), Nietzsche under-emphasized the biological foundation of much of social behavior, even though he was against the denaturalization of morality and culture by religion.  Perhaps Nietzsche, who was brilliant but all too human, could not avoid being overly defensive due to his own real outsiderhood (he had to publish his own outstanding work which virtually no one read), especially in comparison to the wildly popular Wagner, who became his bitter rival.

We certainly do need superior men and women to create high culture and also to help us survive into the future, but this is not best done by condemning the rest of humanity. We find superior men and women by identifying social from antisocial genius, which can be accomplished, for example, when psychometric testing is exhumed from political correctness. Let's not confound criminal geniuses with socially positive geniuses. Without the group and group selection, superior individuals don't contribute for long, or enhance society, or help us evolve.

The colossal arrogance of modern art

The Renaissance tradition of art was considered “repugnant” and a “ghastly mistake” by Braque and Picasso. What colossal arrogance. Soon other artists were banishing color and form, and then art became purely abstract. These artists sensed an opportunity to advance themselves, and I emphasize themselves, and art dealers on the edge, various hucksters, and art critics were happy to follow them for the same largely selfish reasons, and sticking it to the “establishment” was part of the deal.

Society needs to be allowed to tell the difference between social and anti-social art, just as it needs to be able to judge anti-social criminals and non-criminals. It has been suggested that Chimpanzee's create “art” mainly out of the joy of disruption, they are not interested in the art later. Modern art is on that same continuum.

Creativity is of course good, invention is good, but human survival still greatly depends on the culture it possesses. The cross-cultural center for all cultures remains human nature, which remains essentially the same as when it was developed during the million or so years of the Pleistocene. Group selection remains the primary unit of selection and individual selection follows after. In general creativity and change need to be evolutionary not revolutionary.  It is the affirmation of what is held sacred by humans that has defined high art throughout human history, and it desperately needs to again.

The damaging court etiquette of political correctness

The “court etiquette” of political correctness, which Lind correctly called cultural Marxism, is unnatural morality, it is a denaturalization (Nietzsche's term), an ideal severed from reality, it is really a means to power for the people who promote cultural Marxism. The cure for this very damaging Machiavellian scheme is the moral naturalism that rises out of the common sense of sociobiology, which calls reality reality without disguise, and openly states that the essential passions and instincts of every people is to preserve themselves. It is overdo time to stop the revenge-mentality and virtually permanent resentment that continues to follow the genetic and Darwinian ethos of the horrors of World War Two. Resentment, as most psychologists would agree, tends to block the truth and the development of more noble character traits, not only in individuals but in cultures.

The sciences of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology have, among other things, bravely led the way toward affirming natural differences between people, even as they are defining a universal human nature that challenges the political correctness of cultural Marxism. But political correctness is even creeping into these fields as we now consider ethnopluralism as a real and natural way for us all to “get along,” given our human nature. This is a value system that does not try to level and tyrannize one people over another but seeks to advance all people, all ethnic groups, living in their own unique regions, in their own unique ways, in accord with real human nature.

Then we can all get on with cooperating, or at least competitively cooperating, in the the sacred mission of evolving toward Godhood, here and out into the cosmos.  Unnatural empires demanding the court etiquette of political correctness inevitably break back down into small states.  Revolution is not necessary, our Constitution applauds the separation of powers and states, protected by a light federalism.  

The sacred instinct of art and religion

I agree with the evolutionary psychologists in seeing art as a special element of our instincts, with the survival value of art provided by not a single genetic impulse but, as Denis Dutton pointed out, it is a complicated ensemble of impulses involving response to the environment, appeals to color and sound, social status, puzzles, erotic interests, etc. It is almost impossible to make a rational system out of it.

But some evolutionary thinkers then go on to say that the greatest art sets us above the instincts that make the art possible, and that art transcends our animal selves. They would probably say the same about religion. But this is where the ideal of the instincts, the Will, or Tirips enters the picture. The activation of life inwardly by Tirips (the Will-To-Godhood) is the zenith of the matrerial instincts, virtually a supermaterial instinct, shaped by outside evolution and natural seletion, which seeks ascending levels of Godhood as the greatest possible success in survival and reproduction. This is how both art and religion are activated by a sacred instinct, the zenith of the material instincts, which can affirm the greatest art and religion as an affirmation of the sacred.

Moral Naturalism

I think Nietzsche's moral naturalism (The Will To Power) made him the first sociobiologist. But he then seems to have given up on moral naturalism by affirming the “immoralist,” perhaps because he cynically thought that men and cultures could never be honest about their wills to power, when they were in fact only seeking to preserve themselves---go ahead and lie to advance yourselves, be Machiavellian, said Nietzsche.

I don't think we have to be that cynical regarding moral naturalism. Virtues can be openly created to help preserve a people and a culture, the findings of sociobiology can be affirmed, we don't need to be Machiavellian about it, we don't need to affirm the immoralist. But we can be skeptical of any “humaneness” (eg. cultural Marxism), as Nietzsche was, which is disguising the will to power. We can be moralists if we affirm moral naturalism, which naturally seeks success in survival and reproduction.

How can we do this? Better to affirm the naturalism of people living in their own regions and states, in accord with real human nature, where they don't need to be immoral in disguising the real virtues of preserving themselves. Ethnopluralism is one way, because in our crowded world today, imperialism is soon cut down to size, it doesn’t preserve any people for long. Then we can continue materially and super-materially evolving to Godhood in our own unique ways, which is where religion enters the realm of moral naturalism. We are capable of cooperative competition as we evolve, it is the morally natural way to save our planet and ourselves. People are soon going to reject these schemes which in fact deny human nature and nature itself  for the secret purpose of advancing themselves.

How theological materialism makes Christianity become the solution to the suicide of the West and not part of the problem

In its most sacred valuations, the Church turns its back on the material world and seeks the God Within, or the Father Within, which can only be reached through non-attachment or blocking material desires and passions in the material world. Given the strong and essential drives of human nature, the institutions of the Church, which grew up long after the martyrdom of Jesus Christ, often made valiant and even brilliant attempts to rationalize living in the world (think of Aquinas), but the sacred base of complete non-attachment to reproduction, political philosophy, etc.,  is the central message of Jesus Christ, which is not unlike Buddha's message to attain nirvana---and this is also seen at the most sacred base of all the revealed religions.

When the world is religiously forsaken by human beings in its most sacred religious valuations the world declines. A reaffirmation of this sacred non-attachment by the Church is not the solution to the suicide of the West, it is part of the problem. Is the solution to reject the Church, as so many have done? The solution is to affirm the Twofold Path in which the Evolutionary Outward Path fulfills and transforms the Involutionary Inward Path to the Father Within, which was a symbolic-experience of the Godhood reached by evolving in the material world to supermaterial Godhood. This requires sociobiological involvement and engagement with the world. This is an affirmation of theological materialism, this is not a call to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfill them---this is evolution not revolution.

Natural law and the real culture war

What we have been able to discern of natural law or the laws of nature has often defined natural rights. Religions have said natural laws are based on the eternal laws of God, but man has been arrogant in assuming we fully know the eternal laws. Our view of nature has rightly changed as we have learned more about nature---religion has usually followed this change, but slowly. Our religions and cultures should at least harmonize with natural law or the laws of nature. If we are philosophically honest about the basics of theological materialism, the laws of nature precede both religious law and civil law. The real culture war is between natural law versus religions and cultures which do not harmonize with natural law.

Modern cultures have gone against the natural law in trying to behaviorally program-in such things as cultural Marxism, which requires a completely unnatural egalitarianism. And religions have centered on the Involutionary Inward Path to the God Within or Father Within---to experience this requires blocking or non-attachment to natural drives inherent in human nature and natural law. Cultural Marxism needs to move toward some form of ethnopluralism and localism, with a light protecting federalism, and the religious Inward Path needs to proceed to include the Evolutionary Outward Path of our material and supermaterial evolution to the real Godhood first symbolically experienced inwardly.  This can help bring our religions and cultures more in harmony with natural law and natural health.

The Transcendent As Supermaterial

The transcendent is understood here as the supermaterial zenith of material evolution. This can heal the split between religion and science. The Spirit-Will is retained as the supermaterial inward activation of material life to evolve toward Godhood, shaped by outside evolution. With few exceptions the general trend in evolution has been for environments to become more complex, more intelligent, which can be seen religiously and philosophically as becoming more true, beautiful and good. This has not been only random evolution.

This gives a goal to the goal-less nihilism that followed Nietzsche, with postmodernism seeing only power drives and will and relativity, with no goals and no real meaning to life. This is not religion and science merely compromising, this is bringing religious evolution in harmony with natural law, with the goal of attaining Godhood. Science is this way connected to religion in nature, containing the Spirit-Will-To Godhood within itself urging us toward Godhood, shaped by Darwin's outside evolution, which is indeed is ultimate success in survival and reproduction.

Universalism has caused too much suffering and civil strife

Universalism has been exaggerated at the expense of the local, often leading to civil strife, exploitation, imperialism, and war. Religion was probably the first to promote universalism, and politics followed, which has caused much suffering and the loss of local variety, even though universalism has typically claimed to be the only way for us "all to get along."

The universal is real but it needs to be put in its place, second to localism. We are universal Homo-sapiens and not mutually infertile species because of past colonization and admixture of different ethnic groups, but our geographical differences and local ethnic genetic adaptations from climate, etc., remain strong.

Human nature remains essentially local in that we remain kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other local things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. These local differences are universal and have been with us for thousands of years since hunter-gatherer times.

Universalism has been exploited by those who benefit, at least temporarily, from breaking up local bonds. Religion, politics and globalism in business have done this. Even conservative's have split between followers of the universalism of Leo Strauss (neoconservatives) and the localism of Russell Kirk (paleoconservatives).

Localism, or ethnopluralism, is the natural answer to exaggerated universalism. This can be affirmed by honest anthropology, political philosophy and religion. The natural separation of powers, small states, even ethnostates, remains the rational and instinctive best choice, which can even be accomplished in democratic republics, with a light protecting federalism. It does seem that more scholars, religious leaders, philosophers, politicians are now gradually rising and actively affirming localism, across the world.

How can moral naturalism be restored?

Was restoring moral naturalism the theme of the Enlightenment or was it more a restoring of Socratic reason as the new God? Moral naturalism was more clearly a theme with Darwin and Nietzsche. But then people began to sever ideas and morals from reality, with modern political lies, etc., advanced to advance a person or a group---which is, I suppose, a twisted form of naturalism. Can we get back to real moral naturalism?

When we present the Evolutionary Outward Path to the traditions of the Involutionary Inward Path religions this is seen as heresy, it seems to go against what we have been exclusively taught as the Inward Path to the God Within, the Father Within. The Inward Path moves against moral naturalism because it blocks or unattaches us from material desires and passions, unless we see the Inward Path  as a symbolic-experience of the Godhood reached by material and supermaterial evolution in the Outward Path. The fact that the Inward Path may advance the priest class is the transvalued connection with naturalism here.

The French have generally thought that a crisis has to reach its paroxysm and only then can it be resolved, which seems to affirm revolution rather than reform or conservatism. Is revolution the only means of real change? Perhaps the paroxysm of becoming extinct as other animals on earth are becoming extinct will help return us to moral naturalism. I agree with Cattell in thinking of revolution and war as an angry person turning over the chess table, it is almost always negative, progress stops until the war is ended, then the chess game of civilization and evolution can begin again. We need very long periods of order and research to advance ourselves forward in evolution toward Godhood. It is through Revitalized Conservatism and Ordered Evolution that the Twofold Path can best come forward, come what may.

Camille Paglia's crooked strait-shooting

I tend to like Camille Paglia's straight-shooting kind of feminism, which respects gender differences, although she is public lesbian. Paglia believes, like Freud, that the pagan exists beneath our repressed Judeo-Christian culture and she champions art which celebrates the pagan, or her interpretation of paganism, as she praised Madonna a few decades ago. Our culture does repress many of the drives and instincts of basic human nature and one can almost see why white Eminem would choose black rap as a means of more open expression.

Although I don't really like to reach into the private sexual preferences of anyone, homosexuality actually represses real human nature.  Homosexuality is, in essence, the sexual preference for achieving orgasm with the same-gender, which is a sexual activity distant from the central survival and reproductive drives that monopolize real human nature; orgasm was evolved as an incentive for reproduction. When the same-gender sexual preference is elevated and promoted as a whole life style it blocks or subverts the larger basic elements of human nature, reducing their importance and corrupting human nature and human behavior.

Human nature developed many thousands of years ago and 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 genetically 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. Exclusively promoting sexuality or violence or androgyny or homosexuality actually represses much of real human nature, pagan or otherwise.  Let's have artists---and critics--- who express and don't repress more of real genetically derived human nature. This expression might actually exhume a more classic kind of evolutionary realism in art related to more traditional human nature and culture.

The prince of darkness is not necessary in the Twofold Path

The material world is not the prince of darkness, Satan, which traditional religions essentially believe. This has helped cause the Great Spiritual Blockade against our material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood.

The problem seems to come from confounding the Outward Path with the Inward Path. The Involutionary Inward Path of traditional religions seeks the God Within, the Father Within, virtually exclusively among serious followers. Most of the values and morals of religion come from this goal of reaching the Inward God, which requires blocking all material desires, or becoming completely unattached to them. This is how the material world became Satan and the prince of darkness, blocking the way to our evolution to Godhood.

It is the Evolutionary Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution which leads to real Godhood, not the symbolic-experience of the Father Within of the Inward Path, however blissful it is. But rather than playing religious tit for tat, an eye for an eye, and making the Inward Path a trans-valued prince of darkness (as modern secularists seem to have done), we can affirm the Twofold Path, because the Inward Path understanding of God leads to the Outward Path sacred goal of evolving to Godhood in the cosmos, by way of material and supermaterial evolution. The prince of darkness is not necessary in the Twofold Path.

What can we do about the destruction of America?

When writers on the economy speak of the forces of globalization and new technology, they almost never mention that nations rise to power by protecting their manufacturing base and decline when they accept so-called “free trade.” We have seen the deindustralization of America, with thousands of U.S. factories lost, with 230 million white collar jobs projected to be eliminated or transformed, representing trillions in income. Along with that we have had 30 to 40 million legal and illegal immigrants entering the country as a huge increase in the labor force. And who has benefit from this economic destruction of America? The top one percent have seen a huge growth in profits, while the average U.S. family has not had a raise for 40 years. The new jobs created are $15-an-hour service jobs usually filled by legal and illegal immigrants.

What can we do about the destruction of America? We can begin by doing what our Founders did (Hamilton, Madison, Lincoln), and impose a border tax on all goods entering the county, as China now does to us, and we can use the hundreds of billions of dollars from that to cut the taxes on American manufacturing which will help our factories rise from the dead. Then we can have a moratorium on all immigration into this country. As to the red state and blue state cross-purposes that are also tearing us apart, along with the variety of ethnicities and cultures that will continue to separate our citizens into warring factions no matter how much we pursue equality, we need to take seriously the movements of separation which are now instinctively rising across the world, including in the United States. This is completely natural and in accord with real human nature. Let it happen. We can embrace a healthy ethnopluralism in our regions and states, which can even be in accord with the separation of powers of our Constitution. Things are moving this way in any case and we need to avoid civil war which hurts everyone.  We must eventually face real human nature and the social structures that work in harmony with real human nature.

With our manufacturing protected, with our borders protected, and with people allowed to seek out their own kind, even their own languages, in their own regions and states, our Republic can begin to rise again on a firm foundation, with cooperative competition allowed. This is not libertarian, this is not progressive liberalism, this is not neoconservatism, this is not fascism, this is economic nationalism and ethnopluralism within our Republic. In other words, this is Revitalized Conservatism.

Outward Evolution is not diminished when life is activated internally by the Spirit Will To Godhood

Enlightenment thinkers from the seventeenth century on believed that reason, logic and experiment could fully explain everything in life and “spiritual” explanations for life did not really exist. This position was made easier because of the transcendental, nonmaterial, definitions of God and Spirit.

Since the Enlightenment few people have had the courage to claim some sort of internal direction. In our time Ken Wilber and Francis Heylighen are two thinkers who have courage in discussing direction in evolution. Wilber said, evolution is “the opposite of chance or randomness in the universe. It's evidence of a force that is pursuing against randomness in the universe... This is an extraordinary driven process.” Francis Heylighen wrote “...it is assumed that evolution is largely unpredictable and contingent on a host of uncontrollable factors, which may steer its course in any of an infinite number of directions. However, it is noted that directions in which complexity increases are generally preferred...Still, it can happen that systems evolve towards a simpler organization, although this seems rare. It is most likely to occur when the system enters a simpler environment, as when an organism becomes an internal parasite or moves back from the land to the water, but these are obviously unusual examples which go against the general trend of environments becoming more complex.”

Religion does not need to have a problem with evolution, if the Spirit-Will is understood as activating life from within while life is shaped outwardly by Darwin's evolution. The activating internal Spirit-Will needs to be inserted into the outward evolutionary dynamic. Evolution is not diminished when life is activated by the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, although randomness can still occur. Secular views of life have no real sacred goals to life and evolution other than successful survival and reproduction, which suggests a Will-To-Power driving everything rather than the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood goal for evolution.

The traditional Involutionary Inward Path is the transcendental view of God and Spirit, this is nonmaterial abstraction, a word, an idea, a Logos, with no material or supermaterial objecthood, it is an experience of bliss after strict ascetic discipline in becoming unattached to the forces of life. The Evolutionary Outward Path understands this Logos as an internal symbolic-experience of the real Godhood which is reached by evolution, a material-supermaterial evolution that is activated by the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood.

Ironically it is pagans who saw nature and the material world as Divine and traditional religions which tended to deny divinity to the material world. Pagans would not necessarily be at war with science, and religion does not need to be either, if the Spirit-Will is understood as activating life from within while life is shaped outwardly by Darwin's evolution.

The psychology of inauthentic values and morals

Religion and philosophy have often defined ideas that are opposed to the senses, or opposed to nature, ideas “severed from reality” (“The Will to Power,” Nietzsche). Was this “civilizing” done to reduce the survival damage of aggression, or was it as Nietzsche thought, a way for the weaker to weaken the strong? Even scientists can look down their noses at natural drives and passions while almost exclusively valuing the rational scientific mind, although sociobiology has been looking more attentively at natural human nature.

What was needed was an ordering of the natural passions and drives of evolution and not a blocking or nonattachment to them, not a making evil of nature, or merely calling natural passions irrational. Religion and philosophy insisted on reaching the God Within of the Inward Path, or the highest good of philosophy, and they tended to block the natural drives, or advocated becoming unattached to them so as to experience the Father Within, or the highest good. This made actual natural compassion and love secondary to the needs of reaching the God Within, one could more easily feel compassion because one was emotionally unattached to the natural passions of reproduction, competition, and life in general.

Ordered Evolution in the Outward Path is the authentic answer to the psychology of the Inward Path values and morals---but the Inward Path can be retained as the symbolic-experience of the Godhood reached by material and supermaterial evolution in the Outward Path. We evolve to Godhood in nature not by blocking nature or becoming unattached to natural drives, our natural drives can be consciously directed toward higher evolution to real Godhood. God has been too much associated with the opposite of life and the depreciation of nature, a “denaturalisation” has taken place. We need a “moral naturalism,” but contrary to Nietzsche, one that sees altruism as authentically related to helping the group and therefore the individual survive, prosper, and most importantly: evolve.

The highest model for humanity?

It is of course considered sacrilegious and heretical to state it, but the human being who experiences the blissful condition of nirvana, or the God-Within, or the Father Within (the Beatific Vision), or in the more modern terms of Ken Wilber, the person who experiences transrational or Universal Consciousness, is not the highest model and goal for humanity. In stark terms, this blissful condition is a high category of  hedonism hypertrophied and experienced by freeing the body and mind of all passion, and all material desires, which is no easy task.

What redeems this high spiritual hedonism? Seeing or understanding this blissful state as the symbolic-experience of the real Godhood reached by material and supermaterial evolution. Reaching Godhood requires material passions and desires, but passions and desires guided by Ordered Evolution toward continually advancing truth, beauty, goodness, intelligence, complexity, character and proportion, all evolving toward the zenith of these values and virtues, which is Godhood.

In the Twofold Path the blissful symbolic-experience of the Father Within is the highest destination of the Involutionary Inward Path, but real Godhood in evolution by way of the Evolutionary Outward Path is the highest model for future development toward Godhood.

I'll be gone for a bit, and back as soon as possible.

How Nietzsche could have avoided his radical philosophy

Nietzsche's project could be understood in terms of what is defined here as the Twofold Path, only Nietzsche wanted to extirpate, throw out, the Involutionary Inward Path because he saw it as the opposite of nature, which it is. The Inward Path to the Father Within promotes unnatural values because it blocks the natural instincts and desires so as to experience the bliss of desirelessness in the symbolic-experience of the Father Within.

But Nietzsche might have approved of the Evolutionary Outward Path because it brings back “moral naturalism,” as seen in the material and supermaterail evolution to real Godhood. Nietzsche saw a vitalistic will-to-power in nature with no religions goal whereas the Outward Path sees the activating Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which is shaped on the outside by natural evolution.

Also Nietzsche did not equate moral naturalism with the Inward Path symbolic-experience of the Outward Path Godhood reached through evolution. The result: Nietzsche had to become a radical, an anti-Christ, a revolutionary, and even a moral relativist, which eventually fathered postmodern philosophers and many other modern cultural creations---the rejection of moral art for example.

The Twofold Path calls for Ordered Evolution in harmony with a Revitalized Conservatism. The God of the Inward Path is retained as a forebearer of real Godhood reached in the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution. Moral naturalism this way rises from the Great Spiritual Blockade without throwing religion out. But the Sacred goal is essentially not to save Nietzsche but to save our evolution to real Godhood.

How we can aid in our evolution to Godhood

The central lesson of Christianity is not “unconditional love” as we are often told, the central message is the call to reach the Father Within, through the ascetic discipline of stopping or blocking all material desires. As in Buddhism, non-attachment to all things in the world is necessary to attain the state of the God Within. Affirming the poor was a value derived from this nonmaterial prospective, because for Jesus material things were not the path to the Father Within---compassion also came from this perspective. This is the way of the Involutionary Inward Path to the symbolic-bliss-experience of the Father Within, but we require the Evolutionary Outward Path to reach real Godhood.

The Evolutionary Outward Path unblocks the Great Spiritual Blockade against our material and supermaterial evolution to the Godhood first seen in the Inward Path. This is not a rejection of the Inward Path, this is the application of the Twofold Path, one working with the other. Hunter- Gatherers saw nature as more harmonious than Farmers who had to contend more with nature, and their religion's reflected the differences. In human history the manifestations of religion have changed, but the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood does not change. We now can see our evolution to real Godhood, activated by the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood. This dynamic was unconscious for a long time, but it is now conscious and we can aid in our evolution to Godhood.

Is great music an attempt to find the order of the Sacred?

Is music a “balance” of intellect and emotion? Music seems to be an attempt to order emotions. Emotions come from the ancient dominant part of the brain system. The intellect or neocortex is newer and it tries to understand ancient emotions. But to dominate emotions with intellect? Music is more the intellect harmonizing with emotions, like a jockey riding a horse, only this horse is not really broken to the will of the rider-intellect, even if we are arrogant enough to think so.

But something is missing from intellect and emotion, and it is the activation of material life by the material Will or Tirips.  Life is shaped by outside evolution and also activated inside by the Will or Tirips to materially evolve toward ascending levels of Godhood. Is the path to the Sacred in art to harmonize all three: emotion, intellect and Tirips, but then to concede leadership to Tirips? I suppose it is the intellect that harmonizes and understands it all this way, which does make the intellect a powerful element in this dynamic.  But it is an affirmation by the intellect of emotions more than control by the intellect that is happening with music. Is great music an attempt to find the order of the Sacred?

Altruism, egotism and creativity

Altruism is not only the preeminence of the "other," and egotism is not only the preeminence of the ego or the individual, as Nietzsche seemed to suggest, altruism is also a natural instinct, a biological conscience. Egoism is not purer as a natural instinct, and altruism is not less authentic. Human nature and human social life are a not-always-harmonious mix of individual and group selection, with group selection tending to be the final arbitrator of success (see E.O.Wilson's latest).

Sometimes it seem as if at least part of Nietzsche's motive is to extirpate all guilt in regard to the treatment of others. Perhaps Nietzsche keenly felt the drag of convention rejecting his brilliant work, especially in comparison to Wagner.  As long as we naturally need others to survive and prosper than “guilt” about our behavior toward others will be a check on our egotism, and this is as natural and biological an instinct as egotism, so getting rid of all guilt as Nietzsche and later Freud seemed to advocate may not be all that healthy.

As considered here recently, we do need to find a way for real individual genius to have wide freedom to create, but we can affirm genius not by holding up egoism as the only authentic natural instinct in man---society needs to have the right to distinguish between the work of anti-social criminal genius and the work of socially healthy genius. George Dumezil dug deeply examining the origins of the conflict between the different social castes in early human culture, but I, for one, think the social psychologist and sociobiologist Raymond Cattell updated and upgraded this subject regarding individual genius and group survival and reproduction, with an eye toward still progressing and evolving. Nietzsche and Freud and then their postmodern followers seem too selfish.

Toward authentic contentment in the real world

Many attempts have been made to analyze the psychological discontent of modern and postmodern civilization, from Nietzsche to Freud, Jung, Marcuse, and modern Christian approaches, among others. Nietzsche's approach was mainly to bring naturalism back to values and morality and stop blocking the healthy instincts, which he believed Christianity did, and especially to affirm the will to power of exceptional individuals, or the “creators of values.” Freud took this basic anti-christian Nietzschean perspective but changed the dynamics from the power motive to the sexual motive, which he believed needed to be set free since he believed its repression was making people neurotic. Jung found God in the human unconscious as a grand archetype and said we would be healthy when we could integrate the God archetype of the unconscious into the rest of our conscious and unconscious lives. Marcuse applied Freud’s view of sexual repression to conservative cultural life, helping to create the cultural Marxism of political correctness. And Christian defenders seek to transcend human nature and barbaric human instincts, claiming that doing so is both divine law and natural law.

All of these approaches claimed that their way would help solve the discontent of our civilization. While each of these approaches had something to offer in trying to make civilization healthier---and some did damage to us (see Chilton Williamson, Chronicles, January 2014)---none of these approaches took full account of the great anchor of biology and sociobiology in human nature and culture. Actual life and death describe good and evil in the most basic way. Evolution defines progress. Our divinity has to be materially and supermaterially evolved to. We are not free to reject life and biology accept in inauthentic ways, our freedom is confined to circumscribed choices within our biology and environment. We are discontented mainly because we have falsely and in-authentically tried to escape what we actually are in the world. We are evolving in the world and in the cosmos, perhaps in a spiral direction, toward Godhood, shaped by natural selection and evolution. We can make conscious the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood which activates life toward  Godhood, shaped by outside evolution, and we can adjust ourselves and our civilization accordingly. This will bring us as much authentic contentment as is real in the world.

Revolution is not necessary, but the revitalization of tradition is necessary with the Twofold Path. The Inward God of Christianity---and traditional religions---was the first symbolic-experience of the real Godhood which can be reached through material and supermaterial evolution. The Involutionary Inward Path brings us to the Father Within of Christ (also of the Hindu tradition), after applying the ascetic discipline of blocking all desires to experience the God Within. But it is the Evolutionary Outward Path which brings us to real Godhood by way of evolution in the cosmos.  The sacred base so necessary for civilization is this way reapplied.

Linear or Ring?

The old Western and even Biblical idea of linear progress to God seems to somewhat fit with the idea of material and supermaterial upward evolution toward Godhood. The more Eastern idea of “cycles” seems less important from this perspective. There is also no “first cause” in this worldview, only endless, linear, spiral evolution toward Godhood, with stops and starts along the way. Life moves upward in evolution toward Godhood, shaped by selection and evolution, and activated by the Spirit-Will-To- Godhood. This perspective is not fully accepted by either religion or science---so it could be considered a balance between the two. 

Nietzsche suggested that Becoming is a huge ring. But evolution appears to be more a constant, upward, spiral, but linear evolution, for example, from the simple to the complex, with no end in sight other than continual levels of higher evolution. How do these cosmic symbols relate to values and morality? A relativity of values does not seem to fit here. Linear evolution does not assign all parts with equal relative value, as the ring symbol seems to do with its eternal return. The old trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty are ranked higher in material and supermaterial evolution than, for example, illusion or ugliness, with Godhood as the zenith of Truth, Goodness and Beauty.