Hypothesizing on world order without imperialism

Expanding on yesterday's post, I could see a world order more like Dante's prescription for peace than the marauding New World Order of the West, or the projected imperialism of Eurasianism in the East---with one big caution: a world order of ethnopluralism would affirm various religions and cultures living in near-independent ethnostates, even as world-wide voluntary sociobiological research centers, and the religion of the ECC, carry on their work advocating the Ordered Evolution of mankind---not just one group.

Creative evolution in general works best with a variety of people and states living in relative separation, while still trading with one another, where they can consciously develop various positive evolutionary traits, which can be later utilized by other groups, and this all can be protected by a form of federalism---the proper place for the military.

This is not imperialism, this is world order protecting ethnopluralism and ethnic cultures, which human history always falls back to in any case. Religious, political and business imperialism, with their anti-evolutionary forced homogenization, can be blocked as being ever harmful to evolution and to peace, so that Ordered Evolution may take place over time toward Godhood.  This would be a world order worthy of the best of mankind, and beyond.

Biological signaling and art theory

Theories on art from evolutionary psychology tend to take the arrogance and humbug out of philosophies of art. For example, art is seen as an extension of sexual selection, which itself is an extension of the more practical and efficient natural selection. Denis Dutton has done excellent work in examining, with very clear writing, the origin of art. These studies got me thinking about how to distinguish individual and group-selection in art, which has not been much written about.

Individualistic art can be seen as the personal ornament of the individual artist, which supposedly displays the intelligence, skill, and great leisure and richness of the artist, as a signal of the fitness of the artist, especially (and originally) in the mating game (think of Picasso). Whereas art created for the group can signal the fitness and power of the group (think of elaborate religious art), which can then reward the individual artists for their great affirmations of the group, and more importantly enhance the group in competition with other groups.

We might then say that since group-selection is the central unit of selection in humans, as E. O. Wilson  has recently affirmed, group-selection would define and create the higher art. History seems to show this as true with the greatest art usually defined as art that affirms what the group holds most sacred. 

This kind of explanation brings art theory back to biology, back to life, and forward to the extension and evolution of life---we can then better see the wild abstractions of art philosophy through the ages for what they were, often empty signaling on the part of individual philosophers or artists.  We are just looking for truth and reality regarding art, which is perhaps our form of signalling.

Right, progress, and sacredness are on the side of evolution

Hegel placed “right” on the side of the victorious in history, which stood for progress. I think progress in evolution is the higher more sacred calling, since essentially we are evolving to Godhood. Then we can examine history through the eyes of our evolution toward higher forms.

Are the Ancient Greeks and the Apostles the highest types of men for all time in evolution? We don't need to harken only back to the Greeks or Jerusalem---even if philosophy and religion did this over the years---we can learn from past history but we need to look to future evolution. In the Twofold Path, the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood supersedes but does not exclude the Inward Path of involution to the Father Within or the Truth within.

The idea that we are all fallen creatures, flawed and imperfect, is overcome not by thinking our flaws derive from having departed from “pure being,” which most religions believe---I don't see such a departure as having taken place, nor do I see Godhood as pure being, even when real Godhood is attained in material and supermaterial evolution. Godhood is attained in the process of ongoing evolution always reaching ever higher.

Men have dealt with the ugliness of the real world by trying to reconcile ugliness with their definition of a beautiful spotless God. Nietzsche's other early solution to this was to use art as a reprieve from the reality of creation and destruction---Dionysus embraced destruction as part of creation. Hegel saw progress in history as good and bad worked out dialectically. I see the evolution of life toward Godhood as the natural way out of our less than perfect selves. Evolution does not always make progress, backsliding occurs, which is not evil, but “right” is on the side of evolutionary progress. This is the main reason for our conscious involvement in the formerly unconscious process of evolution.  And "conservatism" in fact is necessary in evolution since most new things are not successful and need time to be worked out in orderly societies.

The social and political challenge is to develop some sort of estate style ethnopluralism, where every ethnic culture has its own kind of progress, with a variety of states, protected by some sort of federalism, which can include voluntary guidance in our evolution by national and international sociobiological research centers, as Raymond Cattell talked about.

This seems to be our future, should we survive until then. Right, progress, and sacredness are on the side of evolution.

Answering Nietzsche's Group Problem

To be healthy, morality and human values need to work in harmony with nature, with sociobiology. Morality is not merely a completely relative will-to-power, as Nietzsche seems to have thought it was in his dismissing morality for not relating to Nature. Nietzsche's concept of immorality is also a concept free of nature since morality is very much a part of nature in helping group-selection.

I see Nietzsche's project as mainly an attempt to affirm the great genius creators over everyone and everything else, missing the basic importance of group-selection which is necessary to allow geniuses to survive and prosper. I think Raymond Cattell had a better grasp of this in understanding that the task of society and evolution is to tell the difference between social and anti-social geniuses, and not to denigrate group-values.

The ECC project is to update Hegel and Darwin. To make evolution and history part of religion. To revitalize Christianity and religion in general. To give a moral answer to Nietzsche and his follower’s immorality. To bring back philosophical naturalism to philosophy and religion by way of theological materialism. To bring religion and science together. To bring evolutionary realism  to art. To affirm the object over the concept of the object. To re-position the Outward Path over the Inward Path while keeping both. To affirm that all life is evolving to Godhood, not from Godhood. To have the ethos of evolution involved in morality in general.  And to affirm the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis in political philosophy..... Constructive help in this is not turned down.

Happy Memorial Day

The basic spirit of change within the old order

“...Originality is not taken to mean the creation of something unrelated to any precedent or prototype, but rather the reconfiguration of a given prototype in a vitally creative way.” (Gatesby Leigh)

I like the above quote in reference to yesterday's post on calling myself a conservative. But the basic spirit of change within the old order is seen in the ordered evolution of the religious and political philosophy presented here. Whether Burke or Kirk would agree or disagree is not a given---but they were practical men, with moral imagination.

Traditionalism with no evolution is not reviving the declining West, traditionalism really seems to want to return to the age before Western science and scientific evolution, even though it has made weak attempts to include science and evolution in a separate category from religion.

Not just new science but new religious revelations need to be included, but in the reconfiguration-of-prototypes-spirit of real conservatism. Most new things do not work well. Bringing philosophy back to the real material/supermaterial world suggests that working well needs to relate in to successful survival and reproduction. The quote by Leigh is a very conservative statement, made in reference to memorial architecture, but it could apply to new religious, artistic or political forms. 

Evolution moves inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements, and the pattern has a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward “higher and higher more effective living forms,”as Cattell put it. The goal of evolving  toward higher and higher forms and eventually to Godhood, shaped by natural outside evolution, need not deprive us of either science or religion.

How I Am A Conservative

When I compare the pioneering views seen here to Russell Kirk's fundamental definition of Conservatism, as recently remembered by Clyde Wilson (Modern Age, Winter 2014), for the most part we align with Kirk's view, in our Ordered Evolution, the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis, Revitalized Conservatism, and perhaps with Theological Materialism, and the Twofold Path:

In the affirmation of the original American Constitution I defer to custom and older Western wisdom, as much as to rational speculation. I understand that change should be cautiously approached with the affirmation of Ordered Evolution. I avoid being “provincial in time” by going even further back to our Pleistocene past, where we evolved the human nature we still have today, and also by thinking seriously about our sociobiological responsibility to the future. I take in earnest the warnings by our Founders about avoiding entangling foreign alliances, for example, in affirming Economic Nationalism. And this is unlike the neoconservatives, who are not conservative, in using big government and armed force for nefarious purposes around the world. I value variety, which is so important to real evolution, in affirming an ethnopluralism that can be legally accommodated by the separation of powers and states in the original Constitution, which actually protects variety, unlike multiculturalism which seeks homogenization into a motley non-culture. I think government should be small and the private sphere large. But I am progressive in the following ways: in thinking there is a necessity for objective international sociobiological research institutes, voluntarily applied toward enhancing our survival and our future evolution. And finally, I value the order of nature, especially in its evolutionary aspects, in that we evolve in nature to Godhood materially and supermaterially.  The Twofold Path relates to the past traditional religious tradition which first glimpsed symbolically the God Within as a hint of the Godhood evolved to in the cosmos. I believe with Ordered Evolution we can now consciously help nature evolve toward the higher evolution it has so far only unconsciously been moving toward, activated by Tirips, and shaped by outside selection and evolution.

This is how I am a conservative.

Evolutionary Realism and the Godhood Goal

A mixing of realism and idealism defines the classical arts, according to Gail Leggio. I think “evolutionary realism” best describes the arts involved in our sacred evolution toward Godhood. Evolutionary realism brings art philosophy back to the living object, the natural world, but also extends it out into the future toward our evolution toward ascending level of Godhood.

What we consider “beautiful” tends to have evolved in the Pleistocene through natural selection and sexual selection, and we retain it today. We can build on this, on what we are, since it doesn’t work well to reject human nature. We can build on instinctive feelings and empirical ideas of what is true, beautiful and good, with the goal of evolving to the zenith of these things, which is Godhood.

We are aided in this direction by the inward, purely physical, activation of the Will-To-Godhood, or Tirips, which seeks Godhood by materially activating life to evolve toward Godhood, working along with the shaping of outside evolution and selection. But even without acknowledging this inward purpose, evolution has been moving toward more efficient forms, more complexity, with occasional stops and side-turnings along the way.

Morality does not have to be a counter-movement opposing nature's endeavors to arrive at a higher type, which was Nietzsche's view. But devolution can and does take place with various negative or down-going kinds of morality, the kind of morality that says this material world is not good. Godhood is not only the zenith of truth, beauty and goodness, it is the zenith of successful survival and reproduction. Science and religion can meet here.

Jantelagen

Jantelagen is a Swedish word meaning an ingrained aversion to standing out. The North Asians seem to have it too. The South seems to show almost the opposite of this, although there are always exceptions. What would a southern word for loud extroversion be? Chutzpah?  It also originally seemed to apply physiologically.

These traits are developed slower in natural selection, and then sexual selection helps determine the choices females make, which can exaggerate these traits over time.

With less to pay for any mistakes they make, modern females seem to be more freely choosing males, southern or northern or whatever, since the natural environment doesn't seem to matter as much for the survival of their offspring, assuming they decide to have offspring.

Without the pressures of difficult natural selection, and without the values of older traditions, traits are entering the gene pool in modern times that would not have otherwise. I suppose this can change depending on the ease of survival.

Was Nietzsche affirming the criminal?

In reading Nietzsche it is not very clear that he is not affirming the criminal. To be sure he is affirming geniuses, but he praises immorality constantly: “Have not all the great deeds in the memory of man been immoral?.” And “The moral man is not a better man he is less harmful.” To name only two of many statements like this.

I don't believe that Nietzsche is affirming criminals mainly because he is speaking of the true creators and developers of culture, which we need more of, but he does see these exceptional people as something like wild beasts who do not need social taming by that “terrible species” called the priests. Also Nietzsche praises the Pagan religions, the Renaissance, and Art, as being more creative and affirmative of life, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, which was not a criminal cultural development.

But when Nietzsche writes that from a biological standpoint the phenomenon of morality is of a highly suspicious nature, it cries out for the sociobiological knowledge of our time, which has shown that group-selection instinctively and innately develops morality to enhance success in biological survival and reproduction.

Nietzsche was one of the most brilliantly courageous minds in human history but his big error was in not seeing altruism as being as natural, instinctive and affirmative as the warrior mentality. The social task is to find a way to distinguish between the social and anti-social geniuses, not to reject group morality. The psychometric sciences can in fact do this now.

Yes, we need affirmative philosophy and religion rather than the exclusively Inward Path to the God Within which requires blocking natural material desires. The Twofold Path does not require the death of religion, or the death of group morality, or the death of God, or the dictatorship of individual supermen. The Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution can lead us toward real Godhood, which was first only symbolically experienced in the Inward Path.

Deeper Psychology

I would add the activating, supermaterial, Spirit-Will-To-Godhood to the Archetypes of Carl Jung, and also to Evolutionary Psychology, which would make an even deeper psychology. The archetypes are innate and universal human traits, as are the universal traits of kin-selection, ethnocentrism, and group selection. But an inward even blissful archetype for God is not enough, it is only a symbolic experience of the Godhood reached in outward material and supermaterial evolution.

The main purpose behind the development of these innate universal human traits and archetypes was successful survival and reproduction, which is why they evolved---evolutionary psychology emphasizes this. But psychology, as well as religion and philosophy, would be broader and deeper by including the innate-supermaterial, universal, activating Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which could be considered a Super Id.

As Nietzsche thought, the motive force and its expression should not be seen as separate things. The material and spiritual are seen as separate things, or else they are seen as Plato and the Eastern religions (and their Western versions) saw them, as really all spiritual and non-material. We need to repair or reconnect these two. Chance and natural selection do take place in material evolution but there is also an inward activating force in the selection process, as Teilhard Chardin and others have thought, with their somewhat different interpretations from this one. I see it the other way, trans-valued : it is all material and supermaterial, inwardly and outwardly evolving toward Godhood, no duality is necessary.

Political resentments and overreactions in the world

The French New Right, who I like in general, seem to make the mistake of accepting any challenger to the West, no matter how imperialistic---for example, Russia or China---brought on by big resentment and overreaction to the damaging imperialism of the West. The French seem to forget that they are very much a part of the West, which for years has given its people a higher standard of living than the rest of the world.  Fundamentalist Islam shows even more of this same sort of anger and resentment against the West. History is a hierarchy of competing peoples more than ideas, but intellectuals often get lost in the conflict of ideas and ideology and they tend to bypass the biological dynamics behind ideas. Look at the way sociobiology still has little effect in the Humanities.

All imperialism needs to devolve back to regional ethnostates (and will eventually), protected with some sort of federalism, and that includes the United States, whose Constitution with its separation of powers and states could accommodate ethnopluralism. This best relates to the real human nature that I keep repeating in this blog, and the sociopolitical structures most in harmony with real human nature which developed many thousands of years ago, and are still with us: we remain kin-centered, gender-defined, heterosexual marriage-making, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

If Eurasia devolves away from imperialism and toward ethnopluralism we can affirm them, but the West needs to do likewise. Given human nature and history, this is the future that holds the most promise for us all. People create cultures more than cultures create people, which is why cultures are shaped by the various traits of the people who create the cultures, adapting to various environments.

The religious philosophy of theological materialism, and the ethnopluralism hypothesis, are an attempt to bring culture back to real people, real life, real evolution, rather than increasing the ideological resentments and overreactions.

On defining reality, and the consilience of fields

Real life needs to represent a higher importance than the desirable or the ideal life. That is the conservative position, or at least the Burkean position. I think it should apply not only to politics but to religion and philosophy. People too often believe in things that do not exist, and build whole systems around them. Nietzsche talked about how the means of virtue can be turned into the idea that “everybody must be everyone else's nurse.” But I think Nietzsche was mistaken in not seeing altruism as being as “natural” as any warrior trait, both can advance healthy cultures.

The problem comes of course in defining reality. One big difference comes from those who admit biological and physiological values and those who do not in any meaningful way---the divide in philosophy and psychology often comes here. It seems often to be the difference between naturalism and non-naturalism.

I would place the foundation of reality within the world of philosophical naturalism, and this then leads to theological materialism, which is developed in this blog. When even sacred Godhood is based in evolutionary materialism leading to supermaterialism, we have a chance at the long continuum of life and culture, and the consilience of fields---that becomes a system that actually seems to exist.

Natural and artificial evolution

I keep thinking there is something fishy behind “singularity,” machines evolving to be as intelligent as humans. It looks like humanity being too scared to advance intelligent humans, and beyond, rather than (or as well as) machines---or else it seems like a cunning bypass of the subject of future genetics because it is politically incorrect and doesn't fit various agendas. We have to get over the genetic abuse of World War II, truly healthy people don't dwell on such things as a way of life.

We can use technology to help advance ourselves, but to become machines and possibly therefore lose future human evolution sounds a bit sick. We seem to be allowing deceitful dweebs with media power to determine our future. Let's have a little courage and begin to at least talk about the great evolution of real life toward Godhood, only aided by intelligent machines. It's actually a religious mission. 

Truth as lies, and lies as truth prevail

If someone in a city square with a megaphone loudly proclaimed: “We will fight against human nature until it is eradicated!,” most people might question that proclamation. But that is in essence what political correctness/cultural Marxism is proclaiming all over Western culture. The Western media is the main Orwellian manipulator of the truth as lies, and lies as truth, using people like the smugly homosexual Anderson Cooper, or the unctuously liberal adulterer Bill Clinton (seemingly unaware of their lies), to promote this great inversion of customary meanings, which Orwell called “news-speak,” although it has gone beyond what even Orwell imagined.

The truth about human nature has been understood for years by responsible anthropologists and sociobiologists, who now have to also be courageous as well as responsible in speaking contrary to political correctness, because it can cost them their careers. Basic human nature, cross culturally, contains heterosexual marriage (not homosexual marriage), gender differences (not radical feminism), ethnocentrism (not homogenization), and group-selection (not individualistic hedonism), as well as other traditional human behavior, which developed over tens of thousands of years because it was what was successful over the long term in survival and reproduction. The attempt to eradicate real human nature has been very damaging to Western culture which as a result of the lies of political correctness/cultural Marxism is now declining and falling fast.

Non-white racism and other forms of racism are every bit as strong, or stronger, than white racism, as any one knows who has actually been around non-white cultures, but this truth is not allowed, the truth impedes the take down of the West by the non-traditional manipulators of the truth.  But there is nothing wrong with  people preferring their own kind, even if traditional religion makes a theological error in giving man a fallen nature based only on the Inward Path.

So is it over for the West? It could be.  But there are ways we could save ourselves.

A decentralized America (and Europe) as suggested by the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis would be a way to deal with actual human nature, without the Orwellian lies. Desperate times, such as civil disturbances brought about by the lies of cultural Marxism, could some day initiate the decentralization of states and regions into something like natural ethnostates. In any case, reform, not revolution, needs to be affirmed, more Edmund Burke than Karl Marx. For example, the separation of powers and states in the U.S. Constitution could accommodate some form of ethnopluralism.

Finding Reality

I think of the search for reality as finding reality through the rational and the intuitional, through reason and through emotional conviction. These two work together something like art and emotion, the emotional subjective parts of the brain connect with the abstract and cerebral parts in art creation. Art philosopher Denis Dutton compared this to an intersection between them that helps us find reality. Looking for reality is usually more of an art than a science, which sounds less mechanical, less controllable, but perhaps it is more accurate.

Reality needs to be our guide, reason and intuition can sometimes mislead us, which I think one of the Founding Fathers said in a different way about developing the U.S. Constitution. We can use anything, even the “direct apprehension” that Schopenhauer talked about, we can use reason, intuition, science, anything to find reality. Why not? Nietzsche talked about reason as not being an independent entity but as a state of relationship between all the various passions and desires, he said every passion possesses its own quantum of reason.

Ultimately I believe we need to apply all of these things in enlisting nature in service to our evolution toward Godhood, the sacred, moral, and natural direction of ethical evolution. To go into the weeds a bit: Being-in-Itself has been sidelined (but not really forsaken) and replaced with Being-in-the-world by Heidegger, which has been transformed here into Itself-in-Being as the most admirable action and actor of history, since Being-in-Itself does not really exist accept in the minds of a few arcane philosophers and theologians. Itself-in-Being, which we are, needs to evolve to the zenith of Itself-in-Being of Godhood in the real world. God, or rather Godhood, is not dead---and the Absolute is not ancient Greek or Eastern religious Nothingness (which is only an inward symbolic experience of God)---when attaining Godhood is understood as evolving from where we are now to material/supermaterial Godhood in nature.

The problem is in how the beast is civilized

Nietzsche didn't want to “tame” man with morality, but rejecting morality is a form of taming man, and this is Nietzsche's form of “improvement” which he otherwise condemns in priests. Nietzsche's preferred “immorality” mostly applies to individuals, especial genius individuals, it overlooks natural group selection, which is the prime unit of selection, and group selection requires morality and the natural “taming” of man.

The problem is in how the beast is civilized. Rousseau and Thomas Paine saw primitive and natural man as a wild, free, and innocent, individual, as if group morality were not just as primitive and naturally evolved over the tens of thousands of years when man became man. Edmund Burke had a better grasp of the naturalness of group behavior (before sociobiology) and the civilization that naturally grows up around it.

Our instincts, passions and reason can be enlisted in service to our higher evolution, and higher evolution does not merely “tame” us, it makes us healthier as we move toward the zenith of truth, goodness and beauty. As with artists, geniuses in various fields can be as free as they need to be during the creation of their work, (they probably actually need to be free during the creation process), but then it is most natural for their work to be judged by the cultural needs of the group or by group morality, which is more important than individual morality.

 
What happened when the Nietzschean geniuses of modern art (or philosophy for that matter) had no group or social concerns? By any sane standards we received mostly garbage. For example, with psychometrics today we can almost easily distinguish the social geniuses from the anti-social criminal geniuses, and our grants and work awards to individuals would follow after this lead---but always leaving room for those few who fall between the psychometric cracks.

Revitalized Education

If we think of four philosophies of learning as suggested by Peter Lawler (Modern Age, Winter 2014) as the following: Aristocratic Platonism---contemplation is for the few, action or work is for the many. The libertarian middle-class view that work is for us all and contemplation is self-indulgent illusion. The politically correct view of the liberal professors that it is enough to be against racism, sexism, classism and heterosexism, and that all other values are completely relative. And the conservative (and Christian) view that both work and contemplation are for us all......I would choose the last one, the conservative, classical liberal view of education, but it needs reform, or revitalization.

We don't need to tear down conservatism and Christianity and start from scratch, but conservative and religious education needs to prominently include the science of sociobiology, which can relate to the old Aristotelian concept of seeing nature as defined by the ends it is meant to achieve. We are meant to evolve toward Godhood, the God first seen only inwardly as the symbolic experience of the Godhood reached in the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution. This in turn leads to a  revitalized political conservatism and the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis, which affirms a decentralized America (and other parts of the world  for that matter) with states and regions as ethnic conclaves, which can be accommodated by the originally decentralizing U.S. Constitution.  This could truly conserve us all.

Answering Habermas

In thinking about how Jurgen Habermas has tried to philosophically deal with what has been missing since the Enlightenment began to reject faith and religion---(see “An Unawareness of What Is Missing” By J. Karpowicz in “Modern Age,” Winter 2014)---I think Habermas should be given credit for this since many modern thinkers don't seem to see anything missing.

Habermas wants the religious side of life to accept the authority of natural reason, while secular reason must not judge the truths of faith. Christianity has found a way to do this (Thomism), but not Islam which seems to subordinate all of life to the sacred law of sharia, and not by reason (although I could see their idea of high reasoning more like the Gnostic “nous,” or Holy Spirit).

But the reason of Habermas, like Enlightenment reason, has no God-goal or faith in reaching Godhood to which human virtues can be directed, so Habermas loses the idea of the classical virtues of high truth, goodness and beauty in religio-philosophy, which seems to lead only to following along with the Enlightenment goals of avoiding pain, and seeking pleasure, individualism, success in this world, etc.

Here is the way my religious philosophy answers Habermas:

The Spirit-Will can aid in keeping the passions and desires in check, and the evolutionary virtues can be involved in ennobling human beings as we evolve toward the zenith of truth, goodness and beauty, which is Godhood, rather than pursuing only the Enlightenment goals of avoiding pain, and seeking pleasure, individualism, success in this world, etc.

Faith is retained in the faith we have in reaching the highest goal of the activating Spirit-Will, which is Godhood, and the faith we have in the direction of the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood. Natural Law can be retained in following the order of nature and the drive to successful survival and reproduction, which leads to the zenith of the success of these things at the zenith of evolution, which is Godhood. Outside natural selection and evolution help shape the sacred activation of life from within.

But the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood must not be confounded with the Soul or Mind-Soul, which in human beings is found by non-attachment to passions and desires so as to dwell in the Mind-Soul only, the Father Within, the God Within, which needs to be seen as only a symbolic-experience of the Godhood reached in material/supermaterial evolution. The path to the Mind-Soul can be reached in the Involutionary Inward Path which needs to be synthesized with the Evolutionary Outward Path to real Godhood.  This defines the Twofold Path, which can join the divided world.

We don't have to separate reason into practical and contemplative, or into nous, logos and phronesis, as the Greeks and their followers did, practical reason regarding survival and evolution on earth can be used in social strategies, but social strategies lead to thinking about ways to reach ultimate success in the natural order, which is the Godhood-goal of the Spirit-Will.

Modern living can become involved with religious living as we arrange our social structures (which can include democracy and humanism) and seek social virtues directed toward our continual evolution to the highest truth, goodness and beauty, and ultimately Godhood, which is the zenith of the virtues and the zenith of life in the cosmos. Faith and reason, religion and science can this way be joined in the modern world replacing what has been missing since the Enlightenment.

Reversing metaphysics

The fact that Plato thought Homer was the worst possible example of values is a negative aspect of Platonism, and Neoplatonism---and this can be seen in traditional religions as well. Plato's pie-in-the-sky metaphysics, his non-material forms, can actually be more damaging to humanity than Homer's heroes. Although Nietzsche made his attempt to criticize the spirituality of Plato, and religion, his solution of radical aristocratic individualism was perhaps as damaging as Plato, his supposed opposite.

The way to become whole again in our values is to bring the new into the old, to bring about change within order, not by a metaphysical revolution, but with the Twofold Path, in understanding that the Inward Path to the God or Father Within of the traditional Revealed Religions, and of Plato, is only a symbolic-experience of the real Godhood which can be reached in natural, upward, material and supermaterial evolution, by way of Ordered Evolution.

We can be saved from life-denying metaphysics meant only for the Inward Path and not the Outward Path of sacred material evolution. This is defined in the new religious philosophy of theological materialism, which can help unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade we have been trying to come out from under for centuries with sophisticated religious metaphysics, such as Thomism, or various social and political philosophies, such as Marxism.

Healing the spiritual-material divisions

(The living object is more important than the definition of the object)

The Great Spiritual Blockade has deprived the material world, passion, and nature itself of its dignity, as Nietzsche pointed out---as if there were no high purpose for passion. This was due mainly to the single concentration on the Involutionary Inward Path to the God or Father Within of traditional religions, the state that can in fact, in spite of Nietzsche, be attained by non-attachment to all material desires.

Does the Church believe in things that do not exist? Unlike Nietzsche, the Twofold Path sees the Father Within---which can be reached by way of the Involutionary Inward Path---as the symbolic-experience of the Godhood reached in the Evolutionary Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood in the cosmos. This brings real dignity back to nature, back to life, and even back to religion. This can heal the fissure between religion and science, but both science and religion need to affirm the sacred activation of evolving life to Godhood.  And this can move forward with conservative reform rather than revolution.

When I say that the living object is more important than the definition of the object this, for me, bridges various philosophical and religious gaps, for example, in analytical and continental philosophy, which then leads to a philosophical sociobiology in line with naturalism, but this then is taken forward to theological materialism, the new synthesizing religious philosophy.

It is not Nietzsche's “will-to-power” alone that is the base of natural man, it is the activating Spirit-Will-To-Godhood which exhumes religion from the graveyard Nietzsche put it in, and gives a sacred goal and direction to the material will-to-power, beyond where individual, relativistic, earth-centered supermen might want to exploit it, yet it retains the old Inward God for symbolic reasons.

Universalism versus Patriotism

When the U.S. goes abroad in search of monsters and the people ask---“Why is it our business?---the answer involves the clash between universalism and patriotism. Real human nature does not contain the values related to universalism except on the lower level of the hierarchy of values. Universalism, human rights, equality, open immigration, world democracy, etc. etc, do not much relate to the kin-centered, group-centered, regional-centered patriotism of basic human nature, which developed over tens of thousands of years of evolution---and this is universal.

So the patriots have begun to fight back, especially in Europe, against the sneering, presumptuous, universalists, who were indoctrinated in our colleges and universities with the ideology of cultural Marxism, which William Lind said is the basis of political correctness. The arrogant and condescending Clinton's are examples of this type. Sociobiology desperately needs to enter our Humanities departments, but that is obviously not happening.

But patriotic groups are rising all over, even in the U.S.---and I say go to it! It's big power against little power, but so what? Real human nature and human history are on the side of the patriots.

Decentralism As Ethnopluralism

Defending decentralism to help preserve ethic conclaves and regions must never be mistaken for Jim Crow “states rights” regionalism, which gravely hurt the decentralist cause. Ethnic groups are simply different, with various talents which were mentally and physically adapted to the different geographical regions that they evolved within. Decentralism is meant to preserve and elevate ethnic cultures, and not to have one group dominate another.

The Ethnopluralism Hypothesis affirms a decentralized America (and other parts of the world too for that matter) with states and regions as ethnic conclaves, which can be accommodated by the originally decentralizing U.S. Constitution. The national experiment to homogenize different ethnic groups into one motley mishmash has not worked, accept for very close cousin ethnic groups the melting pot didn't melt. This is why multiculturalism began to be promoted, which also didn't work, because all groups were expected to live close together and just “get along”, which they have not done, and will not do.

Throughout human history up to the present time human nature has remained kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other traditional things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. Human nature generally prefers its own kind and its own cultures, and that needs to be championed not made into something evil.

But there are numerous non- ethnic reasons to support decentralism, as pointed out by Jeff Taylor in his book “Politics of Human Scale,” reviewed by Gerald Russello in the April “Chronicles.” Federalism means “minimalistic government at every level,” broader than the division between national and state governments. “Having many points of power reduces the malevolent reach of any of them.”  This also is the ideal environment for real evolution with variety to take place.

But the centralizing impulses always rise, even among those who promote individual freedom---they end up using big government power to uniformly enforce individualism, when individualism in fact does not trump the central unit of group selection.

Capitalism can be thought of as “the least bad system” because it conforms to real human nature, that is, not man's “sinful nature,” as many conservatives define human nature, but real human nature in the natural world seeking success in survival and reproduction. Decentralism can allow capitalism to continue raising the standard of living for all, as it has done, but it needs to be free of its centralizing and monopolizing impulses, just as big government needs to be.

In great civilizations culture is virtually synonymous with religion, but both culture and religion are developed by various ethnic groups which give them their own special traits. The religion of the future is a religion that affirms human evolution in the Outward Path toward the Godhood (the Father Within) first only symbolically experienced in the Inward Path of traditional religions. We are all evolving toward Godhood with the variety that evolution has always preferred, and we are certainly capable of cooperative competition in this great adventure and mission.

Finding the truth about human nature, and successfully implementing the truth are not often connected

I tend to trust, sometimes presumptuously, my sense of the truth no matter where it comes from, reason or intuition, or even the “direct apprehension” that Schopenhauer talked about, which is not always academic, scientific or religious. It seems more like reason and intuition working together to arrive at reality. Courage also is involved because often times the truth seems to take courage to see, or admit, and also related to sensing what is not the truth.

What I would like to see established is the basic truth that we humans have a built-in determined human nature with a purpose, which is contrary to the idea that all things are subject to malleability by man's ideas and man's culture. This is a cultural, political, philosophical and religious debate over truth and reality, which is often buried by academic, scientific or religious thinking, but it is mostly buried by the social media.

We know that finding the truth is different from successfully selling or implementing the truth. The media in general is first concerned with selling what they decide is the news and they have not been much concerned with finding the truth, which means that the truth often has little social power. Then there are various kinds of force that can be applied with little concern for the truth, which can bury the truth. This means that lies, untruths, or at least misconceptions, prevail in society, and the truth always takes the very slow path to acceptance.

What seems rare is to have a finder and teller of truths who is also a successful seller or establisher of truths in society. Maybe that's why dual forms of leadership, eg. kings and priests, evolved, helping one another in successful societies.

The simple values of future evolution

High intelligence can better deal with the world and its possibilities and give us better ways of responding to life and evolution. But high intelligence needs good character as well, we need to have that intersection between the emotional parts of the brain and the abstract parts, non-feeling geniuses are not what we need. Courage is also needed so that intelligence can venture out toward new solutions, in new or old territories. And good health helps define beauty, which completes the combo. We should not be seduced into putting all our evolutionary hopes into intelligent machines (singularity) which can be a sly way of avoiding human evolution and its problems.

And we can't forget the importance of artists who can be geniuses at working with emotional responses to life in their art. But antisocial art needs to be distinguished from socially redeeming art, which seems like common sense but is not much considered in the sometimes suicidal modern art world. I'm not talking about a Platonic total control of art, this need not stunt creativity, on the contrary, it provides order to the total freedom of art creation.  For example, emotions connected to art can underline and interpret the emotions implicit in our evolution toward Godhood.

The arguments against choosing these evolutionary values seem increasingly selfish and short-sighted. These are simple conservative values---although perhaps not so simply attained---within an Ordered Evolution toward the zenith of intelligence, noble character, courage, and beauty, which helps define real Godhood.