The Problem With "Progress"

The problem I have with “progress” and “evolution” is not with science, which can be sound. The problem comes when material theories allow for nothing else, when they emphatically deny anything in the realm of immutable and eternal principles. The developments and inventions of science and technology are its main superiority, but when it is claimed that these things are all there is, it can lead to decline, unhappiness and chaos.

On the blog: Family, God, Nation

An interesting blog called Family, God, Nation . This site shows, indirectly, how the findings of sociobiology regarding human nature can work harmoniously with traditional conservatism. It’s all here: rejection of narrow left and right political labels, defense of Christendom against all its ideological enemies, the validity of ethnic and national identities, along with supporting patriotic/nationalist aspirations of Christian peoples, defending the heritage of Europe, decentralization of government control, in accordance with the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, “Small is Beautiful,” defending the family, a just economic system based on wide ownership of property, small business, including the agrarian way of life, society built on communitarian values and a foreign policy of armed neutrality. There are links to many other traditional sites. This blog was linked through Jim Kalb's excellent site Turnabout.

Permanent Things

Lawrence the sensualist won,
and Eliot the puritan lost,
the cost we paid was to lay
Western Civilization in
the grave; is this how it ends,
with the well-known whimper and
not a bang? Who reads Eliot
anymore? Who believes in
the core values of the gentleman?
Who thinks about sin and redemption?
We will come back to permanent
things because we must, human
nature and survival will
select the virtuous.

Inconvenient Truth Indeed

Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth) and other big-government pols should not own as they do the environmentalist movement since it is a natural for paleo-conservatives. Paleos rejected many of the assumptions of modernity long before the ecologists did. Deep ecology prefers the “vernacular,” even tribal societies, which were Conservative themes long before the left discovered them.

Conservatives do not promote big government as the way to solve our problems, and this is the big difference between the paleo, the left and the neoconservative solutions to problems. Regionalism, small is beautiful, is the best way to counter environmental damage, and the destruction of our manufacturing base, which has been caused mainly by globalist big business and their friend, big government. And the paleo-conservatives own this subject. Why aren’t paleos taking this issue away from the left? There are hints of interest, e.g. crunchy bohemian conservatives, but paleo leaders mainly ignore ecology; it is not smart.

Placing Universalism

Universalist ethics help basic survival for any and all groups. There is also a need for more specific, regional variety to avoid stagnation and sameness, and here, if the universalist ethics of religion (or international Marxism) are not to be accused of closing off creativity and variety, adapting the Thomistic idea of primary and secondary conservation can be applied.

Secondary conservatism defends fundamental, universal, ethics such as those which help all groups survive, as well as personal individual ethics which help the individual survive. Primary conservatism accepts specific group ethics, which can help specific groups survive. The group is and has been the main unit of evolutionary selection. One does not have to ignore variety while upholding universal ethics. The principles of subsidiarity and federalism follow this kind of social philosophy, which unifies universal, specific and personal ethics.

High Modernism

The pendulum of classicism
does not worship the past, it moves,
starting new grooves while retaining
the same brain, the swinging
weight never stagnates, the earth
rotates, yet it stays, while the rays
of the sun permeate the skin,
the thin membrane breaks when
the old scars have healed,
the wheels travel down the proven
path, and the last man resembles
the first; we thirst for the new
although the grooves rarily change,
they bore us to death, classicism
progresses yet remains the same.

Rest

We are going down to the sound
of punk rock, not Bach,
the sky is falling, the ground
is moving, let us gather
souvenirs and stash them in
black cans, it’s a world of
multi-niches now; we hurl down
our challenge with a measuring
stick, and crawl to our little
corner of the world.

Federalism

Hermes and his cousin Dionysus
are not the same as Apollo,
and so a duality is defined
for people inclined toward conservatism
or revolution, no solution
has been found for the mix, we continue
the war of classic characteristics,
conservatives hold to tradition and
order, revolutionaries seek
power through disorder; which is virtue,
which is sin? Who will win?
Conservatives define the origin
of the moral, which the revolutionaries
destroy as they see fit, both sit on
different thrones seeking to overthrow
the other: controlled separation,
federalism, may be the only
path to control the endless
wrath of man.

Conservatism and Evolution

Nine out of ten new mutations in evolution are unfitting, the development of new and better mutations is slow. This parallels Conservatism and its policy of attempting to alter the more ugly aspects of change, while accepting slow change.

Selection by groups seems to have helped develop the ethical values that are also tied to religion. Ethics which encouraged mutual respect and self-sacrifice by individuals for the group enhanced the group’s survival success. Societies with low ethical standards tended to collapse.

Decline is influenced by luxury, pluralistic ethics and egoistic individualism. American Conservatism struggles against these things but at the same time addresses the danger of sameness. Big bureaucratic states and global business often hurt competition and variation.

The disappearance of all groups but one would be catastrophic. Men like Stalin and Hitler damage the survival and variation of smaller groups by seeking world domination, more or less. Cooperative competition among separate state powers is the essence of Federalism. War is a breakdown of competition, it tends to lose the physically and mentally fit, and the most patriotic among us.

Conservatism and Federalism, as well as religions that affirm subsidiarity and traditional ethics, work in harmony with human nature and evolution. When we sink to imperialism or universalist ambitions we move away from the mutual love and self-sacrifice that has always worked best in smaller communities.

I see these developments in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology as renewing traditional American Conservatism.

Not For Cash

There are salt mines in our modern
cities, where men are free, they say,
not slaves, so far away from ancient
forms of craft, with few objecting
cries, no blue sky dreams, only
convention and monotony, and
this strange belief that we are free,
when freedom serves the sacred,
and not for cash.

We Will Go Back

We move faster toward an undifferentiated
mass, the last aristocrat was seen
playing with his cat on the back waters
of the Mediterranean, the sun is setting
on the artificial empire–
they won’t even get up to put out
the fires–the line between order
and chaos has grown thin,
therefore, we will go back
to where we had been before
the doors separating the regions
were removed, before the global
legions built plastic factories
where our gardens used to grow.

Conservatism

The will to live and survive and reproduce successfully is like the raw ingredients used to develop wine, or fine cooking. We might be able to survive on the raw ingredients, but why would we want to?

Even if the radicals and revolutionaries succeed in destroying the evolved traditions, the raw ingredients, which they attempt to use to form their new societies, will themselves naturally evolve more or less the same wine-making and cooking techniques all over again, because human nature does these things.

It is better to carefully revitalize the customs and traditions, reforming yet conserving, or even revitalizing as a means to conserve, which seems far more reasonable, practical and possible than attempting to start all over again from scratch.

The forms of wine and cooking techniques will vary from one people to another, as Burke’s “Chartered Rights of Man” develop from a peoples’ historic experience. Destroying customs and traditions dehumanizes men. The savage and the brute–and not the noble savage–lurks beneath the evolved customs and traditions.

A good society needs not only good laws but also religion, tradition, customs and the complex relationships that make up the ingredients of a successful, healthy society.

It is the revolutionaries and radicals who think that perfection is possible, who therefore destroy the long-evolved things, attempting to make more perfect things from simple ingredients, which they never accomplish.

Contrary to what the modern liberals say, conservatives are not against change, change is seen as the way nature works. When conservatives seek to modify the strange and ugly alterations to custom and tradition, they are following nature, where 99 of 100 new mutations don’t survive.

It turns out that traditions, customs and ethics are founded on permanent human nature, more or less, which includes such traditional things, seen in virtually all cultures, as gender differences, territoriality, kin-centeredness, monogamy, hierarchy and ethnocentrism, even xenophobia. Modern science, e.g. sociobiology or evolutionary psychology, have now affirmed this view of human nature. The traditionalists, at last, can claim science as affirming the basis of traditions and customs.

However, we cannot rush to found our entire worldview on science, since we adjust culture and politics to nature, including human nature, with its many arts and mysteries, and we do not merely adjust to science, which is only a part of human nature. Science alone is like one of those basic ingredients before they are developed into fine cooking or fine wine. The Enlightenment, for example, tried to base their new societies on basic, uncooked ingredients, such as science alone, and this eventually led to the monstrosities of communism, fascism and decaying liberal democracy.

Can a remnant hang on

Can a remnant hang on to Western culture, and is that what we must do?

We are prone to the great weakness of the creators of ideologies who develop abstract systems on paper, often with little reference to real life or real living.

Perhaps there is some inherent human need for an orderly long-lasting worldview. Nietzsche thought we would have the void as purpose rather than a world of no purpose.

I begin with what we have learned about human nature as the base of any further speculation on human culture. I apply knowledge I have gleaned from sociobiology and evolutionary conservatism, and whatever other knowledge I can find along the way.

During the age of decay, human nature will probably fall back on its own reserves, as we try to survive the attempted destruction of the old order. We may gradually reaffirm regionalism, more out of necessity than any other reason. The various regions will develop according to their needs and talents.

This, of course, depends on our first not destroying ourselves, or destroying the earth, which is not impossible.

So how do we live in the meantime, what do we believe, how do we think? This blog examines these questions through poetry, and occasional essays.