How Wendell Berry Avoids Deep-Conservatism

He may be a Jeffersonian liberal or he may be a Burkean conservative, either way Wendell Berry is a national treasure. That said, I find his view of human nature incomplete.

Localism, which Wendell Berry rightly affirms, rises naturally out of the altruism of group-selection, and group-selection naturally leads to ethnic cultures and to ethnocentrism, and even to xenophobia. Ethnocentrism evolved as a basic part of human nature due to the advantages it brought to survival success and social harmony---call it deep-conservatism.

If localism is to be successful it needs to include an affirmation of ethnic cultures, with ethnic territories, and in a multi-ethnic nation this suggests ethnopluralism. American federalism could then protect the different regions, states, localities, and ethnic cultures, which could be affirmed by the separation of powers and states in the original U.S. Constitution. Whatever human peace is possible needs to include this deep-conservatism.

Although Berry is not the typical Christian, like most Christians he misses the central motive behind the ascetic sermons of Jesus. Jesus rejected all material desires, as Buddha also did, so as to experience the God or Father Within, which could only be fully experienced by ridding the body of material desires. One could love ones enemies and be peaceful and forgiving mainly because one was not concerned primarily with the material desires or outward actions of the flesh. This was not really a social or political philosophy.

Real human nature remains kin-centered, ethnocentric and even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. Jesus, Buddha, and the Hindus before them would probably agree with this definition of human nature (they might even occasionally call it evil), as their ascetic philosophy ran contrary to it. We can retain the inward ascetic experience of the Father Within as the first symbolic glimpse of real Godhood, which is reached not by blocking human nature but by the guided outward evolution of material and supermaterial life toward real Godhood.

Long-term conscious evolution requires peace and order, and peace and order require local, ethnic cultures and ethnocentrism. Contrary to political correctness (cultural Marxism), we would probably not have the territorial racial battles we see happening today in West Baltimore if a protected ethnopluralism had been affirmed and established.

The main test of value of a political system

The main test of value of a political system is whether the political system helps the majority---and not just a minority---evolve upward toward more intelligence, beauty and good character, on the path toward Godhood.

A republican form of government can do this, but so can other forms of government. It is usually best to prefer the government you have, mainly because slower conservative change usually works better and does less harm than radical change.

We could use more scientists, and not only lawyers, in government. Once the people decide where they want to go, the direction can be enhanced by consulting with experts in the field, which is needed in our increasingly complex world, as Raymond Cattell pointed out. National research centers in sociobiology, economics etc. need to be supported by the public too. And it wouldn't bother me a bit to see more requirements and qualifications to vote, rather than fewer and fewer as we have been seeing.

Ultimately all social questions are ethical ones, and therefore religious. All long-lasting cultures and civilizations were founded in religions. After all, the sacred goal of life is to evolve toward Godhood.

Religious Transformation in the Twofold Path

Ascetic freedom from material and bodily desires which the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and others feature, is in reality limited to the Inward Path symbolic experience of the God or Father Within, but total religion requires the Outward Path of evolution, which can channel material desires toward evolving to real Godhood, and not destroying that sacred activation.

In general, the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Inward Path of traditional religion says, in reality, as Schopenhauer said, it is better not to be born than to be. Think of that! But even so, the Twofold Path does not reject the traditional Inward Path, which was our early, inward, ascetic glimpse of Godhood, it transforms it into the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood.

This is conservative evolution rather than radical revolution. One of the basics of conservatism is that you don't abolish your culture, you change it or reconstitute it on a new basis. This is the opposite of the Marxists who openly admit that they act contrary to all historical experience.

The material world, science, culture, can legitimately re-enter religion again with the Twofold Path. Present man and present religion are only the beginning of the man and woman of the future, as we all reach toward Godhood. This means also that politically we have to find a way to keep life and the world going, which leads to the ethnopluralism written about here.

The main strength of conservatism

Conservatism at its best fits youth into maturity, which is like fitting meritocracy into aristocracy. Time and experience allow cultural maturity to accumulate, but we need to avoid aristocracies where merit has slipped and become effete snobbery. But meritocracies alone can bring unethical, uncultured, bright monsters. We need both youth and maturity, both meritocracy and aristocracy. I think conservatism can do this, which is the main strength of conservatism, when it's working at its best. This applies to politics as well as religion. Even science can benefit from the conservative approach. This is also mainly the way evolution works---radical revolution usually harms more than it helps.

There is no legitimate universal right for the West to insist on the freedom to attack Mohammed or for Islam to demand universal obedience to its values

A very important real “universal” is the affirmation of its opposite: exclusiveness, the particular. This means that radical Islam does not have the universal right to impose its religion on the whole world, but then the West does not have the universal right to impose its ideas on free expression and democracy on the whole world either. There is no legitimate universal right for the West to insist on the freedom to attack Mohammed or for Islam to demand universal obedience to its values, that is totalitarianism.

The separation of powers and states is one of the beauties of the United States Constitution, which is one of the few healthy political universals blocking totalitarianism. This we have to return to---it is a highly civilized worldview related to natural human nature, which is universally 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.

The separation of powers and states allows human nature to flourish, totalitarianism obviously does not, whether it derives from Western neoconservatism/neoliberalism or from radical Islam.

Realism also tells us that the separation of powers and states, which brings healthy variety, needs to be defended or it is lost.

Now that America as we have known it no longer exists, a new conserving perspective will be needed

Immigration in the United States was deviously changed years ago from being in favor of Europeans to being in favor of the Third World, and also mass illegal immigration by the millions continues to this day.

The Left apparently loves this, being ignorant of the fact that as ethnic groups change the culture changes, and it will not be the peaceful cant-we-all-get-along culture that modern liberals dream of.

So...a new conserving perspective will be needed to keep the nation from civil war, or from an order-imposing dictatorship of communists or fascists. I prefer to see ethnopluralism develop within regions and states adapted to the various ethnic cultures that inhabit them, virtual ethnostates, which can then harmonize the best with real human nature and group-selection being the primary unit of selection.

Ethnopluralism could also synchronize with the separation of powers and states of our Constitution, so it can be done legally, and with our protecting federalism to keep ethnic or tribal warfare in check.

The existence of a variety of ethnic groups in ethnic regions, taking many paths, is actually good for evolution, good for business, and increases the chances that higher evolution will take place.

If we are wise and courageous, and moral, then the knowledge we learn separately can be shared across states and ethnic groups. This is no longer a world where only one-ethnic-imperialism can rule successfully.

That is how we will all best get along. And most importantly, I believe we all have a sacred mission to evolve toward Godhood.

Some thoughts on natural law

Natural law runs through all of the stars, planets, plants, animals and people, and has been gradually understood by humans. Human nature directly relates to natural law, and human nature has included in every human culture ever studied, kin selection-preference, incest taboos, marriage, hierarchy, division of labor, gender differentiation, localism, and ethnocentrism, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. If culture, natural right, and common law propose to not include these things, which are grounded in natural law, the culture does not last long and it always returns to these things. Justice itself resides in this foundation of natural law. These things also happen to be at the core of conservatism and tradition, whereas many of these traits are missing in communism, modern liberalism and post-modernism. Conservatism has been defined as natural law informed by tradition.

We have to try to understand and arrange things as they really exist and not as they ought to be. Modern liberals are revolutionaries in the sense of insisting on another world, supposedly a better world, refusing to affirm reality. But even ancient philosophers like Plato also were revolutionaries in seeing a better more logical and true world other than our own. And religion has always sought a world other than the material world.

Theological materialism and the Twofold Path apply to this world, the real world, that is, the world of biological evolution and survival are applied to religion and philosophy. Godhood is no longer thought of as out of this world but is understood as the supermaterial zenith of material evolution in this world. This brings religion, philosophy, and culture back to reality, back to human nature and natural law. In the Twofold Path the old Inward God as the goal of ascetic tradition is retained but transformed in the Outward Path of evolution to real Godhood. This helps make new the old and avoids stagnation, as real conservatism requires. Politically the ethnopluralism hypothesis also brings human nature and natural law, as defined above, back to cultural reality.

The dangerous mistake libertarians make regarding individualism and altruism and accepting the old in the new

I had been thinking about how conservatism itself needs to be added to poetry, art and music when we speak of “making things new” over time, the old included with the new, when I watched an interview with Glenn Greenwald, the reporter and promoter of the NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden. It occurred to me that there is a connection here with the philosophical (and now scientific) mistake libertarians make regarding individualism and altruism.

E. O. Wilson, the great innovator in sociobiology, has recently affirmed group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This does not mean that kin-selection and individual selection are not important, but our basic survival affirms group-selection first.

What is missing or deemphasized by individualism is the biological foundation of altruism at the base of social behavior and at the foundation of morality itself. Some libertarians even admit the natural pull of group morality but then choose to see this as something innovative people need to fight against. They are in good company, even Nietzsche made this mistake.

That way of thinking is too easily applied to anti-social hedonism, which easily walks through the open door of individualism, where anti-social deviations and even criminal behavior justify themselves by alluding to the sacredness of individualism.

As mentioned above, conservatism also needs to find better ways of making things new. I am not talking about progressivism, I'm talking about having a way within the system for innovators and whistle-blowers to make the old new. Otherwise we lose creativity and we stagnate, and stagnation is not conservative. But innovators and whistle-blowers need to acknowledge the vital importance of altruism and group morality, even above individual morality.

Personally, I empathize with the problems of innovators, I have been developing a new religious philosophy, which includes the old in the new, and I am an outsider. But I am a patriotic and conservative outsider refusing anti-social or radical revolution. I think it is vital to be able to tell the difference between social and antisocial innovations, which is of course not always easy. Social psychology, psychometrics, has been developing ways, tests, etc. to help us do this.

We need both conservatism and evolution

It is not a contradiction to affirm conservatism as well as ongoing evolution. The realty of what we are at present is a time-centered variation of what we are becoming, but we can chew gum and walk at the same time.

Evolutionists and conservative's tend to want to rule the other side out. But conservatism is needed to retain the best that has evolved while evolving toward new variations and mutations that harmonize with the best of the past. Change, as Burke and others have said, is required if we wish to conserve what we have, stagnation rots the whole structure.

Even the brilliant Nietzsche chose to discard Being in favor of Becoming, and his postmodern followers hypertrophied this to the point of finding everything relative to changing power needs, with no permanent anything (other than their own pronouncements).

The urgency of becoming more intelligent to solve our complicated survival problems does not mean that we should move so fast that we lose tens of thousands of years of evolutionary improvements. I think it was Cattell who said regarding evolution that we are remolding a house while living in it and if we lose the foundation the whole structure falls. In biological and political evolution we don't tear down long-evolved existing structures to build something completely new.

In this sense the transhumanists and singularity crowd also seem to be abandoning long-evolved human biology in favor of artificial intelligence, which should only be a secondary tool of our ongoing biological evolution. Being is Becoming, but Becoming is also Being.

The new within the old religion

Theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church do not advocate the death of the Involutionary Inward Path of the revealed religions but advocate the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood working in conjunction with the Inward Path to the God Within.

Science has more or less tried to kill religion, and religion tried to kill science, but the ECC applies both, bringing the new into the old. Changing the structure of traditional religion while still living with traditional religion needs to be done carefully.

It's like living in a house while remodeling the house. Or it's like the biological brain not abolishing the older brain systems but building a new cortical system above to help control the older system. New structures need to coordinate with old structures.

That is Conservatism, the wisdom of conservatism, rather than starting all over again with something radically new, we evolve rather than have revolution, which is generally the way nature changes.

If we want to avoid the the dying of traditional religion, including Christianity, the structure needs to change. The God Within can be understood as one of the first symbolic experiences by various ascetics, East and West, of what real Godhood may be like when and if we reach Godhood through material/supermaterial evolution.

But it is not practicality alone that is the reason for the changes, reaching Godhood actually requires our material/supermaterial evolution to the Godhood which was formerly seen as the God or Father Within.

Why religion at all, modernity asks? No civilization has risen or lasted long without being grounded in religion. And the very long-term goal of evolving to Godhood in the cosmos requires the very long-term values and morals, and sacred bonding, of religion.

Which political system works best with human nature?

Communism didn't relate well to human nature, it went too far in its annulment of private property, requiring a universal altruism which is not strong in human nature, leading to forced equality. But group-selection is strong in human nature, it is the central unit of selection, suggesting ethnic cultures rather than universal cultures, where altruism is most natural. The hypertrophied individualism of border-less capitalism is also not nearly as strong as group-selection, which is why global capitalism became the monster now devouring all groups and doomed to be dismantled.

The centrality of group-selection in human nature calls for ethnopluralism and ethnostates, perhaps protected by federalism, as well as economic nationalism and a free enterprise system. The United States Constitution with its separation of powers and states could accommodate ethnopluralistic regions and states. This is the balance which works best with real human nature. This can bring us back to real altruism and group-consciousness, back to life-consciousness, and back to modern man finding himself. From here the divine process of evolution can proceed, conservatively.

Conservative group behavior comes before Libertarian individual behavior

Not long ago the great sociobiologist E.O Wilson affirmed group-selection over individual selection---as the Boston Globe put it: “Wilson is not arguing that members of certain species don't sacrifice themselves for the benefit of their relatives. They do. But it's his position that kinship and relatedness aren't essential in causing the development of advanced social behaviors like altruism ---that the reason such behaviors catch on is that they're evolutionarily advantageous on a group level. That socially advanced organisms end up favoring their kin, Wilson argues, is a byproduct of their group membership, not the cause.” Research backs up this position. I would agree with this as long as it is also understood that group-selection, altruism, and conservatism have favored genetically related groups over more distantly related groups. There is a natural continuum of altruism, concern for the world comes after concern for ones own land and people.

What does this do for individualism and libertarianism? Individualism often leads to hedonism and general selfishness, all passions and activity become submerged in the individual, which damages group altruism, and this in turn damages individuals. Yes, the individual is important, especially innovative individuals, and yes, it's easier for individuals to survive now, but nobody can rightly say that the individual can survive for long alone without the group.  And we must also mention the loss of foundational ethics based in altruism.

Public morality is legitimate, private morality is not nearly enough, so those who say if you don't like the program turn it off, are short-sighted and even irresponsible. Conservatism is not really a negation of individualism, it just puts it in its natural place. But I would probably still vote for libertarian Rand Paul, given the choices. This also affirms those who, like myself, see ethnopluralism within many small distinct states, virtual ethnostates, as the most natural social configuration, in line with real human nature.

We could improve democracy

How do we reconcile “rule by the best,” aristocracy, with our democratic republic? We could improve democracy. Our leaders and representatives could be picked by merit and virtue. We have to get the money out of the process of choosing our leaders. We also don't need to choose by families or titles or names, merit is what we want to apply.

I think it was Raymond Cattell who made the sensible suggestion that candidates for office pass exams on subjects relative to their leadership. There should be more social scientists, sociobiologists, and fewer lawyers (now the majority). Government is still, even in a democracy, government by elites---communism was too.

Citizens also could pass general knowledge tests before voting. And sanity tests could also be useful, and freedom from crime. The vote of the classics professor is canceled out by the vote of the man with a record of petty theft. We could trim the voting core to healthy adults.

In the end all leadership questions are ethical questions, and we need leaders capable of making ethical decisions on economics, education, social behavior and military matters. We don't have them now, for the most part.

The celebration of garbage with no good guys allowed

The morals and values of our Western culture did not depend solely on Christian values, before religion was even created or consulted real human nature related well to traditional religion in being kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

Not that long ago characters in the entertainment media could be bad, but we wanted well drawn believable bad characters to show us how well drawn good characters were superior. Not any more. Now it's strait decadence and decay for the sake of decadence and decay. Reviewer's now actually criticize characters for being “hemmed in” by invisible moral boundaries, amoral protagonists are celebrated for boldly breaking all the ethical rules.

Some of this celebration of garbage has to do with the lack of courage of nerdy writers to go against fashionable trends, and some may come from a direct desire to destroy traditional morals, but most of it comes for the cultural Marxism (political correctness) taught throughout our college and university systems which allows no moral judgments, other than being against those who make any moral judgments.

The entertainment media is far more powerful and influential in a negative way than many of us thought it could be. Whether this means breaking up the media monopolies or building up our own media along side their monstrous media, remains to be seen. Meanwhile we sink further into the garbage, and no good guys are allowed. How can we change things! I am an American patriot and I don't advocate fascism, but it is becoming easier to understand how the fascists of the last century could scream in frustration over the  destructive media in their societies.

The Left is more reductionist than the Right

Is it a reductionist ideological abstraction to relate ones personalty to real human nature? Leftist's would have us think so. But it is the ideology of the Left that is the reduction of personality to the sameness of an equality which does not exist. Cultural Marxism, or political correctness, reduces the richness and fullness of real human nature, which is affirmed throughout human history as being kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, and with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. The Left reduces the variety of real life down to an unnatural frame unfit for human nature and life, causing many more problems than the natural problems of human nature.

Sociobiology-based ethnopluralism can revitalize the realism school of diplomacy

Ethnopluralism backed by the definitions of human nature of sociobiology can affirm both the realism school of diplomacy and idealism, and overcome the condemnation of realism by the idealists for being “value-neutral” and not pushing our democratic ideals and morals on other nations---the debacles of Iraq and the Ukraine don't seem to have changed the minds of the idealists.

Sociobiology has affirmed that ideals and morals reside naturally in local kin-selection and group-selection, and especially in small ethnostates, where altruism toward ones own group was created in the first place as the basis for unselfish concern for the welfare of others, which is at the center of most versions of morals and ideals. This suggests a variety of groups and states and values that do best with the balance of power of realism, without meddling in the affairs of others or pushing distinctive ideals on others.

This sociobiology-based realism of ethnopluralism seems inherently stronger than the cool neutral form of realism because it is based in real human nature and works more in harmony with nature without being value-neutral. With this biologically-based realist school of diplomacy one is both ideally and realistically supporting the welfare of other states and nations by leaving them alone to live and evolve in their own fashion, having connections with them when its mutually worthwhile.

The Political Synthesis

Life is inherently optimistic, think of how life has prevailed over endless obstacles since the beginning of the present cosmos, and so I don't think it's overly optimistic to think of a political synthesis of left and right, as Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader have proposed.

America's corporate elite, the megabanks, and global corporations, along with their army of lobbyists, created the nationally destructive NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and massive immigration, among other destructive things, which enriched the elite but hurt everyone else---it is stunning to realize that America did not vote on these things, corporate America paid off our Congress to do their bidding.

But this time the political synthesis needs to include the Ethnopluralist's who have seen the impossibility of merging distinct people all together in one place, and who also see the selfishness and impossibility of imperialist mono-racialism, and who therefore advocate the gradual acceptance of regions and states, or ethnostates, for each distinct ethic group living in those areas, which can be accommodated by the original U.S. Constitution, and even including a state for those who disagree.

This political synthesis can harmonize with real human nature, which is, across the world, 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 definition of real human nature has been blocked by those who selfishly benefit from its blocking, at least in the short term.

All lasting civilizations have been grounded in religion, and the theological materialism written about here is a synthesis of traditional and evolutionary religion, and a religious philosophy which can accommodate this future political synthesis. Perhaps we can then get on with the sacred evolution of life toward Godhood.

How did it happen that the death of a culture could mean so little?

The dynamic forces in the suicide of the West have been the Media and the Academic world. There was a successful “march through the institutions” with modern liberalism conquering, which is cultural Marxism, otherwise known as political correctness.

We were fed daily the propaganda of multiculturalism, consumerism, and a global policy of racial uniformity. It worked well. This morning I heard a local T.V. talking head announce that minorities were now a majority in our public schools as if he were announcing the weather. People almost welcome the change, as someone said awhile back at a dinner party: “How could the minorities do worse than the whites have done?” It is simply not understood that when the people change, the culture changes.

Even the Paleoconservatives, who are the grownups in the conservative movement, have no real answers, although they write eloquently and emotionally about the fall of WASP culture and the decline of Christianity. Some have even had the courage to mention that Jews in America largely supplanted the WASP elites, being just as intelligent but more ethnically-oriented. The metaphysical weakness of Christianity was in confounding local group-altruism with universal-altruism.

This seems to leave the field of a declining people open to the mono-racialists, the neofascists, who want only one race to live and rule in America, and given our great demographic changes, this seems to mean genocide, which is not only morally wrong but impractical in reality.

The solution we talk about here comes in affirming ethnopluralism, regions and states eventually becoming virtual ethnic states, which can be legally accommodated by the separation of powers and states in the original Constitution, without revolution, protected internally and externally by a light federalism. This will not be easy of course because, for example, modern liberalism has diabolically placed many thousands of African and Hmong immigrants in places like Nordic Minnesota.

But ethnopluralism happens naturally, as human nature continues to prefer kin and group-selection. Assimilation only happens with genetically-culturally similar immigrants, otherwise the melting pot does not melt and causes only civil and racial disruptions.

As to the metaphysical weakness, we advocate the revitalization of Christianity with theological materialism and the Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church, affirming the great adventure of evolving materially and supermaterially toward Godhood, with variety, living in our own distinct ways in our own regions and states---there can even be states for those who don't agree---with the cooperative competition that humans are capable of, when we see that it is necessary and sacred.

Why I am not a revolutionary

It is understandable when the Twofold Path and theological materialism are accused of corrupting traditional religion, even though this is a transformation or transcendence of the traditional Inward Path of the symbolic God Within to the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood, while retaining the Inward Path as the first glimpse of Godhood reached through evolution.

Why not just pull up the tree by its roots and declare the old Inward Path as mistaken and even damaging to material life and sacred evolution? The philosophy of Conservatism stops me from this radical action. One of our Founding Fathers, John Dickinson thought, according to William Murchison (Chronicles, July 2014) that “the present (is) understood as a patch on the past. Modern needs to be consulted, yes, but always with an eye on the preceding by which men had come to their present estate---and on the delicacy necessary to a successful project of reform...” Edmund Burke couldn’t have said it better.

Thomas Aquinas didn't so much create a new religious perspective as bring older Greek philosophy into Christianity. Whereas Jesus did bring the new into the old, keeping elements of the old---although ancient Eastern religions had similar beliefs about the God Within---and Jesus was murdered in the process. These reforms were at first labeled corruptions of traditional religion, to say the least.

I am not Aquinas of course, and I may not be delicate enough in my reforms. However, it is a very big change from the ancient mistaken or incomplete notion of a separation between the spiritual and material, the mind and body, to Godhood seen as the supermaterial result of sacred material evolution. It is very difficult to be delicate about this transformation. My belief in the conservative wisdom and reality of including the new in the old is why I am not a revolutionary.

Incidentally, I honor the same conservative perspective in less sacred political philosophy, seeing in ethnopluralism the eventual separation of our states and regions into virtual ethnostates, as a legal Constitutionally accommodated separation of powers and states in the United States, to save an increasingly diverse and unassimilating people, and not radical revolution.

Chivalry?

According to Yuval Levin, Edmund Burke defined chivalry, which was passing in his time, as pacifying and beautifying two dangerous relationships: between men and women and between ruler and ruled.

It sounds sort of ridiculous to think of chivalry in our time when young men think of how to game the bitches, and politicians are unctuous demagogues. Even so, it seems like chivalry would make a better world.

I'm not talking about effete gentlemen mincing around the parlor, I'm talking about the gentleman who can kick ass if need be while still retaining the the Marquess of Queensberry rules. And I'm not taking about women being snobby idiots, women can be ladies with character and wisdom, people you want to respect.

Does chivalry necessitate a great distance between people or classes? Is there a genetic component to chivalrous behavior exclusive to aristocrats ? I don't think it needs to be seen that way. It's also a learned cultural behavior.

Well, perhaps a future state would reaffirm it.