How progress need not be a dirty word

The centralization of state capitalism and state socialism are both unhealthy. The redistribution of wealth and the lifting of all boats is not real progress since they lead to the mess the West has made of its civilization, with its progress-as-consumption propagandized by the global capitalists. However, the answer to the ideology of progress-as-consumption is not to reject progress but to accept the steady biological evolution of man toward Godhood. That is progress affirmed by nature itself. So why doesn't the left and right accept this evolutionary view of progress? It seems mainly do the religious interpretation of flawed and fallen man---at least with conservatives.

I believe the traditional religious view of fallen man is a misinterpretation that exclusively features the God or Father Within rather than Godhood Without which is reached by material and supermaterial evolution. Experiencing the God Within has required the blocking or cessation of all material desires, as the religious founders instructed, and blocking material desires is not exactly life-affirming---it might even be considered hedonistic since experiencing the God Within exclusively in the Inward Path, without the Outward Path, can be individually blissful. The inward view also led to the idea of equality since material things were not considered important, and even sinful.

Godhood needs to be reinterpreted as the traditional Inward Path of asceticism transformed and realized in the Outward Path of material evolution to supermaterial Godhood. Both paths can be conservatively retained in the Twofold Path.

We can also retain “free enterprise,” which initially led to the highest standard of general living in human history, but our “standard of living” can now include steady progress in biological human evolution---eventually even beyond the earth---toward Godhood. This is how progress need not be a dirty word. Let our progress be voluntary, even as our biological evolution becomes our sacred foundation. Great civilizations need a sacred religious foundation, and with this reform, religion can be saved, while real progress can be continued.

The Constitution could accommodate the saving grace of ethnopluralism, without secession

There are some who worry that ethnic hostilities, unchecked immigration etc. within the United States will eventually cause the downfall of the nation, and they therefore call for the secession of states and regions, creating two or more countries. While I also see the coming ethnic civil disruptions, I  think that the legal separation of powers and states in the U. S. Constitution could accommodate ethnopluralism in a less radical and conservative way. We can keep the nation and Constitution intact but adapt it to our unassimilating ethnic cultures. Although this probably would not happen quickly, we can give power back to the states in accord with the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which expresses the principle of federalism as the foundation plan of the original Constitution---that is, the federal government possesses only those powers delegated to it by the Constitution and remaining powers are reserved for the states or the people. It is fortunate that our Founding Fathers set up the separation of powers and states in the Constitution which could accommodate the saving grace of ethnopluralism---if we really wanted to do it, and have the wisdom to do so.

The conservative (and sometimes liberal ) movement of localism also affirms this natural legal separation. Here is a good  interview from July in the American Conservative magazine which shows how localism prospers even in a age of globalization: "A World of Cities" by Alan Crawford.

The Great Spiritual Blockade of Reality

Intellectuals often overlook or even block their emotions. Some of this could be an element of the genetic qualities of our brains, we may have overcompensated in the evolution of our minds over our bodies.

This helped lead to misunderstandings and false ideas which we see in religion and philosophy, where two modes of being, the phenomenal world of the senses, and the world of spirit were wrongly contrasted, where ideas and the spiritual were given priority over the material world.

Reason is a tool of the body not meant to block the instincts and emotions, but meant to help us understand and help direct the instinctive brain, which is far older and in many respects wiser than the rational brain. This is one of the main tasks of religion, science, and the humanities, to harmonize in a natural and realistic way the mind and body.

Contrary to Plato and many other thinkers the unreal world of spiritual forms and ideas get their reality from the real material world. Ideas are only copies of material or supermaterial objects, not the other way around. Mathematical formulas and definitions are only half truths without being first represented by real objects. Even the forces in quantum science are not non-material or spiritual, they are the secondary effect of material things (electrical?) which help create the quantum forces, although we still need to discover more of what they are and how they work.

The one “faith,” the main abstraction, allowed in this perspective is the instinctive and rational projection of the evolution of the material world to supermaterial Godhood. But even here it is the phenomenal world we are speaking of since supermaterial Godhood is grounded in the real world defined as the zenith of material evolution. This is not the same as the God of dualism, and not the same as the idea-God defined as not existing in the world of material phenomenon. This false duality in religion and philosophy can be brought back to realty in the religious philosophy of theological materialism.

The revealed religions center on an Inward God not an Outward God. The Inward God is the mirror image of the Outward God (opposite Plato) which can exist as a supreme supermaterial living object, evolved to in nature. Both Paths are contained within the Twofold Path of theological materialism. The Spirit-Will and Godhood are not immaterial entities, as they are in Aristotle, Aquinas and even Darwin.

Mind concepts exist as computational constructions in the brain and are not independent of the brain. The mind is the brain, as naturalism suggests, but the mind includes, at its zenith, the Spirit-Will-to-Godhood, but this is supermaterial and not immaterial. The Soul-Mind is where the mirror image of the outside God exists, and the Spirit-Will activates Soul, mind and body as its vehicle to evolve to Godhood. The Spirit-Will carries on through or within material reproduction, propagation, natural selection and outside evolution, potentially all the way to Godhood, which is the sacred goal of life.

Defining political configurations as collectivism versus individualism rather than right and left

Libertarianism would this way be defined as radical but not militant international individualism, and fascism would be militant but mainly national collectivism. Communism would be mainly a militant international collectivism.  With its “cooperative individualism” (Clinton Rossiter term) and its group morality, conservatism would be in the middle between collectivism and individualism but leaning toward individualism.

According to sociobiological studies, group-selection is the main unit of selection, and I therefore think we can combine ethnopluralism, or ethnic collectivism, with American conservatism, given that the separation of powers and states in the U. S. Constitution could accommodate regional ethnic states, protected by federalism.

Ethnopluralism calls for a sociobiologically affirmed conservatism, where group-selection is understood as the main unit of selection, taking into account cooperative individualism within the states, and a cooperative ethnopluralism protected by federalism within larger territories. We could then better avoid civil disruption within states and nations from competing ethnic cultures, which is virtually inevitable given that human nature remains group-selecting and even xenophobic. With ethnopluralism we could also better avoid selfish individualism and militant forms of collectivism.

It would probably only confuse things if we turned things around and defined collectivism as on the right, including both fascism and communism, and individualism on the left, including libertarianism, and a middle left-leaning conservatism. Ethnopluralism would be seen as between right collectivism and left individualism, with individualism understood as secondary to group-selection within natural ethnic states. But it's probably easier just to define political configurations as ranging between  collectivism and individualism rather than right versus left.

Plato's Error

Plato turned from the outside concerns of the pre-Socratics to the inside concerns of traditional religion, and that was a philosophical and theological error. “Know thy world” became “Know thyself.” This error continued the error of the old religions in turning away from the real world of the phenomenal senses toward the spiritual world of ideas. Plato essentially rejected the reality of the real world as surely as Nietzsche rejected the reality of the spiritual world. Saying that the Idea of things is more real than the object it defines was, frankly, ridiculous, but there it took root, in the first university of Europe, and it remains in the universities and seminaries of the world.

Plato should have transformed the inward path rather than essentially rejecting the outward path. And Nietzsche should not have rejected the inward path but transformed it in the outward path. After much ascetic discipline in blocking the desires of the instincts so as to see or experience the God or Father Within---whether called God, Logos or Reason---it remains a symbolic experience of the real Godhood which can be reached through material and supermaterial evolution. This understanding is seen in the Twofold Path of theological materialism, and it can help mend the many antagonism of “duality,” between matter and spirit, science and religion, and so on.

Authenticity and the Self

I define “authenticity” different than Heidegger and Sartre, who define the authentic self as the anxiety we feel when we acknowledge death, or define authenticity as the self-choices we make in a life of meaningless freedom.

I think we have to define the “self ” as fully as we can before we can define real authenticity. But even once we manage to define human nature this alone does not define the most “authentic” behavior.

Human nature is among other things, kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. These traits were developed over hundreds of thousand of years of evolution primarily to enhance success in survival and reproduction. But survival and reproduction are secondary to the sacred goal of survival and reproduction, and that goal is for life to evolve to Godhood.

The “lower-self” is the self of human nature, including ones personality. But life is activated from within by the material Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which is the “middle-self.” Even the activating Spirit-Will is not defined as the complete self because it too seeks Godhood by activating life to evolve to Godhood, which is the “upper-self,” and the true self.

Human nature and the activating Spirit-Will within human nature are this way seen as the incomplete self with incomplete authenticity, and Godhood is seen as the complete self with complete authenticity. This is defined in theological materialism.

It is also important to define authenticity (although incomplete) as being what we are at any given time and at any given development, whether or not it is the lower, middle or upper self. As we grow and learn and evolve, this becomes part of what our authentic self is, which we should show at any given time with authenticity, even if it often takes courage. This gives proper respect to life as it is in time, without overbearing pride, arrogance, or hubris. Over much time and with much evolution we may actually become fully authentic and the true Self by attaining Godhood.

How did postmodernism dominate so quickly?

I continue to be amazed at how something as insane as postmodernism could dominate the academic world so quickly. The postmodern idea that everything is socially constructed (but not postmodernism?) is almost psychotic.

This has led to such bizarre things as transgenderism being promoted as natural, even if it requires years of extensive, painful and expensive surgery. It has also led to the overall destruction of standards of excellence in education with affirmative action, which overlooks the reality that we can't have both excellence and equality at the same time (as Clyde Wilson pointed out in Chronicles).

The only explanation that seems plausible to me for this freakish victory of postmodernism in the academic world is that the Nietzschean relativism and power philosophy of postmodernism was not successfully countered by the academic traditional conservative Christians, because they could not fully accept their best defense of the broadly biological origin of social behavior, taught by the scientific synthesis of sociobiology. Traditionalism could not affirm religion as essentially having been a better way to socially bond groups together for successful survival and reproduction. They could not see beyond their definition of God as being outside the world of power and material desires, and postmodernism won the academic war between Nietzsche and religion.

Readers of this blog know that the religious philosophy of theological materialism and the Twofold Path affirm the sociobiological perspective, which is seen in the evolution of the material world to supermaterial Godhood. The symbolic experience of the traditional Inward God is transformed into real Outward Godhood attained in material/supermaterial evolution. This counters both Nietzsche and postmodernism.

Can We Prevent Our Demise?

Watching the debate between the republican candidates for president last night was alarming given the demise of the West which we now face. Nothing was said about this great tragedy.

Srdja Trifkovic has predicted (Chronicles) that by the second half of this century there is a fifty/fifty chance Europe will be be no more, mainly due to the lack of immigration control. Can the United States prevent the same decline?

Those who benefit, at least in the short term, from unchecked immigration and the destruction of the West remain powerful. The question is how do we stop them?

I don't believe we can stop them by a revival of fascism or communism, although that may happen for a time in an attempt to create order out of disorder. The world is now too crowded with distinct, competing, ethnic cultures for a single dictatorship over all to be successful. Eventually human nature will reassert itself and break back up into a natural ethnopluralism.

Human nature takes its shape from the genes and from the reaction of genes to the environment, but the shape does not venture beyond the shape of the genes. There have been many cultural schemes which tried to go beyond the shape of human nature and they did not work and caused greater suffering.

Human nature remains 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.

This natural view of human nature strongly suggests that ethnopluralism is the best way to prevent the demise of the United States and the West, with ethnostates for distinct ethnic cultures, protected by some sort of federalism.

It is fortunate that our Founding Fathers set up a separation of powers and states in the U. S. Constitution which could accommodate---if we have the wisdom to do so---the saving grace of ethnopluralism.

It is a long road from here to there given the appalling presidential candidates we now have, right and left, but nothing is more important than preventing our demise. If we survive we can continue the sacred evolution of life toward Godhood.

Once again we must balance Apollo and Dionysus

It seems that the new (but perhaps older) northern god Apollo brought patriarchy to the old southern Furies of matriarchy in Ancient Greece, and this can perhaps be seen developing in the tragic dramas. Dionysus seems to have been part of that old matriarchal theology.

A more ordered rational Apollo superseded the more instinctive, emotional Dionysus---or call it a transformation, retaining the old in the new, which is the old dynamic of conservatism, rather than a radical or militant revolution.

Then Christianity came to the West and reformed (really blocked) Dionysian instincts, replacing the more instinctive “eye for an eye” of Judaism with the blocking of the desires of the flesh so as to experience the bliss of the mindful God or Father Within (not unlike Buddhism).

A new natural balancing was therefore required, because both the later Greeks (Socrates) and Christianity went too far in blocking the instincts of the old Dionysian Furies. But then Friedrich Nietzsche, in his final thinking, went too far and virtually killed Apollo in affirming Dionysus, rather than conservatively synthesizing or transforming emotional Dionysus into ordered Apollo.

So once again we must balance Apollo and Dionysus by transforming the Furies of Nietzsche and Dionysus into the ordered Apollonian evolution of material life to supermaterial Godhood. Ordered evolution replaces the old conservative term "ordered liberty" in a deeper conservatism.  

This sacred evolution is the task of theological materialism and the Twofold Path, which can work with modern science. The Involutionary Inward Path to the God Within is transformed---and not rejected---in the Evolutionary Outward Path of material evolution to real supermaterial Godhood.

A Conservatism Beyond Carl Schmitt

I don't mount an attack against the Enlightenment or against pluralism, unlike most on the Right. And I don't see the political leader as being allowed to make dictatorial decisions, other than with temporary emergency powers, preserving the constitutional law and order---but that exception should never prove the rule. I think we can preserve the Constitution while retaining pluralism, or more precisely ethnopluralism, and not replace the constitution with some form of dictatorship.

Unlike Schmitt I think ethnopluralism can be seen as founded in the “primordial condition.” The primordial affirmation of ones own ethnic group and ethnic culture relates to primordial human nature and the human preference for ones own people, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This need not overrule constitutional federalism and the separation of powers and states in the U.S. Constitution, indeed it affirms it. Our modern day crisis is more and more like the crisis of the Weimar republic which eventually led to militant revolution and dictatorship from the right (Hitlerism) and from the left (Leninism).

Unlike the far right and far left who seem to prefer dictatorships, and unlike most conservatives, I defend our Constitution and the separation of powers and states but I see our Constitution as affirming the ethnopluralist solution to our present and future civil and ethnic disruptions, without leading to the destruction of our Constitution and a dictatorship of the left or the right.

Unlike Schmitt I do not see a hopeless, endless, human battling that is solved only temporarily by dictatorships (see “Agonistic Politics,” Chronicles, July 2015). I see not agonistic politics but ethnopluralistic politics, with a federalism protecting states and regions with distinct ethnic cultures and ethnic people, which could be conservatively accommodated by the separation of powers and states in the U. S. Constitution.

What are the obstacles to ethnopluralism? The promotion of universalism on the left and dictatorship on the right. Both define their enemies as “absolute enemies,” leading to thinking of the enemy as non-human and even as vermin (now ISIS does this). Hitlerism, Leninism and even ultra-orthodox Judaism tend to consider the enemy as vermin and therefore they shatter the order of any natural ethnopluralism.

Last but not least, no great civilization rose or sustained itself without being founded in religion, and ethnopluralism can be founded in the theological materialism of the Twofold Path, which affirms the material evolution of ethnopluralistic life, to supermaterial Godhood.

How the Twofold Path Harmonizes Religion, Science, Evolution and Morality

When Ayn Rand has a character in one of her novels say that “thinking is man's only virtue” she cuts man off at the head, not unlike the way the ascetics (whom she hates) cut off the body and all material desires, but keep the head for experiencing the God or Father Within. In this way both reasoning science and feeling religion create incomplete humans.

I think that life created thinking as secondary to life and that life created thinking to advance itself, and for the same reason the desires of life were necessary for successful survival, reproduction and evolution. I believe ongoing evolution is man's primary activating drive and that the continued upward evolution of life is the essential, sacred, purpose or reason for successful survival and reproduction in the first place.

This means that which advances evolution is good and that which does not can be evil. The fact that evolution and devolution take place in the cosmos all the time does not mean that the two are relative regarding good and evil or that there can be no good and evil. Life does not have a legitimate choice in the matter---we deny reality, existence, and life itself if we say evolution and devolution are neither good or evil merely because they both always take place.

Human culture can reflect this activating drive of evolution and can be good or evil depending on whether we are evolving or devolving. When religion, philosophy or science deny or reject this primary activation of life and culture it may sever or terminate life, or can throw man into a goalless, meaningless, chaos. The most success in life, the most success in survival and in reproduction comes in reaching Godhood in evolution.

The Twofold Path in theological materialism harmonizes the mind and body, and religion and science, with the sacred goal of life evolving in the material world toward supermaterial Godhood. The traditional God or Father Within experienced in the Involutionary Inward Path is retained but transformed in the material evolution of real life to Godhood in the Evolutionary Outward Path.

Instinct, Emotion, and Reason

Emotions are also tools of the mind along with the cognitive tool of reason, but many thinkers virtually cut off emotions. Both emotions and reason are needed in finding the truth through a process of synthesizing them. To cut off emotions is to seek only half the truth. Intuition seems to come out of the zone of emotions, and intuitions can often be the first glimpse of creativity and truth.

The laws of causality in nature can be blocked or rejected by the emotionless hyper-rationalism of many thinkers in religion, philosophy and science, which is why they seek ideals and goals that have little to do with nature, or human nature, other than as the unconscious subterfuges of men.

Those who feature the mind in religion, philosophy and science often block the instincts. We are not computers, and this is why we should not be ruled by computers (or computer engineers) in forming our most important values. Emotions are validated by reason, but reason is still a tool of the instincts and emotions, just as computers are a tool, and not the other way around.

When the whole body is considered, then reason can be seen as more of an effect than a cause. Reason alone is a half-brain. The unconscious mind, intuition and emotion are more meta-rational or super-rational, and not really irrational.

This synthesizing of instincts, emotions and reason seems to be the process involved in seeing the material Spirit-Will within life activating material life to evolve to supermaterial Godhood, which is at the foundation of theological materialism.

The zenith of success in evolution and religion

Existence over consciousness, object over definition, that is the basis for describing being (ontology) in theological materialism, that is the procedure for acquiring and defining knowledge (epistemology), and hopefully truth.

This does not mean that consciousness and definition are unimportant, it means the object is more important than the definition of the object.

We acquire knowledge not by reason alone, but by intuition, innate ideas, and however. The Age of Enlightenment, the age of reason in the 18^th century was great, but it was great in the way a computer is great, computer reasoning is a tool and not the final arbitrator of all morality and the human condition.

Religion encountered error too much on the non-reason side, and science encountered error too much on the reason-side. We require both to find the truth.

Life developed intuition and reason to advance itself, not the other way around. But life did not develop these things only for the sake of successful survival and reproduction, important as they are. I believe it is the will to evolve to Godhood in nature that defines and activates the basis of existence, consciousness and causality---that is the zenith of success in evolution and religion.

Saving the West

I understand that the moral and artistic world of the West depended on Christianity, but it was a Christianity infused or transformed by pagan philosophers like Plato and Aristotle through the work of great thinkers like Thomas Aquinas. The loss of Christianity, has taken place along with the loss of Western culture because the two are interconnected. Theological materialism is the next way of infusing and transforming Christianity (and even Eastern religions) to help save the West. Conservatism conserves by renewing traditional ways.

The wide expanse between the spiritual and the material which Aquinas and others tried to harmonize while retaining the basic duality, is finally closed in theological materialism. The duality which has continued between religion and science can also this way be closed. We evolve in the material world to the supermaterial world of Godhood by way of evolution in the Evolutionary Outward Path. Traditional religion saw or experienced God or the Father-Within internally in the Involutionary Inward Path only by ridding the body of all material desires. In theological materialism the Inward Path is transformed in the Outward Path by affirming material evolution toward supermaterial Godhood.

This transformation comes not as some modern physicists have attempted to save religion by turning the quantum world into the spiritual world, but by the opposite, by seeing the spiritual world as the supermaterial world. One day a new theory will reveal the deeper material reality behind the subatomic world. Quantum mechanics is a form of materialism yet to be defined. Some form of matter is all, even beneath energy and the quantum world. Perhaps this relationship of small to big can be better explained as some electric force working within materialism.

The material world need no longer be reluctantly affirmed, or rationalized, because the material world is evolving to the supermaterial world of Godhood. This sacred evolution requires real material political structures, such as ethnopluralism, which consciously affirms and saves distinctive ethnic cultures in protected ethnostates, in accord with real human nature, which remains ethnocentric and group-selecting, as we all evolve toward Godhood.  Western civilization can this way be saved.

How To Deal With The New Dark Age Upon Us

First we have to acknowledge that we are entering a new Dark Age, as the migrant conquest-through-immigration of Europe and the United States continues, unstopped by the ruling class, who don't want to stop it. Once we acknowledge that Western civilization is disappearing then we may be able to move beyond hopelessly trying to revive ourselves with unworkable ideologies, such as a universal borderless world controlled by bankers and global capitalists, or ruled by communist and fascist dictators.

Our best conservative thinkers have acknowledged the Dark Age upon us, but their plan seems to be to drop out, hunker down, and teach the old ways to their children. But there is one political hope left and that is to work toward the natural separation of ethnopluralism, and this means a return to real human nature, which remains ethnocentric and group-selecting. Ethnopluralism could be accommodated by the separation of powers and states wisely projected in the U. S. Constitution. All forms of imperialism, whether banking, communist, or fascist, have always ended up breaking back down into natural ethnostates in any case. Ethnopluralism is the most practical, conservative, and civilized way to live in our now overpopulated world of naturally contending cultures... The West need not be over yet, or the rest of the world.

Even Paleoconservatives Believe America Is Lost, But it Need Not Be

Paleoconservatives are now predicting the cultural cleansing (Clyde Wilson term) of traditional America, along with its demographic destruction. What bothers me is that they seem to have no real answer to the destruction.

The solution is not more marauding, more neoconservative, free trade and global capitalism, and not imperial Marxism or one-race fascism, the solution is to now interpret ethnopluralism as possible within the separation of powers and states in the U. S. Constitution, protected by federalism.

We are increasingly facing civil disruptions and even civil war between contending cultures in America, which is only natural since real human nature is ethnocentric and group-selecting. What could be keeping conservatives from moving toward this next saving step of ethnopluralism? I fear that one of the deeper reasons is the traditional conservative concept of “original sin,” that is, the belief that humans are permanently flawed.

But even this can be understood in a conservative way by seeing that original sin derives from the ascetic Involutionary Inward Path designed to experience the God or Father Within, which requires blocking material desires and defining material desires as sinful. But this does not account for the Evolutionary Outward Path.

The Evolutionary Outward Path of material evolution to supermaterial Godhood requires evolving material life. This is the Twofold Path which conservatively retains but transforms the Inward Path to the Outward Path. Alas, this theological materialism seems to be too much for conservatives to absorb at this time.

Even so, ethnopluralism is worth promoting, even by those who believe in original sin, since there seems to be no other realistic or conservative way that is in harmony with real human nature to save America---and the West.