High and Low Art

If high art is the refined affirmation of the sacred, and low art is the unrefined affirmation of the sacred, profane art would not affirm the sacred or could even actively deny the sacred. This seems to be seen in traditional cultures.

Does this imply a “universal” art and a universal sacred? Not necessarily. Each culture, each people tend to have their own version of the sacred---which can however show universal similarities. This is another argument in favor of ethnopluralism which best allows separate ethnic cultures to affirm their own ideas of the sacred.

This also allows cultures to exist in harmony with our existing human nature, which remains ethnocentric and group-selecting. Some sort of cooperative yet competitive federalism can then protect the whole.

What politicians of courage eventually need to affirm and promote

What needs to be repudiated is collectivist statism, rampaging global corporations, feminism, open immigration, egalitarianism, and multiculturalism---none of these things relate to real human nature. We need to affirm ethnopluralism, the separation of powers, regions and states for ethnic cultures, (which the U. S. Constitution could accommodate), and the affirmation of the continued evolution of life in the material and supermaterial world toward Godhood.

This requires politicians with the real courage to commit electoral and social suicide, with the hope that men of courage eventually impress their people with the real needs of survival and evolution. The “great man” view of history applies here, but great men need groups as much as groups need great men, as group-selection remains the main unit of selection.

As Western social order falls, ethnopluralism could naturally rise, but there is a risk of strong despotism first, which is not the separation of powers and states we require, given real human nature. Human nature will change as we evolve beyond the human species, but for now we remain very much kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection, which social and political structures need to harmonize with for long term survival.

In whose service morality?

Nietzsche asked the question, in whose service does morality, virtue, culture, work, and he answered: in service to the will-to-power, which he thought was goalless. I think otherwise, morality serves the fundamental animal-yet-sacred function of the activation of life to evolve toward the goal of Godhood.

The zenith and perfection of material/supermaterial evolution is Godhood, which is the ultimate of successful survival, the Godhood only seen in its preliminary stage of understanding in the Inward Path by experiencing the God or Father Within of traditional religion.

Flesh and blood, the objects of life are far more important than the means of culture, virtue, morality, and more important than definitions and symbols which are actually worshiped in much of religion and philosophy.

There is one action, one material/supermaterial Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, inherent in all phenomena, although it has been the most concealed.

Nietzsche was almost right, but he missed the sacred goal of life and evolution, and he killed God instead. The sacred path is to continue the evolution of life to Godhood. The old preliminary Inward God can be retained---conservative change is more realistic---but transformed in the Outward Path of evolution to Godhood, which is the Twofold Path.

Reason, the Senses, and the Super-Id

Unlike Burke I don't think that a man left to his passions will necessarily be a savage beast. Even Nietzsche made the same mistake in seeing the instincts more as a Dionysian beast, but unlike Burke, Nietzsche did not want to mediate the beast with reason (which to Burke seems to have been morality). Nietzsche claimed to like the beast, which had no goal other than power itself.

I define and present a Super-Id as the the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, and define Godhood as the material or supermaterial sacred goal of the Super-Id, the instincts combined, and the evolutionary goal of life itself. Godhood is the evolutionary zenith of intelligence, beauty, truth, goodness etc, and of course, is not a savage beast.

Reason and morality too often overcompensate or repress the creative imagination that comes from our senses (Burke's moral imagination), and also can obfuscate the data from our senses, which can become a Great Spiritual Blockade. I see reason more like the rider of a valiant steed called the Super-Id or Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which the rider/reason can help harmonize with, or even guide, but the rider is not the steed itself---and the rider would be arrogant in thinking that he alone sets the sacred goal.

 

The main strength of conservatism

Conservatism at its best fits youth into maturity, which is like fitting meritocracy into aristocracy. Time and experience allow cultural maturity to accumulate, but we need to avoid aristocracies where merit has slipped and become effete snobbery. But meritocracies alone can bring unethical, uncultured, bright monsters. We need both youth and maturity, both meritocracy and aristocracy. I think conservatism can do this, which is the main strength of conservatism, when it's working at its best. This applies to politics as well as religion. Even science can benefit from the conservative approach. This is also mainly the way evolution works---radical revolution usually harms more than it helps.

Don't replace biological evolution with intelligent-machine evolution

I don't worry about the development of intelligent machines as much as I worry about those who control the machines as their will to power. Nietzsche rightly said that science is usually the transformation of nature into concepts for the purpose of governing nature, and I see this being done among the brilliant transhumanists and singularity people. They may not look or act like it but they have the will to power of military generals.

Awhile back I wrote: “In the process of our materiel/supermaterial evolution, machine intelligence has the potential to evolve considerably faster than biological life can evolve, but this does not mean that we should abandon the sacred goal of biological life evolving to Godhood. This could no doubt bring a contention between advocates of machine enhancement and advocates of biological enhancement. Intelligent machines can certainly serve slower evolving biological intelligence, but it is simply suicidal to be centered only on super-intelligent machines. Some of our brightest minds have been intimidated by a devious political correctness (cultural Marxism) into replacing biological evolution with machine evolution---courage here is needed, the sacred purpose of real life evolving to Godhood depends on it.”

The old enemies of ethnopluralism and social harmony: looking the hard truths of ethnicity in the face

We have to look the hard truths of ethnicity in the face. The problem with one-race supremacy and empire is that all ethnic groups feel that they are supreme, at least instinctively, which is why one-race supremacy and empire have been defeated time and again throughout human history.

A juxtaposition of ancient and modern knowledge is seen in ethnocentrism. Human nature is in fact ethnocentric and xenophobic (as well as being gender-defined, heterosexual marriage-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection) and human nature has been this way at least since hunter-gatherer times, which has been reflected in both ancient and modern worldviews, from traditionalism to sociobiology.

While it is not perfect comparison, the one-race supremacist ethos of Chosen Jew, Aryan German, Black Power, Asian Power, or Hispanic power, all roughly feel that their own ethnic group and culture is superior to all others. The way to civilize this ancient yet modern beast is to affirm ethnopluralism, with separate, small, largely ethnic states, which is in social harmony with real human nature, protected by some sort of cooperative federalism.

This is the closest we can come to social harmony between distinctive ethnic groups and cultures, and it needs to not be swept under the carpet of political correctness as it has been. Ethnic supremacy and empire are the enemies of ethnopluralism. The long-term material and supermaterial evolution of human beings toward Godhood, which is our sacred destiny, requires long-term social and technical harmony, which ethnic wars destroy, along with the natural life on earth.

Counter-Abstraction in religion and philosophy

“Ultimate happiness” is not in the contemplation of God, as Aristotle and the Catholic philosophers tell us---important as that is in the Inward Path---it comes in attaining physical and supermaterial Godhood in ongoing material evolution in the Outward Path. This view takes religion and philosophy out of the dead world of abstraction, while retaining the experience of the God Within, and into the real world of the objects of life. It is not the definition of God, truth, beauty or virtue that comes first, it is actually becoming and being or embodying these things as physical living objects. This counter-abstraction counters the Great Spiritual Blockade, and affirms theological materialism.

How the United States could last another several hundred years, at least

Sometimes it's disheartening to realize that even as “Affirmative Action” is slowly being understood to really be reverse discrimination---for example, giving 20 points to underrepresented minorities for admission to various universities, or one fifth of those points needed, regardless of their test scores---we do still nevertheless apply the concept of “discrimination” even in the face of many years of evolutionary science, from Darwin to Edward Wilson's sociobiology, showing that human nature is kin-centered, and is ethnocentric, even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

Rather than trying to force assimilation, which rational people can see is not working in the United States (and elsewhere), we should by now be gradually protecting unique ethnic cultures living within their own geographical localities and states. This would seem to mean a gradual acceptance of Black states in the South, Hispanic states in the West, White states in the Midwest, and even mixed states in the East, if they insist on trying to make assimilation work.

But with cultural Marxism now largely---and uncomfortably---in place in the United States, a natural geographical ethnopluralism does seem difficult to bring about. But if we could put this natural political behavior in place, over time, legally, in the United States---which already has a separation of powers and states on paper---we could perhaps last another several hundred years, at least.

Transforming Both the City of Man and the City of Godhood

If we go along with the Thomist idea—adapted from Aristotle—that the purpose of the city is to have a place where people can live virtuous lives, with social design forms in harmony with real human nature, and then if we upgrade Aristotle's definition of human nature to include human nature defined by modern sociobiology (human nature as being 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), and then if we transform the old Greek concept of God from a God as mainly supremely rational to also--and more importantly--a Godhood attained by way of the evolution of material and supermaterial life, then we can more practically affirm ethnopluralism as containing both cities of man and cities of Godhood, that is, cities and small states containing mainly ethnic cultures involved in the highest value of citizens evolving toward Godhood in their own unique ways, with variety, living in the natural ethnic configurations which human nature has always preferred.

We would then have material cities of man evolving toward supermaterial cities of Godhood. On the one hand ethnopluralism would be very much involved in the particular, the local, the place, while ethnopluralism would also transform the local to the universal with its sacred goal of all life evolving toward Godhood. The transformation need not even be a radical transformation since, for example, it can conservatively go along with the separation of powers and states and the federalism of the original United States Constitution.

The material primal plot and the sacred path

What someone called the “primal plot” usually does not include the evolution of life to Godhood, which is the real primal plot. It does not begin in Eden and end in Golgotha, or Nepal, or Mecca, that is only part of the plot. It begins at the various primal origins of various universes, all of which appear to be evolving material life toward Godhood. Some make it, some do not. That is the material primal plot as well as the sacred path. The ultimate purpose of life, which includes art and culture, is not merely to confirm a “maker” but to affirm the sacred path to Godhood of material and supermaterial evolution, guided by the activating Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within life.

Beyond the Will-to-Power

Going beyond Nietzsche, it is not reducing all the intentions of life to the increase in goal-less power, power is an adaptation to the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which is the sacred goal of evolving material and supermaterial life, as well as the secondary goal of having the greatest success in survival and reproduction. This exhumes Godhood, religion and morality after their murder attempt by Nietzsche.

The purpose of the sun is not alone to warm the earth for us, the energy that reaches the earth is only a small part of the sun's output. Even at the most basic level, the sun's energy has that inner activating Spirit-Will-To-Godhood seeking Godhood in its basic level of action, as it helps engender life where it can, as other stars do.

Model of causation and activation in theological materialism

The Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within life activates energy and matter to evolve in the material/supermaterial world toward Godhood; even at the most basic level, the concept of energy has this inner Spirit-Will-To-Godhood. Then comes the power drive, then the hunger drive, then the molding of the evolutionary drive to survival and reproductive success, and then the intellectual function and shaping of the social/cultural/political drive. All these things interact with the environment and the outside forces of selection and evolution. All action is this process of evolution. All these sequences are adaptations to the fundamental Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which have been mostly unconscious to life, including human life. The evolution of man is this way on the path to higher evolution, bringing forward higher evolved individuals and groups, all moving, with starts and stops and devolution, on the sacred path toward highest evolved Godhood.