I had been thinking about how
conservatism itself needs to be added to poetry, art and music when we speak
of “making things new” over time, the old included with the new,
when I watched an interview with Glenn Greenwald, the reporter and
promoter of the NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden. It occurred to me
that there is a connection here with the philosophical (and now
scientific) mistake libertarians make regarding individualism and
altruism.
E. O. Wilson, the great innovator
in sociobiology, has recently affirmed group-selection as the primary
unit of selection. This does not mean that kin-selection and
individual selection are not important, but our basic survival
affirms group-selection first.
What is missing or deemphasized by
individualism is the biological foundation of altruism at the base of
social behavior and at the foundation of morality itself. Some
libertarians even admit the natural pull of group morality but
then choose to see this as something innovative people need to fight
against. They are in good company, even Nietzsche made this mistake.
That way of thinking is too easily
applied to anti-social hedonism, which easily walks through the open
door of individualism, where anti-social deviations and even criminal
behavior justify themselves by alluding to the sacredness of
individualism.
As mentioned above,
conservatism also needs to find better ways of making things new. I am
not talking about progressivism, I'm talking about having a way
within the system for innovators and whistle-blowers to make the old
new. Otherwise we lose creativity and we stagnate, and stagnation is
not conservative. But innovators and whistle-blowers need to
acknowledge the vital importance of altruism and group morality, even
above individual morality.
Personally, I empathize with the
problems of innovators, I have been developing a new religious
philosophy, which includes the old in the new, and I am an
outsider. But I am a patriotic and conservative outsider refusing
anti-social or radical revolution. I think it is vital to be able
to tell the difference between social and antisocial innovations,
which is of course not always easy. Social psychology, psychometrics, has been developing ways, tests, etc. to help us do this.
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ReplyDeleteWhen you say "new religious philosophy", are you sure it's really new? The wrong adjective might be misleading, even to its creator. It sounds a lot like the old religious philosophy, purged of its mistakes and "catching up to its ideal image", if I can put it poetically: that is, the West has always pushed for a "full orbed" view of Truth, often at the expense of Tradition, sublimating all of human nature within the Divine, rather than sacrificing parts of that human nature. I speak historically.
The “old religious philosophy” saw only the God Within, but that was only after ridding the body of all desires, as all of the great mystics advocated. The Outward Path indeed presents something new, that is, the material and supermaterial evolution to real Godhood, in this world, not outside this world, as Tradition suggests, which was stretching the truth since there is no outside this world.
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