Monday, June 20, 2016

What happens when culture imitates nature?


“What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” James Madison, Federalist # 51

When culture imitates nature do we then see order and harmony? Does it look like ancient Greece? Medieval Christianity? the United States? Mao's China? Most importantly when culture imitates nature does it imitate human nature as well?

Human nature precedes the art and culture which reflects human nature. And before that nature precedes human nature. People create culture but then culture also influences the people.

Art and culture are directly related to what is considered “good” by the people. The various categories in religion and philosophy which reflect the definition of the good are not really that much different from one another when they reflect real human nature.

Beauty is not merely an intellectual idea or spiritual formula, beauty reflects the materialism and supermaterialism of nature. Nature is timeless, but there is only the material and supermaterial. There is Godhood attained in evolution, but there is not the spiritual, which can be transformed not rejected.

Material evolution tends to change and innovate the order it creates, usually keeping the best of the past as new changes are developed. This is the basis of real tradition and conservatism.

Where does nature place the authority of culture? In an emperor? In popular democracy? When authority imitates nature and human nature authority is placed in decentralized regions and states that can be defined as ethnopluralism, which reflects the primacy of kin and group-selection inherent in real human nature and in nature itself.

Cultures of distinctive regions and states and ethnic groups then follow, protected by some form of decentralized federalism. This view of authority is more or less reflected in the constitutional separation of powers and states which Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison affirmed in the original Constitution of the United States.

Does the material evolution of nature and human nature have a goal or purpose behind or beyond the creation of tradition and change? The goal is for life always to evolve within the material world toward supermaterial Godhood, with many starts and stops and selections along the way.

For me this answers the question, what happens when culture imitates nature?

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