Answering Nietzsche's Group Problem

To be healthy, morality and human values need to work in harmony with nature, with sociobiology. Morality is not merely a completely relative will-to-power, as Nietzsche seems to have thought it was in his dismissing morality for not relating to Nature. Nietzsche's concept of immorality is also a concept free of nature since morality is very much a part of nature in helping group-selection.

I see Nietzsche's project as mainly an attempt to affirm the great genius creators over everyone and everything else, missing the basic importance of group-selection which is necessary to allow geniuses to survive and prosper. I think Raymond Cattell had a better grasp of this in understanding that the task of society and evolution is to tell the difference between social and anti-social geniuses, and not to denigrate group-values.

The ECC project is to update Hegel and Darwin. To make evolution and history part of religion. To revitalize Christianity and religion in general. To give a moral answer to Nietzsche and his follower’s immorality. To bring back philosophical naturalism to philosophy and religion by way of theological materialism. To bring religion and science together. To bring evolutionary realism  to art. To affirm the object over the concept of the object. To re-position the Outward Path over the Inward Path while keeping both. To affirm that all life is evolving to Godhood, not from Godhood. To have the ethos of evolution involved in morality in general.  And to affirm the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis in political philosophy..... Constructive help in this is not turned down.

Happy Memorial Day

The basic spirit of change within the old order

“...Originality is not taken to mean the creation of something unrelated to any precedent or prototype, but rather the reconfiguration of a given prototype in a vitally creative way.” (Gatesby Leigh)

I like the above quote in reference to yesterday's post on calling myself a conservative. But the basic spirit of change within the old order is seen in the ordered evolution of the religious and political philosophy presented here. Whether Burke or Kirk would agree or disagree is not a given---but they were practical men, with moral imagination.

Traditionalism with no evolution is not reviving the declining West, traditionalism really seems to want to return to the age before Western science and scientific evolution, even though it has made weak attempts to include science and evolution in a separate category from religion.

Not just new science but new religious revelations need to be included, but in the reconfiguration-of-prototypes-spirit of real conservatism. Most new things do not work well. Bringing philosophy back to the real material/supermaterial world suggests that working well needs to relate in to successful survival and reproduction. The quote by Leigh is a very conservative statement, made in reference to memorial architecture, but it could apply to new religious, artistic or political forms. 

Evolution moves 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,”as Cattell put it. The goal of evolving  toward higher and higher forms and eventually to Godhood, shaped by natural outside evolution, need not deprive us of either science or religion.

How I Am A Conservative

When I compare the pioneering views seen here to Russell Kirk's fundamental definition of Conservatism, as recently remembered by Clyde Wilson (Modern Age, Winter 2014), for the most part we align with Kirk's view, in our Ordered Evolution, the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis, Revitalized Conservatism, and perhaps with Theological Materialism, and the Twofold Path:

In the affirmation of the original American Constitution I defer to custom and older Western wisdom, as much as to rational speculation. I understand that change should be cautiously approached with the affirmation of Ordered Evolution. I avoid being “provincial in time” by going even further back to our Pleistocene past, where we evolved the human nature we still have today, and also by thinking seriously about our sociobiological responsibility to the future. I take in earnest the warnings by our Founders about avoiding entangling foreign alliances, for example, in affirming Economic Nationalism. And this is unlike the neoconservatives, who are not conservative, in using big government and armed force for nefarious purposes around the world. I value variety, which is so important to real evolution, in affirming an ethnopluralism that can be legally accommodated by the separation of powers and states in the original Constitution, which actually protects variety, unlike multiculturalism which seeks homogenization into a motley non-culture. I think government should be small and the private sphere large. But I am progressive in the following ways: in thinking there is a necessity for objective international sociobiological research institutes, voluntarily applied toward enhancing our survival and our future evolution. And finally, I value the order of nature, especially in its evolutionary aspects, in that we evolve in nature to Godhood materially and supermaterially.  The Twofold Path relates to the past traditional religious tradition which first glimpsed symbolically the God Within as a hint of the Godhood evolved to in the cosmos. I believe with Ordered Evolution we can now consciously help nature evolve toward the higher evolution it has so far only unconsciously been moving toward, activated by Tirips, and shaped by outside selection and evolution.

This is how I am a conservative.

Evolutionary Realism and the Godhood Goal

A mixing of realism and idealism defines the classical arts, according to Gail Leggio. I think “evolutionary realism” best describes the arts involved in our sacred evolution toward Godhood. Evolutionary realism brings art philosophy back to the living object, the natural world, but also extends it out into the future toward our evolution toward ascending level of Godhood.

What we consider “beautiful” tends to have evolved in the Pleistocene through natural selection and sexual selection, and we retain it today. We can build on this, on what we are, since it doesn’t work well to reject human nature. We can build on instinctive feelings and empirical ideas of what is true, beautiful and good, with the goal of evolving to the zenith of these things, which is Godhood.

We are aided in this direction by the inward, purely physical, activation of the Will-To-Godhood, or Tirips, which seeks Godhood by materially activating life to evolve toward Godhood, working along with the shaping of outside evolution and selection. But even without acknowledging this inward purpose, evolution has been moving toward more efficient forms, more complexity, with occasional stops and side-turnings along the way.

Morality does not have to be a counter-movement opposing nature's endeavors to arrive at a higher type, which was Nietzsche's view. But devolution can and does take place with various negative or down-going kinds of morality, the kind of morality that says this material world is not good. Godhood is not only the zenith of truth, beauty and goodness, it is the zenith of successful survival and reproduction. Science and religion can meet here.

Jantelagen

Jantelagen is a Swedish word meaning an ingrained aversion to standing out. The North Asians seem to have it too. The South seems to show almost the opposite of this, although there are always exceptions. What would a southern word for loud extroversion be? Chutzpah?  It also originally seemed to apply physiologically.

These traits are developed slower in natural selection, and then sexual selection helps determine the choices females make, which can exaggerate these traits over time.

With less to pay for any mistakes they make, modern females seem to be more freely choosing males, southern or northern or whatever, since the natural environment doesn't seem to matter as much for the survival of their offspring, assuming they decide to have offspring.

Without the pressures of difficult natural selection, and without the values of older traditions, traits are entering the gene pool in modern times that would not have otherwise. I suppose this can change depending on the ease of survival.

Was Nietzsche affirming the criminal?

In reading Nietzsche it is not very clear that he is not affirming the criminal. To be sure he is affirming geniuses, but he praises immorality constantly: “Have not all the great deeds in the memory of man been immoral?.” And “The moral man is not a better man he is less harmful.” To name only two of many statements like this.

I don't believe that Nietzsche is affirming criminals mainly because he is speaking of the true creators and developers of culture, which we need more of, but he does see these exceptional people as something like wild beasts who do not need social taming by that “terrible species” called the priests. Also Nietzsche praises the Pagan religions, the Renaissance, and Art, as being more creative and affirmative of life, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, which was not a criminal cultural development.

But when Nietzsche writes that from a biological standpoint the phenomenon of morality is of a highly suspicious nature, it cries out for the sociobiological knowledge of our time, which has shown that group-selection instinctively and innately develops morality to enhance success in biological survival and reproduction.

Nietzsche was one of the most brilliantly courageous minds in human history but his big error was in not seeing altruism as being as natural, instinctive and affirmative as the warrior mentality. The social task is to find a way to distinguish between the social and anti-social geniuses, not to reject group morality. The psychometric sciences can in fact do this now.

Yes, we need affirmative philosophy and religion rather than the exclusively Inward Path to the God Within which requires blocking natural material desires. The Twofold Path does not require the death of religion, or the death of group morality, or the death of God, or the dictatorship of individual supermen. The Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution can lead us toward real Godhood, which was first only symbolically experienced in the Inward Path.

Deeper Psychology

I would add the activating, supermaterial, Spirit-Will-To-Godhood to the Archetypes of Carl Jung, and also to Evolutionary Psychology, which would make an even deeper psychology. The archetypes are innate and universal human traits, as are the universal traits of kin-selection, ethnocentrism, and group selection. But an inward even blissful archetype for God is not enough, it is only a symbolic experience of the Godhood reached in outward material and supermaterial evolution.

The main purpose behind the development of these innate universal human traits and archetypes was successful survival and reproduction, which is why they evolved---evolutionary psychology emphasizes this. But psychology, as well as religion and philosophy, would be broader and deeper by including the innate-supermaterial, universal, activating Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which could be considered a Super Id.

As Nietzsche thought, the motive force and its expression should not be seen as separate things. The material and spiritual are seen as separate things, or else they are seen as Plato and the Eastern religions (and their Western versions) saw them, as really all spiritual and non-material. We need to repair or reconnect these two. Chance and natural selection do take place in material evolution but there is also an inward activating force in the selection process, as Teilhard Chardin and others have thought, with their somewhat different interpretations from this one. I see it the other way, trans-valued : it is all material and supermaterial, inwardly and outwardly evolving toward Godhood, no duality is necessary.

Political resentments and overreactions in the world

The French New Right, who I like in general, seem to make the mistake of accepting any challenger to the West, no matter how imperialistic---for example, Russia or China---brought on by big resentment and overreaction to the damaging imperialism of the West. The French seem to forget that they are very much a part of the West, which for years has given its people a higher standard of living than the rest of the world.  Fundamentalist Islam shows even more of this same sort of anger and resentment against the West. History is a hierarchy of competing peoples more than ideas, but intellectuals often get lost in the conflict of ideas and ideology and they tend to bypass the biological dynamics behind ideas. Look at the way sociobiology still has little effect in the Humanities.

All imperialism needs to devolve back to regional ethnostates (and will eventually), protected with some sort of federalism, and that includes the United States, whose Constitution with its separation of powers and states could accommodate ethnopluralism. This best relates to the real human nature that I keep repeating in this blog, and the sociopolitical structures most in harmony with real human nature which developed many thousands of years ago, and are still with us: we remain kin-centered, gender-defined, heterosexual marriage-making, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

If Eurasia devolves away from imperialism and toward ethnopluralism we can affirm them, but the West needs to do likewise. Given human nature and history, this is the future that holds the most promise for us all. People create cultures more than cultures create people, which is why cultures are shaped by the various traits of the people who create the cultures, adapting to various environments.

The religious philosophy of theological materialism, and the ethnopluralism hypothesis, are an attempt to bring culture back to real people, real life, real evolution, rather than increasing the ideological resentments and overreactions.

On defining reality, and the consilience of fields

Real life needs to represent a higher importance than the desirable or the ideal life. That is the conservative position, or at least the Burkean position. I think it should apply not only to politics but to religion and philosophy. People too often believe in things that do not exist, and build whole systems around them. Nietzsche talked about how the means of virtue can be turned into the idea that “everybody must be everyone else's nurse.” But I think Nietzsche was mistaken in not seeing altruism as being as “natural” as any warrior trait, both can advance healthy cultures.

The problem comes of course in defining reality. One big difference comes from those who admit biological and physiological values and those who do not in any meaningful way---the divide in philosophy and psychology often comes here. It seems often to be the difference between naturalism and non-naturalism.

I would place the foundation of reality within the world of philosophical naturalism, and this then leads to theological materialism, which is developed in this blog. When even sacred Godhood is based in evolutionary materialism leading to supermaterialism, we have a chance at the long continuum of life and culture, and the consilience of fields---that becomes a system that actually seems to exist.

Natural and artificial evolution

I keep thinking there is something fishy behind “singularity,” machines evolving to be as intelligent as humans. It looks like humanity being too scared to advance intelligent humans, and beyond, rather than (or as well as) machines---or else it seems like a cunning bypass of the subject of future genetics because it is politically incorrect and doesn't fit various agendas. We have to get over the genetic abuse of World War II, truly healthy people don't dwell on such things as a way of life.

We can use technology to help advance ourselves, but to become machines and possibly therefore lose future human evolution sounds a bit sick. We seem to be allowing deceitful dweebs with media power to determine our future. Let's have a little courage and begin to at least talk about the great evolution of real life toward Godhood, only aided by intelligent machines. It's actually a religious mission. 

Truth as lies, and lies as truth prevail

If someone in a city square with a megaphone loudly proclaimed: “We will fight against human nature until it is eradicated!,” most people might question that proclamation. But that is in essence what political correctness/cultural Marxism is proclaiming all over Western culture. The Western media is the main Orwellian manipulator of the truth as lies, and lies as truth, using people like the smugly homosexual Anderson Cooper, or the unctuously liberal adulterer Bill Clinton (seemingly unaware of their lies), to promote this great inversion of customary meanings, which Orwell called “news-speak,” although it has gone beyond what even Orwell imagined.

The truth about human nature has been understood for years by responsible anthropologists and sociobiologists, who now have to also be courageous as well as responsible in speaking contrary to political correctness, because it can cost them their careers. Basic human nature, cross culturally, contains heterosexual marriage (not homosexual marriage), gender differences (not radical feminism), ethnocentrism (not homogenization), and group-selection (not individualistic hedonism), as well as other traditional human behavior, which developed over tens of thousands of years because it was what was successful over the long term in survival and reproduction. The attempt to eradicate real human nature has been very damaging to Western culture which as a result of the lies of political correctness/cultural Marxism is now declining and falling fast.

Non-white racism and other forms of racism are every bit as strong, or stronger, than white racism, as any one knows who has actually been around non-white cultures, but this truth is not allowed, the truth impedes the take down of the West by the non-traditional manipulators of the truth.  But there is nothing wrong with  people preferring their own kind, even if traditional religion makes a theological error in giving man a fallen nature based only on the Inward Path.

So is it over for the West? It could be.  But there are ways we could save ourselves.

A decentralized America (and Europe) as suggested by the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis would be a way to deal with actual human nature, without the Orwellian lies. Desperate times, such as civil disturbances brought about by the lies of cultural Marxism, could some day initiate the decentralization of states and regions into something like natural ethnostates. In any case, reform, not revolution, needs to be affirmed, more Edmund Burke than Karl Marx. For example, the separation of powers and states in the U.S. Constitution could accommodate some form of ethnopluralism.

Finding Reality

I think of the search for reality as finding reality through the rational and the intuitional, through reason and through emotional conviction. These two work together something like art and emotion, the emotional subjective parts of the brain connect with the abstract and cerebral parts in art creation. Art philosopher Denis Dutton compared this to an intersection between them that helps us find reality. Looking for reality is usually more of an art than a science, which sounds less mechanical, less controllable, but perhaps it is more accurate.

Reality needs to be our guide, reason and intuition can sometimes mislead us, which I think one of the Founding Fathers said in a different way about developing the U.S. Constitution. We can use anything, even the “direct apprehension” that Schopenhauer talked about, we can use reason, intuition, science, anything to find reality. Why not? Nietzsche talked about reason as not being an independent entity but as a state of relationship between all the various passions and desires, he said every passion possesses its own quantum of reason.

Ultimately I believe we need to apply all of these things in enlisting nature in service to our evolution toward Godhood, the sacred, moral, and natural direction of ethical evolution. To go into the weeds a bit: Being-in-Itself has been sidelined (but not really forsaken) and replaced with Being-in-the-world by Heidegger, which has been transformed here into Itself-in-Being as the most admirable action and actor of history, since Being-in-Itself does not really exist accept in the minds of a few arcane philosophers and theologians. Itself-in-Being, which we are, needs to evolve to the zenith of Itself-in-Being of Godhood in the real world. God, or rather Godhood, is not dead---and the Absolute is not ancient Greek or Eastern religious Nothingness (which is only an inward symbolic experience of God)---when attaining Godhood is understood as evolving from where we are now to material/supermaterial Godhood in nature.

The problem is in how the beast is civilized

Nietzsche didn't want to “tame” man with morality, but rejecting morality is a form of taming man, and this is Nietzsche's form of “improvement” which he otherwise condemns in priests. Nietzsche's preferred “immorality” mostly applies to individuals, especial genius individuals, it overlooks natural group selection, which is the prime unit of selection, and group selection requires morality and the natural “taming” of man.

The problem is in how the beast is civilized. Rousseau and Thomas Paine saw primitive and natural man as a wild, free, and innocent, individual, as if group morality were not just as primitive and naturally evolved over the tens of thousands of years when man became man. Edmund Burke had a better grasp of the naturalness of group behavior (before sociobiology) and the civilization that naturally grows up around it.

Our instincts, passions and reason can be enlisted in service to our higher evolution, and higher evolution does not merely “tame” us, it makes us healthier as we move toward the zenith of truth, goodness and beauty. As with artists, geniuses in various fields can be as free as they need to be during the creation of their work, (they probably actually need to be free during the creation process), but then it is most natural for their work to be judged by the cultural needs of the group or by group morality, which is more important than individual morality.

 
What happened when the Nietzschean geniuses of modern art (or philosophy for that matter) had no group or social concerns? By any sane standards we received mostly garbage. For example, with psychometrics today we can almost easily distinguish the social geniuses from the anti-social criminal geniuses, and our grants and work awards to individuals would follow after this lead---but always leaving room for those few who fall between the psychometric cracks.

Revitalized Education

If we think of four philosophies of learning as suggested by Peter Lawler (Modern Age, Winter 2014) as the following: Aristocratic Platonism---contemplation is for the few, action or work is for the many. The libertarian middle-class view that work is for us all and contemplation is self-indulgent illusion. The politically correct view of the liberal professors that it is enough to be against racism, sexism, classism and heterosexism, and that all other values are completely relative. And the conservative (and Christian) view that both work and contemplation are for us all......I would choose the last one, the conservative, classical liberal view of education, but it needs reform, or revitalization.

We don't need to tear down conservatism and Christianity and start from scratch, but conservative and religious education needs to prominently include the science of sociobiology, which can relate to the old Aristotelian concept of seeing nature as defined by the ends it is meant to achieve. We are meant to evolve toward Godhood, the God first seen only inwardly as the symbolic experience of the Godhood reached in the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution. This in turn leads to a  revitalized political conservatism and the Ethnopluralism Hypothesis, which affirms a decentralized America (and other parts of the world  for that matter) with states and regions as ethnic conclaves, which can be accommodated by the originally decentralizing U.S. Constitution.  This could truly conserve us all.

Answering Habermas

In thinking about how Jurgen Habermas has tried to philosophically deal with what has been missing since the Enlightenment began to reject faith and religion---(see “An Unawareness of What Is Missing” By J. Karpowicz in “Modern Age,” Winter 2014)---I think Habermas should be given credit for this since many modern thinkers don't seem to see anything missing.

Habermas wants the religious side of life to accept the authority of natural reason, while secular reason must not judge the truths of faith. Christianity has found a way to do this (Thomism), but not Islam which seems to subordinate all of life to the sacred law of sharia, and not by reason (although I could see their idea of high reasoning more like the Gnostic “nous,” or Holy Spirit).

But the reason of Habermas, like Enlightenment reason, has no God-goal or faith in reaching Godhood to which human virtues can be directed, so Habermas loses the idea of the classical virtues of high truth, goodness and beauty in religio-philosophy, which seems to lead only to following along with the Enlightenment goals of avoiding pain, and seeking pleasure, individualism, success in this world, etc.

Here is the way my religious philosophy answers Habermas:

The Spirit-Will can aid in keeping the passions and desires in check, and the evolutionary virtues can be involved in ennobling human beings as we evolve toward the zenith of truth, goodness and beauty, which is Godhood, rather than pursuing only the Enlightenment goals of avoiding pain, and seeking pleasure, individualism, success in this world, etc.

Faith is retained in the faith we have in reaching the highest goal of the activating Spirit-Will, which is Godhood, and the faith we have in the direction of the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood. Natural Law can be retained in following the order of nature and the drive to successful survival and reproduction, which leads to the zenith of the success of these things at the zenith of evolution, which is Godhood. Outside natural selection and evolution help shape the sacred activation of life from within.

But the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood must not be confounded with the Soul or Mind-Soul, which in human beings is found by non-attachment to passions and desires so as to dwell in the Mind-Soul only, the Father Within, the God Within, which needs to be seen as only a symbolic-experience of the Godhood reached in material/supermaterial evolution. The path to the Mind-Soul can be reached in the Involutionary Inward Path which needs to be synthesized with the Evolutionary Outward Path to real Godhood.  This defines the Twofold Path, which can join the divided world.

We don't have to separate reason into practical and contemplative, or into nous, logos and phronesis, as the Greeks and their followers did, practical reason regarding survival and evolution on earth can be used in social strategies, but social strategies lead to thinking about ways to reach ultimate success in the natural order, which is the Godhood-goal of the Spirit-Will.

Modern living can become involved with religious living as we arrange our social structures (which can include democracy and humanism) and seek social virtues directed toward our continual evolution to the highest truth, goodness and beauty, and ultimately Godhood, which is the zenith of the virtues and the zenith of life in the cosmos. Faith and reason, religion and science can this way be joined in the modern world replacing what has been missing since the Enlightenment.

Reversing metaphysics

The fact that Plato thought Homer was the worst possible example of values is a negative aspect of Platonism, and Neoplatonism---and this can be seen in traditional religions as well. Plato's pie-in-the-sky metaphysics, his non-material forms, can actually be more damaging to humanity than Homer's heroes. Although Nietzsche made his attempt to criticize the spirituality of Plato, and religion, his solution of radical aristocratic individualism was perhaps as damaging as Plato, his supposed opposite.

The way to become whole again in our values is to bring the new into the old, to bring about change within order, not by a metaphysical revolution, but with the Twofold Path, in understanding that the Inward Path to the God or Father Within of the traditional Revealed Religions, and of Plato, is only a symbolic-experience of the real Godhood which can be reached in natural, upward, material and supermaterial evolution, by way of Ordered Evolution.

We can be saved from life-denying metaphysics meant only for the Inward Path and not the Outward Path of sacred material evolution. This is defined in the new religious philosophy of theological materialism, which can help unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade we have been trying to come out from under for centuries with sophisticated religious metaphysics, such as Thomism, or various social and political philosophies, such as Marxism.

Healing the spiritual-material divisions

(The living object is more important than the definition of the object)

The Great Spiritual Blockade has deprived the material world, passion, and nature itself of its dignity, as Nietzsche pointed out---as if there were no high purpose for passion. This was due mainly to the single concentration on the Involutionary Inward Path to the God or Father Within of traditional religions, the state that can in fact, in spite of Nietzsche, be attained by non-attachment to all material desires.

Does the Church believe in things that do not exist? Unlike Nietzsche, the Twofold Path sees the Father Within---which can be reached by way of the Involutionary Inward Path---as the symbolic-experience of the Godhood reached in the Evolutionary Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood in the cosmos. This brings real dignity back to nature, back to life, and even back to religion. This can heal the fissure between religion and science, but both science and religion need to affirm the sacred activation of evolving life to Godhood.  And this can move forward with conservative reform rather than revolution.

When I say that the living object is more important than the definition of the object this, for me, bridges various philosophical and religious gaps, for example, in analytical and continental philosophy, which then leads to a philosophical sociobiology in line with naturalism, but this then is taken forward to theological materialism, the new synthesizing religious philosophy.

It is not Nietzsche's “will-to-power” alone that is the base of natural man, it is the activating Spirit-Will-To-Godhood which exhumes religion from the graveyard Nietzsche put it in, and gives a sacred goal and direction to the material will-to-power, beyond where individual, relativistic, earth-centered supermen might want to exploit it, yet it retains the old Inward God for symbolic reasons.

Universalism versus Patriotism

When the U.S. goes abroad in search of monsters and the people ask---“Why is it our business?---the answer involves the clash between universalism and patriotism. Real human nature does not contain the values related to universalism except on the lower level of the hierarchy of values. Universalism, human rights, equality, open immigration, world democracy, etc. etc, do not much relate to the kin-centered, group-centered, regional-centered patriotism of basic human nature, which developed over tens of thousands of years of evolution---and this is universal.

So the patriots have begun to fight back, especially in Europe, against the sneering, presumptuous, universalists, who were indoctrinated in our colleges and universities with the ideology of cultural Marxism, which William Lind said is the basis of political correctness. The arrogant and condescending Clinton's are examples of this type. Sociobiology desperately needs to enter our Humanities departments, but that is obviously not happening.

But patriotic groups are rising all over, even in the U.S.---and I say go to it! It's big power against little power, but so what? Real human nature and human history are on the side of the patriots.

Decentralism As Ethnopluralism

Defending decentralism to help preserve ethic conclaves and regions must never be mistaken for Jim Crow “states rights” regionalism, which gravely hurt the decentralist cause. Ethnic groups are simply different, with various talents which were mentally and physically adapted to the different geographical regions that they evolved within. Decentralism is meant to preserve and elevate ethnic cultures, and not to have one group dominate another.

The Ethnopluralism Hypothesis affirms a decentralized America (and other parts of the world too for that matter) with states and regions as ethnic conclaves, which can be accommodated by the originally decentralizing U.S. Constitution. The national experiment to homogenize different ethnic groups into one motley mishmash has not worked, accept for very close cousin ethnic groups the melting pot didn't melt. This is why multiculturalism began to be promoted, which also didn't work, because all groups were expected to live close together and just “get along”, which they have not done, and will not do.

Throughout human history up to the present time human nature has remained kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other traditional things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. Human nature generally prefers its own kind and its own cultures, and that needs to be championed not made into something evil.

But there are numerous non- ethnic reasons to support decentralism, as pointed out by Jeff Taylor in his book “Politics of Human Scale,” reviewed by Gerald Russello in the April “Chronicles.” Federalism means “minimalistic government at every level,” broader than the division between national and state governments. “Having many points of power reduces the malevolent reach of any of them.”  This also is the ideal environment for real evolution with variety to take place.

But the centralizing impulses always rise, even among those who promote individual freedom---they end up using big government power to uniformly enforce individualism, when individualism in fact does not trump the central unit of group selection.

Capitalism can be thought of as “the least bad system” because it conforms to real human nature, that is, not man's “sinful nature,” as many conservatives define human nature, but real human nature in the natural world seeking success in survival and reproduction. Decentralism can allow capitalism to continue raising the standard of living for all, as it has done, but it needs to be free of its centralizing and monopolizing impulses, just as big government needs to be.

In great civilizations culture is virtually synonymous with religion, but both culture and religion are developed by various ethnic groups which give them their own special traits. The religion of the future is a religion that affirms human evolution in the Outward Path toward the Godhood (the Father Within) first only symbolically experienced in the Inward Path of traditional religions. We are all evolving toward Godhood with the variety that evolution has always preferred, and we are certainly capable of cooperative competition in this great adventure and mission.

Finding the truth about human nature, and successfully implementing the truth are not often connected

I tend to trust, sometimes presumptuously, my sense of the truth no matter where it comes from, reason or intuition, or even the “direct apprehension” that Schopenhauer talked about, which is not always academic, scientific or religious. It seems more like reason and intuition working together to arrive at reality. Courage also is involved because often times the truth seems to take courage to see, or admit, and also related to sensing what is not the truth.

What I would like to see established is the basic truth that we humans have a built-in determined human nature with a purpose, which is contrary to the idea that all things are subject to malleability by man's ideas and man's culture. This is a cultural, political, philosophical and religious debate over truth and reality, which is often buried by academic, scientific or religious thinking, but it is mostly buried by the social media.

We know that finding the truth is different from successfully selling or implementing the truth. The media in general is first concerned with selling what they decide is the news and they have not been much concerned with finding the truth, which means that the truth often has little social power. Then there are various kinds of force that can be applied with little concern for the truth, which can bury the truth. This means that lies, untruths, or at least misconceptions, prevail in society, and the truth always takes the very slow path to acceptance.

What seems rare is to have a finder and teller of truths who is also a successful seller or establisher of truths in society. Maybe that's why dual forms of leadership, eg. kings and priests, evolved, helping one another in successful societies.

The simple values of future evolution

High intelligence can better deal with the world and its possibilities and give us better ways of responding to life and evolution. But high intelligence needs good character as well, we need to have that intersection between the emotional parts of the brain and the abstract parts, non-feeling geniuses are not what we need. Courage is also needed so that intelligence can venture out toward new solutions, in new or old territories. And good health helps define beauty, which completes the combo. We should not be seduced into putting all our evolutionary hopes into intelligent machines (singularity) which can be a sly way of avoiding human evolution and its problems.

And we can't forget the importance of artists who can be geniuses at working with emotional responses to life in their art. But antisocial art needs to be distinguished from socially redeeming art, which seems like common sense but is not much considered in the sometimes suicidal modern art world. I'm not talking about a Platonic total control of art, this need not stunt creativity, on the contrary, it provides order to the total freedom of art creation.  For example, emotions connected to art can underline and interpret the emotions implicit in our evolution toward Godhood.

The arguments against choosing these evolutionary values seem increasingly selfish and short-sighted. These are simple conservative values---although perhaps not so simply attained---within an Ordered Evolution toward the zenith of intelligence, noble character, courage, and beauty, which helps define real Godhood. 

Nietzsche's mistake led to Freud's mistake

Freud took Nietzsche's psychological/philosophical study of releasing humanity from the ascetic blocking or repression of life and the passions, and turned it into a therapy. What Nietzsche and Freud missed or greatly downplayed was the central unit of group selection in human behavior, with individual selection only following.

Nietzsche released egocentric philosophy and philosophers on the world, and Freud tried to show people, in long costly therapy sessions, how to affirm what amounted to egocentrism, especially freedom from Christian moral restraints. Later Ayn Rand took up the same egocentric cause in economic philosophy.

Individuals are of course important, especially individual geniuses, but individuals need to be helpful to the advancement of the group. Egocentrism, as well as the Inward Path to the symbolic God Within of religious asceticism, need to be integrated into the Outward Path of group selection and the material evolution to real Godhood. Given human nature this would be healthier for individuals and for the culture.

There will be survival benefits if we can respond with ethnopluralism

Ethnopluralism comes from adaptive political philosophizing. Political theories, like storytelling, can be positive preparation for the complexities of living, and therefore have survival benefits. Multiple perspectives can be examined to develop sophisticated responses to new political and cultural dilemmas.

Abstract and emotional parts of the mind can come together in political philosophizing, which can give advantages to those who can plan ahead in imaginative detail. We have grown beyond the direct responses without forethought of other animals, supposedly.

The ethnopluralism hypothesis is just such an advance notification of adapting to the modern world, and responding to new dilemmas, political and cultural, while living on our now crowded planet. There will be survival benefits if we can respond with ethnopluralism, as well as evolutionary advantages.

This is the future, assuming we survive the present

Denis Dutton and others define natural selection as the development of species by a process of random mutation and selective retention. But something is missing from this account, as expressed by Doran McCarty: “Chance and natural selection do take place, but there is a guiding force in the selection process.” It is the Spirit-Will-to-Godhood within life, not yet acknowledged by science, that is activating life to evolve toward higher consciousness, intelligence and beauty, all the way to Godhood, which is the virtual eternal retention or representation of the highest evolved life. This worldview is contained in the next religion, while conservatively retaining elements of past religions (see the Twofold Path).

For life to evolve to Godhood a natural, positive eugenics (yes, the dreaded word) can be applied, along with genetic engineering, and not merely development toward intelligence machines. It will be a conscious selection process making up for the reduced natural selection of modern times, which has brought an increased genetic load of disadvantageous genes into the gene pool---since we don't want to go back to primitive times and the primitive selection process.

We can now deal with cultural and ethnic diversity not with multiethnic states, which Pearson described as trying to impose a fabricated cultural homogeneity upon members, usually with some version of force, which doesn't work for long in any case. A better way for real human nature, all gene pools, all ethnic groups, all small states, is to keep the diversity, which is good for evolution, and learn cooperative competition within a general ethnopluralism. As Cattell, an early scientific advocate of future human evolution said, we want “Federation not hegemony.”

Outsider thinking? Of course, but this is the future, I am sure of it, assuming we survive the present.  I think many people sense intuitively that this is the future, even when they feel that they must disagree with it.

Ethnopluralism as the new/old conservatism

Burke's conservative view that “political institutions grow from customs and conventions cultivated through long generations” needs also to include the long biological origin of much of cultural behavior, or the sociobiology perspective, which can go deepest. Then we can more clearly see that some of the promotions of universal abstract conceptions, for example, by the global desiring neoconservatives, are impossible---impossible abstractions would include not only the quixotic extremes of Marxism but libertarianism, more or less, which has been preferred by many American conservatives. The group remains the central unit of selection, individualism follows.

The power of history (historicism) can and does limit politics and abstractions, as Burke believed, but biology circumscribes politics even more so. People and their genetic traits are the founders of our cultures, culture doesn't found people. Biology is more a “universal” element than the Platonic abstractions of Leo Strauss.

Burke would have opposed the Straussian dominance of universal classical “natural rights”over living Christian morals, but the concept of natural rights can adjust to universal sociobiology without losing Anglo-American Christianity, which many say is at the foundation of the West. To understand Christianity in the face of the biological origin of much of cultural behavior, including religion, requires a theological shifting, not abandonment, from emphasis on the abstract and symbolic Inward God of Christ to the Outward Godhood of material and supermaterial evolution, which is the realization of the Inward God of Christ. Religion can join universal evolution and science this way, then both can embrace the world.

Our evolution toward Godhood requires the Ordered Evolution of conservatism, because improvements are slow, stable conservative societies are needed, nine-tenths of mutations are unfitting.  And we should not bypass the evolution of life for the evolution of intelligent machines, which almost seems to be a sly way of avoiding the touchy but vital subject of human evolution.

This sociobiological political understanding also revives Southern Agrarian ideas of the land and localism, and shifts the bigger Burkean political and cultural institutions toward the side, but not out of sight. What then appears is Ethnopluralism, many states that are virtual ethnostates, which can live within the classical conceptions of human rights and republicanism, on the Left or the Right, protected by a light federalism, even within the U. S. Constitution.

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.