History, evolution, states, and future religion

The Spirit-Will is the activation-process of life taking place within life and within man---evolution and selection is the outside development and shaping of life and man, as man and life evolve toward Godhood. This not only helps explain human history but the history of life in the cosmos.

History doesn’t culminate in a completely non-material Spirit (Hegel) or in human Communism (Marx), history culminates in supermaterial Godhood evolved to in the material world, beyond the human species. Theological materialism defines this evolutionary process, moving from religion to philosophy to science to evolutionary religion, retaining but transforming the past.

Marx (following Feuerbach) turned Hegel on his head, replacing Hegel's Spiritualism with materialism. Theological materialism turns Hegel back on his feet again, comparatively speaking, while reinvigorating religion with evolutionary materialism, culminating in the evolution of life to material/supermaterial Godhood, not to Communism.

The idea that one state, or one ethnic group, can imperialistically dominate all other states and ethnic groups has proven not to be workable over the long term (and in ongoing evolution the long term is important), causing rebellious wars of liberation that tend to dysgenically stop evolution and research until peace returns.

Neither Communism nor Fascism best advances human evolution, Conservatism does, that is, a revitalized paleoconservatism which affirms Ethnopluralism, with many small states, or ethnostates, protected internally and externally by a light federalism, with small federal government and freedom, and with the separation of powers and states, which can even be accommodated by the original U.S. Constitution. Our development and evolution can then be guided voluntarily by sociobiological research centers, and by evolutionary religion.

Morals, values and evolution

Morals, values, habits arose to support the instincts, not the other way around, as religion too often seems to see it. This is what naturalizing the values is all about, this is what sociobiology is trying to do in our time.

Edmund Burke said that values and morals civilize and beautify relationships, which could be interpreted as helping ones group survive more successfully. Group behavior can ennoble human beings.

But it is also dehumanizing to deny the animal in man (Burke), just as it is dehumanizing to take away the cultural attributes and affirm only the animal (Paine).

But it is not good enough to support only the instincts or only the cultural values and morals of group selection, life also needs to affirm the sacred goal of evolving to Godhood. Add the activating Spirit-Will-To-Godhood (it is also a natural instinct) to naturalized values and to group morality, and we have a winner.

Repossessing religiously the material world

We need to repossess the material world, but not by trying to kill religion, as the far left and far right tried to do, but by including materialism in our revitalized definition of Godhood: we evolve to supermaterial Godhood in the material world. Then perhaps we can also better care for the natural world, since it is the sacred vehicle by which we evolve to Godhood.

The Inward Path to the God or Father Within estranged us from the desires of the material world in order to symbolically experience the Father Within, but the Outward Path is the transformation of that estrangement of man to evolving to real Godhood. Theological materialism is a broader category than spiritualism or humanism to help us in not only repossessing life and man but in carrying us beyond man to future species in evolution.

Life and human history can be thought of as the material evolution toward Godhood. This can help demystify religion and philosophy. Our primary life is beyond being citizens of states, or economic units, or dwellers on the Father Within, these are important but secondary to our primary life of evolving to Godhood. And the new scientific cult of transhumanism often sidesteps material and biological human evolution in favor of evolving machines, which also alienates us for real material evolution toward Godhood.

Decentralizing the tyranny of the media

There is more “free press” in America than in, say, Russia, but the American media today is not unlike a  dictatorship in controlling the narrative where most people get their news. The media's preferred positions, defined as political correctness or cultural Marxism, are secure, they can drown out any dissent, they can manage the blowback, they can spin any evidence the way they want to serve their agenda, they can eliminate any perceived discrimination against the social, political, economic groups or special interests that they champion. That's a dictatorship.

Many people think that Fox News broke through the media dictatorship, but they too are constrained within media-approved neoconservative parameters and they rarely cross the politically correct line. Most Americans think Fox News neoconservatives are conservatives, unaware of the coup that took place a few years back when the paleoconservatives were ousted from most of their media publications and organs of influence by the neoconservatives. The neos promote a marauding foreign policy designed to enhance the power of global big business, and other special interests---and that is not Conservative.

The tyranny of the media needs to be decentralized, just as the big banks which are “too big to fail” need to be broken up. We need to get back to the separation of powers and states of the original Constitution, and we also need to eventually interpret decentralizing as encompassing an ethnopluralism of states and regions to deal with our coming disruptive diversity, while being protected internally and externally by a defensive federalism, and some form of our original economic nationalism. This is of course a very difficult mission, since the devious media is aligned with big crony capitalism and the government---but as they say, even the longest journeys begin with the first steps.

When the Great Spiritual Blockade is unblocked

In the ancient rush to escape the animal they made their God the complete opposite of the animal and thereby limited their God. Why do the highest realms of beauty, truth and goodness in religion exclude the material and even the supermaterial?

The secular world does tend to exclude the higher realms of truth, beauty and goodness, but religion essentially excludes the material world from the higher realms. Both ways are incomplete.

Beauty, truth and goodness are not separate in the higher realms, but they are also not separate from the material or the supermaterial world. Godhood is the zenith of material and supermaterial evolution, which does not exclude the material world.

The God-Within or the Father Within is reached by blocking or becoming unattached to material desires and this symbolic experience of the inward God was the dynamic that was confounded with real Godhood reached in outward material/supermaterial evolution. Both can be retained in the Twofold Path, if they are understood this way.

When the Great Spiritual Blockade of material evolution is unblocked and understood for the symbol that it is, then the material/supermaterial world can be redeemed, and we can get on with evolving to real Godhood.

Overcoming the destruction of the ideal

According to Patricia Watwood, the late Martha Erlebacher talked about how each artist has their own unique “form sense,” that is, an inborn sense of perceptual tendencies, which they uses in making decisions about what they see or create. (American Arts, Spring, 2014). Martha believed that great art is about sex and death, with “Big Beauty” as the succor for the human condition. But alas, even Big Beauty is not enough.

A form sense or pattern sensibility also seems to apply to philosophy and philosophers. The form or pattern of theological materialism written about here, moves across a consilience of fields. If we consider beauty alone, or truth alone, or goodness alone, we can end up with hedonism, or only abstractions, or a morality that excludes truth and beauty. But it turns out that one thing does encompass these virtues and values and that is Godhood, defined as the zenith of the material evolution of truth, beauty and goodness.

This sacred ideal becomes the foundation of art philosophy, as the affirmation of the sacred, which has always defined the greatest art. But this also applies to philosophy, politics and culture in general. Pursuing a balance of truth, beauty and goodness can be an aid in a rational and humane eugenics as well, as we evolve toward Godhood in the cosmos. This is a form sense that can overcome the modern destruction of the ideal.

Unblocking rational and humane eugenics

It remains politically incorrect to say it, but eugenics need not lead to slavery and a tyrannical ranking. Nietzsche, loving the ancient Greeks, helped perpetuate this attitude in saying that the prerequisites for a high degree of culture were a belief in slavery and the order of rank.

A rational and humane eugenics can better help in developing high culture, without slavery or a crude ordering of rank, when cooperative behavior regarding eugenics is made easier, that is, when the solid connections between genes, high intelligent and high achievement are better understood and accepted.

Then with eugenics the existing genetic lag between the high achieving gifted and the general population, which causes so much of our social unrest, can be relatively closed. But the lie of equality will remain a lie.

We have to get past the abuses of WWII, which are continuously kept alive in popular culture. It is not necessary to treat things that exist today with harshness and tyranny for the sake of the future. But we need to consider the future in regard to the strong connections between genes and culture.

Most importantly, I believe the sacred path to evolving to real Godhood, for all of us, is helped along by eugenics, among other things, and blocking eugenics means not only blocking the continued development of high culture but blocking our evolution to Godhood.

The sacred progression

Marx certainly absorbed Hegel but how much of Darwin did he absorb? Marx lived about the same time as Darwin. Nietzsche also didn’t absorb enough Darwin, but he did absorb Schopenhauer, who was a sort of rival of Hegel, although not nearly as popular. Modern philosophers deeply absorbed Nietzsche. And of course these philosophers were influenced by thinkers before them, and so on, back to primitive man gazing at the stars.

I do see an evolutionary progression of the knowledge of reality, not unlike the evolution of biological life, with dialectical starts and stops and sideways goings, but a steady progression toward more knowledge of reality and higher consciousness. Darwin is perhaps now represented by E.O. Wilson and sociobiology.

I recognize a progression from religion to philosophy to science to evolution, with each retaining elements of past knowledge but transforming them, leading now to theological materialism. Man is not the measure of all things, man is evolving to Godhood, the God first glimpsed in the Inward Paths of traditional religion and thought about in the Being of philosophy, which is retained but now transformed in the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution toward real Godhood, activated inwardly by the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, and shaped by outside evolution and selection.  A healthy people and a healthy world is a people and a world conservatively evolving toward Godhood.

How the Death of God Was Not Necessary

Nietzsche wanted to bring religion and philosophy down from the clouds, but he didn’t need to kill them in the process, because the naturalization of values which he sought leads to Godhood in natural and supermaterial evolution. Traditional religion can even be retained, as the Inward God, and the Being of philosophy are retained but transformed in the Outward Godhood reached by successful evolution.

Religion and philosophy moved too fast away from the animal---they even made their God the opposite of the animal, with no material foundation. Why? The unconscious motive for wanting to escape the animal might have been the sacred activation within life to evolve beyond man to Godhood. But our minds, our senses, are tied to our physiology, we have not escaped the animal, we have not escaped real life, which seems to have been the consequence of this hatred of life, this hatred of the prerequisites of life, seen in so much of religion and philosophy, which rightly angered Nietzsche.

When Godhood is seen as the zenith of evolving life, the zenith of material and supermaterial evolution, then religion and philosophy can return to the prerequisites of life and they do not need to be rejected, as Nietzsche and his post-modern followers did. We can retain many of the traditional things which were so painfully, and successfully, evolved in human history, and we can avoid the arrogance of radically trying to begin the world all over again. God, religion and philosophy didn't die, they were killed prematurely and unsuccessfully, but our understanding of them needs to be transformed.

The instincts are not immoral

Nietzsche thought real life was immoral, he saw no morality in the instincts, he thought the instincts were Dionysian, chaotic, disorderly, power for the sake of power. So how is that dynamic different from the morality of traditional religions which also, in reality, finds the instincts of life immoral? The difference is that Nietzsche embraces the immorality, the relativity of values and power, whereas religion condemns immorality and offers its abstract-metaphysical-orderly-morality which humanity is called to follow. Nietzsche's position is not unlike the Satanist's whose philosophy depends on the values of religion to overthrow (although Nietzsche was a far greater thinker than any Satanist.) Freud too took up Nietzsche's position only he changed the will to power to the will to sex, which he wanted to release from its traditional religious “repression,” which largely succeeded in the chaotic modern sexual revolution.

Both ways are mistaken. The instincts are not Dionysian and chaotic even if on the surface they seem so, and the instincts are not immoral and evil and therefore in need of repressing by abstract religious metaphysics. The zenith of the instincts, the activating Super-Id, or the Spirit-Will, seeks real Godhood in material and supermaterial evolution, while being shaped by outside evolution and selection, and for this reason our values and morals need to be in harmony with or refined (not repressed or made disorderly) in the sacred direction of evolution to Godhood, which nature ultimately seeks.  Traditional religion saw the first glimpse of God in the Inward Path with ascetic discipline, which now is transformed, but retained, in the Outward Path of evolution to real Godhood.

What have they done to America?

Who are “they?” Aside from the monopolistic global business world, and crony capitalism with its all powerful lobbies, and the very destabilizing immoral media, it is also the politicians who are largely bought and controlled by these same people.

I think of the Clintons, with Hilary about to run for president. Their political agenda came out of the 1960's, with its hippie counter-culture, its cultural Marxism (political correctness), which is still taught in the colleges and universities where Hilary and Bill were miseducated. That is, they believe that people are all completely equal, the free enterprise system tends to be evil (accept for those capitalist's who give money to liberal causes), they personally think religion is ridiculous, they believe the U.S. needs to educate the rest of the world on every subject, they demand that sexuality of all types needs to be liberated from oppressive tradition, and they think that only big government can solve our problems since the states and the local people---not being properly educated in cultural Marxism---can't be trusted. The fact that these things do not relate in the least to basic human nature was never taught to them. Real human nature developed many thousands of years ago, and even the smallest change in human nature and our DNA structure, for example, in our immune system, tends to take hundreds of thousands of years to change. We remain kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This relates more to conservative tradition, whereas cultural Marxism only relates to nature in the general will to power of its advocates.

Nevertheless, the Clinton's are at it again. Personally I don't find Hilary Clinton likable in the least, even her most friendly smiles and delightful bursts of laughter are obviously calculated---this means Hilary isn't a very good actor, and politicians apparently need to be. We certainly do not need Hilary as our president, any more than we needed her husband as president. It is a testimony to the strong influence of the decadent 1960's that their followers didn't throw the Clintons out of public life for Bill's immoral behavior in the oval office, and his many lies about it all. Do we really want a president like that? But it's not likely Hilary will be stopped because she has cozied up to the crony capitalists (talk about phony liberalism) who run the country. But, oddly, many people continue to think they are wonderful human beings.

Is Rand Paul the best we can do as an alternative to Hilary---with Pat Buchanan blocked and grounded by the powers that be? Pat seems to have failed to field a successor. Rand doesn’t share Pat's economic nationalism which is desperately needed to revive and protect the nation and its manufacturing base. But Rand recommends bringing the troops home and largely shutting down the empire, and that is at least a start. But even these men have not dealt with ethnopluralism, that is, the idea that it is okay if the states slowly take on more of the character of the ethnic cultures within the various regions and states, as a realistic way to deal with very disruptive diversity, which will increase, brought on by both the liberals and conservatives and our open borders. Ethnopluralism can harmonize with federalism and the Constitution... Future politicians will have to deal with this.  Meanwhile we have to survive the Clintons.

Toward a new kind of psychotherapy

The psyche includes the ego, superego and Id, at least according to Freud, but it also contains what I call the Super-Id, or the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which activates life inwardly at the zenith of the instincts, and is shaped by outside evolution and selection. The psyche is more than the ego, which manages the other parts of the psyche---without the Super-Id, or Spirit-Will, which is material/supermaterial, the psyche appears meaningless or limited to a selfish sex drive with no longer-term purpose other than reproduction or couple-bonding. The Super-Id is also more than the “Self” of Jung, which for Jung is the destination of the harmonious psyche, and not unlike the desire-free inward state sought by Eastern religions. The Super-Id or Spirit-Will is the activation of life, not the destination of life, and is very much also connected to outer life and evolution. This being the dynamic of the psyche, a new kind of psychotherapy enters the realms of both religion and science, a psychotherapy involving not only the individual but the more holistic evolution of the individual, groups and cultures toward real Godhood, the sacred destination.

 © 2006--2014 Kenneth Lloyd Anderson.

Grounding philosophy

Godhood, like human beings, can exist without a concept, the concept, the idea is attached later. “Being” in philosophy is the same. Godhood is not a single non-material entity, it is a supermaterial level of evolution attained by life, which can include more than one living object, seen as the zenith of success in evolution and selection in the cosmos.

The term “getting back to the object” for me means getting back to the real material/supermaterial living object, not merely the subject, concept, idea, or definition of the object, which has dominated so much of religion and philosophy. “Being-In-Itself” is a concept, an idea, and probably not an existing object since it is usually defined as spiritual and non-material---that is, it exists only in the minds of men.

Theological materialism grows out of a grounded philosophy. As I have written before, theological materialism is more or less placed in the worldview of philosophical naturalism with the main difference being that philosophical naturalism is generally irreligious, and theological materialism is religious in seeing Godhood as the goal of evolution, first mirrored in the Father-Within of traditional religion, which means that these traditions can be retained but transformed in the Twofold Path.

Added thoughts:

The abstract differs from the concrete by not being an object alive or dead, whether the object is causal or not. Eventually the abstract became synonymous with the spiritual, then both of these opposed the material which is hypertrophied to be satanic. We see only as much of an object as our senses have evolved to see, and objects can exist outside of our observance of them. Living objects evolve to become the supremely evolved objects defined as Godhood. Reducing things down to their primal beginnings doesn’t define God either, beginning life needs to evolve to Godhood at the zenith of evolution. There is no reason to believe that God originates the cosmos, we evolve to Godhood, perhaps endlessly, not from God, but from the opposite primal beginnings. And these beginnings aren't abstract either, not symbols or numbers or sacred words, they are simple concrete beginning objects, activated by the material Spirit-Will within them, which is never separate from the material objects it inhabits---then the object is shaped by the ups and downs of outside evolution and selection, while life steadily evolves upward toward more intelligence, beauty, and excellence in general.

How an hypertrophied unworkable form of altruism doesn’t doom religion or altruism

Altruism was created largely from competing with outside groups which required altruism within groups to be successful against other groups who may have been less altruistic within their group, and so altruistic genes survived---and group selection remains the central unit of selection, as E.O.Wilson has recently affirmed. Then Christianity and other religions (including Marxism) called for altruism toward everyone, in-group and out-group, which inadvertently destroyed the very dynamic and origin of of altruism. This helps explain why two thousand years of Christian altruism toward all has not stopped wars, altruism-for-all destroyed the very altruism required to take social action in a group. But competition between church groups didn't cease, the competition even helped bond altruism within the group.

So, what if your tradition is based on a lie or on ignorance, do you chuck it? Not if you have absorbed Edmund Burke, and before him the efforts of Thomas Aquinas. The long standing human institutions are nearly as important as human nature. We can't kill these things without paying a heavy price. We need to include but transform traditions, we can't radically begin the world over again, even if some revolutionaries are foolishly willing to try. But religion can be legitimately transformed even without doing it for strategic conservative reasons.

We can see Heroism as Eros (defined as love upward by Ken Wilber) which leads the virtues of the Evolutionary Outward Path, and Saintliness as Agape (love downward) leading the virtues of the Involutionary Inward Path. The Twofold Path combines these Paths and retains traditional religion. Heroism leads material/supermaterial evolution toward real Godhood, Saintliness leads to the desire-free Soul-Within, the first glimpse of God. There is no phenomenal/noumenal distinction, there is only the material and supermaterial. The spiritual has been confounded with the supermaterial. This theological materialism can help to end the arguments of metaphysics and end the separation between religion and science.

Hypertrophied unworkable altruism doesn’t doom Christianity, which largely created its form of altruism by rejecting material desires, including competition, for all people, all groups. But the Inward God of Christianity and other religions, reached by complete non-attachment to material desires, needs to be transformed into the real Outward God, which can be reached over much time and evolution by the material and supermaterial evolution of a variety of groups, who can apply altruism within their groups in the evolutionary quest to reach real Godhood, the Godhood first only glimpsed symbolically in the Inward Path. Here cooperative competition is a workable outer form of good will. That is how an hypertrophied unworkable form of altruism doesn’t doom religion or altruism, and how altruism can remain an important aid in our sacred evolution to Godhood.

The science-oriented seem paralyzed by the fear of finding direction in evolution, or an inward activation to life

Traditional religion has declared a goal to life that is not much related to material life or evolution but related mainly to the involutionary opposite: a nonmaterial God Within. Few science-oriented people have had the courage to claim some sort of internal direction to life, or even a development toward complexity in evolution. Francis Heylighen and Ken Wilber are two modern thinkers who have shown courage in discussing a direction in evolution. Philosopher Wilber said, evolution is “the opposite of chance or randomness in the universe. It's evidence of a force that is pursuing against randomness in the universe... Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory holds that all of these transformations upward were just the result of chance and randomness. But there is no way in hell that the universe went from atoms to Shakespeare out of random stabs. This is an extraordinary driven process.” (Conversation in Enlightenment, Issue 47, 2011 -p-48 ) The astrophysicist Erich Jantsch referred to evolution as “self-organizing through transcendence,” which is a good way to think about it. Francis Heylighen wrote, “ it is assumed that evolution is largely unpredictable and contingent on a host of uncontrollable factors, which may steer its course in any of an infinite number of directions. However, it is noted that directions in which complexity increases are generally preferred...” "The Growth of Structural and Functional Complexity during Evolution.”

Even recent thinkers in evolutionary religion still retain the non-material inward goal of the God or Father Within as the supreme goal of the "evolution" of consciousness, which is really an involutionary non-material convergence and is not divergently evolutionary. Science and evolutionary religion have still not come close to admitting that the goal of life and evolution is to evolve in the material and supermaterial world to Godhood. The inward activation of life is like a Super-Id of the instincts, defined here as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood. The fear of claiming a vital direction to life or evolution has paralyzed the science-oriented from finding real meaning in the world, and traditional religion is trapped in the Great Spiritual Blockade of real material evolution. It is simply not enough to declare inward human enlightenment, or how something scientifically works, we need to know why, and where real life is going. To my mind, science discovers how things work, philosophy discovers the truth, and religion includes the art of living along with the discovery of how things work and finding the truth. We will not be satisfied with less.

Modern art as attack more than art

Atonal music actively attacked tonal music, otherwise tones would have now and then occurred, Schoenberg had to consciously avoid tones, as Denis Dutton pointed out in “The Art Instinct.” But modern art in general does this too, actively attacking realism, meaning and order, as if to destroy it. Why? Why the anger? Why the desire to destroy? And they were triumphant! They conquered the art world!

People have not, by and large, to this day accepted contratonal music or modern art, in spite of its strong promotion, and in spite of the taunts that people are just too lazy to appreciate it. The human mind is not infinitely malleable, not a blank slate. People prefer meaning, order, which are evolutionary traits developed in the minds of our Paleolithic ancestors, mainly because this strengthened social health and helped us survive. Individual artists also used art in the game of sexual selection. Real art throughout human history grew out of these dynamics and out of this human nature.

This says to me that atonal music and modern art were not really a legitimate development in art history but were mainly an attack on the order and meaning of Western culture, more like an abortion, as someone once called it. Who did the attacking, and why? This needs to be brought out more. Was there a pattern?  Names, groups, need to be named. I know years ago Tom Wolfe did a great job in “The Painted Word” exposing the sham of modern art, but more needs to be done, as we try to exhume the meaning of real art from the old battlefield.

Knowledge as a means to evolve to Godhood

If we say that knowledge is the means to evolve to Godhood and that happiness and virtue are secondary to this, we are closer to the purpose behind seeking knowledge and truth in theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church. This relates to defining the highest truth and virtue as residing at the zenith of material/supermaterial evolution, defined as Godhood, which is supposedly what knowledge seeks.

This indicates not primarily the will-to-power behind all knowledge acquisition, as in Nietzsche, and not primarily the will-to-truth claimed by many who are really seeking power through truth, this is knowledge sought seeking the power, truth, virtue and beauty of evolving to the non-abstraction of Godhood the object, or objects, at the zenith of evolution, with life activated by the inward Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, while being shaped by outside evolution and selection.

In human terms, this does not indicate a transhumanist evolution of half-man half-machine, or artificial intelligence completely replacing man, this is the evolution of real life, not artificial life, toward the zenith of evolution, which is Godhood. Unfortunately the evolution of artificial intelligence over the evolution of human intelligence is politically more correct now---the subject of human evolution remains in exile. Artificial intelligent machines can aid in our sacred evolution, but they cannot be the sole goal itself or made a substitute for the evolution of life toward Godhood, which could then block our sacred evolution.

The other now ancient blockade of human evolution comes from the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Inward Path of traditional religions, which blocks or becomes unattached to all the material desires so as to experience the God or Father Within. The Inward God is acceptable as the first symbolic glimpse of the real Godhood reached in the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution, but it cannot be made a substitute for the evolution of life to Godhood, any more than tranhumanism can. The Twofold Path includes but transforms the Inward Path of the God Within to the Outward Path of Godhood reached in evolution...

This is the way out of nihilism, the relativity of morals and values, and the dogmatic anti-evolutionary but power-seeking movements that are all gradually destroying life on earth.

Ethnopluralism and the arguments between the nationalists and federalists

Arguments between the nationalists and federalists have been going on since the founding of America, with the nationalist's insisting on sovereignty residing in the central government which they say represents the overall people, and the federalist's saying sovereignty is within the individual states who have the right to nullify the Constitution and even secede from the federal union. I think it is clear that the federalist compact theory between the states, as pointed out by Chilton Williamson Jr. in the June 2014 “Chronicles”, was taken for granted from the time of the Founders to the war between the states, but this was gradually superseded by a “domestic imperialism” or unitary nationalism, in its “long march through the Constitution.”

My interest in this subject also comes from my interest in the sociobiological concept of group selection as the primary unit of selection, and also in seeing group selection as the basic creator of altruistic ethics within groups competing with other groups, where the most internally cohesive groups are more successful than those that are not. This behavior is grounded in basic human nature which remains kin-centered, gender defined, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This logically, practically, and naturally has always led to ethnic cultures within ethnic states, or ethnopluralism, and against centralizing imperialism---and ethnopluralism can harmonize with federalism and the compact theory.  It will be gradual, states will slowly take on more of the character of the ethnic cultures within various regions and states.

This can be accomplished avoiding radical revolution, bringing the old into the new, but common sense is needed on both sides of this argument, anarchism is not what we are after. We seem headed toward social conflicts and ethnic confrontations, which are even now naturally developing as we hopelessly try to homogenize different groups together in the same living space, which is contrary to basic human nature. There is a place for the central government in helping to regulate international trade, and establish an army to protect the nation against foreign incursions, and also to protect the independence of the states. Then, with a natural relative harmony and order established, we can all get on with the sacred mission of evolving toward Godhood on earth and out into the cosmos, in our own distinct ways, within our own states. 

Altruism grew directly out of the competition between groups, and what to do about it now

“Hereditary altruists form groups so cooperative and well-organized as to out-compete non-altruists groups.” (E.O. Wilson “The Social Conquest of the Earth.”)

Altruism grew directly out of the competition between groups, with successful groups having more social bonding and cohesion, which passed on those altruistic genes. When the Inward Path to the God Within of the revealed religions affirmed universal altruism it was largely based on not caring much about material things, while seeking the non-material universal Father Within. But this actually discouraged the competitive conditions necessary for altruism. The new “enemy” was the personal but universal desires of the flesh.

A religious way to accommodate natural in-group altruism is needed, and this can be understood in the hierarchy of group values, beginning with ones own group and moving out gradually with lesser altruism to the world and universal humanity. Raymond Cattell's work is helpful on this subject. For example, when the world is threatened then universal altruism more naturally influences human beings, but daily existence naturally keeps altruism at home where it originated and works best.

This suggests “cooperative competition” as an important value, rather than trying to make strangers love one another universally, especially when this call for equality is done in a second hand way, since the call comes from the ascetic religious base of traditional religions which doesn’t really care much about material life. The “universal”can enter in with objective international sociobiological research centers, working along with evolutionary religion, to help guide our evolution toward Godhood. All groups can naturally evolve in their own unique ways, while residing in their own ethnic cultures and states, with real altruism, without trying daily to impose a quixotic universal equality, leading to a global imperialist perspective that doesn’t really work.

Why it is not “playing God” to seek to evolve to Godhood

It seems that I harmonize better with classical science than modern science in asking why things exists and not only how things exists. Aristotle thought that nothing exists without a reason, a function, an end. I am never satisfied knowing only the correlation between two things, the sequence alone is not enough. As the excellent Claude Polin recently pointed out in “Chronicles,” modern science made a choice to view things only pragmatically, and then modern science terrorized anyone who asked why things exist in the first place. Phenomena alone is never enough, we need to know why phenomena exists.

The problem with the traditional religious view is that it thinks unless the universe has a Maker-God there can be no order in nature or in man. But there are natural bounds and order to nature and to human nature whether God made the order or not. Everything is not necessary permitted even if God is defined as dead. We may not be as free as either traditional man or modern man think we are. We have a determined human nature even if modern man doesn’t think we do, we are not free to do or become anything we please. Traditionalism gives us the freedom to “stray” from our own natural nature, which is then defined as evil. But our real freedom is limited by various determined choices, we have the flexibility to be mistaken about who we are and what we can do, which helped us in making survival over non-survival choices in the various environments presented to us by nature. And we can be mistaken in relation to survival in our cultural schemes.

There is a determined human nature, there is order in the universe, there is a goal to life, and a goal to evolution, and there is purpose in phenomena, but it is not defined the way either modern science, classical science or traditional religion define it. There is an activating force in nature and in life, a Will, or a Super-Id---here defined as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood---which is then shaped outwardly by the ups and downs of natural evolution and selection. We are evolving to Godhood, rather than from God.  Godhood is the zenith of success in natural and supermaterial evolution. Purpose is defined here in the philosophy of theological materialism.

Harmonizing with human nature and nature itself is what morality is mainly about, but human nature and nature include evolving in nature toward Godhood. But we are never all-wise, we are always searching to find out who and what we are and where we are going. The best and most recent sociobiological knowledge is telling us that human nature, affirmed throughout human history, has been, and continues to be, 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 is basic human nature. Politics can then follow with an ordering among men, by including real human nature harmoniously in its programs. Not to do so has caused many misfortunes.

We are free to help nature and help life, including human life, evolve toward the Godhood life naturally seeks. This is not the great evil of “man playing God,” it is trying to aid nature in nature's purpose of evolving to Godhood, which is the why, and not merely the how, of life. We can include science and religion together but more in the fashion of classical science, which did ask both how and why. I affirm the goal of life and nature evolving in the material/supermaterial world to the Godhood first only glimpsed in the Inward Path of traditional religion. This is the way we conservatively include but transform traditional religion and modern science.

How sovereignty developed?

Georges Dumezil thought that in proto-Indo-European ancient history sovereignty was comprised of the shared rulership of a Magician-King, in concert with a powerful Jurist-Priest, and all were protected by warriors---then IE society rested on the shoulders of provider farmers. This was the Trifunctional hypothesis.

I have not done the serious scholarship of Dumezil but I speculate that originally there was one warrior sovereign leader of a small group, a total leader, a warrior-priest-lawmaker. As he became older and presumably wiser he delegated warrior duties to his son, or someone like a son, but he kept the priest-law duties for himself. This was a preliminary dual leadership, but when the old man died the son became once again the sole warrior leader-priest etc., assuming he could retain the post.

Over time as groups became larger they simply became too large for one man to be sovereign of all things, and this is when a dual sovereignty began between priest and warrior. But it was an uneasy sovereignty. If you have ever seen the old classic John Ford Western, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” you may remember the very uneasy relationship between the law of the gun in the old West (John Wayne) and the new coming laws of statehood (James Stewart). In Indo-European history it was mainly to calm the problems between the dual leadership of priest and warrior that the “King” was eventually appointed, who then had the final say in things, while still keeping the warrior, priest, and the other castes. Modern sovereignty and modern castes developed out of this.

This seems simpler and more likely than a period of shared sovereignty between a Magician-King in concert with a powerful Jurist-Priest. And it would probably apply to societies other than Indo-European as well... Of course scholarship would need to affirm this speculation.

What social or political scheme best harmonizes with what we are?

Nothing human, ultimately, seems to be untouched by biology. Yet most of the ideas in modern liberalism and in the humanities in general are defined as untouched by biology. Modern liberalism, now hypertrophied into cultural Marxism, says there is virtually no limit to the human ability to adapt to any social scheme, people can be taught to appreciate anything, we are malleable, our minds are a blank slate. It turns out that this is nonsense. The fact is, human nature sets limits, some things we cannot adapt to or accept. Human nature is basically kin-centered, gender defined, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. So if most of the causes of modern liberalism are things that actual human nature cannot in reality adapt to or accept, are not these modern social schemes exercises in futility? More likely they are subterfuges to gain power for specific individuals or groups, which is explained by biology.

What social or political scheme best harmonize with what we are, that is, with human nature? It seems to many now (especially the European New Right), that we best harmonize with our own ethnic cultures and ethnic states, and this suggests that ethnopluralism is the best overall social and political scheme, for all ethnic cultures, protected by some sort of federalism. This does not suggest a one-race dictatorship of repressive imperialism---we see imperialism, and those who benefit from it, slowly falling, as they always do. In America, the movements to decentralize Washington DC and Wall Street and to bring back the Constitutionally-derived separation of powers, and to put power back in the hands of the individual states, are an example of this movement toward accommodating real human nature... Ethnopluralism is a simple concept, but difficult to bring forward, given the selfish powers that be, yet it is probably inevitable, given human nature---assuming the imperialist's don't destroy us all first.

Human nature is not flawed but we need to evolve

The ascetic and the scientific man are alike in seeking their goals by way of an opposition to the normal passions. The ascetic seeks the God within by ridding the body and mind of all desires, and the scientific man seeks absolute objectivity by ridding the body and mind of all desires. Nietzsche thought Socrates/Plato ruined the old religions, but did they both not at least seek objective-passionless truths? Perhaps this is where Western and Eastern religions began to separate, with the objective mathematical forms of Plato leading to the science of the West, and with the God Within of the East free for the most part of all mathematical formulas and science?

Both religion and science need to bring the instincts in from the cold. Human nature is not “flawed,” as traditional religions believe, and as science also suggests with its goal of passionless objectivity-as-truth. Religion even goes so far as to call the instincts satanic, and science has little time for truths not affirmed by objective science considering them almost satanic. Human nature isn't flawed but it can be crude and unrefined, and we need to evolve. Both science and religion can remain---this  is not calling for liberal humanism, Marxism or logical positivism---but we need to understand that the zenith of the instincts, defined as the Super-Id, or the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, are leading us to the zenith of material/supermaterial evolution, which is Godhood, while being shaped outwardly by evolution and selection  This is described in theological materialism.

Evolution can be silenced by the non-action of the ascetics, and by passionless forms of science, as well as by crude war, where the best people, places and things are often eliminated. Religion and science can be enlisted in our evolution to real Godhood, the God first seen only inwardly, or glimpsed with mathematical abstractions. We need the refinement of ongoing evolution, not the crude hammer of blocking the instincts. It is the instincts that lead us to evolve to Godhood, while being shaped outwardly by evolution and selection. This does not call for defining human nature as flawed, this calls for material and supermaterial evolution.

Art and Sexual Selection

Art seems to have grown out of sexual selection, if so, then women should be better at discerning art, because they have needed to be acute in judging the authenticity of men, since they pay a heavier price with the long-term care of babies if they judge wrong. But the desire of men to impress women might help explain, at least unconsciously, why their are more top men artists and male art critics than women. Homosexuals in the arts, at least in these times, might also explain some of the disparities in the sexual selection-discernment hypothesis.

This gets confusing when we consider the stereotypical common man who says he hasn't a clue as to what color goes with what, especially since men are trying to impress women in sexual selection and should therefore care about the way they look. Perhaps women give central importance to the money or position a man has, at least beyond the teen years, and they just kind of overlook his lack of color harmonizing.

In any case, this connection with sexual selection is probably the way to study art origins (see The Art Instinct), which gets us away from the absurd and phony abstractions that define postmodern art. High art (low art too) can then be seen sociobiologically as an affirmation of what the group holds sacred, since the group is the main unit of selection over the long term.

Hypertrophied primordial universals should not be worshiped

As Frank Wilczek envisions it in “The Lightness of Being,” matter is built from almost weightless units, pure energy, and that is the source of mass, space is a dynamic grid of energy creating and destroying particles spontaneously (does he mean randomly?), and Wilczek says this energy can help explain the feebleness of gravity---and he finally hopes for the unification of these forces---(without taking sides, is that pure energy “electric” in the way the electric universe folks describe it, and can they then come in from the cold of exile?)

This neat worldview, although mainly scientific, seems to point to that old preference for the universal over the particular which Plato, and other religious versions of metaphysics, were so fond of, elevating the completely abstract, or spiritual, over living particulars---which led to the misrepresentation of the “universal” with equality---which has caused so many social disruptions in human history.

Of course there are mathematical universals, and we may be able to understand a unification of primordial forces, but these primitive forces are not Godhood, and we don't worship them. We also don't worship the activating, not random, Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within the Primal Material, vital as it is, which is shaped by outside evolution and selection. These are primitive unevolved forces, whereas we do affirm the sacred zenith of material/supermaterial evolution, the highest evolved living, particular, objects in the cosmos---or Godhood---we do not worship the universal abstract definitions of these evolved living objects or their primitive beginnings.

Acceptance of everything?

Today I watched the first few minutes of a c-span book interview with Michael Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell (Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt ) which began with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink at morality, the sort of ironic pose that many modern intellectuals like to take, assuming that morality and values are relative to time, place and environment, which is cultural Marxism. Nonsense. Why is cultural Marxism the exception to the demand for a relativity of values? But the audience seemed to go along with the game, even though most of the audience were probably moralists---unless colleges and universities have been doing a better job of teaching this bilge than I thought they are doing.

Morality is natural, we don't have to bring in supernaturalism---although there are supermaterial goals to natural evolution. Morality is as natural as distinguishing or discriminating between what will hurt us and what will help us; this is a solid part of human nature which helped us survive some very difficult conditions over much time. A relativity in values and morality was encouraged by Friedrich Nietzsche and his followers, who overlooked or underemphasized the vital biological foundation of mutual aid seen in natural altruism, which religion incorporated. Group selection developed out of this altruism and remains today the primary unit of selection, even though this truth is buried in political correctness.

Acceptance of everything is said to give us freedom, but that is like a slave trying to justify his slavery. Yes, it is good to know what we cannot change, but change is directly related to sociobiological success in living and evolving, which is what life is about, and we therefore need to change or revitalize what we believe needs changing. Some things which we work toward may not change in out lifetimes. So What? Heroic living is healthier than slavery. The relativity of values and morals of our intellectual “leaders” (which hypocritically is itself a strict valuation) has led to nihilism, decadence, degeneration, hedonism, and the continuation of the slow destruction of the Western world.  I don't buy it.

Speculating on consciousness and the instincts

“Ease and speed of cerebral transmission” seems to come from the instincts and from innate genetic traits, consciousness seems to slow down this transmission, which is not necessarily good or bad. The instincts are not better than consciousness, as Nietzsche seemed to think, but consciousness needs to be balanced with innate human nature---culture often misrepresents reality to our consciousness. Honesty is not always present in the intellect. I think of Thomas Jefferson saying , he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods.

Speculating further out, in our evolution to Godhood we might gain a fuller consciousness, one in which the conscious and unconscious mind act more as one, like a perfect action, when the instincts and consciousness are in accord. Some teach the opposite of this, that consciousness speeds up cerebral transmission, but that is like the old cliche of putting the cart before the horse. Consciousness is very new, and the unconscious is very old. Priests, philosophers and intellectuals have often been afraid of the unconscious and the instincts, they thought it was a beast, or even satanic.

Nietzsche perversely thought the power-seeking but goalless, immoral beast was good, which might have been an exaggeration to make his point about dishonesty in philosophy. But the unconscious is activated by a sacred goal, to evolve all the way to Godhood in the cosmos, while dealing with the ups and downs and shaping of outside evolution and selection.

Happy Independence Day

What the return to human nature predicts politically

 I doubt that human existence has been ruined beyond repair.

Culture can arrive haphazardly by chance, and human nature can also develop through chance influences, but the main structure and dynamics of human nature, which we still possess today, developed long ago in our distant past. Our cultural life today comes mainly from prehistoric adaptations that have been hypertrophied into modern culture. Cultural Marxism which prevails across the Western world today cannot accept this, or it doesn't want to allow real human nature to present itself, out of ignorance, or from the more diabolical wills to power of individuals and groups who benefit by suppressing real human nature, at least in the short term.

That short term advantage cyclically shows that human nature has its limits, human nature can be suppressed for only so long and then there is some sort of counter-revolution, radical or not. Nationalism and ethnic regions always rise naturally for this reason, because they better affirm real human nature, which developed in the first place to help us survive and reproduce more successfully. Regions and states then become defined by people who innately prefer their own cultures, their own kind.  The border-less world that Globalism now exploits begins to reassert natural boundaries, objections to open immigration rise, etc., which we are clearly seeing today.

We see the beginning of such a return to human nature in the growing secessionist and separatist movements across the world today. Repressive imperialism is trying to stop this natural rising, but imperialism, and those who benefit from it, are slowly falling. This was not only predicable but inevitable given human nature. Ethnopluralism---not another imperialism---will eventually ride this natural wave of decentralization and will eventually be seen as creating fairness and social harmony, in accord with real human nature, which continues to be kin-centered, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. Many ethnostates, or virtual ethnostates, and many regions, protected by some sort of federalism, can then continue on with living healthier and more natural lives on earth.  We might even have a state for those who want  to continue to try the modernist mix of all ethnic groups in one state.  Our idealism or faith, grounded in theological materialism, can then be identified in evolving toward Godhood in the cosmos, our sacred mission.

Passion, Reason, Religion, and Nietzsche

Nietzsche thought that truth and honesty were sacrificed when a thinker begins to reason, he thought genius lies in the instincts, and that goodness does too. But what kind of thinking was Nietzsche doing when he made that statement? Was it not reason looking at the instincts? I think the problem for Nietzsche comes in thinking of the instincts as a wild Dionysian beast that needs to be released. What Nietzsche was really concerned with, which might have caused him to exaggerate a bit, was that too often religion, philosophy and science have completely blocked the innate instincts with reason---the continuing denial of sociobiology in the Humanities even today continues this blockade.

I think of reason, the intellect, and the conscious mind as riding a horse called the Instincts, which is not Nietzsche's wild Dionysian beast-instinct, but a horse which also contains the essential sacred instinct of evolving in the material/supermaterial world to the zenith of evolution, which is Godhood. This is the right balance between reason and passion, if it can be called a “balance.” Is your conscious mind totally aware of all your needs and wants? If it does not know the activation of life to evolve to Godhood---shaped by the vagaries of outside evolution and selection---then it is not totally aware of all your wants and needs and may be blocking your most sacred instinct.

Reason can become a virtue, contrary to Nietzsche, as long as reason includes the balance of a large dollop of the passions and emotions, and is especially aware of the goal of the instincts to evolve life to Godhood. We don't want to reject reason in favor of the passions, as Nietzsche seemed to do, without including in the passions the sacred Godhood goal of the instincts. But we also don't want to reject passion in favor of reason without including in reason the sacred instinct toward evolving to Godhood. Reason and the instincts can reason this. Intelligence developed to the degree that Nietzsche felt it was “tyranny” over the instincts, but it is not tyranny if we would not have survived and evolved without that powerful intelligence.

Even so, I have to acknowledge Nietzsche's concern with intellectuals, priests, and philosophers applying ideas as their own wills to power and not as the will to truth they claim. Nietzsche thought that Socrates separated the population from their instincts and that Plato was a moral fanatic in doing this to Socrates. Nietzsche thought the real philosophers of Greece came before Socrates, they were on guard against an intellect that “puffs one out” with theatrical virtues and clever dialectics.

This is not anti-intellectual, it is anti-abstract ideas attempting to rule real life and biology, and anti the definitions of things becoming more important than living objects. Too often religion and philosophy grew on this phoney ground, and I think they can be revitalized with theological materialism, which also includes a return to common sense. With Godhood seen as the sacred goal of the instincts, and related to the first glimpses of the Inward God seen in Christianity, and other religions, Nietzsche can be seen as having been mistaken in trying to murder God and religion---he missed the instincts and reason behind these things.
We are looking for "reality" when we use reason, intuition and instincts to look for truth.

When the evolutionary perspective comes into its own

Social and cultural productions only seem entirely culturally derived, but social/cultural instincts are biologically grounded. The deeper evolutionary perspective tells us that human nature, affirmed throughout human history, is kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other innate things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection---and social and cultural productions are influenced by innate human nature because that has helped us survive and reproduce successfully over the long run.

Establishing these evolutionary truths has been difficult, they do not conform to the popular culturally Marxist and global Big Business perspective which prevails in modernist culture and in the media in general, which aids those who most benefit from cultural untruths.  They continue to demand that culture has little or nothing to do with biology, and that culture can go anywhere it pleases, we only have to be taught the culture properly (even force is sometimes used) to make it work.

This will slowly change, and when it does the ethnopluralism hypothesis will make more sense to people, assuming we can survive the globalist cultural lies. But when evolutionary enlightenment comes I hope mono-racialism will be seen as a parochial view and be replaced by the more cosmopolitan evolutionary perspective, which tells us that since all human groups innately prefer their own kind and their own cultures across the globe, we will survive best when we affirm a natural ethnopluralism in our political configurations, with ethnic regions and states protected by some sort of federalism. Protection, yes, war, no. Otherwise the world naturally gangs up on mono-racial imperialism, and no one wins---war is mainly dysgenic and slows our evolutionary progress, the best people, places, and things are often lost.