Re-imagining moral imagination

In theological materialism, Godhood is transformed from the non-material to the material/supermaterial, and then re-imagined culturally in moral art (perhaps another version of Burke's “moral imagination”). God is not rejected but conservatively transformed: the God or Father Within of traditional religion is understood in the Twofold Path as a symbolic experience of the real Godhood reached through material and supermaterial evolution.

There is teleological purpose in the activation of the evolution of life, and not “mere” utility or strength. Basic causality is seen in the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood which activates and virtually defines life. The teleological equation becomes utility (survival success of Darwin) plus strength ( power eg. Nietzsche) leads toward upward evolution (theological materialism). Both religion and science are transformed, and saved. Godhood is seen as the zenith of beauty, truth, goodness, power, etc. attained in material/supermaterial evolution.

There is no legitimate universal right for the West to insist on the freedom to attack Mohammed or for Islam to demand universal obedience to its values

A very important real “universal” is the affirmation of its opposite: exclusiveness, the particular. This means that radical Islam does not have the universal right to impose its religion on the whole world, but then the West does not have the universal right to impose its ideas on free expression and democracy on the whole world either. There is no legitimate universal right for the West to insist on the freedom to attack Mohammed or for Islam to demand universal obedience to its values, that is totalitarianism.

The separation of powers and states is one of the beauties of the United States Constitution, which is one of the few healthy political universals blocking totalitarianism. This we have to return to---it is a highly civilized worldview related to natural human nature, which is universally 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.

The separation of powers and states allows human nature to flourish, totalitarianism obviously does not, whether it derives from Western neoconservatism/neoliberalism or from radical Islam.

Realism also tells us that the separation of powers and states, which brings healthy variety, needs to be defended or it is lost.

Valuing ethnic and national differences more than world markets

One doesn't want to destroy world trade, but one also doesn't want to destroy the uniqueness and exclusiveness of separate nations and small states, which world markets and globalism have in fact done. It's a matter of valuing differences in cultures and states more than world markets---global markets usually make a few capitalists very rich and everyone else less rich, while destroying variety and natural differences, as well as damaging religion, morality, politics---even science is subsumed.

“For 40 years, U.S. workers have seen factories close, jobs disappear and company towns become ghost towns, the "creative destruction" of Joe Schumpeter's felicitous phrase. Only the wholesale destruction was no accident, it was planned.” (Pat Buchanan). This is why the protection of tariffs on foreign products is one of the few places (national defense is another) where government over-site can be good. What we need is a separation of powers where no section or group in the world or the nation can gain dominance over the others, which happens to be what the Founders of the United States had in mind by separating powers and states.

But successfully and harmoniously separating nations and states to protect differences does seem to require civilized people. At least real human nature is solidly on the side of preferring ones own kind, as the science of sociobiology has most recently reiterated. But politics in the West has been captured by nation-destroying-globalism, so changing this will of course be a challenge.

What is the difference between multiculturalism and ethnopluralism?

Multiculturalism attempts to be universal, and in doing so, no culture is supported---although people privately tend to prefer their own. Ethnopluralism takes seriously the differences in ethnic cultures and groups, enough to allow them to flourish, and preferably in their own territories. Then, as Angelo Codevilla wrote, “good relations” become not ends in themselves but a way to deal with one another in each country, preferably with cooperative competition.

Ethnopluralism is closely harmonious with real human nature, which is not only ethnocentric and often xenophobic, but also in every culture ever studied, human nature included kin-selection, incest taboos, marriage, hierarchy, division of labor, gender differentiation, localism, and group selection as the center of selection. If a culture proposes to not include these things the culture does not last long and eventually returns to these things.

My hope is that one day the separation of powers and states inherent in the United States Constitution will deepen to see states and regions as virtual ethnostates. This might occur in any case with more primitive separations and secessions---personally, I could only agree to doing it legally and conservatively....But our depraved and controlled culture today seems not yet ready to even think about this return to health.

Order, the Populist Right, and Ethnopluralism

Both big government and big business tend to destroy the natural exclusiveness of localism, small states, and even nations. We need not be against trading with the world but against being devoured by the world, where everything becomes subservient to bigness.

Contending against big government and big business is of course not easy, they have immense wealth and power. It seems to me that some form of populism which promotes the natural rights inherent in localism seems possible. But populism has been exploited by both the left and the right. The populist left tends to like big government and hate big business, whereas the the populist right tends to hate both big government and big business, which seems like the healthier way to go.

The United States Constitution seems to me to be on the side of the populist right. Libertarians move in localist directions but their hyper-individualism overlooks the centrality of group-selection in real human nature which tends to allow powerful individuals to return to bigness and exploitation.

I would like to see localism and the rights of small states eventually deepen to include an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, which could bring the longest-term order---if their independence was protected by a light federalism. The order of society depends on the process of appropriation and assimilation and if the process of assimilation does not succeed the whole organism falls apart and separation occurs. Here the science of sociobiology can help us in seeing that people really do get along and assimilate best locally, and with their own kind.

Reviving teleological purposes

I agree with Nietzsche that the inner activation of life is a more important dynamic in evolution than the environment, but I think the inner activation is more than the “will-to-power." There is a goal, a sacred destination, beyond strength (Nietzsche) or utility (Darwin.)

Happiness and hunger are part of a deeper instinctive process which only uses these things to aid in the goal of evolving toward Godhood. Even success in survival and reproduction are a secondary result of the activation (the Spirit-Will-to-Godhood) toward Godhood.

Why does a thing want to survive successfully? The deeper purpose is not mentioned, if we can't measure it we won't consider it. Teleological purposes are buried. It is the development toward Godhood that is the real “progress.”

Godhood by way of evolution is the God we have been trying to define for millenniums, it is a transformed version of the inward God of traditional religion, which is conservatively retained but transformed in the Twofold Path.

Unifying the city of man and the city of God

The city of man and the city of God can be reconciled in the material and supermaterial evolution of material man to supermaterial Godhood. There is no real separation here, no real conflict, when material evolution is understood to continue to supermaterial Godhood---in theological materialism both man and Godhood are on the continuum of evolution.

The diversity of mankind and the universal goal of Godhood need not be a conflict if separation and variety are understood to enhance real evolution toward Godhood. Diversity and universalism can work in harmony with real human nature, which is in fact naturally ethnocentric and even xenophobic. The goal of diverse ethnic cultures and states is to evolve universally toward Godhood. Forms of federalism can protect the general evolutionary independence.

I know of no better way for mankind to realistically get along over the long term while retaining sacred religion and natural philosophy and science. Humans are capable of cooperative competition in this great and sacred adventure.

Fantasy God or Real Godhood?

There has been much theological fictionalizing, treating God as independent of material life and distinct from nature. Then religious philosopher's developed brilliant ways to make a non-material God seem both rational and objective. This should have sent up alarms regarding what reason and objectivity really mean.

We don't have to lose God, or more precisely, Godhood, if we bring God back to real nature. We evolve in the material and supermaterial world toward Godhood. Nature preceded both man and God, indeed, nature evolved both man and Godhood.

When we conceive of Godhood as that which we evolve to become in the material and supermaterial world, as is done in theological materialism, then religious and philosophical problems tend to be resolved. We can conservatively retain but transform the old conceptions of God in the Twofold Path.

Why Evolution?

Life is not so much a “force-establishing process” as Nietzsche suggested (The Will To Power) with no goal, life is a Godhood-establishing process by way of evolution. But life does seem to be evolving not toward stability or equilibrium, life just keeps on evolving higher and higher, even as it also devolves occasionally.

What does this say about the evolution toward complexity? Nietzsche suggested that complexity can be a simplifying process as well. Evolution simplifies an unwieldy mass, with a sort of refined complexity. The evolution of life is more a “continually increasing but persistently simplifying process.” But contra Nietzsche, evolution is more than only a force-establishing process.

I describe the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood of theological materialism as a plurality of forces bound not so much as a common “nutritive process” or “force-establishing process” but as the inward activation of life toward the zenith of evolution, which is Godhood. The Spirit-Will activation then works with the outside forces of selection and evolution in whatever environment life finds itself in.

Evolution and adaptability explain what happens, but not why. The Spirit-Will-To-Godhood and not the will to power alone is “a means, an instrument in service to higher life, and the elevation of life.” Our consciousnesses has not been fully aware of this process, which created consciousness.

Sacred cause and purpose in the modern world

If science cannot find a main purpose, a cause, a goal behind life, this does not mean that life has no goal. But a mathematical formula may not be complete knowledge of a thing, and neither will be a mere definition. Men tend to reduce all phenomena to the level of men with human senses and human mathematics, but any Godhood attained by way of evolution will be way beyond man and beyond man's senses and mathematics. But we do still want to affirm what is “right by nature,” as Aristotle put it, and this means we examine nature by various means including reason, intuition and even some form of revelation.

Theological materialism seeks to answer this question of purpose and goal. The general word “evolution” explains an enormous fact, but why a given life is used for this purpose is not fully explained. We evolve not merely for survival and reproductive success but because life seeks the zenith of survival, truth, and beauty in evolution, which helps define Godhood, the Godhood religions have been trying to define for millenniums. Nature is not God, nature becomes Godhood by way of life evolving to Godhood in the material and supermaterial world. The central question for religion, philosophy and science then becomes: what is the best way for life to evolve to Godhood? And cultural creations follow from that foundation.

Life and the cosmic goal

To adapt and change Nietzsche (The Will To Power), we could say the evolution of life is a “force-establishing process” in which various contending forces grow unequally, with some coming to terms with resisting forces by combining with those that are sufficiently related to it, and they then conspire together for power and survival success. And the process continues with continual “interpretation” of the various power levels as one of the very first principles of the organic evolutionary process.

The cosmos is not evolving toward a state of stability, and so its evolutionary zenith is not equilibrium. Energy is converted into life and then life is converted toward evolving to Godhood by way of material/supermaterial evolution, which goes on always, with some life receding, devolving, and other life evolving toward Godhood.

Religion, philosophy and science need to harmonize with this dynamic. In our overpopulated world this is how we arrive at a cooperative ethnopluralism, to harmonize with the natural dynamic of evolution, real human nature, group selection, and the contending forces of men. The cosmic goal is Godhood, which is life at its highest evolution and success.

Essence and Existence

It is not ideas but evolution which drives history, which does not mean ideas are not important, but ideas are driven by biological evolution. Intellectuals especially often overlook this in making illusory ideas the driving force of history.

It requires more than the consciousness of evolution, evolution is not merely a mental awareness, we require actual biological evolution toward Godhood. Actual future human evolution will need to be revived after being buried by modern liberalism.

For me, bringing existence in harmony with essence means affirming and harmonizing the essential activating force within life, which is the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, with biological and superbiological evolution in the environment, which defines existence.

How the driving forces of future history can be religious

It is not non-material ideas and conceptions that drive history, these can be illusions, it is men and groups seeking to survive and reproduce successfully, and thereby creating cultures, civil societies, ideas and conceptions. Ideas that harmonize with this material evolutionary worldview are the most realistic.

What has been considered “objective” has often treated historical conditions independent of the actions of material life and evolution. On the other hand, I don't think that the Americanized modern French ideas that see no objective truth which now dominate academia---mainly influenced by adapting German Nietzsche---will prevail.

We need not rule out religion or even Godhood as other philosophies of materialism do, there is no need to completely “pass from the realm of God to the realm of man.” Life evolves in the material world to Godhood, if it can, and this can define future ideas and conceptions in religion, philosophy, and science. Real human nature along with altered circumstances of living can bring this realism forward.

How to avoid Nietzsche's radicalism and affirm materialism in religion

Nietzsche was too radical, he jumped from the traditional spiritualism and celibacy of religion to the affirmation of amoral material desire, especially with his goalless will-to-power. Such a radical jump can be considered unrealistic when one absorbs the more realistic evolutionary rather than revolutionary ideas of change in conservatives like Burke and Kirk.

Philosophical or ascetic priests tried to bring about a Great Spiritual Blockade of material desires, which was designed to aid in the ascetic experience of the God or Father Within. This did not work well among the population, it worked best in monasteries ( although it also led to homosexuality among the priests.) So the “sins” of materialism remained, as they well might.

The Twofold Path is the less radical more evolutionary approach to religion, the Involutionary Inward Path to the God Within is retained as the first glimpse or human experience of God but it is now transformed by affirming and not blocking the material desires of evolution which lead toward real Godhood in the Evolutionary Outward Path.

Material desires are not defined as the “free,” radical, amorality of Nietzsche's goalless will-to-power, material desires are subsumed in the evolutionary ethics of material and supermaterial evolution leading toward Godhood in the Evolutionary Outward Path.