How to prevent falling like the Roman Empire (it's politically incorrect)

Ancient Rome fell in Ad 476 when massive immigration lost control of its borders, rather than from barbarian warrior invaders. Before that Rome controlled immigration letting in fixed amounts of people, and telling them where they could settle. It looks like the U. S. will not control its borders either, and we really don't want to become a police state to do so. This means we will have no choice, a wide variety of people, and ethnic cultures, will enter the nation, even though many recent immigrants have not been assimilated.  Then the founding culture changes, laws change, cultural wars naturally take place. This has been happening in Europe too.

Short-sighted and greedy businessmen are mainly responsible for our open borders, they seek cheaper and cheaper labor costs, and they largely control the government and elected officials. Then other individuals and groups ride the tide of open immigration with their own schemes and wills to power.

The hard fact is, in modern times, assimilation has not worked, when ethnic cultures are too distinct from one another they simply don't assimilate, the melting pot hasn't melted. Assimilation only really works when groups are fairly closely related, and even then unassimilated pockets remain. The question not asked is, why should very different people melt into one people, even if they could, which they can't, when that motley condition largely led to the fall of Rome, as well as other great civilizations?

Otherwise it looks like we will fall as the Roman Empire fell. Ironically, we will then most likely split into ethnostates---because real biological grounded human nature works that way. Throughout human history, right up to the present time, human nature has been kin-centered, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among many other traditional things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.  Homogenization and assimilation won't happen unless we genetically change human nature, which is unlikely, since the modern liberals don't like to think about biology or genetics, even though changing human nature would be the only way their quixotic, egalitarian, totalitarian, we-are-all-the-same utopias might have a limited chance of being realized.

Passion and reason and reviving the dignity of life

Reason has usually been preferred to passion, but as Nietzsche pointed out, reason is not an independent entity, it is the relationship between the various passions and desires; passion has its own quantum of reason.

Power grows around the forces of passion, which don't need enfeeblement but need to be enlisted in the cause of our evolution, not as individuals but as groups, as a species.

In the Twofold Path, the passionate Outward Path of evolution toward material/supermaterial Godhood supersedes, but does not get rid of, the Inward Path of involution to the God Within, which necessarily enfeebles the passions so as to experience the Father Within, as a hint of the Godhood reached in evolution.

Religion has tended to disable life in seeking only the Inward Path.  Modernity and non-religion have released chaotic passions with no sacred goal. There is great positive power in the forces of nature. Life, that is, evolving life, needs to revive its dignity.

Philosophers as gamers

Skeptical thinkers often seem to rely only on “bad-move” elimination of what they consider unscientific or irrational, the way a chess-playing computer works, and they don't seem to much include assessing new positive interacting ideas, there is little scrolling for new ideas, its all defense on their part, often a sort of snotty or snooty negativity.

Philosophers are also gamers in the sense of practicing moral or value games, as military strategists practice war games, which ideally prepare for real world morality or real wars. But then philosophers seem to forget that they are playing moral philosophy games or using fantasy and they battle other philosopher-gamers for real world turf. The moral games tend to get far removed from real life that way.

I would like to see sociobiology introduced more into philosophy, and science, and into their games, which is a winning strategy for finding the healthiest values and morals for humanity. Leaving sociobiology out is like military strategists leaving human behavior out of their war games. Military strategists seem to have a better grasp of real human nature than many philosophers. Fantasy games in the Humanities in general do really seriously need sociobiology, with such things as their latest fantasy of cultural Marxism and political correctness.

Nietzsche's big mistake

The important cultural and religious question is moral: will civilization help evolve mankind toward higher man and ultimately to Godhood? Everything of value in art, history, science, technology, and yes, religion, need to be shown to have advanced man along the great path to higher man, but in the direction of Godhood, defined as the zenith of evolution. This sounds Nietzschean but Nietzsche was bitterly against setting moral conditions, he claimed to be an immoralist.

What was missing in Nietzsche, leading to his affirmation of immorality, was evolutionary or sociobiological respect for group selection as the main unit of selection, which requires morality and altruism, which was codified in religions.. In dismissing morality Nietzsche gave carte blanche, free rein, to aristocratic radical individualism, and to individual geniuses creating their own individual morality, of their own will, and that was Nietzsche's big mistake.

Yes, we certainly do need individual geniuses, culturally and genetically, to help advance mankind, but the works of genius require the group and group morality to fully realize evolutionary advancement. We need to tell the difference between social and anti-social genius, both in the humanities and in the sciences. I believe this, along with theological materialism, is the way out of the nihilism that Nietzsche saw coming with the fall of traditional religion, but which he couldn’t realistically prevent with his philosophy.

How art can imitate and expand life

In the experience of beauty is “existence suspended,” and do we become “detached” from immediate desires, is “disinterestedness” the central idea, all of which Kant suggests regarding art?

There is adaptive value to beauty which can be seen in both art and religion. One of the primary attributes of Godhood in theological materialism is ti attain the zenith of beauty, along with the zenith of intelligence and the zenith of noble character. These higher values are here understood as evolved to in material and supermaterial evolution, which is where their adaptive value resides.

Contrary to Kant the “imaginative experience” of art is not detached from real biological life, it intensities, enhances, and expands life. Works of art do happen in the mind but they are not removed from biological drives and instincts. The fiction-drive relates to the beauty-instinct in the biological ways of desire. Beauty in human beings is related to good health and good health has survival and reproductive value.

Only when we trans-value and remove the definition of God from material and supermaterial life do we define beauty in art as suspended from life, after which art can only be seen in disinterestedness. When Godhood is seen as a non-material, spiritual-only construction in the mind or soul, that is when art and religion depart from the real world.

We drifted away from didactic and moral art as we became more literate, but as evolutionary psychologists point out, story-telling had survival benefits in the Pleistocene. It still does, when we relate beauty to real biological life, evolution, and religion. There is no need to use a hammer to didactically or morally inspire, art is usually best when it is subtle. Imagining Godhood attained in future evolution has religious and artistic value, but it also has survival and reproductive value.

Healing broken instincts: removing the lies about human motives and history

Nietzsche pointed out that we falsify great periods, great men in history to enhance various moral perspectives and to disguise, often unconsciously, our wills to power. Even the Reformation was a disguise for the agitators and their own, natural, wills to power (although there was corruption in the Church). Was the disguise necessary? Nietzsche saw nothing wrong with lies and was very skeptical of the “truth”, seeing the truth as merely relative to the will to power.

But why not tell the truth about the will to survival and reproductive success, which is at the foundation of human behavior and human culture.? I think we can do this now, we can stop lying about history and human motives, we can heal the broken instincts. Political structures can be openly set up, for example, as the Ethnopluralism Hypotheses suggests, which can affirm the natural will to success and survival of the various ethnic cultures within their own territories, minus the lies about motives. The truth about human nature is becoming clearer with each new era.

Even religion can affirm the biological origin of much of cultural behavior, now seen as having a goal, a sacred goal, of evolving all the way to Godhood in the Outward Path, the God first seen in the Inward Paths of traditional religion,which Nietzsche, and later modern science, did not affirm. This is the “common” goal of mankind, living separately, but fully capable of cooperative competition, sharing evolutionary knowledge. If this sounds like a dream, another utopia, it is a dream with no real need for gross historical lies, and based in not having to lie about real human nature.  The lies are more obvious now, even if some of them are quite elaborate. Who still wants to lie about human motives and history?

Unifying conservative order and progressive evolution: reform over revolution

Speculating on future reform---which is always preferred over revolution---suggests that elite scientists of sociobiology and psychometrics would not rule democracies with elite technocratic dictatorships, but would be utilized by democracies to help guide the evolution of man toward Godhood. Why would we prefer to go to non-doctors or non-automobile mechanics to fix our problems? Evolutionary religion and the church would also not rule with theocracies but would guide and give solace within democracies. Reform not revolution is also philosophically seen in in the theological materialism of the TC, which synthesizes the Inward Path to the Inward God, first seen within tradition, with the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood in the cosmos.

Order is defined as Ordered Evolution and not as the ordered but almost total freedom of the libertarians, since there is a sacred evolutionary goal within the order. Present and future generations are both important considerations because evolutionary change requires the order and the time of the present generations to find and select desired real improvements, genetic and otherwise, for future generations. Free choice remains but there are obligations of the present generations toward future evolution.

The U. S. Constitution with its separation of powers and states would be a good territorial configuration for the variety of states that could accommodate the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis, which real evolution prefers, and here too reform rather than revolution applies. Civil disturbances even civil war become more likely if we try to change basic human nature and force homogeneity upon distinctly different people and territories. And the world seems to be going in this natural direction of separation and the devolution of  large empires, as it always has in the past.

Feeling and thinking and being yourself

It seems obvious that feelings are as important as thinking, but many people block their feelings of love, anger, rage, perhaps because they were hurt or damaged in their past by showing their feelings. The old cliche, which is now considered sexist, that women feel and men think has some truth in it, like most stereotypes. But both genders need to better balance feeling and thinking, giving serious time to both.

Thinkers, philosophers tend to think that they can discover reality best through reasoning, rationality, whereas artists and mystics tend to think they can discover reality better through feeling and intuition. To discover the same reality using either reason or feeling is the ideal proof.

To be yourself in both feeling and thinking takes strength and even courage, more than most people realize, weaknesses and strengths present themselves in trying to be yourself, anxieties show themselves---and tyrants or bully's who tend to block people from being themselves also show themselves---but being in the open these things can better be dealt with, one way or another.

This of course does not mean that the group is not important (and I am not advocating narcissism), healthy, self-realized feeling and thinking individuals enhance the group.

The adaptive value of using fantasy for truth-seeking?

Speculation: some people, or even groups, have more of a distaste for fantasy and fiction and more of a devotion to truth than others, which developed like most of human nature back in the Pleistocene. This would not mean that those more devoted to truth can't plan ahead or strategize using fiction and stories, it would mean that the strict truth had more adaptive value for some groups more than others.

A Contrary Thought: As Denis Dutton pointed out, other animals don't create fictional stories, they are naive realists, responding directly to immediate threats, they don't create future scenarios, they prefer the direct truth. This makes a distaste for fantasy seem less advanced.

Response: It seems to me to be a newer adaptation to use fiction more in the search for truth, so that truth-lovers in fact do use or apply fictional fantasy, but mainly the better to get at the truth, and they use fantasy less for its own sake. This might explain differences between, say, advances in science on some continents more than others. But there is no better/best here, just different survival strategies.

The "transmutation" of man to Godhood is accomplished through evolution

God or the Father Within was first experienced and defined as “spiritual” by sages and saints who were required to block or become unattached to all material desires in order to experience the God Within. This is where and why the material world began to be thought of as “dark” or evil.

What has been formerly thought of as spiritual is supermaterial. Enchain man to matter? The problem here, and with occult metaphysics in generally (and also seen in the revealed religions) derives from the perpetuation of the material world as dark, and the so-called non-material spiritual world as light. This duality does not really exist, material life evolves to supermaterial life and eventually if successful to supermaterial Godhood at the zenith of evolution.

Radical revolution, occult or otherwise, is not necessary, the new is enfolded in the old. It is through the material and supermaterial evolution of life that real Godhood is reached, which is far beyond the inward, human, experience of God, blissful as that is. Calling the material world or material evolution evil or dark actually blocks the Path to real Godhood---if anything that is evil. But we do need to distinguish between ascending and descending evolution.  The Paths find balance in the Twofold Path where the Involutionary Inward Path is seen as only the symbolic-experience of the supermaterial Godhood reached in the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution.

There is no need to waste time trying to untie the various still-existing Gordian Knots of the occult world.  The "transmutation" of man to Godhood is accomplished through evolution. This is the real "alchemy", and it is the central concern of the Evolutionary Outward Path. The Inward Path contains the ancient version of the alchemy which attempts to transmute man inwardly to at least mirror the Golden Soul-Within. Material/supermaterial evolution applies the real, not symbolic, “elixir of the philosopher's stone,” which includes man evolving beyond man to Golden Godhood.

Reverse engineering human culture back to real human nature

Steven Pinker and other evolutionary psychologists see the mind as a neural computer fitted by nature with reasoning about plants, animals, people, used for goals that served biological needs in the ancestral Pleistocene environment. The question I ask is, are the goals that served biological needs in the ancestral Pleistocene environment still relevant, or is our modern culture mainly a corruption of our neural computers and human nature?

I think the answer is generally that, yes, modern brains and human nature have been corrupted by the cultural Marxism of political correctness, which has less and less resemblance to what human beings actually are. That is, we possess basically the same neural computer and human nature that evolved in the Pleistocene. We remain essentially kin-centered, gender defined, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

But we don't have to get involved in the arguments about whether culture is all biological adaptation or all the blank slate by-product of adaptations, we can, as Denis Dutton pointed out regarding art, define these things as enhancements, codifications, intensifications of our ancient and still existing human nature.

The task, or the mission, is to bring human culture back in harmony with human nature, so that culture and human nature will be healthier and more in accord with Nature itself. This suggests a kind of reverse engineering back to...wait for it: a new kind of revitalized conservatism, this time grounded in the science of sociobiology, which includes such passe things as religion.

Then, the new psychology can be evolutionary psychology, philosophy can be philosophical sociobiology, and theological materialism can be the next theology, with ethnopluralism as the next political philosophy. That would be healthier for us all in the long term, if I do have to say so myself.

Examining the harmony behind rising ethnopluralistically

Tyrannically promoting one wing of human evolution, one group, over and against all others, and using extreme methods to do so, does not seem to be the best means in the ascent of evolution, even if Nietzsche, for one, thought that using extremes was justified in the cause of the ascent of mankind. All other groups not included in the ascent often gang up on any one-group supremacy, eventually, which usually means evolution stops or descends during dysgenic wars, and upward evolution is not served.

With the same reasoning, attempting to force various, different, ethnic groups into one homogeneous state does not work for long either, since people prefer their own groups, with their own territories, in accord with real and basic human nature.  Even now the latest empires are breaking into ethnostates.

On the other hand, if we all rise together, separately, in evolution, promoting ethnopluralism, as real human nature has historically preferred, while making cooperative competition the watchword, that is, helping one another by sharing evolutionary knowledge---this does seem to offer the best chance for the continued ascent of mankind in the evolution toward Godhood.

Digging deeper, the activating Will-To-Godhood, or Tirips, does not appear to be a tyrant either, although it is a sacred instinct with a sacred mission. Tirips seems to be more a delegator, portioning off its drive to other parts of the body, the brain, the mind, reproduction, each of which ideally harmonizes with the Godhood goal of Tirips in evolution. But natural living needs to harmonize as well with the environment in natural selection, which also has a strong hand in shaping evolution... If the sacred activating Tirips in life is not a tyrant, this is another reason for the harmony behind rising ethnopluralistically.

Our ignorance regarding human nature has nearly destroyed us

I suppose there has been a steady improvement in defining human nature over time, with the biggest problem coming from the biased will to power of human nature itself.

People began to see their way out of the strict ancient paternalism of containing human nature when Adam Smith and others began to use individualistic greed, etc. for public benefit, as long as rules were in place to counter such abuses as monopolies, etc. The U.S. Constitution was much influenced by this in its balancing of the separation of powers.

But individualism was too much emphasized, and it was then countered with the Marxist emphasis on classes, which in turn was then countered with nationalism. Nationalism moved us closer to accommodating real human nature than is usually acknowledge in this age of political correctness.

The new Darwinism of sociobiology is perhaps the most accurate view of human nature so far. Human nature began to be redefined in a basic way as being kin-centered, gender defined, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things,with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. But there has been much hostility and corruption regarding sociobiology, and it seems to have receded....such things as misnamed “neoconservatism” and religious fundamentalism block its view.

Human nature as proposed by sociobiology strongly suggests that the ethnopluralism hypothesis defines the best method over the long term for us “all to get along.” That is, the separation of powers, regions, states much more in terms of ethnic cultures, not unlike the separation of states and the protecting federalism of the U.S Constitution, which could accommodate this real human nature, and help save us from destroying ourselves.

Rather than uniting with God, “theosis” is evolving to Godhood

Uniting with God or the Father Within can be experienced in the Involuntary Inward Path while one is still human, whereas to reach real Godhood we must evolve many species beyond human beings to the zenith of evolution in the cosmos, which is the sacred task of the Evolutionary Outward Path. These Paths are called the Twofold Path in the Theoevolutionary Church.

The Inward Path toward experiencing the God Within, as sought in the revealed religions, requires blocking or non-attachment to all the desires and instincts of life. The Outward Path is the refining and evolving of the desires and instincts of life all the way to the highest consciousness, intelligence, and the supermaterial zenith of material life. Evolution, not devolution, is the process we undergo to become advanced enough to reach the intense brilliance and power of Godhood.

The fault is not in religion but in reducing serious religion to the Inward Path of material blockade, while seeing the Outward Path to real Godhood as sinful or evil, rather than as the sacred path of evolution to divine life.

This vision of theosis brings real life to religion, while retaining past traditions. Nonreligious people should realize that the God Within is a real experience felt by many generations of saints and sages across the world, but it is the symbolic-experience of real Godhood reached by material and supermaterial evolution. The God Within is not a perversion of the Godhood reached by evolution, it is a first preliminary experience of the power and beauty of real Godhood.

Evolution beyond nature/nurture

Adapting a clue from Denis Dutton's writing on art, I'm thinking that it might make sense to drop the nature/nurture arguments of evolutionary theory and say this: culture is an enhancement or codification of natural ancient genetic traits, influenced by the environment. Not a duality but a whole. Culture can then in turn influence genetic traits. Biology leads this dynamic. So the Wilsonian definition of sociobiology as the study of the biological origin of social behavior still stands.....Now if we can get people to take a serious look at activating purpose, along with random selection in evolution, toward higher and higher consciousness and intelligence, all the way to Godhood, then the duality between religion and science can also be made whole.

Private and Public Morality and Hollywood

What Hollywood especially likes to do is take beautiful, innocent, young actresses from the hinterlands and gradually, sadistically, encourage them to play low-lifes and prostitutes, and then lavish them with awards for their debasement. There is something especially vile about this, it has gone on for many years in Hollywood, and it is repeated with each rising actress---the list is long.

Nietzsche thought vice was not a cause but an effect of some sort of physiological degeneration. In any case, a healthy culture would not put up with Hollywood. The usual defense of the right to private expression and private morality does not trump public morality, group selection is still the central unit of selection. Not licentious individualism or tribal choseness should be free to destroy the health of a culture.

Curbing Hollywood will not be easy of course since virtually the entire media, and their unctuous lawyers, support Hollywood. If in the future our country returns to or separates into a constitutionally valid ethnopluralism equivalent to our present regions and states, then the rights of the states could better curb the  monopoly of Hollywood.  California could then, unfortunately, debauch itself and the public as it pleases.

Altruism, Egoism and Nietzsche

I don't see Nietzsche finding the loop back from egoism to altruism and the group, he advances individualism, especially superior individuals, but seems to fail to see that superior men need the group as much as the group needs superior men. This could relate to Nietzsche's big hatred of Christianity, which he sees as anti-life and unnatural, and supposedly blocking men like himself.

Nietzsche is correctly sensing the non-material elements required in the Inward Path to the Father Within---this is an actual blissful state attained by ridding the body and mind of all attachments to the material world of desires, which is seen in all the revealed religions. This path in fact is unnatural and anti-life. A whole theology, or ontology, or theory of Being, grew up around the attempt to add life, real desiring life, to the basically anti-life path to the God Within. Think of the elaborate work of St. Thomas Aquinas using Aristotle, or the great Hindu thinkers who try to synthesize real living and life into a totally ascetic path, even to the point of fighting wars with disinterestedness as advocated in the the Bhagavad Gita.

But when the Inward Path and the Father Within are seen and understood as the symbolic-experience of real Godhood only reached in the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution, then Nietzsche's concern regarding the anti-life elements in religion can be resolved. Altruism and egoism can work together in the Twofold Path, as humanity evolves upward toward Godhood in the cosmos, first seen in the Inward Path.

The group remains the central unit of selection. Anti-social criminal-type geniuses can bring the whole group down and  they need to be differentiated from socially redeeming geniuses whose creations enhance both the individual and the group. It is already becoming possible to identify individual social and anti-social traits with various forms of psychometrics and genetic studies.

It is not the either-egoism-or-altruism of Nietzsche's vision that we need, we need both. We don't need genius dictator emperors, we have seen where that leads, we need genius altruists.

Modern culture does not relate well to real human nature and ultimate causes, why?

“Proximate causes,” such as universal equality, are confounded with “ultimate causes,” such as group survival and reproductive success. Long evolved behavior is subject to misinformation and corruption by culture. The human mind and its cultural creations ultimately had and continue to have survival as their design or purpose, but with political correctness (cultural Marxism) proximate causes are confounded with ultimate causes and ulitimate causes are virtually banished.

Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology may one day turn this around, if they themselves can avoid political correctness. E.O. Wilson called for sociobiology to enter the Humanities forty years ago, but not much progress has been made. Postmodernism rules our colleges and universities, with its proximate causes for everything. This still needs to be turned around.

Then the sacred cause of evolving materially and supermaterially to Godhood in the cosmos can enter the worldview; but here sociobiology and evolutionary psychology will need to see beyond proximate causes and ultimate causes to sacred causes.

Human nature and culture

“Culture” can be defined as the response to the environment which basic human nature makes mainly to enhance survival and reproductive success. Cultural responses to the environment are restrained by a human nature mainly fixed since Paleolithic times, which has many universal elements among all people. A human being reacts to the environment the way a human does and not the way another animal does. But there are ethnic variations of cultural responses to the environment do to slightly different genetic traits within basic human nature, which developed with adaptations to different climates and geography.

80 thousand generations of humans and protohumans evolving in the Pleistocene made us what we are today, with the past 50 thousand years forming our modern nature. The brains that our genes built for our Pleistocene ancestors helps explain our cultural creations. Basic human nature can be defined as 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.

It happens that not all culture is beneficial to survival success and can develop misinformation, and human nature can become corrupted. And this has happened in many ways with modern Western culture, which has in its cultural creations lost sight of real human nature, usually corrupted by the very real human will to power of various nontraditional groups. The Ethnopluralism Hypothesis has been proposed as the way to reverse the misinformation and corruption of modern culture. Ethnopluralism allows small states or virtual ethnostates to flourish, usually within a protecting federalism, more in line with what human beings actually are. Then, given real human nature, cooperative competition can be the civilizing value to follow, rather than trying to completely uproot real human nature by conjuring up more corrupting and misinformed cultural lies about what people really are and what they can harmoniously be and do.

Military Keynesianism : Never Ending War

 Never-Ending War: An Economic Policy, Pdf, by Joseph Fallon, from Chronicles.

Contrary to Nietzsche, how the hero and the saint can harmonize

Nietzsche rejected the saint as the most powerful type of man, saying that all the other values crystallized around the saint, dragging all the senses and passions of life down, which Nietzsche rejected with his aristocratic radicalism. This was overbearing it seems to me and overcompensating and probably quite revengeful of Nietzsche, even though he otherwise saw through the revenge motive in others.

It would have been psychologically (and culturally) healthier to accept the saint as the religious type seeking the God Within in the Inward Path---by way of the conquest of the senses and passions---which can then be seen as a symbolic-experience of the real sacred goal of the hero type, who seeks Godhood in the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution---while applying the senses and passions to do so, in an evolutionary way.

Tradition and conservatism and Ordered Evolution---which are the the long term reality of successful human behavior and culture---can harmonize or synthesize with the revitalized religious goal of evolving to Godhood. The Hero (Pagan) and Saint (Revealed Religions) can even bring science and religion together, with no need to radically annihilate the religious ideals in revolution.

Nietzsche later said that we need our enemies to make us stronger, perhaps seeing that he sounded too much like a moralist in his call to eliminate the competition, when he preferred to be known as an immoralist, not a moralist. It seems that Nietzsche was more a radical libertarian promoting or validating only those individuals he deemed to be superior. But the individual requires the group, and group morality, to successfully survive and evolve.  And the old needs to be brought along with the new.

Libertarians don't understand altruism

Altruism is not necessarily as enfeebling as Nietzsche thought it was---and as some of his libertarian followers think (eg. Ayn Rand). Within groups, altruism help lead to success in survival and reproduction, which is why it evolved to be part of human nature. Egocentrism tends to develop with individualism. This does not mean that the individual is not important, individual selection does take place, but within groups, and the primary unit of selection is group selection, as the great E.O. Wilson has recently affirmed. If libertarians fully understood this they would be conservatives.

Values and morals developed out of the survival needs of group selection, and not merely so that the “weak” can enfeeble the “strong” as Nietzsche claimed. Universal human nature is centered in these selection strategies, but human nature can become corrupted in various ways, such as survival values being distorted to advance (at least temporarily) anti-social elements within society, or only individuals, etc.

Art and Identity

Art may not always be created to affirm the identity of the culture the artist lives within, but in art history the best art did this. It's true that Shakespeare was interested in theatrical entertainment, but he was also affirming Elizabethan culture. Great art, in my opinion, affirms the sacred elements within the culture, and low art does this too in a less sophisticated way, or art used to do this, before globalism and internationalism made people and cultures less isolated.

It is mainly that old cultural Marxism behind the modern Western denial of differences in people and the rejection of any biological or ethnic connection with the creation of cultures, even as it demands no comparison with “evil' Western culture in the art of non-Western people, which contradicts the idea of there being no differences between people. This leads to a jumble of art, at least in the West, with no discernible cultural identity and it certainly does not reflect what is sacred in the culture---modern art reflects the chaos of the relativity of modern culture, and that does is not even art.

 

Modern art philosophers want to leave biology out of art philosophy (and everything else) and say that culture alone creates the differences in identities. Art is a universal instinct and contains many of the same elements in all cultures, even so, the genetic traits of the artist, and his ethnic group, affect the kind of art the artist creates.

Every person and every culture at least unconsciously seems to want to claim what works for them to be good for everyone---this is the natural will to power working.  The way to deal with it is not to deny it, or call it evil ethnocentrism, but to allow the natural separations of people and cultures, where each people can affirm their own people, culture, and art.  This is what developed the best art overall in human history.

Civilizing the Will To Power

Turning away from the following deeply politically incorrect statement by Nietzsche from “The Will To Power” doesn’t make it go away: “Any species of men seems to be doomed as soon as it becomes tolerant, grants equal rights and no longer desires to be master.” Nietzsche downplays or rejects altruism and prefers the individual (at least the superior individual) to the group. This seems to miss the fact that altruism is usually the best way to advance individuals, even though group-selection remains the main unit of selection, as his statement suggests. Sociobiology has recently affirmed that human nature in fact is kin-centered, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things,with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

Some groups respond to this “predicament” of human nature by trying to create imperialism and the dominance of one people over all others. But imperialism never lasts for long because all people, all ethnic groups, contend against their own demise, whether this natural will to power is hidden in the words of religion, political correctness, or not.

It seems that the rational and emotional way to deal with the politically incorrect nature of human nature is with some sort of ethnopluralism, allowing small states or virtual ethnostates to flourish, usually within a protecting federalism. Then cooperative competition seems to be the most civilizing value system to follow, given real human nature, rather than trying to completely uproot real human nature by conjuring up more lies about people being all the same, with no legitimate group-selection instincts. It needs to be seen more clearly that those who preach the loudest about all people being exactly the same and demanding equality are usually advancing their own group above others in the hypocritical process.

Beyond this, the sacred mission---and a sacred mission has upheld all successful civilizations---needs to point toward evolving to Godhood in the cosmos, all of us, in our own ways, and sharing knowledge as we evolve. If this goal seems like a dream, an ideal, a faith, it is at least grounded in nature itself and real human nature.

Beyond the self-divination of man

It is true that men rejected God and made humanity God, but before that man made the Inward God a God, or they defined the Father-Within as God, and man rejected, or left undiscovered, the natural Godhood reached in material evolution. The church was still needed to mediate between the God Within and humanity, but then virtually all forms of God were rejected and the church was not needed at all.

Either way, whether it is man without God, or man with the God Within man, it is the self-divination of man that is the problem. The Inward Path to the God Within man tends to be satisfied with the bliss of experiencing the God Within, and modern man without God tends to think only of improving divine man, the species, and not surpassing man and evolving to new and better species. Both are man-made blockades against evolving to real Godhood.

Man needs to be seen not as divine, and not only with divinity within man, man needs to be seen as evolving toward real Godhood in the cosmos. The Evolutionary Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood needs to supersede, but not replace, the concept of man himself as divine, as well as superseding but not replacing the Involuntary Inward Path to the God Within.

Deglobalization

It's usually good news when the marauding economic globalists dislike something, and they certainly don't like the trend toward deglobalization which has been taking place since the debt crisis of 2008 (which was caused by them).

Rana Foroohar of Time magazine recently reported that trade talks are increasingly becoming more regional and local, companies are moving production back home. 21% of all manufacturing firms in the U.S. are actively “reshoring”, and 54% say they are considering it. The U.S. has even shrunk its deficit a bit due to the shale-oil and gas boom, we are buying less foreign oil.

Markets that converged globally, largely to enrich a few globalists at the expense of everyone else, are increasingly diverging along national lines. Free movement of money and goods across borders have been bumping up against trade barriers.

This is all good. It has always been economic nationalism which has made individual nations grow richer---the whole nation. Yes, it is more tricky geopolitically and diplomatically, but far better for all of us economically and culturally.

The question is, can this deglobalization be sustained, or will the global marauders continue to buy more powerful politicians than the economic nationalists can overcome? Trends are good in any case.

Burke Connections

I go along with the Burkean idea that government and culture need to function along with the traditions and forms of the life of society, and not only from abstract principles of justice. This is why ethnopluralism seeks to harmonize with the traditional separation of powers and states in the U.S. Constitution, without radical revolution. I have communicated with radicals, as Burke would occasionally do, but in the sense that they can sometimes be a counterbalance to the abuse of power. The Left supposedly promotes the weak and the Right the strong, but we need the balance here which Burke thought was central.

In religion this balance is seen in the synthesis of the Twofold Path, with the Inward Path to the God Within of traditional religion included in the Outward Path of material evolution to real Godhood. This reforms Christianity, which has been a failing institution at the heart of Western culture, rather than rejecting Christianity.

Burke thought politics had to be adjusted to human nature more than to reason, and I agree, but definitions of human nature need to be revitalized by sociobiology, which sees human nature as kin-centered, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things,with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.  This tends to affirm ethnopluralism, the separation of powers and smaller states, protected by a light federalism. But religion needs to be naturalized toward theological materialism to be more in harmony with nature, the cosmos, and who we really are, and what Godhood really is.

Curing cultural and religious paralysis

What to do about the tendency of the unhealthy to enfeeble the healthy? I have a different answer than Nietzsche's criticism of this phenomenon, and different from postmodernisms relativism.  The cultural Marxism of political correctness can cause this paralysis, but in a deeper way so can religion because serious religion seeks the state of beatitude beyond all material concerns, where even hatred is eliminated with non-attachment to all things other than visio beatifica, the beatific vision. This can become what Nietzsche called hemiplegia, or one sided paralysis.

How to cure this? The Involutionary Inward Path to the God or the Father Within of traditional religion can be conservatively redeemed in its denial of life through the Evolutionary Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to real Godhood. Alone, the Inward Path deserves Nietzsche's criticism. In the The Twofold Path the Inward God is a symbolic-experience of the Outward God attained in material and supermaterial evolution.

All moral truths are not merely tired instincts, as Nietzsche believed, morals and values which affirm our continuing evolution toward Godhood represent the natural instincts at their healthiest. And this does not even rule out altruism, which Nietzsche (and his political-economic follower Ayn Rand) wanted us to do. Altruism or group selection is seen in the natural world as the primary unit of natural selection ( recently reaffirmed by the great E.O. Wilson ) in decreasing circles outward, and individual selection follows this direction.

This can then lead us toward the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis in politics, and theological materialism in evolutionary religion---the long term way out of our cultural and political paralysis.

Virtues of the Twofold Path

Nietzsche believed that the classical ideal affirmed all the more important instincts and that Christian morals were anemic morals. The strengthening affirmations of life in Paganism, said Nietzsche, were impoverished with the denial of nature in Christianity.

In Christianity, the Involutionary Inward Path experience of beatitude (called Enlightenment in the East) allows not even a hint of the desires of the world (sin) because complete detachment from the world is required for this blissful experience. This necessarily puts the forces of life and the instincts under the ban of the Inward Path to beatitude.

How does the Twofold Path reconcile this duality between life and non-life? Not by rejecting religion as Nietzsche did, which led to all kinds of philosophical chaos. The Involutionary Inward Path is seen as the symbolic-experience (blissful as it is) of real Godhood reached through the Evolutionary Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution.

The Pagan virtues (from the Greeks) of prudence, justice, courage and temperance were in any case introduced into the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity, perhaps because they were necessary for living real life. But to bring nature and religion together more is needed. This means including the virtues required in our material and supermaterial evolution to real, not symbolic, Godhood. Improving the qualities of intelligence, beauty, and good character are needed. Higher consciousness and intelligence allow us to better advance in our upward evolution toward higher species of existence, and eventually to Godhood. The Twofold Path of theological materialism does this within the Ordered Evolution of tradition.

Ethnogeography

The awkward word “ethnogeography” describes better than “geopolitics” the political dynamics of the world now and in the future. Globalism, with the elites in the West thinking that they could control the world, was a quixotic dream causing far more problems than it solved.

The bonds of blood, of ethnic groups, as we have been writing about here regarding the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis, along with the natural territories they live within, are, as always, the real movers and shakers of human behavior. We need to harmonize with this natural ethnogeography, which is actually happening now in spite of the dreams of the global elite, in the Ukraine, the Middle east, East Asia, Africa, etc. We also see it in the various rising separatist and secessionist movements in the West.

Decentralization of the globe, along with trying to maintain the standard rules of civilized law, is what we need to be supporting. Ethnogeography realistically establishes boundaries that can achieve whatever real harmony is possible in the world. Even in the United States decentralization back to the regions and states of the original Constitution needs to be connected to ethnogeography, within a light protecting federalism. We need to let people gather together in the groups they prefer to live with—group selection remains the primary natural unit of selection---and stop trying to block this behavior with damaging dreams of globalism, or world consumerism with a culturally Marxist twist, which only advances a tiny few in the short term.

Human nature and the Deniers

Philosophers of art and politics have too often been like shyster lawyers creating clever diversions explaining odd and problematic outsider ideas rather than centering on the actual basis of human nature---although I suppose some lawyers actually believe their client is innocent. As Denis Dutton points out, the natural universal center of human nature is where theory needs to ground itself, cross culturally.

The biggest lie is defining human nature as strictly a consequence of social institutions and as a cultural product, which now prevails throughout politics and the arts. This continues in the face of the latest science of sociobiology which shows that even the brain our genes built can be broken down into genetic modules which best suited our Pleistocene ancestors.

The Pleistocene made us what we are today and only when we admit this knowledge into politics and the arts will we have healthier cultures. We simply are kin-centered, mostly ethnocentric, even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection, among many other traditional traits. These are universal traits in human nature that almost ironically point not to universal, egalitarian, borderless cultures, but suggest such politically incorrect things as ethnopluralism, economic nationalism, perhaps held together with federalism---and art which, at its best, affirms what each group holds sacred.

It's overdo time to go there, even if the deniers continue to try to divert us with their hair-splitting.

From the city invented by the ancient Greeks, to the Roman Empire, and back to Ethnostates

In a review in Chronicles of Pierre Manent's ideas, Jack Trotter describes Manent's idea of the city in ancient Greece as originally becoming the place where the many are persuaded to submit to, while at the same time being given a share in, the values of the descendants of Homer's aristocratic warriors---and in this discovery of the “common thing” the city is born. This may be understood as the domestication of war through the discovery of political justice, justice meaning the standard of value in the quest for the common good. The later Roman expansion into empire was not so much the abandonment of this form of the city as its “monstrous distention.” Then Cicero extended the bonds of fellowship to the whole human race at the service of a universal morality.

Earlier Aristotle had thought of the civic bonds as developed “in a community that is real...that can be seen, named and touched." Later Montaigne advised men to be guided by “our natural condition,”since he believed that finding the best form of society was only an “altercation fit for the exercise of the mind.”

If we put these various thinkers together, (a) the development of the common thing from the struggle between the many and the few, (b) the community as seen and touched of Aristotle, and (c) the natural condition described by Montaigne, they point toward definitions of human nature which have been gradually revived by sociobiology. That is, a human nature affirmed throughout human history as being kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among many other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This can in fact suggest ethnopluralism as the “best” form of society, developed within nations or within old fading empires, with each small ethnostate protected in their independence by a light federalism. We can go from the city invented by the ancient Greeks, to the Roman Empire (or the American Empire), and back to, at least, virtual ethnostates. It so happens that real evolution has usually worked best with such variety, so this form of society can also define progressive change within conservative protection.

Our Ordered Evolution

Plans for improving life through evolution can never forget the old conservative wisdom that culture needs to be adjusted not merely to reason or science but to human nature, of which reason is by no means the greatest part, as Edmund Burke cautioned. Ordered Evolution is the watchword. Reform not revolution. The way people are, their traditions, the way they live, ethnic groups, these need to be seriously included in any thoughts of change.

Real evolution also needs to include variety, a variety of ethnic groups living in a variety of territories, each with their own bio-cultural trajectories. Class differences? It is improving the qualities of intelligence, beauty, and good character that are looked for, and these traits can show up anywhere. We need sociobiologists and geneticists to help guide us in our higher evolution, always adjusted to real human nature. Cooperation between groups even in competition is the other byword, as we all evolve toward real, not symbolic, Godhood.

This is how we, gradually, bring ourselves out of the various nihilistic blockades, the one-track world-hating religions, short-term consumer passions, declining people and cultures, which cover the modern world.  With the Twofold Path we retain the old Inward God, but it is reached in the Outward Godhood of material and supermaterial evolution...The world is not quite ready for this, but it will be, if we can survive our present dilemmas.

Ethnopluralism and the New Right in France

The New Right in France needs to be given credit for their realistic way of looking at the modern world, understanding that ethno-cultural groups need to live in freedom, separately if possible in different states and territories. Also, as Lucian Todor reminds us in Counter-Currents, the New Right in France has been advocating federalism for some time, based on principles of subsidiarity, granting autonomy to regions and local political structures. This can also mean democracy. Benoist has said that ethnic, cultural and racial differences coincide with organic democracy and with recognition and respect for differences.

I would hope that the New Right would not drift too far toward Radical Traditionalism which also has a concept of the federalist state, as Tudor says, but who grant far more authority to the central ruler, which can then bring the same old problem of a state too big and too bureaucratic to rule localities without using great force. But more importantly, the religious philosophy of Radical Traditionalism ultimately traps adherents in the same life-denying Inward Path as other traditional religions, giving virtually no importance to evolution, biological or otherwise. This is the Inward Path of the Buddhist type, which Nietzsche said leads ultimately to “the perfect cow” content with experiencing the personal bliss of the Father Within. As in the Bhagavad Gita, real life, even war, is "lived" as if enduring the duty of the unreal, hoping to be released from it all.  We evolve to Godhood materially and supermaterially in the Evolutionary Outward Path. The Inward Path to the God Within is only a symbolic-experience of Godhood reached by evolution---and  future politics needs to keep this in mind.

Although they tend to dislike America a bit too much, the New Right in France should  be given credit for their realistic way of looking at the modern world, mostly ahead of everyone else.

The primary and secondary object of evolution

Science sees only random evolution, and religion doubts the evolution of men and religious cultures. I see the secondary object of natural selection as incorporating genetic traits in individuals that will help produce an increase in survival and inclusive fitness, and also with the cultures they create. But I also see the primary object of natural selection as the evolution of life all the way to Godhood in the cosmos, with starts and stops along the way. Mere survival or even successful survival is not enough to explain our destiny. I see the zenith of the natural instincts as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood activating life from within in a primary way, which then works along with secondary natural selection to increase survival success as we evolve... Religion and science can finally harmonize in this way, but at this time they both remain uncomfortable with this worldview.

The answer to the errors of holistic multiplicity is ethnopluralism

Nietzsche said that humanity does not constitute a whole, pointing to the multiplicity of ascending and descending organisms. The science of evolution has confirmed this. But Nietzsche was focusing more on individualistic aristocratic radicalism than the reality of group-selection and successful survival. This is where the brilliant Nietzsche got off track while fighting against holistic ideals that preached “thus it ought to be” which buried superiority within mediocre ideals.

It is at the group level where even superior individuals find successful survival. It is the sweeping political “isms,” and most of the religions of the world that try to lay down what ought to be for a multiplicity of ascending and descending groups and states of life. The only holistic aim that I see is the biological evolution of life toward Godhood. This means seeing Nature as the expression of the most important instincts, not the least important, or even nonexistent instincts. Evolution likes variety, time, and distance. This can define the highest cultural style as the affirmation of the expression of Tirips, the inward activation toward Godhood.

Ethnopluralism is the answer to holistic ideals in the face of multiplicity. How many wars of independence and succession now (and in the future) which are agitating the world would not be taking place if ethnopluralism was prevailing? All countries can affirm ethnic cultures and groups by allowing them their own territories, states and regions, and then protecting them. The United States can do this legally by emphasizing the existing Constitution which affirms the separation of powers and states.

Then we can all get on with evolving to Godhood---and ideally we can help one another in this sacred mission.

Why Evolutionary Realism in Art

Art is an imitation of some sort, as Aristotle thought, but more importantly art values the thing represented, the content of the thing represented. For example, great art is often an affirmation of the sacred as defined by the culture. In traditional or classical art, low art it usually a less sophisticated version of high art. In modern times most art is minor or low art which usually negates or denies the sacred.

Realism remains the best way to affirm the sacred, but then Evolutionary Realism takes into account change within the Ordered Evolution of life, which is the authentic conservative perspective. Unrealistic art can of course affirm the sacred but it is less suited to reaching the people and the culture with its message.

Hume thought the principles of taste are generally uniform in human nature but human nature is capable of corruption, systematic mistakes, and ethnic differences (for more on this see the excellent “The Art Instinct” by Denis Dutton). Without human nature, judgments on art would collapse into personal preferences---interesting that postmodernism has rejected human nature and rejected essences and therefore promotes a complete relativity in taste.

Life never ceases to evolve toward ascending levels of Godhood, with stops and starts along the way, and Evolutionary Realism seems best suited to affirm this sacred mission in culture.

To save itself (and the world) the United States needs to curb the neoconservatives

Newly revitalized Orthodox Christian Russia and the Islamic fundamentalists have been virtually alone in pushing back against the neoconservative globalist cabal. The neocons have been fomenting trouble in the Ukraine, reigniting the cold war, along with inciting wars with Islam in the middle east, seeking to exploit the resources and people of these lands, and introduce them the moral rot of the neocon West.

To save itself (and the world) the United States needs to curb the neocons, and return to a sane, rational, and moral political culture, one that does not go abroad as a monster in search of other nations to exploit. There is very big money behind the neocons, their crony capitalism exploits our government, so obviously it will not be easy---whoever rises will have to do so with virtually the entire Western media against them (Fox and its facsimiles are neocon).

We need to see the rise of political candidates who are economic nationalists, and who are eventually ethnopluralists revitalizing the separation of powers and states in the U.S., while defending the nation with a second-to-none defense.  Most Americans wait for this.

When did affirming human nature become evil?

It probably began with the ancient religious duality favoring the spiritual over the material. This was a theological error: the inward spiritual path to the God or Father Within is only the symbolic-experience of the real Godhood reached through material-supermaterial evolution.

In out time, egalitarianism, internationalism and heterogeneity have taken the place of homogeneity and ethnic differences, under the ubiquitous banner of modern liberalism, which also calls real human nature evil. The political error of modern liberalism represses basic human nature, which remains as it has been for tens of thousands of years, that is, kin-centered, tending to be ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

Ethnopluralism, which directly affirms real human nature, will rise in contention with modern liberalism.  Liberalism has been exploited by those who rise to power on the denial of human nature.  And various serious abuses of one-race imperialism have helped make the affirmation of real human nature virtually an evil thing, that is, the affirmation of human differences and the protection of diverse ethnic states.

But real human nature is on the side of the ethnopluralism hypothesis, and this will gradually and naturally help it rise. In the United States the separation of powers and states can even accommodate such an ethnopluralism, which could eventually save the nation from civil and ethnic strife.

Contrary to Nietzsche, Nature is not aimless

In the wild notes of his masterpiece, “The Will To Power,” Nietzsche thought that the idea of Nature was invented by Nature-enthusiasts with little knowledge of what he describes as the terrible, implacable and cynical elements of Nature. Nietzsche sees the Christian ideals as having been read into their notions of Nature. But then Nietzsche proceeds to read his own ideals into Nature as being terrible, implacable, cynical, and aimless. He writes of “the aim that seems to have crept into the evolution of man.”

But there is an aim in Nature seen in the evolution of life from the simple to the complex, from unconsciousness to consciousness, with stops and backward goings along the way. This indeed means reading aim into Nature, and I go one further, material and supermaterial life is evolving all the way to Godhood in the cosmos. This can also mean a revitalization of the revealed religions, which Nietzsche loathed. The aimless Will To Power is really the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood activating life inwardly, and shaped by outside evolution. The God or Father first seen inwardly is the Godhood reached outwardly in evolution...Science may one day back up the idea of a long term aim in Nature, and is already beginning to, for example, in the work of Francis Heylighen.

In spite of postmodernism there is a straightforward and stable human nature

When old Terence said “I am a man, and nothing human is alien to me,” he was talking about universal human nature. The science of sociobiology has been offering good definitions of human nature for some years now, which are not all that different from traditional definitions of human nature.

All humans have the same impulses of human nature, but as Denis Dutton suggests in writing of Hume, human nature is also prone to mistakes, corruption and different dispositions ethnic and otherwise. Having different dispositions, foibles and corruptions does not mean that, say, beauty is only in the eye of the beholder, because there is a straightforward and stable human nature which includes the variations.

If we remove the mistakes, foibles and dispositions ethnic and otherwise, we arrive at something like the definitions of human nature which are repeated in this blog: that is, even the smallest change in human nature and our DNA structure, for example, in our immune system, takes hundreds of thousands of years---we 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.

Our cultures need to unite with real human nature, they tend to do so anyway over time. This is why ethnopluralism, with small states, and protecting differences, is the healthy way to go.

Are the effects of globalism irreversible?

Are the effects of globalism irreversible, the destruction of manufacturing in America, the indifference to borders and diversity, etc. etc.? I see no national politician addressing these issues. Pat Buchanan was desecrated by militant neoconservatives, and he is in his seventies---and he seems to have groomed no successor. The neoconservatives are not conservatives, they are leading the globalists charge. Libertarians mostly want open borders and unfettered global economics. We need to trade with the world of course but backed by a fair trade economic nationalism, not the so-called “free trade” which benefits the self-interest of the one percent at the great expense of the nation.

We can have innovation and creativity of course but it needs to be within the traditions created by real human nature. Modern liberals and neoconservatives can try to ignore the past and claim only the future, but they can't ignore human nature, which inevitably creates various forms of small, virtual ethnostates, with ethnopluralism, which always regenerates out of the wreckage of imperialism and globalism. This is why Marxism was doomed and why the politically correct cultural Marxism which rules the West is also doomed. The use of force only slows down for a bit the natural devolution of empires.

But still, it would be nice to see a national politician with the courage to address these issues, they are in our future, one way or another...To answer the question: the effects of globalism are reversible, sooner or later.

“God the All must be subdivided”

The above title is a quote from Nietzsche, but we don't need to throw away God altogether as Nietzsche did. We evolve to Godhood, which is not one God but is a level of evolution, the stage called Godhood at the zenith of evolution and beyond, with more than one entity evolving to this stage. This evolutionary activation may be at the primeval origin of human dissatisfaction, the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood leads us on and on.

When we limit the All this way we can see also that there appears to be no First Cause---there is no more real proof for a First Cause than there is proof for no First Cause---but there are always Gods evolving, and there always have been, and there always will be Gods evolving. “Life is a multiplicity of ascending and descending organisms.” In human terms, political ethnopluralism, and protecting differences while sharing knowledge on evolving differences, harmonizes with this multiplicity.

The most sacred mission of life across the universe is to evolve to Godhood. This defines the real Godhood first seen in the revealed religions but seen only inwardly as a symbolic-experience of the Godhood reached in evolution. Subdividing the interpretation of God the All is not meant to shock sensitive souls, but it is the next healthier stage in continuing religion, it can apply evolutionary science to religion, and it is healthier, more conservative, than Nietzsche's atheistic, relativistic, aristocratic radicalism, or the prevailing cultural Marxism which has little connection to real nature or human nature.

How the spiritual world, not the material world, can be misleading

Various thinkers seem to agree that Aristotle liked it best when the laws of men (nomos) unite with the laws of nature (phusis), but the laws of nature seem to provide the ultimate principles for Aristotle, the naturalist.

The creations of the human mind are within nature, and that includes religious philosophy. Plato and the Hindus thought that nature, including human nature, are subordinate to spiritual Forms, they thought that nature, and the creations of human nature---even great art---were misleading because they were really an imitation of the nonmaterial spiritual forms.

It was the spiritual world that was misleading. Duality is not necessary, but it is the material that subsumes the spiritual and not the other way around. Laws, spiritual or material, define things, objects, and are secondary to the objects they define. Laws are expressed by material minds and are within material minds. What was formerly thought of as spiritual is at best supermaterial.

The old ideas on spirituality denaturalize laws, values and reality, and so the laws of men escape, or think they escape, the laws of nature. What was once seen as God, or sacred Forms, was the involutionary God or Father Within, which needs to be seen as only the symbolic-experience of real supermaterial Godhood reached in material and supermaterial evolution. In the Twofold Path, the Inward Path leads to the Outward Path.

Addressing the Moral Rot

It is politically incorrect to say it but it was largely the loss of religion in the West, ie. Christianity, which brought the moral rot we see all over today. But not only modern liberalism rejected religion, the less political sciences also looked disdainfully at religion, even those which tend to support traditionalism, such as sociobiology, anthropology, and genetics. Look at today's hits in music, film, television, books, but also in high art, and in much academic work, the moral rot is widespread, and we all know it---is there any need to count the ways?

However, what we don't ever hear from religious people is that much of this has to do with the deep discounting of materialism and material life by religion, especially by the more serious sages and thinkers in religion, who center on the Inward Path to the God-Within or Father Within, which can only be reached by thoroughly unattaching oneself from material life and the desires of life. This has gradually led to the denaturalization of morals and values and allowed material culture to go largely unattended and open to the rejection of religious morals and values.

This is why the Twofold Path, the Involutionary and Evolutionary Paths to Godhood, are redeeming of the times. The Evolutionary Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood unblocks the Great Spiritual Blockade against material life, which means necessarily addressing the moral rot, since a keen interest in material life, evolution, and culture is required if we are to evolve to Godhood, the Godhood which was first only symbolically-experienced in the Inward Path of religions.  It remains true that no culture ever rises or lasts long without religion.

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Religion is not going out of fashion, but what religion offers to people will change. I think evolution, material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood will be the next offering of religious philosophy in the centuries ahead.

History does repeat itself but in a slightly different way---which really means history doesn’t repeat itself, it resembles itself. Religion in the future will resemble past religions. I think the Twofold Path: Evolutionary and Involuntary, is such a change, bringing the past Involuntary Path forward into the future Evolutionary Path.

How the Evolutionary Outward Path is primary and the Involutionary Inward Path is secondary

In the deep duality of the Hindu principle of correspondence (and perhaps also in the tree of life of the Kabala), every phenomenon, every thing, seems to be associated with an “immaterial” power, but not merely associated or corresponding with an immaterial power, every thing is actually the very immaterial power. These formless roots can be perceived eventually when material desires are blocked or unattached to by the sage, hence the sage can then perceive sacred “emptiness.” The emptiness is sought first as a principle, as Evola says, or an image of a principle, that is a yantra or mandala, which is supposed to relate to the forms assumed by the powers in the subtle plain. In Tantra what is sought is the realization that everything is the Spirit, or Shakti, “truly all of this is Shakti.” “Duality” is this way overcome.

What is sought in Hinduism, and in the more serious paths of all the revealed religions (many of which seem to have derived in one way or another from Hinduism), is not the real, living, material or supermaterial object of Godhood, which needs to be evolved to, but symbols and principles that in fact do not exist in the material or supermaterial world---however they can lead to the blissful condition of emptiness, nirvana, heaven, the Father Within, if the various ascetic disciplines for achieving nonattachment to material desires is attained. This is the Involutionary Inward Path, and the sole concern of the more serious paths of the revealed religions. The God Within is reached by a Great Spiritual Blockade or nonattachment to material and even supermaterial desires.

But there is another path, the Evolutionary Outward Path, where the primary goal is evolving to real Godhood in the material and supermaterial world. This is not symbolic, this is not a principle, and not the blissful human experience of complete emptiness of objecthood, this is not the spiritual blockade of material desires, this is real Godhood reached in real life by way of evolution toward the zenith of material desires, which is Godhood, or the zenith of success in survival and reproduction. The Spirit-Will within material life activates life to evolve to Godhood, and then life is shaped by outside evolution. This is the only way for the Spirit-Will to attain Godhood, that is, riding within the vehicle of material and supermaterial evolution---the Spirit-Will is never outside of material or supermaterial life---duality does not enter the worldview.

In the Twofold Path both paths can be applied, tradition is not abandoned, but the Evolutionary Outward Path is primary and the Involution Inward Path is secondary, with the Father Within seen as a symbolic-experience of the real outward Godhood reached by evolution. This defines the real "transvaluation of values" needed.

Feeling and reasoning reality

The hope is for theological materialism and the ECC to be the result of both feeling and reasoning methods of seeing reality.

Rationality discovers reality through reason, and intuition feels reality with emotions. Could non-linguistic methods for solving problems and emotional reactions before the time when rationality was fully developed have been a superior way to make decisions, or a better way to discover reality? We need both---when both separately arrive at the same reality then we seem to be on the path to seeing actual reality.

This is why science, art and religion should not be completely separated, with each making their own attempts to find reality, we can use them all together. Modern humans tend to specialize, but reality is probable best found using all of these fields together, or at least bringing them together in the end to synthesize their findings. If this sort of Renaissance ethos can't be done by one person then individuals need to work together.  Knowing reality is vital for our survival, and our future evolution.

This is also the argument for liberal arts colleges being better than specialized schools in helping the population discover more of reality. But schools of wider learning have faded away under the tyranny of political correctness and the indoctrination of cultural Marxism. Reality has also faded.  Nihilism is not reality. Introducing sociobiology into the humanities would be a big step in the right direction, as E.O. Wilson has called for.

Moral rights and the self-preservation of a people

Moral rights need to be connected, or reconnected, to the self-preservation of a people, but this reality is often disguised, even to the participants themselves, with elaborate claims of universalism in moral rights usually removed from the subject of biological preservation. Perhaps it was the case where only such tricks and subterfuges were thought possible to bring success. Even war is waged claiming abstract universal moral rights.

It is overdo time to naturalize morality and rights. Nietzsche, who I think was the first sociobiologist, called for this 100 years ago. But this time the naturalization of morality needs to be accomplished without Nietzsche's aristocratic radicalism, which favored individual superior men with a sort of libertarianism that did not pay enough attention to the reality of group selection as the primary unit of selection---we certainly need superior people, but individuals alone do not survive or prosper yet alone evolve.  Humanity is so numerous now that cooperative competition between different groups and states is necessary---the imperialism of one people over others brings the whole world up in arms against them, which doesn't lead to imperial success.

Much of the humbug regarding morality and rights needs to be seen for what it really is, the self-preservation of those who promote the humbug. Today the humbug of political correctness or cultural Marxism rules Western culture, disguising the wills to power of the nontraditional individuals and groups promoting it. Ordered change, Ordered Evolution, not radical revolution, can bring forward the naturalization of morality and rights, backed by sciences such as sociobiology. This is the way we can save ourselves from the tricks and subterfuges which are causing the chaos and decline that we are increasingly experiencing.

The whole of humanity is made up of naturally dissatisfied wills-to-survival success, which lives instinctively within the heads and bodies of all people, and this is why some form of ethnopluralism is the most natural configuration designed toward fulfilling, not blocking, these basic natural instincts, which have led to the creation of culture itself.  Then humanity can get on with the sacred mission of evolving toward Godhood out into the cosmos.

The Ethnopluralism Hypothesis

We still have the innate dispositions of our ancient ancestors, as Denis Dutton points out, we still universally prefer savanna landscapes innately (the Savanna Hypothesis) with trees and a river running through it, because this was the landscape that gave us the best chance of survival during the 80 thousand generations or so of the Pleistocene when our human nature developed (Socrates only goes back 120 generations). This leads to what I might call the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis: ethnopluralism is the universally preferred social configuration we innately prefer---if we are honest---in accord with human nature, because human nature remains 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.

Political correctness, cultural Marxism, and modernism in general go directly against these natural traits of human nature, which is why they don't last long or work well. These distortions are promoted by individuals or groups who seek to dominate by promoting these counterfeit views. Some people genuinely make what they believe is a rational decisions based on the idea that we may survive best by promoting egalitarianism, but this inevitably ends up being like forcing two fighting children together in the school yard rather than separating them to create a more lasting peace. The best we can hope for, given human nature, is cooperative competition, and this is possible, because it does not go against who we actually are as instinctive human beings, yet allows for rational cooperation.

The Ethnopluralism Hypotheses suggests that cultural Marxism wont last for long and we will go back to cultural and political behavior in accord with human nature, which is ingrained emotionally and even aesthetically, and it also happens to be the best rational choice for the future survival and evolution of all groups, not just one group. Empires always break back down into regional small states, which are virtually ethnostates, where ethnopluralism naturally develops, protected by some form of federalism.

Human freedom, liberalism, and religion

In speaking of human freedom Claude Polin (Chronicles, Feb. 2014) is right in saying that the suicide of the West has everything to do with men thinking they have unfettered freedom, when men are only as free as human nature and the order of nature allow. Modern liberals believe that they are congenitally free to do anything they please, realizing, perhaps, that they cannot be free if they are “enslaved” to anything, including their own nature. This is why Polin sees “absolute individualism” as the real plague of the West.

For those who cannot affirm a God creating human nature and the laws of nature, the evolutionary sciences such as sociobiology have also underlined a human nature to which we are unfreely connected. We have some freedom within the determined paths of human nature, and we can believe in progress, without believing in the unfettered freedom of modern liberalism, because we are in the process of evolving toward the ultimate progress of Godhood, materially and supermaterially, in the cosmos. “First causes” are not even required when Godhood is seen as the zenith of our evolution in nature. We can harmonize with the laws of nature and evolution, which can help determine the laws of men.

As men are prone to arrogance, even religion went too far beyond knowledge and truth in declaring that it knew the laws of God and the laws of the universe, to which it said we must obey, and so as human knowledge evolved this arrogance had much to do with the rejection of religion. But religion can return when the largely involutionary traditional view of God is seen as a first symbolic-experience of the evolutionary path to Godhood which we need to attain, shaped by outside evolution. This return can be seen in the Twofold Path of theological materialism. The new can synthesize with the old in an Ordered Evolution.  Perhaps even the liberals could affirm this kind of freedom, even if they have the problem of having declared the biological origin of any cultural behavior politically incorrect, supposedly because they think it fetters their imaginary freedom, or license.

The way back from the suicide of the West

As Chilton Williamson put it writing about James Burnham (Chronicles Feb 2014), postmodern liberalism has established multiculturalism, inclusivism, unitarianism, (or cultural Marxism), in the belief that people, races, cultures, nations are all the same, which is causing the suicide of the West.

This is accurate, but to replace it with neoconservativism (not Williamson's choice), and so-called free trade---which is the exploitation of everyone by the international, one percent, global corporations, who include the same values of multiculturalism, inclusivism, unitarianism, (or cultural Marxism), and the belief that all people are the same---is not the answer to the suicide of the West. The main neoconservative difference from postmodern liberalism is in backing the global corporations with the U.S. military, and a preference for Zionism.

Pat Buchanan has most of the solutions to the suicide of the West, beginning with the return to economic nationalism, bringing manufacturing home again, and putting tariffs on foreign imports---trade with the world, yes, but fair trade more than free trade. But Buchanan has not as yet promoted ethnopluralism, although he has acknowledged the growing separatist movements in the world. Perhaps the Christian belief in us all being the same spiritually is behind the hope of assimilation.

Ethnic cultures with distinct ethnic traits always end up forming into their own units, formally or informally, and the Constitutional separation of powers and states in America, protected by a light federalism, is the workable conservative format for a future American ethnopluralism. Human history has always moved this way, empires always decline into ethnopluralistic regions and states, which are the most natural political configuration given human nature. Human nature remains as it has been since it developed in the Pleistocene many thousands of years ago. We 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.