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.