It seems as if any motive or sacred goal that philosophers can't control threatens them

Are there any completely abstract forces within human nature with no motives at all? Is there a "pure"motiveless ebb and flow ? I don't think there is.

Music may seem like an abstract flow but it contains the emotions or the state of mind of the composer who has many human motives and emotions while living in the world. Even "power" has a motive to attain what it desires.

If the "will-to-life" has no motive or goal then the virtues and values that derive from the will-to-life have no motive or goal and all values are relativistic. This is what the postmodernists and their fathers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (who are my favorite thinkers) more or less said.

Religious tradition does give life a goal but the goal is "spiritual" with no material substance, and their God exists beyond or above the material world. Why the depreciation or even hatred of things material?

The will-to-life, which I term the Spirit-Will-to-Godhood, is entirely material and exists perhaps in every cell of the body as the essential activator of "life." This activation within life not only has a motive but has a sacred motive to activate life to evolve in the material world to supermaterial Godhood, which is the ultimate success in survival and reproduction, and is the real Godhood.

It seems as if any motive or sacred goal that philosophers can't control threatens them.

The Twofold Path transforms the God of Odin and Christ

Colin Cleary suggested a few years ago in his essay, "What is Odinism?" (recently republished in Counter Currents, part one) that the key feature of Odin was his quest for knowledge and power. Cleary thinks that Odin and Odinism essentially sought to "become God" in that quest for knowledge and power.

The Christian world has disparaged the idea of becoming God as being highly blasphemous. Traditional religions have demanded that their God be spiritual and certainly beyond the vulgar and evil material world, the desires of the material flesh are to be blocked or overcome in order to see the God Within.

Odin could be called the first Western Faustian man (although he was originally Asian-Aesir) seeking knowledge and power at all costs. But being Faustian, Western knowledge has moved on from Odin to where we can now see that the path to real Godhood is through material evolution.

But conservatism is vitally important in the lives of human beings and human culture, that is, retaining what was long developed as important to humans and to human survival, which is comfortable in the lives of people. The culture of Christianity is virtually baked into Western civilization, but it can be transformed, just as Christianity retained but transformed Odinism and paganism.

The Inward Path to the God Within of Christ (and Buddha) can be retained but can now be seen as the first symbolic experience of the real Godhood reached through the Outward Path of material evolution. This is seen in the Twofold Path of theological materialism.

Faustian knowledge was obtained by standing on the shoulders of many men who not unlike Odin and Christ hung on modern trees of religious and scientific suffering and study. The Twofold Path conservatively does not reject either Odinism or Christianity. We can actually become Gods by affirming the material evolution to supermaterial Godhood, the transformed God of Odin and Christ.

Rethinking our positions on equality, universalism, and homogeneity

If when we are talking about how to create real social order we proceed from laws, to morality, to religion, without mentioning basic human homogeneity, we are building on a weak foundation which will not lead to long-term social order.

If universalism and equality are our religious and political goals---if we believe that social behavior is largely determined and molded by the environment and the culture---and if we neglect the biological origin of much of our social behavior, we are adding to the weak foundation for social order.

Human nature remains mainly kin-centered and ethnocentric, which creates the homogeneity necessary for long-term social order---which is difficult enough even with homogeneity. So the logical and instinctively right political structure for creating social order in our crowded world is an ethnopluralism of ethnostates.

Cultures don't create people, distinctive people create distinctive cultures. People, with their unique genetic traits, and unique places where they live, develop distinctive cultures which do not always work harmoniously with other people who have different genetic traits and different cultures. One is not superior or inferior to the other, they are just different.

Things get worse when rising ethnocentric groups deviously use universalism and equality to advance themselves in competition with more powerful ethnic groups, which also leads to social disorder.

Interesting that the ethnic homogeneity which is necessary to best maintain social order is now considered politically incorrect. Even conservatives rarely mention it. We need to rethink our positions on equality, universalism, and homogeneity. Will religions, political ideologies, and political correctness let us do it? It might require a bit more courage. We will have real social order to gain.

Is President Trump a tragic hero or villain?

Aristotle thought a tragic hero should not be defined as a virtuous man brought down, but simply a man who evokes fear and pity brought down.

On President Trump's side we have the powerless populist/nationalists who nevertheless elected Trump, and on the other side against him we have the powers and governments of the world, including the most powerful lobbies of Wall Street, Oil, the Israelis and Saudis, as well as the Big Media, the unelected Deep State, the Democratic Party, many in the Republican Party, the academic world, all of show business, etc etc.

They all attack Trump, often with dirty tricks, and when Trump becomes frustrated and angry and shows his flaws they say his administration is in chaos, a chaos they caused. They would like to drive Trump mad, and sometimes they seem to be succeeding. In spite of all this Trump has done more for populism/nationalism than any leader has in very long time, in going against NAFTA, open immigration, political correctness, cultural Marxism. etc..

But it is not yet clear to me if Trump was or was not controlled by the Israeli and Saudis lobbies all along, since he has almost immediately given them both exactly what they want, the power of America supporting their every nefarious action. Or perhaps Trump uses changing values and virtues to fit his own personal power.  In that case his populism was a demagogic con to get elected, and he would be more a villain than hero.

If I couldn't avoid giving a short answer to the big question of why empires fall

I would probably name four reasons, which are not original, and not necessarily in this order: leadership degenerates and becomes decadent, ethics and virtues, pagan or Christian, no-longer promote physical or intellectual courage, the ethnic homogeneity and order of the founders of the culture are lost, borders and immigration become porous and alien forces and unassimilated ethnic groups take advantage of the decadence of the leadership to push their own agendas that do not benefit the founding nation, which then slowly or quickly falls.

This has now happened in America, and it probably happened in Ancient Rome and elsewhere...The way back from decline or fall seems to be to reverse engineer these causes of the fall, and bring back the character, tone, and guiding beliefs of the founding ethos, reformed a bit for the time, the place, and the people involved... In the future we need to avoid creating empires.

Can we redevelop Western civilization and rise again?

In our easy chairs looking back we can see that if conservative thinking had been in place foul slavery would have soon ended in the American South as it was ending in the rest of the world, without civil war. But the Civil War was more about Northern industrialists trying to dominate the old agrarian South than it was about slavery.

Not being conservative, early capitalists did not care much about anything other than making money, and the Western world changed. National borders, demographics, and traditional culture meant very little to the capitalists who were usually libertarian or oligarchic, although they were not much concerned with ideologies.

Cheap labor and open borders were pursued with no thought about whether or not the immigrants could assimilate with the traditional host country, many could not. And so we have the mess we have today, with ethnic culture warring against ethnic culture, while welcoming new unassimilating immigrants---and all within the same living space.

We can't go back to the gentleman culture of old Europe and the American South, but we can revive our democratic republic by letting the constitutional separation of powers and states become an ethnopluralism of regions and ethnostates, protected by federalism...At least some of the regions and states could then redevelop Western civilization and rise again.

Recovery of Life and the Universal

Scientists have all but defined the origin of life on earth as derived from minerals, water, rocks, meteors, volcanoes, lightning, etc. in an ongoing evolutionary development. I see no reason why this same thing could not happen throughout the vast cosmos. Most likely God doesn't create life, life creates Gods by way of outward evolution and an inward activation.

The end-goal of Godhood comes from this evolving process of life seeking the most success in survival, power, and even everlasting life, which is Godhood. This is what life strives for in a cosmos perhaps with life in many stages of evolution, from bacteria to Gods. This inward and outward will or spirit of material evolution is about as close as we will come to defining the "universal."

It seems to me that if we want to give direction to a world which is throwing away the virtues and values of religion this is the way to recovery.

Conservatism as improvisation on a biological melody

Where you can change for the better do, where you cannot change for the better don't. Conservatism has a constant natural melody, which is mainly the movement of successful biologically survival and evolution, with an ever-changing way to play that melody---like jazz improvisation on a biological melody. The melody is always there but the best musicians create beautiful improvisations on the theme....

The Roots of Deep Conservatism

(An ongoing comparison to Russell Kirk's "The Roots of the American Order")

There is Godhood which life evolves to in the material and supermaterial world, as described in theological materialism.

This evolutionary Godhood is the source and end-goal of morality and values for humans and nations as best we can discern it.

Life can create long-term order inwardly and outwardly by affirming this evolutionary worldview.

We are designed by human nature to live in communities of kin and ethnic groups which can then bring the deepest order from a homogeneity of genes and culture.

Order involves different classes and hierarchies, which naturally develop, living within the same ethnostates, where each class is treated with the same justice.

Good political models have been monarchy, republic, or aristocracy, which help to create healthy long-lasting order in society.

The traditions of the people are followed as having developed naturally over time from who the people are genetically and culturally, even as those traditions are refined and reformed as we evolve.

When the ethnicity and traditions of a people are corrupted, neglected, or rejected, the people and the order decay, as history has shown time and again.

All people are subject to the law, powerful and unpowerful alike.

Laws develop from the laws of nature and from human nature, which includes the biological origin of much of our social behavior.

The American Constitution was a written way to preserve unwritten law that was inherited from Britain.

The Tenth Amendment protects states and regions---which eventually will become ethnostates---from each other and from corrupting influence by Big Government.

Why journalism standards self-destructed

"In the 19th century, power meant control of the means of production; today, power lies in control of the means of communication." (Patrick Buchanan)

The deep origin of the change in the standards of journalism was the postmodernism taught in our colleges and universities since the 1960's, which taught a relativity of values, where only cultural power, not right or wrong, determined morality and cultural standards---not unlike Marxism. Editors and reporters absorbed this cultural ethos.

This also allowed other special interests, who were not at all relativistic about their values, to exploit the lack of standards of the Media.

And so we arrive at the take-down of President Trump by a Media which no-longer keeps its own opinions out of the story---and its opinions are always leftist or anarchist.

What can be done? Journalist Michael Goodwin suggests ( Imprimis, June 2017) that we actually support alternative media, which is at least a start at slowing the speeding decline of our culture due largely to the Media.

Real human nature always rises against willful misinterpretations

Back in the 1970's the great sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson clarified Darwin's insight that human nature is in fact biologically and genetically kin-centered and ethnocentric, but that this did not mean that some races are superior and others inferior. Wilson was ignored, although he shook things up a bit for a time---water was poured over his head at a public meeting, etc.

One of the most successful propaganda campaigns ever was the campaign by the Big Media and the academic world to define "racism" as one race thinking itself superior to other races and discriminating accordingly. Even conservatives bought into this definition.

This willful misinterpretation was mainly the attempt by some races or ethnic groups to attain power by proposing a false definition of human nature. This attack on racism was actually a nefarious example of racism at work.

The Big Media and the academic world and those who used it to gain power were just too strong for Wilson to overcome, and so the lie prevailed that human nature is not ethnocentric and that we are all the same and only different due to social conditioning. It was really a brilliant deception.

But as Soviet communism fell, which also perpetuated (at gun point) this same lie of people being all the same and made different only by social conditioning, the Soviet Union broke apart into, guess what? Natural ethnostates.

This ethnocentric/populist/nationalist breakup of empires has been increasingly happening across the world---as well it might, since it reflects real human nature. But the Big Media and the academic world and those who use it to gain power remain strong. So the lie that human nature is not ethnocentric and that we are all the same continues, although it is weakening.

Even so, an ethnopluralism of ethnostates carved out of big, overgrown, artificial, sovereign borders is coming. Real human nature always rises, even if it has been on a leash for awhile.

The real foundation of human culture

Definitions of the "will" are varied from the idea that "virtue" is an instrument of the will (Schopenhauer), the will is amoral (Nietzsche), immoral (Buddha, Christ), sexual (Freud), or does not exist (science).

I call it the "spirit-will' (to include religion) though it is an entirely material activation. The spirit-will is the basic, primordial, activation of life toward survival and reproductive success, and perhaps exists in every cell of the body.

But more than that, this spirit-will has the end-goal of Godhood, which is a living object, or objects, evolved to in the material and supermaterial world. This Godhood also defines the highest success in survival and reproduction, and defines the highest beauty, truth, goodness and power.

This sacred description acknowledges that the will is not evil, satanic, or nonexistent, but is the most sacred element of life, after Godhood, and is the real foundation of human culture.

"...power lies in control of the means of communication"

"In the 19th century, power meant control of the means of production; today, power lies in control of the means of communication."  Patrick Buchanan

If we can survive the civil disruptions and wars there is real hope in the instinctive rise of real human nature

Communism/socialism used to define globalism, now the globalists are plutocratic neo-liberals and the Republican Party.

We thought President Trump would be a nationalist/populist but apart from a few token America First moves Trump's nationalism seems to have been a demagogic con, and Trump has increasingly joined the forces of globalism.

To many in the Alt right Russia's leader Putin looked like the nationalist they prefer. They seem to have missed the imperialism beneath Putin's nationalism, or they actually affirm imperialism as there intellectual hero Dugin does (and Bannon?).

So nothing much has changed the downward trajectory of America and the West, which the Big Media, academia, the plutocratic neo-liberals, and the Republican Party have been greatly encouraging. Things are even getting worse. There is not much left of traditional American culture.

But if we can survive the the civil disruptions and wars, there is real hope in the instinctive rise of real human nature and the natural separations of an ethnopluralism of ethnostates. Although there will never be perfection, kin-centered and ethnocentric human nature always rises out of the decadence of imperialism and creates real culture again.

A moral imperative for theological materialism

Godhood is the "moral imperative," but Godhood is evolved to in the material and supermaterial world, so Godhood is not a spiritual imperative.

This moral imperative exists in the very essence of life, perhaps in every cell of the body as a primordial activation, which can be named the will or spirit-will as long as it is understood as an entirely material activation.

At this stage in our evolution we do not know what the end-goal of Godhood will be like, but we can rationally and instinctively project that it will be the highest truth, beauty, goodness, and power, and also the highest success in survival and reproduction. Power is not always included in this trinity due perhaps to religious bias and the great spiritual blockade against the material world and all it desires.

The spirit-will knows its determined end-goal but the evolutionary path is not fixed. Morals, ethnics, values, rationality, and culture form out of this moral imperative---which we have not always been aware of.

Conservative tradition need not be rejected, but the inward path to the god-within needs to include the outward path of material evolution to real Godhood. Conservative politics, democratic republics, and federalism can adapt to an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, more in harmony with real kin-centered and ethnocentric human nature, as we all evolve toward Godhood.

Back to the real living object

Many of the sociopolitical "isms" are cold and even mathematical conceptions that turn out to be far removed from real living people and real human nature.

This has applied to such central isms as fascism, Marxism, capitalism, libertarianism, and feminism, which are often dominated by cold conceptions (ideologies) often removed from reality or from real human nature.

For example, such concepts as "efficiency" and "freedom" are removed from the reality of the natural creations of human nature. Efficiency becomes engorged with bureaucracy, and freedom becomes a license to do anything, falsely free of the determined aspects of human nature.

Even conservatives say they reject cold inhuman ideologies but then create an ideology out of conservatism, most of it based in non-material definitions of God and religion.

I use the phrase "back to the real living object" relating to these disconnections to the real material world, and I don't become trapped in philosophical games defining object and subject.

I don't reject religion or conservatism but affirm a Godhood reached through material and supermaterial evolution. And I promote a political ethos based in real human nature which is basically kin-centered and ethnocentric.

Cold conceptions and definitions unrelated to human nature or human behavior are relegated to a secondary position where they belong. We need math and we need technology, but not as religion or political philosophy.

Which Way Will America Go?

It was what Mitch Landrieu praised as the "bubbling cauldron of many cultures" which doomed America. Can we face that?

This upside-down "philosophy" marched through our public educational institutions and as Mark Brennan put it, "brain-washed the hordes."(Chronicles, July 2017)

Will heroic and brilliant leadership bring us out of this cultural mess? Not at first. We will probably first have to contend with powerful instincts of basic human nature.

Human nature is mainly kin-centered and ethnocentric, and so things could first go far right, far left, or toward an openly (it is now covered) undemocratic, military-controlled capitalism.

Holding on to our democratic republic will not be easy in the face of these powerful simple passions, and that's where heroic and brilliant leadership will eventually make a difference.

That bubbling cauldron of ethnic groups may almost naturally split into an ethnopluralism of ethnostates to create survival-order out of chaos.

Then a heroic leadership may be able to conservatively adapt our constitutional separation of powers and states toward an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, protected internally and externally by our traditional federalism.

That's the hope, which seems realistic and possible.

How religion and science together can develop the highest culture in human history

Religious intellectuals say that God is the ultimate object of the human intellect, but they go on to make the ideas of the intellect the ultimate object. Then concepts and definitions become Gods.

Our colleges and universities do the same thing but they choose to worship the ideas and definitions of Marxist/Machiavellian/Relativity rather than living people.

There is of course a place for ideas and definitions, but real living objects are more important.

Godhood is a living object, or objects, which we evolve to in the material and supermaterial world, and Godhood is not merely a definition or idea.  Godhood is not even the inward bliss of ascetics who have managed to block all material desires.

Religion has virtually blocked science and science has blocked religion. Religion needs to return to the real material world and include the sacred evolution of material life to supermaterial Godhood. And science needs to affirm a sacred goal to material evolution, which it can aid.

Then religion and science together can get on with developing the highest culture in human history.

Toward a republic we can keep

As Ben Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention he was asked what sort of a government the delegates had created and he famously said, "it's a republic, if you can keep it." Well, we couldn't keep it. The great pyramid of unelected people (GPUPS?) with the Big Media at its apex have destroyed America.

Many of us---conservatives, populists/nationalists, and even the Alt-right---thought President Trump might be able to stop or at least slow the sinking of America, but that hope is gone, due not only to the nefarious GPUPS but to Trump's fast and loose values and morals honed over a life-time in thoroughly decadent New York City.

So what's next? I suppose the far right and far left will eventually reject democratic means, and will quote the classical philosophers who predicted this consequence of democracy. The military will more likely eventually step in, also rejecting democratic means to create order.

And "order" is the important element here, because the disorder that sunk America was bought about mainly because we ignorantly allowed to form here a motley population of competing ethnic groups with competing cultures who manipulated democracy for their own ends, which tore apart the democratic republic.

Why? Because in seeking success in survival and reproduction, human nature remains deeply kin-centered and ethnocentric, and our cultures work relatively smoothly only as long as the culture remains homogeneous. We have seen the changing of American culture in the decline, decadence, and overcoming of the WASPS who founded it.

The cause of the disorder can reveal the solution, but the means will be debated. I, for one, affirm legally and gradually adapting the American constitutional separation of powers and states toward an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, in accord with real human nature. That will be a republic we can keep.

Any change more radical than that away from American traditions has less chance of long-term success...But first, "A hard rain is gonna fall."

Totalitarians of any sort need to see the old wisdom of the separation of powers and states

Totalitarian systems like Islam, communism, fascism, etc---and now increasingly including Western- liberal-democratic-cultural Marxism---and all expecting total acceptance, do not harmonize with real human nature, which remains kin-centered and ethnocentric, and should be leading to the separation of powers and states, and even to an ethnopluralism of ethnostates.

So the totalitarian temptation is a false and dangerous temptation that soon destroys the private and social health of a people, like drugs or candy, only worse. Short-term thinkers and impatient youth, and even some Christian perspectives, are prone to totalitarianism, which looks simple and efficient but is like cutting off the hands to allow the feet. Totalitarians of any sort need to see the old wisdom of the separation of powers and states.

Will they? Or are these natural cycles which imperfect man must always repeat? I tend to agree with Wilmot Robertson's politically incorrect challenge ("The Ethnostate"1992) to Spengler's cyclic view of history, where Robertson suggested that we could halt and reverse the decline of America by transforming the socially destructive aspects of ethnic or race competitions, which destroy nations and empires, into developing socially constructive ethnostates.  I continue to believe this will be done in the future.

The return to human nature in conservatism

The always excellent James Kalb recently wrote about "returning to type" (Chronicles), which I would rather call the return to human nature. But conservatives (I consider myself a conservative) have had problems absorbing the science of sociobiology, so the conservative return to type has had problems.

Traditional conservatism has retained values and morals that relate to the sociobiological view of human nature, or vice versa, but has remained almost hostile to Darwin and the Neo-Darwinism of sociobiology and the biological origin of much of our social behavior, when they should have added it.

What perhaps stopped them or blocked them was what I call the Great Spiritual Blockade as well as the materialism or philosophical naturalism of science. The traditional God was non-material and reaching Godhood involved blocking the desires of the flesh, best accomplished in monasteries or on mountain tops. So religion and conservatism faded.

In our time almost all art, literature, philosophy, even religion have rejected or denied the deepest elements of human nature (deep conservatism), some more than others. Kinship and ethnic identity have clashed with the universalism of religion (and the cultural form of Marxism), which blocked the values of kinship and ethnic identity in both religion and in secular culture, and our people have absorbed it, since it is all they see in the Media and is all they are taught in school.

Even the smallest change in human nature, in our DNA structure---for example, in our immune system---took hundreds of thousands of years (now we have genetic engineering which is more rapid). But still we all remain 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. Rational and instinctive channeling of human nature and human drives, or education in general, need to move in this direction.

And religion needs to move there too, while retaining all the elements of real human nature inherent in conservatism. In theological materialism Godhood is seen as evolved to in the material and supermaterial world. This brings religion and cultural life back to nature, and back to real human nature, synthesized with science. Politically it suggest an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, which conservatives can adapt to the constitutional separation of powers and states.

I believe we will eventually go there, if we can survive.

Heaven is an evolutionary meritocracy

Contrary to the concerns of many conservatives (see "Hell Is A Meritocracy," page 13, Chronicles July 2017), meritocracies do not require big culturally Marxist or fascist states any more than the private ownership of the means of production (capitalism) does.

It took awhile for IQ tests to be accepted and it will take awhile for the science of genetics to be accepted. Who wants radical change? Conservatism changes more slowly. And the change can certainly be voluntary.

The people will choose to have children without genetic diseases, and later will more positively choose to have, say, more intelligent children. That is humane. There need be no Orwellian widening of the gap between classes, genetic science will become cheaper for everyone.

Intelligence can and does rise in any class. New varieties of intelligence and creativity are welcome in ongoing evolution. The intelligent top want the bottom to improve. But this does not call for a Marxist or fascist state when an ethnopluralism of ethnostates will do nicely---an ethnopluralism of ethnostates can be conservatively adapted by the constitutional separation of powers and states in the U. S. We all rise together protecting variety over long-term evolution.

The technocratic meritocracy we have today recognizes IQ from sterile tests and then feeds the chosen into culturally Marxist universities which do not believe in the biological or genetic origin of much of our social behavior. That is an oxymoron meritocracy to say the least and it should not represent meritocracies.

As to religion, which is perhaps the bottom line of conservative objections to meritocracies: when real Godhood is understood as evolved to in the material and supermaterial world (see theological materialism) then religion and conservatism can be on the side of meritocracies. Heaven is an evolutionary meritocracy.

Populist/nationalists or expert/specialists?

What have the experts and specialists brought us politically? A world that is a dangerous mess. The populist/nationalists didn't create this mess, the "progressive" experts and specialists did, and the postmodern relativity of values did this to us.

Sports, etc, have become a virtual religion. Why? Postmodernism has taught us that all values are relative, football is as important as religion or philosophy, the only value is in becoming an expert in anything, as Chilton Williamson recently pointed out in Chronicles.

But we don't need to be an expert to harmonize with conservative tradition, we just need to harmonize with real human nature, and that human nature is certainly not solely created by social conditioning, as our postmodern experts and specialists have taught us, like their Marxist mentors.

And real human nature remains as it has always been, 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 successful selection, followed by individual selection.

Yes, experts and specialists can be of service, but only after our final values are holistically determined.

I have no doubt that if we had listened to the populist/nationalists (say, Pat Buchanan, in spite of his faults) we would not be in the political mess we are today, which was advocated by experts and specialists, the same ones who now hate our president because he isn't an expert.

Stop this train

"Stop this train
I want to get off and go home again..." John Mayer

Mayer's song about himself, of course, and show biz ends by saying"...I'll never stop this train." The song could relate to the massive federal government which some of us want to see go home again to the states. That move is actually legally backed by the constitutional separation of powers and states. If we cannot go home again we may soon get operators who want to run the train as dictatorial Marxists or fascists.

But we will probably go the way of the Roman Empire which could not find its way back to a Republic and eventually, after much pain, broke apart into ethnostates. First we will probably fall apart in ethnic conflicts---wouldn't it be good if we could do this rationally and not by civil war? But an ethnopluralism of ethnostates is actually good because it will be a natural return to real kin-centered and ethnocentric human nature.

We can keep religion but end the Great Spiritual Blockade

How can it be possible that the highest religious traditions are suicidal?! This is the goal of the deepest ascetic discipline, an end to all willing, an end to all material desire in the pursuit of the plateau of the sublime, where the attachment to life falls away! The originating Vedas, Buddha, Christ, the philosopher Schopenhauer and many others advocated just that as the goal of at least serious religious life.

That Great Spiritual Blockade is not seen in theological materialism, which retains religion and Godhood but removes the suicidal goals which in any case do not lead to real Godhood but lead only to the blissful feeling of no pain or suffering when all willing and all desires cease, like a death in life, which is a phrase actually used by some gurus!

We reach Godhood by affirming material life and desires, Godhood is not reached by committing suicide. Godhood is reached by refining and reforming the drives of life with continuing knowledge of material and supermaterial evolution toward real Godhood. We can keep religion but end the Great Spiritual Blockade, which should make real conservatives happy.

What new religion conservatively retains and removes of old religion

Contrary to idealists from Plato to Schopenhauer, it is not mainly a non-material Idea which does not change that best defines the "universal," and it was disingenuous of Schopenhauer to try to contrast concepts with Ideas, claiming that concepts are abstract but Ideas are part of the fabric of nature.

Religion needs to return to real life and the essential elements of life. It is the very much material Will-to-Godhood, perhaps within every cell of the body, that best defines the universal, which has been with the world from the beginning of every cosmos.

We can retain Godhood and religion but not the God which is in reality the nothingness of an Idea. This perspective of Schopenhauer and the religious gurus leads to the renunciation of the will-to-life, as Schopenhauer advocated, so as to experience the non-material Idea as God.

Contrary to idealists from Plato to Schopenhauer, there is a Godhood beyond the Idea of Godhood, which can be reached through material evolution to supermaterial Godhood. And this is not the mere experience of the Idea of godhood, which even humans can reach with ascetic discipline. It is the evolution of real life beyond the present species all the way to real Godhood. This is what new religion conservatively retains and removes of old religion.

A realism and a neo-romanticism that both religion and science can believe in

Quantum physics is not spiritual, even if we cannot perfectly understand it, and the same thing can be applied to Godhood, which is evolved to in the material world. Energy isn't spiritual either, it is based in the material, as all things are.

The origin of life isn't spiritual, it begins at the lowest stages of life and then evolves in the material world to the highest stages of evolved life, which is Godhood.

It is evolving life that is probably eternal, with many starts and stops along the way, and then if life is supremely successful life can, and has, evolved to Godhood.

Why did the spiritual invade the material? I suppose for wish-fulfillment. James Tate called this invasion a definition of romanticism.

The great gurus found that if material desires were blocked with much discipline it would also block all pain, and they equated that blissful state with Godhood, which was a great limitation of real Godhood.

Since about the Enlightenment science hasn't believed there is a spiritual or a Godhood. But that was mainly because they thought of God as spiritual, since all the gurus defined God that way.

Science can be brought in from the cold when Godhood is seen as material or supermaterial and is understood as that which we can evolve to in the material world.

That is a realism and a neo-romanticism which both religion and science can believe in.

Moving toward theological materialism

I disagree with Schopenhauer that artistic, ascetic, or philosophical genius work at their best when they are "will-less" or independent of the will, and that this is where true objectivity comes from.

This also Buddha and Christ and their countless followers believed. In another related way, legions of scientific thinkers reject any idea of a will and see only random selection taking place with no sacred end-goal.

Both religion and science deny any sacred material activation within life: science sees only random outside selection pressures, and religion sees only a non-material spiritual end-goal.

At least religion was right about the sacred goal, but was mistaken in defining the goal as non-material and spiritual, or as the result of blocking the will.

On the contrary, the will or the Spirit-Will (although completely material) exists as an activation within perhaps every cell of the body to evolve to the highest success in survival and reproduction, which ultimately can lead to Godhood.

The inward activation of the will works with whatever outside environment of natural selection it finds itself living within. And now humans are even moving beyond an almost ageless unconscious natural selection toward conscious genetic engineering, although they have no religious end-goal.

see Reflections On Theological Materialism PDF