A biologistic reading of culture

We can't legitimately say "I will," but we can say "the" will. In civilizing the beast it would have been more truthful to say that we can be better animals than to say that we are not animals, as much of religion and philosophy said for centuries. It takes strength to admit limitations.

We have free will but it is limited to choices within the determined path of life and evolution, like a loosened boulder rolling down a craggy mountain. The activation to live, survive, and reproduce can only be pseudo-denied with such things as ascetic discipline, because the will or activation (Tirips) is a vital part of being alive in every cell of the body, only death can really stop it---which explains part of the importance of reproduction.

Given the activation to live, survive, and reproduce which puts our will on a loose-fitting biological leash, we can legitimately try to harmonize with what we are, with the life force within us, and aid rather than hinder our material evolution toward the zenith of biological success, which is supermaterial Godhood.

That brings forward the biologistic reading of culture, which rises from the same biological source.

Clearing away the presumptuousness and the weaseling of psychoanalytic philosophers

Psychoanalytic philosopher's do not engage or explain the social as much as they should (Derrida, Lacan, Butler), and their endless verbiage about "individuation" does not correctly engage the social either. So their work is not worth much to me, since human nature is grounded primarily in social group-selection; and the individual is advanced best through altruism toward the group---even individual-selection is advanced within the group with successful group-selection at its heart.

I suspect it is that old desperate fear of the biological drives put forth by the fascists of World War Two which wrongly featured imperialistic supremacy that biased and obfuscated the minds of the postmodern psychoanalytic philosophers, which to me means that they either lacked the courage to overcome their fears, or they are part of the will to power of the globalist elite whose mortal enemy is a completely natural populism, nationalism, and ethnocentrism, which is at the core of human nature---or maybe it's both with them.

So the biological origin of social behavior as studied by sociobiology can clear away the presumptuousness and the weaseling of psychoanalytic philosophers and their chickenshit postmodern followers in the U.S..

What comes then, at least from my perspective, is theological materialism and an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, that is, religious and political philosophy in harmony with real human nature and evolution---psychology follows in its wake.

Adapting Hegel's grand synthesis to natural reality

We can see the way the Ancient Greeks developed the individual sacrificing to the universal, as seen in Greek tragedy, which lost the individual to the universal, and on to the Romans who brought the individual to the legal, and the medieval losing the material to a universal spiritual, and now the postmodern way of trying to make the individual the universal, with each historical movement losing one vital bond or another in the synthesis.

The universal realistically and naturalistically bonds with individual genetic drives and desires even at the furthest and weakest end of altruism, or being-for-others, as the earth and the universe itself must survive if the individual is to survive, and then altruism gains strength moving from the universal to the nation, ethnostate, ethnic group, kin and self, becoming ever stronger altruistically in genetically-activated bonding due to ever closer and therefore stronger genetic relatedness.

Next we can see how real human nature has been affirmed throughout human history to this day as being 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.

This logically and naturally points toward the political/cultural solution of an ethnopluralism of ethnostates. It is a conservative transformation---not revolution---which can bring about a sociopolitical or political/cultural structure most in harmony with the real human nature and natural universal evolution. "Within groups, selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals." E.O. Wilson

In theological materialism the universal exists in both the material Tirips, which is the material activation within life toward evolving to supermaterial Godhood, which works along with outside perhaps sometimes random natural evolution---and the universal also exists in individual knowledge.

So we can altruistically synthesize and bond with the individual, kin, ethnic group, ethnostate, nation, earth, and the universal, without resorting to a non-material, un-bonding,  "spiritual/universal," and we can realistically bond with the real supermaterial Godhood at the zenith of material evolution, without losing any of these bonds.

How universalism loses its utopianism in universal ethnostates

Liberals want a bottomless "universalism," but "universal ethnostates" are the most naturalistic and realistic way to define universalism.

Kin-centeredness is almost an individualistic kind of altruism or being-for-others, but one where the self can know itself even as it knows others. This idea is further extended in the sociobiological affirmation of the biological origin of social behavior, as written about in this genetically-derived social or group affirmation by sociobiologist E. O. Wilson: "Within groups, selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals," leading to success in survival and reproduction.

Ethnostatism stands at the furthest reach of effective altruism or being-or others without losing or alienating the self and kin. An ethnopluralism of ethnostates represents the realistic extent of naturalistic social or political universalism, where being-for-others need not alienate self and kin.

The universalism of liberalism expands beyond real altruism and moves back to the self in the form of individualistic and selfish global corporations or political Marxism, with no biological or genetic ties to real altruism, so they soon socially fall apart.

Science and reason have also often led to the withdrawal into individual reasoning, which tends to take the place of bonding with others. Religious asceticism does this too seeking individual enlightenment that tends to downplay materialism and biology, ironically even as it touts a grudging form of material universalism: "If you must marry I suppose that is better than burning in hell," St. Paul more or less said.

However, science and reason move back to a realistic form of being-for-others in the sociobiological affirmation of the biological origin of social behavior, seen in genetically-derived social or group affirmation. And religion moves back to real altruism and bonding when Godhood is understood as evolved to in the material, not spiritual, world. That is how universalism loses its utopianism in universal ethnostates.

How theological materialism defines faith

Inspired by the models or pattern-making of Hegel, I define "faith" as projecting the realities of the natural world and the world of science into the utmost future. As I said yesterday, in theological materialism I see evolution moving inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements, and the pattern has a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward higher and higher more effective living forms, ending in supermaterial Godhood. "Faith" derives from projecting the realities of the natural world and the world of science into that future.

That faith can add to the noble way of overcoming selfishness and being-for-itself as well as overcoming anthropomorphism in predicting the future. But perhaps even more importantly we can avoid having faith in an absolute spiritualism which removes itself from the realities of the natural world and the world of science---alas, even Hegel couldn't avoid that kind of faith.

That is also the rational, and instinctive, way to identify the individual with the future of the group or the collective---I hesitate to identify with the "Absolute" mainly because I don't think evolution ever ends, there are always Gods evolving and arriving at the zenith of success in survival and reproduction.

Hypothesis on the dynamics of biology and evolution

Evolution is a product of life before life is a product of evolution. How is that? An organism is both internally activated to evolve and externally activated to evolve from environmental conditions. But it is first activated internally to survive (but not spiritually) and then to somehow reproduce and evolve. Why? Ultimate success, or the zenith of success, in survival, reproduction and evolution leads to eternal (?) survival, reproduction, and evolution, which defines Godhood. So that is how evolution is a production of life seeking Godhood---which is also how religion joins science. 

 

(A response to physicist Nigel Goldenfeld, Quanta magazine interview)

Demand understandable intellectuals

America has tended to be anti-intellectual, which has been thought of as a bad thing. But the presumptuous abstractions of many intellectuals have not been as wise as the practical populism of the people, so this seems to affirm their anti-intellectualism. To change Henry Ford's conclusion on history: intellectuals have offered more or less bunk.

It seems to me that the best and deepest ideas can be understood by a non-elite public. When an idea is difficult it probably needs more refining by the author. Sloppy writers, selfish writers, make the reader struggle through the author's unclear thoughts to make them understandable.

This is not to say that I don't believe in deep genius. I would increase the number of geniuses. And I certainly don't believe all opinions are equal. But many or most intellectuals deserve the anti-intellectualism of the people.

So, carry on America, demand understandably intellectuals.

Why I praise the West

French and Russian intellectuals, and their subordinates in Western academia, have been attacking the West for some time now, blaming the West for the modernity that in fact brought material comfort and prosperity, the rule of law, freedom, etc, to large groups of people. The intellectuals are right in attacking inflated individual greed and the marauding crony capitalism of the West, but these are negative deviations of the natural free enterprise system and should not alone lead to condemning the whole of the West and modernity. Also, rarely have the qualities of Western people been praised, due perhaps to the universalism of Christianity, as well as modern cultural Marxism, which insists that all people everywhere are the same, other than the differences caused from different social constructions. Hypertrophied individualism also rose in the West, encouraged by Christianity, because universalist altruism---also encouraged by Christianity---did not counter greed very well. Altruism in real human nature is local and group-centered, as sociobiology has affirmed, and not universally very workable. People naturally love their kin and their group, their ethnic cultures, and beyond that bonding becomes increasingly difficult.

Greek and Roman culture also positively influenced the West---less the East---in philosophy, administration and the arts. All of these things led to the obvious advantages of the Western world. Calling for the destruction of the West, especially by Westerners, is neurotic and even ignorant. Reforming the West means blocking crony capitalism and hypertrophied individual greed without destroying the great Faustian spirit of the West, its free enterprise, its creativity, its civilizing of the beast, and perhaps most importantly, saving Western people. This of course will not be easy because crony capitalism now generally controls Western governments and elected officials.

I also think a natural ethnopluralism eventually needs to be accommodated by the U.S. Constitution, with its separation of powers and states, this will bring our increasingly diverse culture, which is naturally not getting along well together, back to real and workable human nature, which prefers kin, local groups and regions, and bonds best at that level, protected by a light federalism. Then we can all better get on with the deeper sacred mission of the evolution of life toward Godhood.

Those who have increasingly embraced the Traditionalist School, French, Russian and American, generally want to destroy the West rather than reform it, with their revolt against the modern world. They want to politically install an empire in Eurasia managed by Russia, allied with Islam, not unlike an ancient religious caste system, with initiations and levels of retreat from the world, with spiritual leaders who condemn the material world and seek only the non-material Inward God. But that is a transvaluation of life: the material world is the vehicle for the material/supermaterial evolution of life toward real Godhood, the Godhood only symbolical seen as the Inward God or the Father Within in the Inward Path of Traditionalism. Blocking the Outward Path of the material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood is suicide, not life, and not a solution to the world's problems. The West, with its creative materialism, seems to be a natural fit for affirming this sacred, progressive, evolution toward Godhood, while retaining all that is best in the West.

Natural law/tradition is nature/nurture

I think it makes things clearer to compare the arguments of natural law (Straussian Neoconservatism) versus history/tradition (Paleoconservatism) to nature versus nurture, because there is no “versus,” they work together dialectically. You can't leave either history or natural law out of the world view.

But as we endlessly circle the cave of knowledge where the secrets are supposed to lie, Thomas Aquinas reminds us that we can discern only as much as we can discern of universal natural laws using reason or revelation. Natural law now includes the scientific knowledge coming in from sociobiology, in the development of evolutionary knowledge since Darwin. This can be applied to history and natural law.

Survival and reproductive drives adapting to various environments help develop human culture, and in turn the genetic qualities of the people who develop the cultures affect the cultures. Natural laws leading to natural rights need to be in harmony with these natural drives if we are to work in harmony with real human nature and nature.

With universal laws regarding religion I include the intellectual intuition and faith (revelation) in the goal of the evolution of material life to supermaterial Godhood, which can then help ground social philosophy and natural rights. The Inward God is seen as only symbolic of the Outward Godhood reached by material evolution, which gives religion a more natural connection with universal natural laws.

Then there is the further advantage of making reality clearer and more natural with grounding the Platonic/Revealed Religion abstractions of God, Being, or Virtue---which are only definitions---in the real Natural Object of supermaterial Godhood, reached by natural material evolution.

Political philosophy seeks to harmonize with natural human nature in developing Ethnopluralism, which harmonizes best with primary human nature in being essentially kin-centered, local  and group-centered. History (Paleoconservatism), and natural law (Straussian Neoconservatism), and natural rights, can come together in this, as nature and nurture do.

Biologizing the Eschaton

Conservative's contrast “ideology” with “conservatism,” defining ideology as the secular attempt to create a social utopia on earth, which was called “immanentizing the eschaton” (Eric Voegelin), or trying to bring about the eschaton, the final, heaven-like stage of history in the immanent material world, on earth. Whereas conservative's believe that the world is controlled by God, who is beyond the material-secular world, and that man cannot create social utopias on earth without God's help, because humanity is flawed and incomplete, containing original sin caused by attempting to act contrary to God at the beginning of mankind. One might think this would better make the comparison between ideology and religious philosophy, but it is assumed that conservatism contains these sacred elements in its political programs---or perhaps it looked too volatile to suggest a battle between religion and ideology.

How is theological materialism defined regarding ideology and conservatism? Theological materialism biologizes the eschaton in the evolution of material and supermaterial life to Godhood. But Godhood is not seen as a social utopia on earth, theological materialism promises Godhood beyond the earth, but unlike traditional religion, Godhood is reached through the formerly “secular” world of material and supermaterial evolution. God was first understood or seen by ascetics in the symbolic experience of the Inward Path to the God or Father Within, but in theological materialism this symbolic God is attained through material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood, beginning on earth and then evolving out into the cosmos, applying such things as sociobiology and even voluntary eugenics.  “Salvation” comes through material and supermaterial evolution. This is not an “armed doctrine” (Burke) of radical revolution, this is an outward conservative transformation of the undeveloped traditional inward definitions of God.

Is this ideology or religion? Biologizing the eschaton toward evolving to Godhood is religious philosophy, not merely ideology. But why get upset by the the term ideology? The material and supermaterial world includes  ideology and religion as the means by which we evolve to Godhood.  This could even help heal the great divide between ideology and religion.

Why it is not “playing God” to seek to evolve to Godhood

It seems that I harmonize better with classical science than modern science in asking why things exists and not only how things exists. Aristotle thought that nothing exists without a reason, a function, an end. I am never satisfied knowing only the correlation between two things, the sequence alone is not enough. As the excellent Claude Polin recently pointed out in “Chronicles,” modern science made a choice to view things only pragmatically, and then modern science terrorized anyone who asked why things exist in the first place. Phenomena alone is never enough, we need to know why phenomena exists.

The problem with the traditional religious view is that it thinks unless the universe has a Maker-God there can be no order in nature or in man. But there are natural bounds and order to nature and to human nature whether God made the order or not. Everything is not necessary permitted even if God is defined as dead. We may not be as free as either traditional man or modern man think we are. We have a determined human nature even if modern man doesn’t think we do, we are not free to do or become anything we please. Traditionalism gives us the freedom to “stray” from our own natural nature, which is then defined as evil. But our real freedom is limited by various determined choices, we have the flexibility to be mistaken about who we are and what we can do, which helped us in making survival over non-survival choices in the various environments presented to us by nature. And we can be mistaken in relation to survival in our cultural schemes.

There is a determined human nature, there is order in the universe, there is a goal to life, and a goal to evolution, and there is purpose in phenomena, but it is not defined the way either modern science, classical science or traditional religion define it. There is an activating force in nature and in life, a Will, or a Super-Id---here defined as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood---which is then shaped outwardly by the ups and downs of natural evolution and selection. We are evolving to Godhood, rather than from God.  Godhood is the zenith of success in natural and supermaterial evolution. Purpose is defined here in the philosophy of theological materialism.

Harmonizing with human nature and nature itself is what morality is mainly about, but human nature and nature include evolving in nature toward Godhood. But we are never all-wise, we are always searching to find out who and what we are and where we are going. The best and most recent sociobiological knowledge is telling us that human nature, affirmed throughout human history, has been, and continues to be, 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 is basic human nature. Politics can then follow with an ordering among men, by including real human nature harmoniously in its programs. Not to do so has caused many misfortunes.

We are free to help nature and help life, including human life, evolve toward the Godhood life naturally seeks. This is not the great evil of “man playing God,” it is trying to aid nature in nature's purpose of evolving to Godhood, which is the why, and not merely the how, of life. We can include science and religion together but more in the fashion of classical science, which did ask both how and why. I affirm the goal of life and nature evolving in the material/supermaterial world to the Godhood first only glimpsed in the Inward Path of traditional religion. This is the way we conservatively include but transform traditional religion and modern science.

Human nature is not flawed but we need to evolve

The ascetic and the scientific man are alike in seeking their goals by way of an opposition to the normal passions. The ascetic seeks the God within by ridding the body and mind of all desires, and the scientific man seeks absolute objectivity by ridding the body and mind of all desires. Nietzsche thought Socrates/Plato ruined the old religions, but did they both not at least seek objective-passionless truths? Perhaps this is where Western and Eastern religions began to separate, with the objective mathematical forms of Plato leading to the science of the West, and with the God Within of the East free for the most part of all mathematical formulas and science?

Both religion and science need to bring the instincts in from the cold. Human nature is not “flawed,” as traditional religions believe, and as science also suggests with its goal of passionless objectivity-as-truth. Religion even goes so far as to call the instincts satanic, and science has little time for truths not affirmed by objective science considering them almost satanic. Human nature isn't flawed but it can be crude and unrefined, and we need to evolve. Both science and religion can remain---this  is not calling for liberal humanism, Marxism or logical positivism---but we need to understand that the zenith of the instincts, defined as the Super-Id, or the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, are leading us to the zenith of material/supermaterial evolution, which is Godhood, while being shaped outwardly by evolution and selection  This is described in theological materialism.

Evolution can be silenced by the non-action of the ascetics, and by passionless forms of science, as well as by crude war, where the best people, places and things are often eliminated. Religion and science can be enlisted in our evolution to real Godhood, the God first seen only inwardly, or glimpsed with mathematical abstractions. We need the refinement of ongoing evolution, not the crude hammer of blocking the instincts. It is the instincts that lead us to evolve to Godhood, while being shaped outwardly by evolution and selection. This does not call for defining human nature as flawed, this calls for material and supermaterial evolution.

Hypertrophied primordial universals should not be worshiped

As Frank Wilczek envisions it in “The Lightness of Being,” matter is built from almost weightless units, pure energy, and that is the source of mass, space is a dynamic grid of energy creating and destroying particles spontaneously (does he mean randomly?), and Wilczek says this energy can help explain the feebleness of gravity---and he finally hopes for the unification of these forces---(without taking sides, is that pure energy “electric” in the way the electric universe folks describe it, and can they then come in from the cold of exile?)

This neat worldview, although mainly scientific, seems to point to that old preference for the universal over the particular which Plato, and other religious versions of metaphysics, were so fond of, elevating the completely abstract, or spiritual, over living particulars---which led to the misrepresentation of the “universal” with equality---which has caused so many social disruptions in human history.

Of course there are mathematical universals, and we may be able to understand a unification of primordial forces, but these primitive forces are not Godhood, and we don't worship them. We also don't worship the activating, not random, Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within the Primal Material, vital as it is, which is shaped by outside evolution and selection. These are primitive unevolved forces, whereas we do affirm the sacred zenith of material/supermaterial evolution, the highest evolved living, particular, objects in the cosmos---or Godhood---we do not worship the universal abstract definitions of these evolved living objects or their primitive beginnings.

Passion, Reason, Religion, and Nietzsche

Nietzsche thought that truth and honesty were sacrificed when a thinker begins to reason, he thought genius lies in the instincts, and that goodness does too. But what kind of thinking was Nietzsche doing when he made that statement? Was it not reason looking at the instincts? I think the problem for Nietzsche comes in thinking of the instincts as a wild Dionysian beast that needs to be released. What Nietzsche was really concerned with, which might have caused him to exaggerate a bit, was that too often religion, philosophy and science have completely blocked the innate instincts with reason---the continuing denial of sociobiology in the Humanities even today continues this blockade.

I think of reason, the intellect, and the conscious mind as riding a horse called the Instincts, which is not Nietzsche's wild Dionysian beast-instinct, but a horse which also contains the essential sacred instinct of evolving in the material/supermaterial world to the zenith of evolution, which is Godhood. This is the right balance between reason and passion, if it can be called a “balance.” Is your conscious mind totally aware of all your needs and wants? If it does not know the activation of life to evolve to Godhood---shaped by the vagaries of outside evolution and selection---then it is not totally aware of all your wants and needs and may be blocking your most sacred instinct.

Reason can become a virtue, contrary to Nietzsche, as long as reason includes the balance of a large dollop of the passions and emotions, and is especially aware of the goal of the instincts to evolve life to Godhood. We don't want to reject reason in favor of the passions, as Nietzsche seemed to do, without including in the passions the sacred Godhood goal of the instincts. But we also don't want to reject passion in favor of reason without including in reason the sacred instinct toward evolving to Godhood. Reason and the instincts can reason this. Intelligence developed to the degree that Nietzsche felt it was “tyranny” over the instincts, but it is not tyranny if we would not have survived and evolved without that powerful intelligence.

Even so, I have to acknowledge Nietzsche's concern with intellectuals, priests, and philosophers applying ideas as their own wills to power and not as the will to truth they claim. Nietzsche thought that Socrates separated the population from their instincts and that Plato was a moral fanatic in doing this to Socrates. Nietzsche thought the real philosophers of Greece came before Socrates, they were on guard against an intellect that “puffs one out” with theatrical virtues and clever dialectics.

This is not anti-intellectual, it is anti-abstract ideas attempting to rule real life and biology, and anti the definitions of things becoming more important than living objects. Too often religion and philosophy grew on this phoney ground, and I think they can be revitalized with theological materialism, which also includes a return to common sense. With Godhood seen as the sacred goal of the instincts, and related to the first glimpses of the Inward God seen in Christianity, and other religions, Nietzsche can be seen as having been mistaken in trying to murder God and religion---he missed the instincts and reason behind these things.
We are looking for "reality" when we use reason, intuition and instincts to look for truth.

A living answer to both the Greeks (happiness) and Nietzsche (power): the evolving object as essence and goal

Concepts have been a tyrant against the instincts. Nietzsche talked about Plato being so charmed by concepts that he deified them. Theology in the revealed religions did this too, and so did much of philosophy. That is quite a statement: to deify concepts!

What we need to do is sanctify the living object, which evolves to Godhood, where it can be “deified” in our value systems. I would rather speak of the will-to-power of living objects, or more precisely, the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood of living objects---defining the Spirit-Will as the combined instincts of life---which is an activating material force within life (never outside of life) seeking to evolve to Godhood, shaped by outside evolution and selection.

The important struggle is with evolution, more than with concepts. It is the evolving object that is the essence, not the idea. It's not the appearance (see phenomenology) of a thing that is its essence, it is the object itself (see theological materialism), no matter what the object is made of, or what our senses at this stage in our evolution can see of the object.

Itself-In-Being is how I describe the living object, no matter where it lines up in a hierarchy of beings, whereas the old metaphysics used the term Being-In-Itself to describe a non-material, non-object, abstract concept as God or Being. We can define the Spirit-Will within the object as the quintessence within the object-as-essence, and the Spirit-Will does not exist outside the material/supermaterial object and is itself material or supermaterial.

Do we desire overall happiness? Power? Essentially our instincts desire Godhood, or the zenith of evolution, activated by what I call the Super-Id or the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which is not the wild beast Nietzsche (and later (Freud) suggested the instinct are... This is the living answer to the goals of both the Greeks (happiness), and Nietzsche (power).

There is a goal to evolution which is never-the-less shaped by outside evolution and selection, a zig-zaging goal of evolution toward Godhood. This way of defining real life can bring religion and philosophy back to life, and unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade---now many millenniums long---which has been blocking our evolution to Godhood. This blockade has been largely a decadent phenomenon, as seen in the world today, which the blockade helped to create.

But we can keep the God Within, the Father Within---there is no need for radical change here---as the first inward abstract glimpse of the real Godhood reached in outward evolution.

Biological forces and cultural fallacies

Culture is given an illusory significance and value, but there is a fitness test behind cultural acts, sooner or later, resembling sexual selection, where every cultural act of presenting oneself is a fitness test.

Human culture is initially produced by human biological systems which are largely in control of cultural intentions, almost as much as biological systems are in control of human nature.

Yes, nature and nurture interact and influence one another, and history and tradition have influence over culture and biology, but the primary influence is biological.

People tend to balk at this because it suggests less free-will than people prefer, and because cultural Marxism wants to see anything but the intentions of biology, and wants to greatly diminish the role of biology. But biology is in the controlling position as the creator of culture.

There is always tension between individual needs and the needs of the group which is reflected in our sometimes messy cultures, but even this is ultimately balanced by the success or failure of our biological survival.

Theological materialism is a religious philosophy that takes these underground biological forces and cultural fallacies into account. We evolve materially and supermaterially in the Outward Path to the Godhood first discerned in the merely cultural Inward Paths of traditional religion---but we can conservatively retain the old in the new.

New strategies for the United States in dealing with the changing world

Non-interference in the affairs of the world is an important beginning, but even when America stops meddling---which will mean curtailing the neoconservatives and their powerful lobbies, no easy task---America will still realistically always have enemies, which is the nature of the human condition. But we need to bring our troops home from the world. William Lind's thinking on Fourth Generation war between state systems and non-state forces needs to be understood and accepted. But a ballistic missile defense system also needs to be applied, even though no one, so far, wants to chance nuclear war---and it has not in the least stopped the smaller wars. We need to identify and actually exclude terrorist organizations and crime organizations from the U.S.  We also need to basically cease immigration into the U.S. which has become suicidal.

Only Pat Buchanan (other than a few unknowns) seems to be taking seriously the rising movements in the world toward the preservation of separate and unique ethnic and cultural identities, which is superseding the claims of supranational organizations such as the EU or the U. N.. Human nature throughout human history has been and still is 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.

Another, deeper, reform not seen by Buchanan, involves the philosophical and theological reform of Christianity. Universalism sits within particularism, not the other way around. Christian universalism has been at least somewhat religiously blocking natural movements toward ethnopluralism in its tendency toward both imperialism and equality, which goes against basic human nature and the decentralization of the world. Theological materialism, which is the religious reform needed, says the Inward Path to the God Within, or the Father Within, needs to include the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood, which was first only symbolically experience as the God Within.

This can then help bring the natural decentralization of ethnopluralism forward as not only the best political configuration in relation to real human nature, but also the best path for our longer term sacred evolution toward Godhood. Independent states or ethnostates can be protected with some form of federalism, not unlike the original U.S. Constitution, and can include the aforementioned strategies of defense within the decentralization. This reform, or attitude change, closer to the original Constitution, could save the United States from future radical civil war, including ethnic strife, which is now beginning to take place in Europe.

Imperialism and global dictatorships are seen as the real enemy, as mankind is thought of as a family of races, ethnostates, and nations, each maintaining their own distinctness, with none allowed to claim to be exclusively more noble or chosen to globally rule, which damages variety, and peace on earth. Cooperative competition and evolution are within the realm of realistic human behavior.

How eugenics is seen as the moral, humane, and religious thing to do

Contrary to the prevailing political correctness (cultural Marxism), and counter to most traditionalists, eugenics is the moral and humane thing to do for many reasons. It can slow the suffering that comes from the collapse of civilization largely due to the genetic and cultural lag of primitive sex and pugnacity instincts (ergs as Cattell calls them) much in excess of civilized needs. Pessimists say a eugenic solution would be like spitting into a hurricane, but the hurricane can become a manageable thunderstorm if we at least begin the task. It can be accomplished democratically and voluntarily when people become aware of the positive moral and humane aspects of eugenics.

Raymond Cattell pointed out many of these things in his brilliant but perhaps necessarily disorganized and complicated book “Beyondism.” Cultural inventions are the work of exceptionally gifted individuals, but then new culture can demand more complex adjustments from the general population then they are genetically suited for. The resulting genetic lag is the cause of many social problems. Individuals who pursue dangerous antisocial behavior do so with genetic defects as well as by their cultural habits and values. An increase in intelligence and a reduction of psychotic disabilities along with education could help ease the stress, which can then help avoid the cruelty of failures and the disasters of cultural death. The cruel decline of nations is not a necessity, as gloomy fatalists often think.

We can then get on with the sacred mission of evolving toward Godhood. I differ from Cattell in seeking to reform Christianity with the Twofold Path, rather than radically rejecting it. That is, with theological materialism we conservatively retain the traditional Inward Path to the God or Father within as the symbolic experience of the Godhood reached in the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution. Eugenics can be seen as the way to help us survive and improve on earth, as well as the way to join religion and science in the great mission and adventure of attaining the sacred goal of evolving to Godhood in the cosmos.

The evolutionary continuum toward theological materialism

We start with Darwin’s natural selection, random mutation and selective retention of traits, this selection is more brute physical survival, accepted by virtually all scientists. Then we add the next stage of Darwin's work in sexual selection, where the designer is human beings, domesticating themselves, as Denis Dutton put it, which actually showed a purpose in brain and behavior changes through mate choices, although it was not God. This was more reluctantly accepted by the natural selection purists, but it eventually was. Now we add evolutionary teleology seen as theological materialism, with more purpose in evolution. Here we have the activation of life itself by the inward Spirit-Will to evolve toward virtually eternal representation, toward the zenith of intelligence, beauty and goodness, which is defined as Godhood, the ultimate success in evolution. Godhood is this way seen as an evolution designed, Spirit-Will activated, ultimate cosmic life form.

Tiny as these various evolutionary forces may be, over time they have a big impact on the direction of evolution. Theological materialism defines evolution on a continuum of natural selection, sexual selection, and Spirit-Will activation toward Godhood. Most scientists easily affirm natural selection, more reluctantly admitted sexual selection, but have not accepted the inward activation of life toward Godhood. This involves  standard slow acceptance towards the next stage of evolutionary theory; this can bring science back to religion, which is increasingly lost.

Free and unfree will, and direction in evolution

Nietzsche thought denying free will denies morality, but then he made a morality out of the will to power, but called it immorality. It took courage to deny free will, however, Nietzsche missed seeing a direction or goal to the will, he saw the will as a completely relative will to power, which later, with the postmodernists, meant that relativity in values and morals prevailed, with disastrous results for high culture in the West. But a direction or goal to the will to power does not mean that we have a completely free will, we have free will limited to a few choices within the determined path of life and evolution, like a boulder rolling down a mountain. We evolve toward more efficient forms, more complex forms, with starts and stops and backward goings along the way, heading toward Godhood at the zenith of evolution.

What is the direction, the goal which Nietzsche denied? It is seen as the Will-To-Godhood, or Tirips, rather than as a goalless will to power. Defining Godhood needs to be revitalized outwardly, from its exclusive inwardness: we evolve to Godhood by way of material and supermaterial evolution, which was at first seen only inwardly as the symbolic experience of the God or Father Within. Even Nietzsche's radicalism is denied because religion is revitalized, culture is brought back to biology, back to the real morality, which develops instinctively by way of survival and reproductive concerns, with conscious rather than unconscious evolution added. And this suggests the Ordered Evolution of conservatism.

With biology and evolution back in the picture, altruism and morality are not the evil Nietzsche thought they were. It is true that other than a little borrowing from other cultures, it is innovative individuals who are mainly the creators of culture---supermen and superwomen in that sense---and the general population tends to genetically and culturally lag behind. But even supermen do not survive long without the group, and without group values and altruism. Problems develop regarding how to bring the population up to the quality of the creators and innovators of culture, in our continued evolution toward Godhood. This is where evolutionary  values come from, always activated by the largely un-free direction of the evolution of life, while being shaped by outside evolution and selection.

In our overpopulated world, one superman dictator, or one imperial state, or one imperial people, or culture, will not survive for long, the world always gangs up on such arrogant selfishness. This does not mean that we are all the same and that we can all get along in one homogenized multicultural configuration---whether the present globalist rulers benefit from it or not. They too will fall. Human nature remains kin-centered, gender defined, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. We require an ethnopluralism of states, protected by some sort of federalism (not unlike the original U.S. Constitution), which is how as many groups as possible may best survive and creatively evolve, with relative independence, while we are evolving together in the world, with conscious cooperative competition, toward Godhood. Otherwise we may not survive, yet alone evolve.