We need to harmonize sociobiologically defined human nature with our religious, social, and political structures

Russell Kirk said the scholar of religious aims and aspirations is a person of true freedom of the mind ("The Essential Kirk"). But what does he mean by religious aims and freedom? Kirk wrote of “submission to the will of God,” but how is he defining freedom and God? Kirk says we must abide by the real duties and limitations of human nature, but what are those limitations? And Kirk says freedom is the absence of desire, as the Stoics and Indian tradition believed, which Christianity agreed with. Kirk also said that no order falls except from its own weakness.

Next to Pat Buchanan, Kirk is my favorite conservative writer, but I disagree with them both regarding the nature of religion. The key here for me is that while material evolution can be random, it is not entirely random or accidental. Life has been evolving toward increasing consciousness, intelligence, beauty, and complexity. Few people ask the question why are we driven toward success in survival and reproduction? (Francis Heylighen has been one of the few modern scientists to examine purpose in evolution.)

Just as the pleasure or happiness derived from eating food is driven by the deeper requirements of successful survival, and not mere pleasure, the drive to survival and reproductive success (the sole aim according to science) is driven by the deeper need of evolving toward ascending levels of Godhood as the zenith of success and purpose in evolution (so contrary to many philosophers happiness, like desire, is a secondary goal). Naturalism in evolution can therefore include the activation toward higher evolution leading to ascending levels of supermaterial Godhood.

Human nature is universally 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. As you can see, there are traditional and conservative aspects to natural human nature, and it relates very little to Rousseau. But ethnocentrism, for example, is not evil or the lower part of human nature, as both traditional religion and Rousseauians tend to define it.

This suggest that when we look for a “moral path to peace” as Claes Ryn termed it, we need to harmonize sociobiologically defined human nature with our religious, social, and political structures. This logically and instinctively advances some form of natural ethnopluralism, with regions and states set aside for ethnic cultures, and protected in their near-independence from marauding imperialists, supremacists, and global money grubbers, by a light federalism. I prefer the term ethnopluralism to cosmopolitanism because it more directly defines what cosmopolitanism requires if we want a solid bonding foundation in human nature for international states and regions, related to the primacy of kin and group-selection. Altruism, the original creator of religious group values, was evolved within the particular groups and it is not a universal altruism---although if the whole world is threatened then altruism is extended to the world---but the most natural condition of altruism within human nature is designed for ones own group.

That is the natural moral and religious path to peace, in harmony with real human nature and the natural world, and it is fundamentally conservative, so it stands the best chance of being successful over the long term.