Updating the Southern Agrarians

The Southern Agrarian's thought that with the traditional bonds dissolved society would become anarchic or be forced together by a central state. Force, not love of place and culture would hold things together. This more or less is what happened. But I don't think the Agrarian's emphasized enough the importance of ethnic cultures and groups. The other problem with the Agrarians was that they thought science was a threat and that the idea of  "progress" only dissolved traditional social bonds. They also disliked "industrialism" for the same reason.

However, the science of sociobiology affirms localized and ethnic bonding, which brings science into traditionalism, whether it is accepted or not. The loss of religion due to science is also updated, which is a central theme of this blog: we evolve in the material and supermaterial world to the Godhood only symbolically experienced as the God or Father within of traditional religion. Science this way enters religion and conservatism.

The ethnopluralism hypothesis, which proposes regional, state, and local control against big-government central control, along with the bonding of separate ethnic cultures and the right of states within our federation, is in line with real human nature, which is kin-centered, even xenophobic, and group-selecting. But the measure of any political system is related to its evolutionary path, which leads to the bonding of groups and cultures, keeping the best of the past as we evolve toward Godhood.

Theological materialism describes religion as bringing ourselves in harmony with the evolutionary intention of life to evolve toward Godhood, and it seeks to define our role in this sacred path. The idea of "original sin" kept the Agrarians from affirming science, evolution and progress. When Godhood is understood as that which we evolve to become in the material and supermaterial world, then "progress" certainly enters religion.