Raising the lower level to the higher level

The Right seeks (usually) to raise the lower level to the higher level, but the Left usually wants to bring the upper level down to the lower level seeking “equality.” The Left and Right can agree if they both proclaim that they want to raise the lower level to the higher level. Equality is never the goal, nothing is equal on earth. The goal should be to continue to evolve toward higher levels of truth, intelligence, higher consciousness, beauty and goodness.

Basically, we need both genetic and cultural innovation. What usually happens is the brilliant lead and create culture, and the less brilliant follow. There exists not just a cultural lag but a genetic lag between the leaders and followers. As the brilliant become genetically less frequent culture declines. On the other hand, when the genetic endowment can do more than it is doing, the culture can also lag---Cro Magnon's had the genetic equipment to do modern physics---revolutions seem more likely under those circumstances as well.

What Raymond Cattell speculated about was consciously helping to modify the genetic lag through the promotion of the higher reproduction and gene selection of people with socially desired traits, and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired traits---voluntarily. That is, modifying the genetic lag toward the more brilliant cultural demands rather than to have this happen always by chance, which seems to be causing more of a lag between the higher and the lower, with the less brilliant having more children, and culture slowly declining. This would cause less suffering in general, and so it could be a humane undertaking.

This makes sense to me, and it would to the population too if the Media and the academic world would stop falsely calling it evil. Especially since the sacred mission is to evolve toward Godhood.

We can see enough of reality, and we will see more when we evolve

Philosophers and scientists tend to underestimate what we can see of reality as “merely” appearance, and religionists overestimate what we can see of reality. When Kant and others discovered that we don't see all of reality they went a bit overboard in limiting what we see as only the inaccurate appearance of reality. The subjective world was exaggerated and real objects were minimized.

But why is it prejudiced if we tend to regard what is real and true in relation to what favors the preservation of life or the species? That is mainly what the truth and reality is! Reality finds a correlation between degrees of value and degrees of reality. What reality would they have, one that does not involve life and survival? Life does not seem to be enough for them.

We see enough to know of real objects and we will see more when we evolve. We see more than a frog sees of reality, and with higher evolution beyond the human species we will see more, and if we evolve to Godhood we may see most of reality. Appearance contains enough reality. We can know what we are, and where we are going, we can see the evolution of life, if we have courage, and intelligence.

Scientific or positive knowledge tends to be indifferent to religious knowledge and religion is indifferent to scientific knowledge, and they need to come together. Theological materialism can bring them together: we evolve in the material world to supermaterial Godhood, the God first symbolically experienced in the Inward Paths of religion. Understanding this does not require the same old puzzles of epistemology and ontology which philosophers seem to enjoy more than finding reality.

We need both conservatism and evolution

It is not a contradiction to affirm conservatism as well as ongoing evolution. The realty of what we are at present is a time-centered variation of what we are becoming, but we can chew gum and walk at the same time.

Evolutionists and conservative's tend to want to rule the other side out. But conservatism is needed to retain the best that has evolved while evolving toward new variations and mutations that harmonize with the best of the past. Change, as Burke and others have said, is required if we wish to conserve what we have, stagnation rots the whole structure.

Even the brilliant Nietzsche chose to discard Being in favor of Becoming, and his postmodern followers hypertrophied this to the point of finding everything relative to changing power needs, with no permanent anything (other than their own pronouncements).

The urgency of becoming more intelligent to solve our complicated survival problems does not mean that we should move so fast that we lose tens of thousands of years of evolutionary improvements. I think it was Cattell who said regarding evolution that we are remolding a house while living in it and if we lose the foundation the whole structure falls. In biological and political evolution we don't tear down long-evolved existing structures to build something completely new.

In this sense the transhumanists and singularity crowd also seem to be abandoning long-evolved human biology in favor of artificial intelligence, which should only be a secondary tool of our ongoing biological evolution. Being is Becoming, but Becoming is also Being.

We seem to have cycles of human nature reflected in human cultures

We seem to have cycles of human nature reflected in human cultures, with long-lasting cultures better affirming basic human nature than shorter-term cultures which move away from human nature. Long-lasting human cultures are 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. Conservative traditions and institutions tend to reflect real human nature more than cultures which try to force human nature to fit cultures that don't much reflect basic real human nature, such as Marxism, or the modern cultural Marxism of political correctness.

Ethnopluralism can best affirm basic human nature, where regions and states are devoted to distinctly ethnic cultures, usually held together and protected by some kind of federalism. Human history seems to return to ethnopluralism following various forms of imperialism which move away from basic human nature. Diverse ethnic groups artificially jammed in one territory simply do not assimilate well with one another, leading to civil disorder, and the return to ethnopluralism. This is common practical knowledge often overlooked in various intellectual schemes of equality, etc. which usually disguise one groups will-to-power. We are all in these cycles of human nature, human cultures, and ethnopluralism together.

The hope is that the basic separation of powers and states in the United States can reaffirm this direction toward more independent states and regions---this can even harmonize with the original Constitution. Evolution not revolution is the better way to proceed toward a return to human nature reflected in our cultures. The one inclusion not emphasized enough in conservatism which needs to be emphasized is the natural changes of biological evolution, which retains basic human nature and its traditions, or the best of the past, but includes slow biological improvements brought about through natural positive mutations, and our conscious involvement in own evolution.

We should not have immigrants from Ebola-stricken West Africa

I had to add this early note after suffering the media this morning.

We should not even have healthy immigrants coming from anywhere yet alone from Ebola-stricken West Africa, we have not absorbed the millions of new immigrants we now have. Lurking behind, and exploiting the cultural Marxism and do-gooderism of hypertrophied universal altruism is the will-to-power of those who dominate politics and the media, and the global corporations who own them. How vile are those who benefit from our open borders and open immigration at the cost of the destruction of our culture and our nation!

A Future Culture Where Aristotle and Aquinas Include Darwin

When St. Thomas Aquinas encountered Aristotle he approached it the way a traditional conservative approaches new things---although Aristotle was older than Christianity. Aquinas was tasked with trying to fit Aristotle, who he greatly respected, into Christianity, the “new” into the old. This meant taking an ascetic internal philosophy and adding to it a largely external social philosophy.

The Christian cross is a symbol of dying to oneself so that one can follow the Inward Path to the Father Within. The old self is crucified. The way of Christ, in some ways like the way of Hindus and Buddhists, is the path to the God Within. As Ravi Ravindra put it, Christ is the way, but Jesus is a way---many religious mystics have sought and found the God Within. All the desires of the flesh and body need to be unattached from, or blocked, to truly experience the God Within. The values and morals of Christianity were mainly concerned with attaining the God Within.

Aquinas had to develop the intellectual machinery to fit Christianity in with Aristotle or Aristotle with Christianity. Aristotle was concerned with the best life for humans to live in communities and small cities, which would provide an environment where people could live virtuously while pursing the commercial, recreational and religious things that fit well with human nature. Aristotle assumed that people would live together with kin and ethnic group, where the best bonding would be possible. Ridding the body of all desires to experience the God Within was not a top priority for Aristotle, some desires were more noble than other desires.

Aristotle and Aquinas did not have Darwinism to consider when they considered human nature and natural law. But we do. It turns out that the conservative tradition follows, more or less, Darwinian descriptions of human nature, especially with the discoveries of sociobiology. Human nature has been affirmed throughout human history as being 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.

Theological materialism, reflected upon here, can fit Darwin and sociobiology in with traditional conservatism and Christianity, but to do so we need to get back to defining the original Christianity of the Involutionary Inward Path. The intellectual machinery which tried to fit Aristotle with Christianity took Christianity too far away from Jesus and his central concern of the Inward Path to the Father Within.

The Inward Path was the first symbolic glimpse of the Godhood which can be reached in the Outward Path of evolution. Theological materialism adds to Christianity and the Involutionary Inward Path the Evolutionary Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to real Godhood. This is the Twofold Path of theTheoevolutionary Church which can bring the evolving knowledge of real human nature, natural law, and conservative tradition within Christianity without the twisting metamorphosis of Thomistic theology.

Future culture, future cities, can follow the order of tradition but include also the sacred evolution of life to Godhood. Monasteries can remain for those who follow the Inward Path, and sociobiological and genetic research centers can exists for those who follow the Outward Path, which transforms the Inward Path to the Outward Path of evolution to real Godhood. Churches can bond these sacred things, there can be Masses for both the Inward and Outward Paths, or one new Mass containing both. Culture and communities can live in harmony with real human nature, with kin and ethnic group, with an ethnopluralism of small states protected by a light federalism. Aristotle and Aquinas can include Darwin in this way, as we all get on with the sacred mission of evolving toward Godhood.

Why the big resentment of reality by the religious mystics?

Why do the religious mystics and philosophers require a world other than the real world? Is it because there is suffering in the world? There is also satisfaction in the world, should all people judge the world as suffering because some suffer? Why this preoccupation with pain?

Healthy people don't make pleasure and pain the ultimate question, these are secondary conditions in the evolution of life. We can even be skeptical of the connection between truth and happiness, which continues to confound philosophers.

Plato didn't start this transvaluing of reality, this making concepts causes, this making the conditioned out of the unconditioned, this was going on in the East, and probably before Plato. Buddha said life equals pain! But the dangerous thing about this resentment of reality is that morality is created out of it, as Nietzsche brilliantly pointed out.

It is well overdue time for this “vaporization of God,” (Goethe) to end. The material world is not only good it is the vehicle by which we evolve to real supermaterial Godhood, the Godhood only hinted at, or feared, or hidden inwardly as a desireless state.

The new within the old religion

Theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church do not advocate the death of the Involutionary Inward Path of the revealed religions but advocate the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood working in conjunction with the Inward Path to the God Within.

Science has more or less tried to kill religion, and religion tried to kill science, but the ECC applies both, bringing the new into the old. Changing the structure of traditional religion while still living with traditional religion needs to be done carefully.

It's like living in a house while remodeling the house. Or it's like the biological brain not abolishing the older brain systems but building a new cortical system above to help control the older system. New structures need to coordinate with old structures.

That is Conservatism, the wisdom of conservatism, rather than starting all over again with something radically new, we evolve rather than have revolution, which is generally the way nature changes.

If we want to avoid the the dying of traditional religion, including Christianity, the structure needs to change. The God Within can be understood as one of the first symbolic experiences by various ascetics, East and West, of what real Godhood may be like when and if we reach Godhood through material/supermaterial evolution.

But it is not practicality alone that is the reason for the changes, reaching Godhood actually requires our material/supermaterial evolution to the Godhood which was formerly seen as the God or Father Within.

Why religion at all, modernity asks? No civilization has risen or lasted long without being grounded in religion. And the very long-term goal of evolving to Godhood in the cosmos requires the very long-term values and morals, and sacred bonding, of religion.

The fall of Nietzsche's hyper-individualism

Friedrich Nietzsche was a brilliant philosophical psychologist, one of my favorite thinkers, but it seems to me that his philosophical edifice, and also that of his post-modern acolytes (and modern hyper-libertarians), falls with the sociobiological discovery of the biological origin of altruism and social behavior. Nietzsche's individualism depends on the philosophical destruction of morality based on altruism.

Group-behavior, group-selection, understood as the primary unit of selection in human evolution, created the messy balance/imbalance of human nature, between individualism, kin selection, and group selection, which in any case helped to create human civilization. That human nature, developed mainly in hunter-gatherer times, remains with us today, helping to direct our behavior.

The moral checks and balances on individual passions, disparaged by Nietzsche, are as natural as passions themselves; this allowed social behavior to conquer the world, as recently affirmed by E.O.Wilson, another of my favorite thinkers. Even conservatism can be affirmed in biologically natural altruism, seen at the creation of social traditions and institutions, as long as it includes the changes of material evolution, which it doesn't always include.

The question becomes not whether to develop individual geniuses (such as Nietzsche) or not, but how to distinguish (and encourage) socially responsible and not socially destructive geniuses, which another one of my favorite thinkers, Raymond Cattell, dealt with in his social psychology.

Getting back to nature in the mind-world of religion

If we define intuition the way Kant did, “to be aware through the senses,” then intuition might be at least as good at describing the world as abstract thought, which often seems to leave the senses behind. Abstract thought can become estranged from nature and from real life; religion and philosophy have often done this. Thought only through thought, or rationalism, is in any case usually disguising the natural senses, a living will-to-power behind abstractions.

Becoming is more than categories of logic, becoming is natural evolution taking place. The purpose of itself of life exists within nature, and the purpose of nature is not to confirm our abstractions, but to confirm itself, its evolution. Nature is not a form created by an idea, ideas are the form created by nature, nature does not derive from an idea, ideas derive from nature. Nature is or should be the real mind's world. Hegel said that the highest absolute is mind, but the absolute is more accurately seen as a supreme natural body-with-mind at the zenith of material or supermaterial evolution.

Can we cheer up conservatives?

Materialism depresses real conservatives, that is, paleoconservatives, but most deeply in the religious metaphysical sense, and this seems to be where their excessive pessimism is coming from. The material world, the world of flesh and desire, can never be anything but second rate, and so, deep down, soul-down, conservatives see the material decline of ancient Rome, and the similar decline now of America, as stemming mainly from the decline of spiritual values. History repeats itself because human nature does not change in being materialistic.

But what if there exists a religious materialism? There does, in the Twofold Path of theological materialism. The material world evolves to the supermaterial world of Godhood, the God first glimpsed in the Inward Path of traditional religion. That is, deep down, soul-down, there is reason for optimism, the material world is the main vehicle by which we evolve to real Godhood, activated by the Spirit-Will within life, or Tirips, and shaped by outside evolution and selection. Material paths are required in religion to reach Godhood, which is also defined as supreme success in survival.

When we look at the diversity of groups, ethnic groups, which are now increasingly tearing old nations apart, as happened before to the Roman Republic, we can see that a solution can come in affirming some version of ethnopluralism as the natural political state of real human nature, that is, we can find a material solution to our internal bickering, for example, with small virtual ethnostates, not unlike the original regions and states in America, and protected by federalism. Both material and religious needs can be met, as we all seek to evolve in variety to Godhood in our own ways. Even given our differences, cooperative competition can be encouraged, which is good for evolution in general, and religion in particular.

Which political system works best with human nature?

Communism didn't relate well to human nature, it went too far in its annulment of private property, requiring a universal altruism which is not strong in human nature, leading to forced equality. But group-selection is strong in human nature, it is the central unit of selection, suggesting ethnic cultures rather than universal cultures, where altruism is most natural. The hypertrophied individualism of border-less capitalism is also not nearly as strong as group-selection, which is why global capitalism became the monster now devouring all groups and doomed to be dismantled.

The centrality of group-selection in human nature calls for ethnopluralism and ethnostates, perhaps protected by federalism, as well as economic nationalism and a free enterprise system. The United States Constitution with its separation of powers and states could accommodate ethnopluralistic regions and states. This is the balance which works best with real human nature. This can bring us back to real altruism and group-consciousness, back to life-consciousness, and back to modern man finding himself. From here the divine process of evolution can proceed, conservatively.

Goals and Means

I agree with many of the goals of Beyondism as suggested by Raymond Cattell: to increasingly have sociobiological education as the basis for social decisions, to promote group freedom for each group to diverge from others, to permit group growth but also group retraction with “cooperative competition,” to avoid the genocide of cultures and groups by pre-analysis, to avoid the hedonism of overindulgent humanism, to except the principle that evolution will proceed as fast as possible, and to set up powerful sociobiological and genetic research centers.

We need to have end-goals but we need to work with what we have---this is the essence of evolving conservatism. Radical revolutionaries tend to think of only the end-goal and give little thought to what they have to work with---and many moderns don't even have a goal. For example, the ethnopluralism discussed here can harmonize with the separation of powers and states of the U.S. Constitution.

Moving on from Cattell, if we get behind thought and feeling we find the instincts of the Spirit-Will, or the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, or Tirips. We can perhaps define Tirips as the multifarious processes of the instincts which activate life to evolve toward the supreme survival success of Godhood. The Tirips exists within material life and is never separate from it, there is no duality here.

The activation of material life by Tirips toward evolving to Godhood is the unchanging constant, but values within this basic instinct change, as evolution makes new discoveries and presents new challenges. Many attempts have been made to evolve to Godhood in many cosmos, and many attempts were botched or bungled---this is how evolution works.

The big task is to find ways to tolerate and encourage diversity between groups and small states, which are all on the path toward Godhood. Equality is a forcible leveling. Ethnopluralism and ethnostatism are quite different from what is known as “racism.” Racism usually defines mono-racial supremacy and racial imperialism, but ethnopluralism affirms the sociobiologically-defined group-selection of real human nature, for all groups, as human beings continue to prefer kin and group, in spite of the prevailing powerful cultural forms of Marxism.

The generating principles of theological materialism

The two principles: the activating Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within material life, and the shaping of outside evolution and selection. Both are within the realm of naturalism, a naturalism that evolves life to Godhood, if successful in evolution.

The material superseded equals the supermaterial, not the spiritual. Existence is not manifest in thought alone but in the physical existence within which thought takes place. Religion and philosophy have been hidden under so-called non-material but still sensual disguises.

St. Thomas defines God as “He who is.” Theological materialism defines Godhood as “What we evolve to become.” The traditional Inward God is transformed by the Outward Godhood reached through evolution.

In theological materialism religion can find its naturalistic confirmation---and a place can be found once again for the sacred in society.

How we see objects, from the Vedas, and Beyond

Indian philosophy, as described by Nitin Kumar, identifies five means through which we can gain knowledge of an object. I would affirm four of the five different pramanas, described below. But the fifth, the “word of God,” I would replace with intellectual intuition of the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood residing within life, which activates life to evolve to Godhood, shaped by outside evolution and selection. 

Direct physical sense perception (Pratyaksha). Objects in the world all fall into one of the following categories: sound, touch, form, taste and smell. “These five sense objects are perceived through the five sense organs: ears, skin, eyes, tongue and nose. These sense organs come in contact with the respective sense object and the contact results in the definite knowledge of the object.

Inference of means ( Anumana Pramana) “Other than direct sense perception, there are other means of knowledge also. Many a times, we draw upon partially perceived data and arrive at a conclusive knowledge of something which does not immediately fall under the scope of direct perception. For example, because we have seen fire and smoke many times together, when we see smoke on a far off mountain top, we infer that that place is on fire. In colloquial expression this is referred to as guessing.

Similarity (Upamana) A city dweller wants to know about a wild animal named ‘gavaya’. The forest dweller tells him that gavaya is just like a cow. Here gavaya is the object whose knowledge is desired. The upamana is the cow, the familiar object whose knowledge is already established. Not all features of the two animals are identical since the gavaya does not have the folds of skin which hang from a cow’s throat; however, only similarities are to be taken into account for the purpose of identifying the object of enquiry through an already known object.

Presumption (Arthapatti) It is not possible to survive without taking any food. But there is a man named Devadatta whom nobody has seen taking food and yet he is strong and sturdy. How to reconcile these two facts? It is done through presumption. We presume that even though nobody has seen Devadatta take food, he must be eating without being noticed by anybody. Otherwise, it is not at all possible to remain healthy and active as he appears to all. Arthapatti is in fact a method of assumption of an unknown fact in order to account for a known fact that is otherwise inexplicable."

But it is when the Vedas, and other traditional religious texts, are thought of as the absolute word of God---beyond the natural world, the absolute truth created not by human beings---that the Vedas go off track and become definitions and abstractions rather than real objects only defined by truth. 

We evolve to material or supermaterial Godhood in the material/super material world, we do not evolve from God. We can know the truth of objects in the first four ways mentioned above, but the fifth way to truth which I do admit is the intellectual intuition of the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood residing within life, which activates life to evolve to Godhood, shaped by outside evolution and selection. We can know the truths of the Spirit-Will increasingly as we evolve materially to higher consciousness and intelligence. But the Spirit-Will is not Godhood since it seeks Godhood by activating the material vehicle it lives within to evolve to Godhood, with a material and supermaterial method of evolution.

How Nietzsche could have retained God

Philosophy since Nietzsche has often centered on the subject and not the object, finding the object only the subjective fixing of one subject by another subject. That was convenient for describing a relativity of values and morals.

Nietzsche, rightly, said that Being will have to be conceived as the sensation which is no longer based on anything quite devoid of sensation. But then since God had been defined as devoid of sensation, Nietzsche rejected God. If Nietzsche had understood Godhood as a material/supermaterial object, or objects that we evolve to become in the material world, which had been previously, traditionally, but partially, seen as the Inward God or the Father Within, then Nietzsche might have been able to retain God transformed in the Outward Godhood we can evolve to become, if we are successful in survival and evolution---first glimpsed as the Inward God.

Philosophical naturalism for me, which is inherent in theological materialism, doesn't think only in terms of subjective relativity, human nature is determined in many ways, and other parts of nature are as well, and their definition doesn't strictly depend on who is doing the defining. We see as much of reality as our level of consciousness can see.

Getting back to the object means moving away from subjective definition of objects. Human nature and Godhood are seen as objects in reality, with many, although not all determined features, which are simply not defined as only relative to the subject viewing them.

This describes a living evolving object Godhood. In getting back to the real object and moving away from the relative subject we find real Godhood. We don't require the aristocratic radicalism of Nietzsche's solution---which involved a goalless and relative will-to-power---an evolving conservatism will aid in our evolution.

The object of the goal of consciousness is God-consciousness in evolution

Naturalism is capable of both comprehending and attaining Godhood, whereas religion and philosophy have traditionally reached the Inward God, which is an abstraction of a desire-free state attained in asceticism. Godhood is, or can be, a real, natural, sensuous object, which has evolved to the zenith of living objects. How can a God outside of nature who does not exist in nature influence nature? A God divorced from all material things, all worldly things, is not a thing or object with real qualities anymore.

The object of the goal of consciousness in evolution is not merely human self-consciousness but God-consciousness, and not merely the God or Father of the Inward Path but the Godhood of the Outward Path of material evolution. The object is not merely superior human beings but the continuing evolution of species all the way to Godhood.

Teleology is physical, based in the reality of material evolution, not in the definition or abstraction of causes. Religious mystics and philosophers have transcended real life, or at least attempted to, in their thinking, but their thinking is on the contrary based in real sensuous life. The next stage of religion needs to include the transformation of real material life in the evolution of life to supermaterial Godhood, which was formerly too-human-centered abstraction or definition only.

Cattell's Courage

Raymond Cattell argued for at least a partial role for genetics among sociologists which is greater than the almost zero now maintained. Cattell asked, why discourage the multiplication of exceptional people? The challenges we face on earth and out into the cosmos require smarter humans. It's interesting that individuals and even ethnic groups are increasingly consulting with genetic specialists before having children, even without the sanction of sociologists.

Injustice is the equal treatment of unequals, but Cattell said we can have an equal attention to raise the intelligence of all people. There is a genetic lag in the strength of our primitive “pugnacity” and sex instincts, which often are stronger than the needs of civilization. The roots of intelligence seen in empirical studies are in the genetic pool, and statistics show an increase in unemployment and crime in people with IQ's below 90 or even 100. This needs to be considered. Cattell believed that without  counter measures large groups tend to decline into selfish and destructive behavior.

But we can only raise levels in the raw material, which education and culture will then shape, and families continue to pass on more values than schools or church.

Wars have offered negative selection, the fit are mostly chosen and then they can be lost to the nation, and this can later sink the nation into second rate status. But peace also has a cost because altruistic qualities are underproduced, at least in the West, as the media appeals more to consumer sexuality and pugnacity.

Cattell was not looking for the production of one type, he was not a racist in that sense, a variety of gifts are needed, and deficiencies need to to be balanced. We need to raise the rate of average intelligence, which is the only permanent way to end many of the ills of the civilized world and the future world. We cannot merely rely on intelligent computers to save us.

I affirm the path of our evolution as sacred, with a continuing increase in intelligence, truth, beauty and goodness---we need more than intelligent monsters, we need people with good character as well---as we evolve toward Godhood, the God first glimpsed in the Inward Path of traditional religion.

A remedy for cultural genocide

Paleoconservative's define culture as nurturing and growing children into mature adults who are religious and national in nature. Neoconservative's define culture as a “creed” based on a set of principles, imperial and corporate in nature---modern liberals or socialists do likewise in affirming big state governments. Both the academic world and the popular media promote cultural Marxism or political correctness, that is, people should be careful not to use language or behave in a way that could offend any group, including any ethnic group of people, which actually ends up being the opposite of culture, and the opposite of human nature, which is mostly kin-centered and group-selecting. The root of culture is basically who we are, our ethnic culture, if we change the ethnic group we change the culture---this has been hard to admit with political correctness cowing reality.

Conservative Christian's tend to avoid the ethnic definition of culture due to non material definitions of spirituality, and equality before God. Neoconservative's avoid defining ethnic cultures mostly as a means to attaining border-less, culture-less, imperial power. What we end up with is “cultural genocide.” That is what has happened to the U.S. and the West in general.

The remedy for cultural genocide, discussed here often, revolves around the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis, which can be constitutionally applied in the U.S. in relation to the separation of powers and states. Politically correct “diversity” has led to cultural genocide, but each region and state can gradually, and naturally, affirm the main ethnic culture of the region or the state, which can be protected internally by constitutionally derived federalism, and externally protected by some form of economic nationalism, as we did for most of our history. This is the healthy way, the evolutionary and not revolutionary way, the fair way, to restore real culture in our crowded, diverse, culture-less world.

Burke, Pagans, Evolution, and Godhood

The power of conservatism in human affairs is too strong and true to ignore, which is one reason why I am not a Nietzschean, or a modern pagan. But the power and truth of science is also too strong and true to ignore, which is why I am not a conservative of the Traditionalist School. I believe that we must improve on the inheritance of past religion, not only improve on the inheritance of political philosophy, with ideas and actions that fit into the older patterns, with gradual innovations, adding to the permanent body. Edmund Burke was very concerned with the pace of change, but theological materialism is also concerned with the direction and goal of change in our evolution toward Godhood.

Evolution is affirmed rather than revolution, with nature as the living model of how to change. In the Twofold Path, the Outward Path harmonizes with the order of nature in the material evolution of life to supermaterial Godhood, the God first seen symbolically in the Inward Path of traditional religion. Godhood is separate from man only in evolutionary terms.

A religious conservatism that refuses to change may relate to a God that is outside of nature, which is a definition outside of nature rather than a God. But radical revolution is also outside of nature's way of conservatively changing, which is why radical revolutions are rarely successful in the long term, and we are evolving for the long term.

Grounding the mind, and religion, in theological materialism

Things in the mind come from the senses, but the mind can root around, disassemble what is there, and play games with the the patterns in the mind, and some of these actions were eventually called reason and logic. Religion and philosophy largely came from these higher patterns in the mind. The plumbing of the mind which we are born with can predetermine to a degree the way we think, but this too is defined as part of the material world of the senses. This does not mean that the mind cannot be brilliant and find real truths in life, but the mind is grounded in materialism. However, this materialism does not rule out Godhood.

Traditional religion and philosophy usually see “true' “essence” as spiritual, abstract, non-material, and the world is often seen as only a product, only phenomenon of the mind. This led eventually to an occult, mystical understanding of things and of life. But as I say here often, we were not “estranged” from the spiritual, we are estranged in a Great Spiritual Blockade from the material.

Theological materialism is grounded in sacred materialism, true materialism, filling the atheistic void of scientific and Marxist materialism with Godhood defined as the zenith of material/supermaterial evolution. Godhood is not a non-material God or non-material Absolute, Godhood is the zenith of material evolution, a supermaterial object, or objects, attained in evolution. This is a goal, a “faith,” based in projecting the known pattern of the theory of evolution and the ascent of life from the simple to the complex, and from unconsciousness to consciousness, all the way to supermaterial Godhood in the cosmos. And we can help this process along.

It was thought that the Inward God was non-material, the Father Within was thought of as God, but even this God was a state attained in the sensual mind which was reached after the ascetic discipline of ridding the body and mind of all material desires. Both Christ and Buddha carried on this tradition. Theological materialism sees the Inward God as a symbolic glimpse of what real Godhood may be like when attained in evolution. This symbolic God is retained in the Inward Path of the Twofold Path, but transformed in the Outward Path of material evolution to real Godhood.

Thoughts on the natural instinct toward religion and art

If the “classical” can be seen as not only ideal but scientific, relating to evolving material objects, and if the “romantic” can be seen as aesthetic and holistic, then theological materialism leans in the direction of the classical world, but it soars toward the romantic beauty of life evolving toward Godhood.

Romanticism was, among other things, a revolt against the constraining rationalism of the scientific Enlightenment, but then romanticism constrained rationalism too much, which was understandable because science tends to think something does not exist until it is proven to exist.

But we seem to need it all, intuition, religion, reason, science, art, because the truth and reality are found somewhere in the mix of these fields. We seem to have an instinct or a need to know what goodness, truth and beauty are, but more than to know, we need to experience these things, somehow physically.

With this instinct we create worldviews that affirm goodness, truth and beauty, and we want them to be real, we believe they are real. Why do we do this? Why do we need this? We seem to sense instinctively that the goal of our life goes beyond what we are. It is then that we begin to see the goal of our instincts as leading to Godhood, which also defines for us the zenith of goodness, truth and beauty, which we seem to both mentally and physically desire---this is seen in our preferences for beautiful people, places and things. We bring this romantic vision back to classical physical reality, back to nature, when Godhood is understood also as supreme success in natural survival.

We create a religious/philosophical narrative as a system of images and ideas useful in our instinctive transformation toward Godhood, that is, the sacred narrative of our material/supermaterial evolution to Godhood. It is a transformation away from the nihilism and hedonism of the secular age, but this time it is a naturalistic sacred narrative, related to the successful survival of life and beauty, not merely as an opiate of the people. It is real.

This religious narrative, or instinct, satisfies our natural instinct toward religion and art, and what seems to be an inborn, and sacred, desire to know and experience, goodness, truth, beauty and Godhood.

All values are not relative to individuals

We do require power to help us survive but it is secondary to the goal of evolving to Godhood, and  not power for power's sake, as Nietzsche suggested, and as postmoderns have expanded from Nietzsche, with nihilistic consequences. The act of interpreting things and values is usually indirectly and unconsciously a form of the activating Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within material life activating life to evolve to Godhood, then shaped by outside evolution and selection. This is not a goalless will-to-power, it has the goal of evolving within material life toward supermaterial Godhood.

We feel and define things, their qualities, in relation to our possibilities of survival and power, but more essentially in accord with our upward evolution. This is where and how we interpret the worth of things. We interpret things mostly unconsciously before we make our conscious choices. Teleology is physical, contrary to Nietzsche who saw teleology as only as nonphysical purpose derived by humans---interesting that the traditional religious mystics, who Nietzsche was not a fan of, also found teleology nonphysical. Godhood is a superphysical object which we can evolve to become in the material world as our inward drives seek more successful survival and higher evolution.

There is an essential Being or Beings at the highest level of evolution, or there can be---all values therefore are not relative to individuals. Some values are higher than others, with Godhood being the highest value, and this higher value of Godhood is what survival, reproduction and evolution strives for in the first place.

The Mistaken Eternal---Existence is Essence

For Aristotle the eternal was wordless, but this phrase does not include the idea, which he also believed, that the eternal was without material body, or even without supermaterial body, the eternal or Being was without being, not a material or supermaterial object. Most religions and philosophies agree and in fact see the eternal as completely abstract, or sometimes described with holy words or symbolic numbers, although they usually think of it as more than this.

The concept of the eternal, like time, is not a God, not a living or dead object. Time and the eternal are only related to what happens to an existing object, time and the eternal have no real meaning without reference to an existing object.

Real Godhood is more like the Greek chronos, the word for worldly time, and not like kairos, the word for eternal time. Chronos was considered profane, which was a transvaluation of real existence by the mystics.

But there is a hierarchy that does not include the non-material at its highest point, which does not move from the material to the non-material-abstract, but moves, or evolves, from the lower material to the higher supermaterial, and eventually to a Godhood of supermaterial life, and not a non-material God unconnected to life and real time.

Why has religion become increasingly unnecessary? Life does not advance by repressing life. Religion killed itself by making its God not of this world.

Existence is essence. There is no healthy need to find dualities between essence and existence, they are never separate. The activation of material life by the Spirit-Will exists within material life as part of life and is never outside of life. They have been together since the Primordial Material was activated by the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood at the beginning of this present universe, and universes before our universe.

We need to unblock our religions and philosophies from the Great Spiritual Blockade of the mistaken non-material eternal and evolve to real Godhood in the material and supermaterial world.

Economic nationalism as the way out of being submerged in greed

Grotesque, hypertrophied greed, that is the danger of capitalism and the free enterprise system, but capitalism and the free enterprise system can be saved with economic nationalism. Money alone should not define the total extent of a person, this attitude has given dishonest, unscrupulous and even stupid people great honor and respect based solely on their money. The position of money in the grotesque capitalism of globalism has overturned and confounded natural human behavior, and even human nature itself, money has become a divinity, ruling and defining everything, truth, beauty, goodness, governments, everything.

Economic nationalism suggests that neither big government or big business rules, the golden mean between them rules. Government protects the free enterprise system within the regions and states of the nation, that is, not only protection from foreign imports, but protection from the influence and dominance of national corporations who might want to monopolize everything. Neither big government or big business can fairly and efficiently run the economic system.

 

Both the government and philanthropy get their real money from the business and working world within a free enterprise system---where else would the real money come from? Government and philanthropy therefore depend on our free enterprise system, which is why the economic system should be kept as free as it can be to innovate with great variety. Then we can trade with each other and the world on fair terms.

 

But that freedom must now be defined as a global fair-trade freedom, not a global free-trade where global corporations destroy the manufacturing base of a nation to enrich themselves, which has happened in America.

 

We need to revitalize economic nationalism, which is how America and other nations originally gained health and power. We need to give the power back to the regions and small states so the most efficient level of economic operations can flourish, and then we need to protect that freedom with the light federalism that the Founder's envisioned.

Where are the politician's promoting a sane and healthy economic nationalism? Apparently they have been submerged in greed.

Pretentiousness, sublimation, and higher civilization

I have never liked, sliding away from the truth in mannerisms, speech and gestures, pretentiousness, phoniness, always seems somehow weaker... And yet, and yet, I understand that we must sublimate aggression and even the sex drive if we want higher civilization--- those people who cannot sublimate remain primitive, violent, and live short lives. We need to evolve far beyond the beast and this often seems to require more than the straight talk and the real behavior that we prefer.

It seems to me that unpretentious people are stronger than pretentious people, just in face to face connections, but it also seems to be true that unpretentious people are less successful than pretentious people. Pretentious people perhaps have a larger variety of behaviors, roles that they can play, in a complicated society, they sublimate the aggressive instincts. Some just may be inauthentic or bad actors. And pretentiousness seems to be stronger with the striving middle class and less so in the more aristocratic classes. But the skilled worker on weekends with his dogs and his gun acts not unlike the lord of the estate with his dogs and his gun. Also there is no doubt that genetic connections are involved in the ability to sublimate the instincts.

If we let mammalian drives, instincts (ergs), go as they go without sublimation we end up not moving beyond the primitive level of communication, which may be okay for some roles but not for most roles in higher civilization. We don't want to create opposition between the instincts and intelligence, nevertheless some instincts need to be checked and sublimated, not blocked---sex and aggression are certainly sublimated in the higher religious and aesthetic pursuits...This all adds up to the natural often conflicted behavior of human beings.

That being said, we don't want to move too far away from basic real human nature, and we may not even be able to do so successfully, which includes such things as kin selection, marriage-making, religious-making, among other things, with group-selection, even ethnocentrism, as the primary unit of selection. I consider the material spirit or will, which activates within material life like a Super-Id, as the zenith of all  these instincts, it is leading us to evolve in the material world toward Godhood, shaped by the outside forces of evolution and selection. That is one instinct that is already sublime in its unpretentious state.

Defining the religious process of conservative evolution

The concept of a thing requires one thing defining another thing, this does not mean the thing is not there if no one is around to define it, but it shows how definitions and concepts depend on who is doing the defining. A frog can't form the word for a thing like a human but can still see a thing as best his senses can see the thing. Our past concepts of God came from this procedure, it was the best we could define God at our level of consciousness and intelligence.

We attached a fixed definition to a process, the process of evolution, we usually found something familiar to define as the fixed cause, when it is really an endless process of change and Becoming more than it is Being. But we see that we also need to pause in our evolution to make as certain as we can that the new mutations evolved are beneficial. Then we continue on in the process and the Becoming of evolution. We preserve ourselves with our concepts, but it is all in the process of overcoming ourselves and evolving to new species. Oddly and incongruously this is best done as a conservative process, this pausing to secure our beneficial gains before moving forward again. It is change within order, it is conservative evolution.

Evolution toward what? Here we apply everything, reason, intellectual intuition, nothing is ruled out during the search for truth or reality. Then we define truth more like Michael Polanyi, that is, something is true if it reveals deeper meaning, if it has potential for future discoveries or manifestations, if it relates well to other truths found in other areas, and not merely because something could be true because it could be proven exactly with scientific methodology.

This is how we arrive at Theological Materialism, the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, the Twofold Path, the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis. We are materially evolving to supermaterial Godhood in the cosmos, activated by the Spirit-Will residing within, not outside, the material world, and shaped by the outside environment of evolution and selection. We retain, in conservative evolution, the old conception or symbolic experience of the Inward God or Father Within, but it is transformed in the Outward Path of material-supermaterial evolution to real Godhood. We can all evolve in our own way, at our own pace, in ethnopluralistic regions and states, as real human nature prefers, where variety enhances evolution---and we can share knowledge with one another. 

Human beings are capable of this sacred evolution.