Trusting Existence

“But for this religious sanction and warrant of our senses and our reason, whence should we obtain our right to trust in existence.” (Nietzsche, “The Will To Power”)

Nietzsche meant the above quote sarcastically, cynically, but I take it seriously and uncynically. Theological materialism gives us not Nietzsche's superman, it gives us Godhood as the zenith of the evolved superman. This transvalues Nietzsche's tranvaluations back to religion again, which he rejected---although it was mostly Christianity that he disliked so much---he liked religious paganism.
 
We can keep the instincts---which religion has had big problems with---when Godhood is defined as the zenith of the evolved instincts. Traditional religion saw a preliminary God in the Inward Path to the Father Within, which can be retained but transformed in the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to real Godhood.

As the goal of the unconscious Super-Id, or the goal of the instincts, Godhood is not only the highest consciousness having reached its goal of activating life to evolve to Godhood. Godhood is the unconscious become conscious in this sense, never separate from materialism or supermaterialism.

What do we desire? Happiness? (Aristotle's choice) Power? (Nietzsche's choice). These things are desired but the essential sacred desire is the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood---this activates life to evolve to the zenith of evolution, while being shaped by outside evolution. The placement, the hierarchy of these values is important; happiness and power attached to cultural ends are less profound than when these things are attached to our evolution to Godhood. It is not immoral to desire happiness or power, as the Inward Path necessarily teaches to how to see the God Within, it is just less important than the goal of evolving in the Outward Path to real Godhood.

Traditional religion has attempted to block and divert our instincts toward the God Within with varying degrees of success. What I have called the Super-Id of the instincts, defined here as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, is not the wild-beast-desiring-mainly-immoral power that Nietzsche thought it was, and it needs to be unblocked---it is difficult enough to reach higher evolution due to the shaping environmental vagaries of natural evolution---we need to help sacred evolution along.

Why is it so hard to find or develop conservative artists?

There is something gracious, Burkean, in Robert Lurie  (Chronicles) letting Bob Dylan off the hook for Dylan's 1960's legacy of decadent radical songs, but I can't quite do it. Lurie points to the eight years of---sort of---conservative songs and retreads of traditional songs ("Nashville Skyline", "New Morning", etc), as well as Dylan's years of trying---sort of---to have a traditional home-life and marriage. It seems sad and pathetic to see the hoops that conservative's have to jump through to try to find viable conservative artists who might appeal to the people, even to the point of squeezing Dylan into that format.

Why is it so hard to find or develop conservative artists? I think the fault lies in the basic and essential rejection of materialism at the heart of Christianity and traditional religions---even given the valiant efforts of great religious philosophers like Aquinas who laboriously tried to salvage a place for real life, real living, within the otherwise deeply ascetic and monastic ethos of true Christianity. This anti-real-life-materialism has had more to do with the decline of religion and the absence of conservative artists than anything else.

Great art does affirm the sacred, that is a positive mantra on this blog, but it is nearly impossible to affirm anti-living and an exclusive inward life, especially for creative young people. It was easier for Christianity, and for art to affirm Christianity, in the days before science, which can be seen in the great art of that pre-modern period. The Ancient Greeks did not have that great spiritual blockade to work against and their life-affirming art shows it.

What we speak of here, and with theological materialism, is the Inward Path to the Father Within of traditional religion transformed (not rejected) in the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood, the God first only symbolically experienced in the Inward Path. This transformation can then help provide a way out of this conundrum for conservative artists. The Great Spiritual Blockade has drained the life out of modern conservative art---and religion as well.  But more deeply it has blocked the sacred evolution of life to Godhood.

Dylan didn’t show us the way out of the decadent 1960's, which is what he would have had to do to absolve himself of the damage he did, even if many of his lyrics were pure gibberish. He is now back to endlessly touring and partying like a rock star, sporting the almost ridiculous persona of an old white blues singer. 

Decentralizing both Wall Street and Washington DC, and including Ethnopluralism

Conservatives advocate decentralizing Washington DC, and modern liberals advocate decentralizing Wall Street, but both need to be decentralized. We need the election of people who think more like Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader, with the courage and power to create real decentralization.

But with a little more courage we also need to go a step further than those men have gone in affirming the deeper decentralization of ethnopluralism for the states and regions, which can be accommodated by the U.S. Constitution. We ignore human nature as defined by sociobiology at the cost of suffering real social disharmony.

Throughout human history human nature has been essentially kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This suggests the natural decentralization of virtual ethnostates as the best way to bond together human beings and culture---in the U. S. the states and regions can even be protected by the Constitutional separation of powers of our federalism.

In our increasingly diverse nation, future civil disorder, even ethnic wars, can be avoided , and cooperative competition can realistically be pursued. We can also then get back to a new version of the economic nationalism that made our country strong and healthy for most of its existence, while trading with the world.   Wall Street and Washington DC have combined and hypertrophied into a motley imperial monster, which we must tame if we are to survive and not fall apart like the Roman Empire, which we now resemble.

The world of “becoming” is built right into the world of “being”

So-called “becoming” describes evolution, which is a biological and super-biological dynamic, with biology activated inwardly and this activation never separate from the material being it inhabits, shaped by outside evolution. There is no duality here, contrary to various philosophers. Becoming-In-Being replaces Being-In-Itself. This does not deny the world of being as Nietzsche did, it denies the Platonic/Traditionalist School world of only “ideas,” it places the emphasis on living, evolving, life rising in a zig-zag and up and down pattern, activated inwardly by the Spirit-Will toward Godhood, and shaped by outside evolution.

There is no phenomenal/noumenal distinction, there is only material and supermaterial evolution. Mystics did not discern the supermaterial so they created the fiction of the spiritual, which was mainly an abstract name only for the material/supermaterial experience of the God Within. Abstract ideas can only define concrete things, the concrete thing is the reality.

With naturalism, only natural forces and entities make up the world. A nominalistic naturalism, where abstract ideas and universals are only the secondary definitions of particular concrete things, then affirms Theological Materialism, that is, we evolve to Godhood with concrete material and supermaterial evolution.

Art and Anti-Art

When a work declares itself anti-art, like Duchamp's white porcelain urinals (the first in the anti-art movement), or Manzoni's can of his own shit which he sold to the Tate Gallery, than it is of course not art, no matter how much the piece fits the criteria for art, eg. it gives direct pleasure (ironic pleasure in this case), shows skill, shows novelty, etc.

Art grew out of evolutionary sexual selection (which grew out of natural selection) and spread out to all social life, as Denis Dutton points out so well in “The Art Instinct.”  The high art theory I prefer grows out of the high affirmation of what the group holds sacred, great art has done this and so has folk art, and this is based in sociobiological dynamics. It's that simple or difficult.

We can't remove art or culture from it origin in natural selection and sexual selection and the biological origin of social behavior, why would we want to? I am suspicious of those who want to remove art, social life, political life, etc, from its evolutionary foundations. I suspect a biological motive behind it in any case.  This all is related to the devaluing of biology and material evolution which has been going on for thousands of years. When it is seen that we evolve to real Godhood in material/supermaterial evolution, then this great blockade may end.

The multiple meanings of Civilizing The Beast

The title of this blog first of all relates to the evolution of man from prehuman to human, and projects our evolution outward toward the zenith of evolution, defined as Godhood.

Another meaning is related to the Beast as it has been conversely defined as the hypertrophied Materialism of Satan.  The Twofold Path takes the deeply negative view of materialism necessary to experience the God Within in the Inward Path and transforms it in the Outward Path, seeing materialism in the Outward Path as the only vehicle by which we evolve to real supermaterial Godhood. The ascetic discipline of the traditional Inward Path seeks only the God Within or the Father Within and usually defines Satan as the source of the materialism which needs to be blocked to symbolically experience the God Within.

But rather than rejecting the traditional Inward Path, it is included in the Twofold Path, as having been the first symbolic experience of the real Godhood reached in material and supermaterial evolution.  In this I affirm a conservatism that  includes change and evolution, rather than radicalism.

I ignore or cut the old Gordian Knot of occult maneuverings, symbol-creating, and Satanic invention, which has been mainly based in seeking the God Within in the Inward Path---or rebelling against it. The real “alchemical” transformation is accomplished in the material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood---who has that unobscured knowledge?

My blog is controversial, but I have a good audience, and I don't talk down to them. I challenge my readers and expect them to have the adventure with me. Subscribers and supporters rise and fall, usually depending on how volatile the subject is, but a slowly rising group remains, which I am grateful for.
 
( I should mention, I think I saw the term “Civilizing the Beast” first in Nietzsche's writings, but I know William Butler Yeats used it, and he may have created the term. )

A living answer to both the Greeks (happiness) and Nietzsche (power): the evolving object as essence and goal

Concepts have been a tyrant against the instincts. Nietzsche talked about Plato being so charmed by concepts that he deified them. Theology in the revealed religions did this too, and so did much of philosophy. That is quite a statement: to deify concepts!

What we need to do is sanctify the living object, which evolves to Godhood, where it can be “deified” in our value systems. I would rather speak of the will-to-power of living objects, or more precisely, the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood of living objects---defining the Spirit-Will as the combined instincts of life---which is an activating material force within life (never outside of life) seeking to evolve to Godhood, shaped by outside evolution and selection.

The important struggle is with evolution, more than with concepts. It is the evolving object that is the essence, not the idea. It's not the appearance (see phenomenology) of a thing that is its essence, it is the object itself (see theological materialism), no matter what the object is made of, or what our senses at this stage in our evolution can see of the object.

Itself-In-Being is how I describe the living object, no matter where it lines up in a hierarchy of beings, whereas the old metaphysics used the term Being-In-Itself to describe a non-material, non-object, abstract concept as God or Being. We can define the Spirit-Will within the object as the quintessence within the object-as-essence, and the Spirit-Will does not exist outside the material/supermaterial object and is itself material or supermaterial.

Do we desire overall happiness? Power? Essentially our instincts desire Godhood, or the zenith of evolution, activated by what I call the Super-Id or the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which is not the wild beast Nietzsche (and later (Freud) suggested the instinct are... This is the living answer to the goals of both the Greeks (happiness), and Nietzsche (power).

There is a goal to evolution which is never-the-less shaped by outside evolution and selection, a zig-zaging goal of evolution toward Godhood. This way of defining real life can bring religion and philosophy back to life, and unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade---now many millenniums long---which has been blocking our evolution to Godhood. This blockade has been largely a decadent phenomenon, as seen in the world today, which the blockade helped to create.

But we can keep the God Within, the Father Within---there is no need for radical change here---as the first inward abstract glimpse of the real Godhood reached in outward evolution.

It does not much matter which tyrant we buy our oil from

Democracy is not realistic in the Middle East. It seems clear that disruptions and wars happen in the Middle East when tyrants are defeated and new tyrants seek to dominate, religiously caused or otherwise. America tried to impose democracy in Iraq but when the military left so did democracy.

In the case of our defense of Israel in the Middle East, which fights against the Islamic tyrants who hate the U.S., the enemy of our enemy has proven to not be our friend. Israel cares mainly about Israel and not the U.S., which is natural, and so also does Israel's neoconservative “amen corner” in the U.S.. Disconnecting from this so-called ally will be no easy task.

Nonintervention is what we want, not “isolationism,” which is used by the globalists to slander the non-interventionists, almost the way those who love their own people are slandered as “haters” of other people, which does not necessarily follow.

Nonintervention has had a problem being implemented mainly because global business in the U.S. has its fingers and toes involved in the natural resources and business of other nations. This meddling needs to be curbed if we are to ever have longer-term peace for the U.S.. Economic nationalism needs to rise again for the U.S, which is what once made our country strong and healthy---and this does not mean that we don't trade with other nations---another slander.

The U.S. needs to stop meddling in the Middle East and go home for good. It does not matter much which tyrant we buy our oil from. Healthy ethics are to be found in local and national ethics, not in trying to impose global ethics, which is usually only a front for greed or imperial dominance.

Once home, it should be made clear to other nations which may try to mess with the U.S. or its people that they will very much wish they had not.

Biological forces and cultural fallacies

Culture is given an illusory significance and value, but there is a fitness test behind cultural acts, sooner or later, resembling sexual selection, where every cultural act of presenting oneself is a fitness test.

Human culture is initially produced by human biological systems which are largely in control of cultural intentions, almost as much as biological systems are in control of human nature.

Yes, nature and nurture interact and influence one another, and history and tradition have influence over culture and biology, but the primary influence is biological.

People tend to balk at this because it suggests less free-will than people prefer, and because cultural Marxism wants to see anything but the intentions of biology, and wants to greatly diminish the role of biology. But biology is in the controlling position as the creator of culture.

There is always tension between individual needs and the needs of the group which is reflected in our sometimes messy cultures, but even this is ultimately balanced by the success or failure of our biological survival.

Theological materialism is a religious philosophy that takes these underground biological forces and cultural fallacies into account. We evolve materially and supermaterially in the Outward Path to the Godhood first discerned in the merely cultural Inward Paths of traditional religion---but we can conservatively retain the old in the new.

Technology versus biology?

Transhumanism often chooses to make non-biological technology transcend biology and become ever more evolved until technology attains Godhood. We choose to have people, life, biology, ever evolve until life attains Godhood.

Transhumanism more or less tries to escape the politically incorrect and culturally Marxists problems that surround eugenics. They say that eugenics is too slow, and in fact it can be if selection is not strong---but with genetic engineering things can speed up considerably---yet there is a sort of nerdish timidity and deception in blocking real biological evolution, and that is serious and dangerous.

Will this become a future competition between biological and machine evolution? It seem so, but it doesn’t have to be if technology is seen as an aid in the evolution of life toward Godhood, and not seen as God.

Meanwhile in this great blockade of real biological evolution, the power of the media increasingly is on the side of transhumanism and machines, and they like to burn and blacklist heretics, so we have a ways to go.

The paralyzing of eugenics

Since at least the days of Socrates intellectuals have sought to paralyze their opponents with their intellects making their opponents feel furious and helpless. Nietzsche called this the will to power of intellectuals. Truth is secondary. This tactic has been used with the subject of eugenics, where not only intellectual paralyzing is applied but all manner of slander and insults. Eugenics had the misfortune of being presented by people such as Darwin, Huxley, Galton and Shaw, just before Hitler, which led to eugenics being considered evil and virtually buried.

Some of the best thinking on eugenics over the past 30 years comes from Raymond Cattell's book, “Beyondism,” (1987), especially the tightly packed 16^th chapter. I would have future research centers on sociobiology and evolution build on Cattell's work, which can then be applied in our religious evolution toward Godhood. Cattell points out that eugenics can be done in countries that are democratic. People choose the things they want to improve. Eugenics is already shaping where the next generation wants to go in education, and parents are already using testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering, and we can move on from there, as the deceitful paralyzing of eugenics begins to wind down.

As Cattell put it, negative eugenics means trying to avoid the birth of the physically and mentally handicapped, and positive eugenics tries to advance both the average and the leading minds/bodies of society. We are paying a terrible cost ignoring the foresight of eugenics, which can help mold human nature without the great suffering caused from raw unconscious selection by “nature red in tooth and claw.”

The deeper more serious problem for me which comes from blocking eugenics is that it blocks the sacred mission of life evolving to Godhood. Theological materialism and the TC do not remove God or Godhood from evolution, and so we avoid some of the emotional austerity of Cattell's Beyondism. We do not launch ourselves out on a goalless adventure of evolution, our goal is Godhood. The philosophy of the TC allows us to retain more of the emotional appeal of traditional religion with the sacred end-goal of Godhood, described and experienced in the past as the Inward God, or the Father Within, which is retained in the Twofold Path, but is now transformed and seen as the Outward Godhood attained by way of material and supermaterial evolution.

And conservative social values can harmonize with ordered evolution, tradition can work along with evolutionary progress. To reject long standing traditions in favor of radical programs like Marxism, or imperial mono-racism, or rampaging globalism, destroys societies sooner rather than later. In any case, the world gangs up and destroys arrogant and selfish imperialism. Natural selection among groups and individuals thrives on variation, which the regionalism and localism of conservatism affirms. Decentralization and a light protecting federalism can work in harmony with evolution. Each group, each small state in a world of ethnopluralism, can follow it's own divergent path to Godhood, in a world where “cooperative competition” is possible.

Ethics have been essentially based in the survival of the group, but our ethics also need to be essentially grounded in the goal of evolving from the material to the supermaterial and on to Godhood. This is the sacred mission of eugenics in the long term. Evolution is a prime process of the universe, but there is also a divine urge or activation in evolution which can be identified with the Holy Spirit of traditional religion, now understood as the supermaterial Spirit-Will To Godhood, not yet recognized by science, which is then shaped by outside evolution and selection. Qualities such as intelligence, emotional stability, conscience (altruism), good health, good sensory organs, longevity, these are some of the aims of eugenics, and these things reach their highest quality, or their zenith, as evolution moves toward Godhood.

Harmonizing reason and passion

Passions, instincts, reason, tradition, the environment, are all included in ones view of human nature and human behavior. If we try to make one of these dominant over the others it can throw human nature and human behavior into disharmony.

Passions are reasonable with such instinctive passions as protecting and helping ones kin or ones group (altruism), which enhances survival success. And human ideas (see Plato) need to harmonize with existing traditions (see Burke) which grew out of the long human experience in living. But traditions also need to take new ideas into account.

What does seem to be dominant are the elemental forces of life seeking success in survival, reproduction, and ultimately our evolution toward the highest success, which is evolving to Godhood. This is the dynamic activation which, for best success, harmonizes passions, instincts, reason, traditions and the environment, as well as ideas.

The difficulty comes in bringing these forces into harmony, but when we do we can have the synchronicity of high civilization.

Godhood is what we ultimately seek, internally and materially

Are we merely a self-designed species due to sexual selection? Why do we choose beauty, good health, intelligence in sexual selection? Yes, healthier children provide more successful survival and reproduction, but why do we seek successful survival and reproduction? If we answer, “that's just the way it is” it is not a good enough answer.

We, our biological bodies, instinctively desire the best or highest success in survival, which ultimately seems to mean being permanently represented in the world. The word “permanent” can easily be seen as “eternal” or infinite, and when we speak of being eternally represented we are speaking about Godhood. That is, with material/supermaterial evolution which includes sexual selection and every other kind of selection, we seek Godhood, when we seek the highest beauty, good health and intelligence, it is Godhood we ultimately seek as the zenith of these things. Did the Ancient Presocratic Greeks sense this?

But we do have a little help in this selection process from the inward, yes vitalistic, activation of the material Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which seeks Godhood through the vehicle of the evolution of material life, shaped by outside evolution.

Teleological explanations of life invoking ends and purposes for evolution remain valid for me. Passing from the phenomenal to the noumenal does not happen, there seems to be only the phenomenal passing into the superphenomenal, so arguments against the reality of teleology can rest easier, we are not teleologically seeking a ghost in the sky. Intentionality persists even in the face of postmodernism which sees no essence, no direction, other than relative, goalless, Nietzschean power, or random evolution.

The altruism instinct

Nietzsche did not think that morality could attain “the certainty of an instinct,” but altruism is an instinct when it is understood as the constellation of genetic traits that make up group-selection.

Nietzsche should have stopped at the problem altruism has when it hypertrophies itself into universal altruism, because altruism is tied to kin and local group, and only somewhat beyond the local, and not to worldwide universal altruism.

Religion did this mainly, but so did philosophy beginning with the universal virtues of Socrates, although the Hindus in the East were probably doing this before the Greeks. The main source of this universalism was the universal abstraction that derives from centering on the so-called non-material God or Father Within.

The non-attachment to all material desires required in seeing the God Within brings about the dissolution of the instincts, with moral judgments “denaturalized.” But this can be reformed in the Twofold Path, when the God Within is understood as only a symbolic experience of the Godhood which can be reached in material/supermaterial evolution.

The altruism and values of group-selection in the Outward Path can help all groups, and not just one group, evolve upward in evolution toward real Godhood, as an instinctive action, a Will-Spirit like a Super-Id. This of course does not rule out individual contributions to society, including the Nietzschean genius, but it puts them in their proper survivalist and evolutionary place.

New strategies for the United States in dealing with the changing world

Non-interference in the affairs of the world is an important beginning, but even when America stops meddling---which will mean curtailing the neoconservatives and their powerful lobbies, no easy task---America will still realistically always have enemies, which is the nature of the human condition. But we need to bring our troops home from the world. William Lind's thinking on Fourth Generation war between state systems and non-state forces needs to be understood and accepted. But a ballistic missile defense system also needs to be applied, even though no one, so far, wants to chance nuclear war---and it has not in the least stopped the smaller wars. We need to identify and actually exclude terrorist organizations and crime organizations from the U.S.  We also need to basically cease immigration into the U.S. which has become suicidal.

Only Pat Buchanan (other than a few unknowns) seems to be taking seriously the rising movements in the world toward the preservation of separate and unique ethnic and cultural identities, which is superseding the claims of supranational organizations such as the EU or the U. N.. Human nature throughout human history has been and still is kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

Another, deeper, reform not seen by Buchanan, involves the philosophical and theological reform of Christianity. Universalism sits within particularism, not the other way around. Christian universalism has been at least somewhat religiously blocking natural movements toward ethnopluralism in its tendency toward both imperialism and equality, which goes against basic human nature and the decentralization of the world. Theological materialism, which is the religious reform needed, says the Inward Path to the God Within, or the Father Within, needs to include the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood, which was first only symbolically experience as the God Within.

This can then help bring the natural decentralization of ethnopluralism forward as not only the best political configuration in relation to real human nature, but also the best path for our longer term sacred evolution toward Godhood. Independent states or ethnostates can be protected with some form of federalism, not unlike the original U.S. Constitution, and can include the aforementioned strategies of defense within the decentralization. This reform, or attitude change, closer to the original Constitution, could save the United States from future radical civil war, including ethnic strife, which is now beginning to take place in Europe.

Imperialism and global dictatorships are seen as the real enemy, as mankind is thought of as a family of races, ethnostates, and nations, each maintaining their own distinctness, with none allowed to claim to be exclusively more noble or chosen to globally rule, which damages variety, and peace on earth. Cooperative competition and evolution are within the realm of realistic human behavior.

How eugenics is seen as the moral, humane, and religious thing to do

Contrary to the prevailing political correctness (cultural Marxism), and counter to most traditionalists, eugenics is the moral and humane thing to do for many reasons. It can slow the suffering that comes from the collapse of civilization largely due to the genetic and cultural lag of primitive sex and pugnacity instincts (ergs as Cattell calls them) much in excess of civilized needs. Pessimists say a eugenic solution would be like spitting into a hurricane, but the hurricane can become a manageable thunderstorm if we at least begin the task. It can be accomplished democratically and voluntarily when people become aware of the positive moral and humane aspects of eugenics.

Raymond Cattell pointed out many of these things in his brilliant but perhaps necessarily disorganized and complicated book “Beyondism.” Cultural inventions are the work of exceptionally gifted individuals, but then new culture can demand more complex adjustments from the general population then they are genetically suited for. The resulting genetic lag is the cause of many social problems. Individuals who pursue dangerous antisocial behavior do so with genetic defects as well as by their cultural habits and values. An increase in intelligence and a reduction of psychotic disabilities along with education could help ease the stress, which can then help avoid the cruelty of failures and the disasters of cultural death. The cruel decline of nations is not a necessity, as gloomy fatalists often think.

We can then get on with the sacred mission of evolving toward Godhood. I differ from Cattell in seeking to reform Christianity with the Twofold Path, rather than radically rejecting it. That is, with theological materialism we conservatively retain the traditional Inward Path to the God or Father within as the symbolic experience of the Godhood reached in the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution. Eugenics can be seen as the way to help us survive and improve on earth, as well as the way to join religion and science in the great mission and adventure of attaining the sacred goal of evolving to Godhood in the cosmos.

Universalism Within Particularism

Far too much is made in religion, especially in traditionalism, and philosophy in general, of the "universal," to the point where the particular is almost lost entirely and abstract universal formulas are actually worshiped. And this does not take place only in the Eastern Traditionalist School; Catholicism is universalist, as is Christianity in general, having taken the natural altruism of the local ethnic group and hypertrophied it into universal altruism, which is quite unnatural and therefore has not made the world a peaceful and loving place for all. The real object is not the definition or abstraction of the real object, even if we usually here this the other way around. Any particularism seen in these religions seems to be only a reluctant bow to the practicality of natural life. 

Universalism can remain symbolic and secondary to particularism in the Twofold Path, but secondary to the real living object. When traditional religion can revitalize and reform itself with theological materialism, then the natural particularism required in our material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood can help solve the particularism/universalism problem. When the highest evolved nature of Godhood is seen as the highest evolved natural object or objects in the cosmos then Godhood will no longer be lost in abstract universal formulas defined and worshiped as God. The Inward God or Father Within can keep its abstract place in the Inward Path as the symbolic-experience of the real Godhood evolved to in the cosmos in the Outward Path. The wisdom of Conservatism can prevail in this by bringing the new into the old rather than radically trying to begin the world all over again.

There are also political implications in this, for example, when we define Edmund Burke as a particularist and Leo Strauus as a universalist, as Daniel McCarthy recently did in an excellent essay on Strauss and Burke. McCarthy writes: “One way to understand the paleo-neo wars of the 1990s is as a struggle to decide whether a universalistic Christian conservatism (including Christian Zionism) or a particularistic ethno-nationalist (specifically, Southern and white ethnic) conservatism would prevail.”  The Ethnopluralism affirmed in this blog protected by some sort of federalism can allow for the variety and independence of small virtual ethnostates (not unlike the States in America can be) as the best and most natural means of living in the world and evolving toward Godhood together---a kind of universalism within particularism.

Toward evolutionary sacred art philosophy

I see cultural and art creations not strictly as only the intention of the creators, not the consequence of ideological systems (see the French), not merely libidinal forces, and not the consequence of historical materialism, or economic determinism, although all of these are included in cultural creations to a certain extent.

I see cultural and art creations as primarily the consequence of biological and genetic instincts related to successful survival and reproduction, along with the deeper sacred activating forces of life and evolution, as defined in theological materialism. This includes, along with the instinctive survival needs of the author, the survival needs of group-selection within which the author exists.

To change a statement by Roland Barthe about literature really being capitalist language speaking and not the author speaking, it is biology speaking deeper than the author's voice, and also speaking is the sacred goal of biological evolution activating creation to evolve toward Godhood. The new anti-intention, anti-author, criticism seems largely to be an attempt to empower the critic as the main center of literary and cultural meaning, a bold intellectual grab for power by middlemen, intentional or not, who tend to give works illusions never intended and not instinctively or biologically present.

Reforming the understanding of God, not killing Godhood

When we say, "Culture, that is to say the Gods," as Nietzsche put it, we are talking about the foundation of traditional civilizations, none of which formed without a base in religion. And what if your culture is increasingly not being defined by the Gods? Your culture is probably dying or dead, in spite of Nietzsche.

The problem is, as Nietzsche again pointed out, religion has represented the denaturalization of moral values. Virtue was made wholly abstract, which meant turning ones back on the world---philosophy did the same thing beginning with Socrates.  But religion (and philosophy) can recover and naturalize moral values when Godhood is seen as the zenith of material/supermaterial evolution.

This is accomplished not by trying to radically murder God, as Nietzsche did, but by reforming or revitalizing the understanding of God---that is, by seeing the Inward God, the Father Within, as only the first symbolic experience of the real Godhood reached in Outward evolution. The wisdom of conservatism can prevail in a reformed understanding of God.

And turning to Western versions of Eastern religions is not reform, it is regression back to the original non-material religions. Evolution, not merely involution, needs to be emphasized, biological and superbiological evolution to real Godhood...This is the future of religion. Civilization, that is to say the Gods, can then be reclaimed, including evolutionary science.

The evolutionary continuum toward theological materialism

We start with Darwin’s natural selection, random mutation and selective retention of traits, this selection is more brute physical survival, accepted by virtually all scientists. Then we add the next stage of Darwin's work in sexual selection, where the designer is human beings, domesticating themselves, as Denis Dutton put it, which actually showed a purpose in brain and behavior changes through mate choices, although it was not God. This was more reluctantly accepted by the natural selection purists, but it eventually was. Now we add evolutionary teleology seen as theological materialism, with more purpose in evolution. Here we have the activation of life itself by the inward Spirit-Will to evolve toward virtually eternal representation, toward the zenith of intelligence, beauty and goodness, which is defined as Godhood, the ultimate success in evolution. Godhood is this way seen as an evolution designed, Spirit-Will activated, ultimate cosmic life form.

Tiny as these various evolutionary forces may be, over time they have a big impact on the direction of evolution. Theological materialism defines evolution on a continuum of natural selection, sexual selection, and Spirit-Will activation toward Godhood. Most scientists easily affirm natural selection, more reluctantly admitted sexual selection, but have not accepted the inward activation of life toward Godhood. This involves  standard slow acceptance towards the next stage of evolutionary theory; this can bring science back to religion, which is increasingly lost.

Free and unfree will, and direction in evolution

Nietzsche thought denying free will denies morality, but then he made a morality out of the will to power, but called it immorality. It took courage to deny free will, however, Nietzsche missed seeing a direction or goal to the will, he saw the will as a completely relative will to power, which later, with the postmodernists, meant that relativity in values and morals prevailed, with disastrous results for high culture in the West. But a direction or goal to the will to power does not mean that we have a completely free will, we have free will limited to a few choices within the determined path of life and evolution, like a boulder rolling down a mountain. We evolve toward more efficient forms, more complex forms, with starts and stops and backward goings along the way, heading toward Godhood at the zenith of evolution.

What is the direction, the goal which Nietzsche denied? It is seen as the Will-To-Godhood, or Tirips, rather than as a goalless will to power. Defining Godhood needs to be revitalized outwardly, from its exclusive inwardness: we evolve to Godhood by way of material and supermaterial evolution, which was at first seen only inwardly as the symbolic experience of the God or Father Within. Even Nietzsche's radicalism is denied because religion is revitalized, culture is brought back to biology, back to the real morality, which develops instinctively by way of survival and reproductive concerns, with conscious rather than unconscious evolution added. And this suggests the Ordered Evolution of conservatism.

With biology and evolution back in the picture, altruism and morality are not the evil Nietzsche thought they were. It is true that other than a little borrowing from other cultures, it is innovative individuals who are mainly the creators of culture---supermen and superwomen in that sense---and the general population tends to genetically and culturally lag behind. But even supermen do not survive long without the group, and without group values and altruism. Problems develop regarding how to bring the population up to the quality of the creators and innovators of culture, in our continued evolution toward Godhood. This is where evolutionary  values come from, always activated by the largely un-free direction of the evolution of life, while being shaped by outside evolution and selection.

In our overpopulated world, one superman dictator, or one imperial state, or one imperial people, or culture, will not survive for long, the world always gangs up on such arrogant selfishness. This does not mean that we are all the same and that we can all get along in one homogenized multicultural configuration---whether the present globalist rulers benefit from it or not. They too will fall. Human nature remains kin-centered, gender defined, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. We require an ethnopluralism of states, protected by some sort of federalism (not unlike the original U.S. Constitution), which is how as many groups as possible may best survive and creatively evolve, with relative independence, while we are evolving together in the world, with conscious cooperative competition, toward Godhood. Otherwise we may not survive, yet alone evolve.

Pure Form Nonsense

We can base high and low culture on the upgraded philosophical naturalism defined here as theological materialism. The sacred is reached through material and supermaterial evolution, with the inner activation of life to evolve to Godhood, shaped by outside evolution and selection. Art philosophy, politics, and religion need to affirm this real material/supermaterial but still sacred path.  All life and culture will be the better for it.

A healthy people would at least begin to break up the power of the media monopolies in the West

The popular media simply does not give the public what it wants. It says it gives the advertisers the bigger audience they want for money-making ads, but even here it limits the choices for advertisers to what it deems politically correct. Politically incorrect shows are not even presented as choices---and they can be very popuar---no matter how big the audience might be for the advertisers.

That is a lot of hiding, lying, censoring and control, especially when the media is probably now the most powerful force in shaping public opinion. It is cultural Marxism that they are selling to the public, when they not presenting outright obscenity.  And they use this junk to weaken traditional values in order to advance their own media empires, which seems almost criminal.

It is very clear that to begin to save the West from being corrupted and exploited out of existence, a healthy people would at least begin to break up the power of the media monopolies, difficult as that may be. It will take courage because the powerful media slanders maliciously, virtually without rebuttal, anyone who attempts to limit their power.

Long-Term and Very Long-Term Consequences Within Christianity, Imperialism, and Conservatism

In the long-term of human history it seems that imperialism is the rule, almost the natural condition of human affairs, but in the very long-term, imperialism breaks down into ethnostates, which do seem to be the perpetual, permanent, social organization preferred by humans. Ethnostates, or ethnopluralism, then relates to conservatism, and conservatism relates to human nature, which in the very long-term continues to be kin-centered, gender defined, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things,with group-selection as the primary unit of selection, which tends to lead to ethnostates in the very long-term.

Long-term conservatism lasts long because it relates so well to human nature, as we seek to survive and prosper. Conservatism also tends to seek the possible and not the ideal, and it works within the circumstances it finds itself living in, and does not attempt to begin the world anew chasing ideals. But if there is a weakness in any human system it will eventually show up in the very long-term, and the weakness often comes from going against the natural design of human nature. For example, the imperialism of neoconservatism, like all imperialism, can only sustain itself as long as it can force people to live within a global imperial system. Very long-term conservatism will affirm natural ethnostates and ethnopluralism, protected by some sort of federalism.

The same long-term and very long-term conservatism applies to Christianity. Christianity has lasted so long because it has related so well to the traditional human nature listed above. But in the very long-term its weakness is in its internal concentration on the symbolic-experience of the God or Father Within of the Inward Path, and its neglect or ignorance of the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood. Christianity has generally preferred to neglect the insights of science, naturalism, and materialism, which has slowly weakened it. Very long-term Christianity will take the conservative path of including the Inward Path to the God Within along with the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood, as the Twofold Path does---it will not begin anew. Otherwise, Christianity, like imperialism and conservatism, will continue to fade in the very long-term from its internal weakness. And post-modern Nietzschian relativism will not replace it over the very long-term, nor will fundamentalist or eastern traditionalist religions, due to the same internal weakness.

Reclaiming the body and the material world for religion and philosophy

“The motive forces and valuations have lain long below the surface.” (Nietzsche)

Conservatives and traditionalists can take heart in that we can keep the first symbolic-experience of the God Within or the Father Within, which was at the founding of all the revealed religions. But then we can move beyond the concepts and abstractions of the mystics and philosophers who deny the value of the material world as the central requirement to experience the God Within, since ridding the body of all material desires is needed for this state/condition.  This has put up the great spiritual blockade.

The denial of the senses in order to experience blissful inner states began perhaps with Plato in the West, but before that in the East in the Vedas, which prepared the way for Christianity and Islam. Saints developed in all the revealed religions from this discipline. Modern philosophy has also developed elaborate abstract conceptions of Being far removed for the body and from material life in its attempt to out-shine religion.

The rather weak nods given to real life, real living, real desires, real instincts (think of St. Paul saying, “Well, if you must marry...”) helped to assuage the majority of people who are naturally not wanting to take the ascetic path. But this mystic condescension is not nearly enough, it can even be as an insult to the great activation of life to evolve to real Godhood, the Godhood first seen only inwardly. We need to reclaim the evolving material world for religion and philosophy and then include, but not expunge, the preliminary findings of the early mystics. Theological materialism can begin the reclamation process.

Human mind development and religion

Denis Dutton nicely defined the human mind as a computer model combined with natural selection, then sexual selection is added with its modules of gadgets and gizmos to impress the opposite sex, and its ability to be like a home-entertainment center (which helps explain the origin of the arts.) This defines the mind-machine that survived the Pleistocene with well-honed computational algorithms, which we still retain today.

I don't think these natural explanations need to desacralize religion, as many religions believe, when nature is seen as the material and supermaterial world evolving to Godhood. This brings nature and religion together, and can also bring science and religion together.

I add one vital thing to this definition of how and why the human mind developed: our Super Id or Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which activates life inwardly toward evolving to Godhood, even as evolution shapes life outwardly in selection. This gives a deeper picture of how and why the human mind developed---the mind and body developed for more reasons than merely for success in survival and reproduction, or for earth-centered creativity in the arts and sciences, or for only religious contemplation of the God Within.

Synthesizing Ethics by Means of Evolution

Here is the simplified philosophical working model:

Right is on the side of evolution, which defines progress for mankind.

When the goal of our evolution is to attain Godhood this brings religion into the philosophy, defined as theological materialism.


Group-selection remains the central unit of selection, which brings ethnopluralism and altruism into political philosophy.

Defining the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, or a “Super Id,”as the inward activating force, shaped by outside evolution, brings psychology into the philosophy.

And the affirmation of all these things brings in art philosophy.

Toward an Evolutionary Conservatism that answers both Burke and Foucault

I base my philosophy on what I define as theological materialism, the biological evolution of material life to supermaterial Godhood. Unlike Michel Foucault, who reduced everything to elements in a big system where everything, all culture and knowledge, are basically the will-to-power, or are discourses on the will-to-power, and where truth changes as the epoch changes and truth is imposed by the “class” that most profits from their version of the truth, leading to a cultural relativism---much of which was gleaned from Nietzsche.

I don't think conservatives can rightly accuse me of trying to destroy what exists merely to pursue what I see as a better future, as the communists tend to do. I seek to reform what exists, but not merely with superficial intellectual facades. A Conservatism which only wishes to reconcile conflicting interests and maintain law and peace, is simply not enough. I see the Humanities revitalized with the discipline of sociobiology, blended with an evolutionary religion that revitalizes but does not exclude existing religions. And science does not have to devalue Traditionalism if it applies sociobiology toward the investigation of religion. Science produces metaphysical nihilism when it does not see biology and human life with a sacred goal, and the sacred goal is evolving toward Godhood, the Godhood that was first symbolically experienced in the Inward Paths of the revealed religions.

I disagree with the Burkeans when they say that society cannot be organized to a material plan or a goal, and that there is no direction to material history. This might be more true if biology and future evolution are left out of the worldview, as both the conservatives and modern liberals tend to do. Theological materialism says that biological evolution, seen in relation to natural law and moral law, has a plan which is more than the random successful survival and reproduction that science tends to see. Life is evolving to Godhood. That is the origin, the plan, the goal, and the organization. And furthermore, the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood activates life inwardly to evolve toward Godhood even as life is shaped outwardly by evolution.

Our kinship with the more traditional paleoconservatives comes from their natural, biological loyalty to the group, to home, to a sense of place and territory, while living in various regions and small states that would better be seen as ethnostates---this is where the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis makes sense. I see Ordered Evolution as Conservative, evolution needs long-term social order to better understand what works best as we evolve, since most new things do not work well.

I agree with those who believe that the individual is important, especially those individuals who advance the health of the group, but selection takes place at the group level, as the great founder of sociobiology, E. O. Wilson, has recently affirmed. Individuals need to bond within the group.

Why do we have the continued fear of biology and sociobiology? It is not racist to talk about future biological evolution. World War II is over, it is ignoble to perpetually dwell in intellectual resentment and revenge regarding ongoing human biological evolution. Those who try to ruin careers with smears of racism need to be called out for their intellectual dishonesty. We are all, all people, all ethnic groups, evolving toward Godhood, or should be consciously working toward this great goal, and we need to stop killing one another and get on with a realistic competitive cooperation in this sacred mission.

Knowledge is embedded in biology, but it is a sacred biology leading toward Godhood in evolution, which leads to more than the biologically/evolutionary goalless Burkeans, or the will-to-power/Nietzsche/Foucault cadres still ruling our colleges and universities.

Who or what is really to blame for the decline of the West?

Catholic intellectuals blame the Protestant Reformation for the decline of the Western world, but both religious perspectives roamed too far away from real human nature and natural law, and in doing so the decline of their religions was inevitable. Moral law and natural law are built into human nature, but we have to define human nature as it really is. Something built-in cannot be avoided, even if the will to power as a part of human nature can bypass or corrupt parts of human nature, for a time. Going against human nature in our cultural and religious creations is like swimming upstream rather than downstream.

Religious leaders often make the mistake of thinking that material knowledge is generally corrupt and that only revelation is what we need to see reality, when the healthiest position is to apply both. But science does the same thing in rejecting revelation.  Religion and science need to work together in trying to see reality.

The hedonistic 1960's showed us that good laws cannot be founded on what each individual thinks they want. When this happens the group-morality upon which each individual depends falls apart. Then there is always the problem of those individuals, and sometimes ethnic groups, who benefit, at least in the short term, from a borderless, hedonistic, motley world. In spite of all this, human nature remains 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. Even the smallest change in human nature and our DNA structure, for example, in our immune system, takes hundreds of thousands of years to change, although now we are now learning ways to speed up that process, supposedly.

Human history shows us that empires always fall back into some sort of regional and ethnic separation, and this is precisely because they harmonize best with real human nature. Human nature, and the natural law built into human nature proscribe some form of ethnopluralism, that is, not a homogenizing multiculturalism but the separation of powers and states into virtual ethnostates, where real human nature can best function in harmony---with some form of federalism for the internal and external protection of the states. The common laws and institutions that evolve out of human nature (traditions) also become part of an improved order which needs to be accommodated, as Burke taught us, which means that reform rather than revolution is always preferred.

And where does religion apply in this worldview? We can live in harmony with nature and new technology, as we become part of the great adventure of our natural evolution on earth and beyond the human species out into the cosmos toward real Godhood. The ECC mission is to make evolution and history part of religion. To revitalize Christianity and religion in general. To bring back philosophical naturalism to philosophy and religion by way of theological materialism. To bring religion and science together. 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 as part of the natural law. And to affirm the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis in political philosophy.

Can we do this? Yes, but not overnight. Human nature and the natural law will help us do this, with synchronicity, as well as with the aid of the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which always activates life inwardly toward the zenith of evolution, even as life is shaped outwardly by evolution.