#the true synthesis is that its civil religion

[brbgensokyo]

its a bit late for me to writing about this but i really do think its interesting that Lemesia turned out as a world without religion despite being on the comatose psychic planet that loves you and having avatars of the planet being guiding hands

[sanatan-hindu]

Exploring the Essence of Sanatana Dharma: A Comprehensive Overview of Hinduism's Ancient Wisdom and Enduring Relevance

Sanatana Dharma, often referred to as Hinduism, is one of the world's oldest and most diverse religious traditions. Rooted in ancient scriptures and philosophical teachings, it encompasses a vast array of beliefs, practices, and cultural expressions that have evolved over thousands of years. In this exploration, we delve into the essence of Sanatana Dharma, tracing its origins, key teachings, diverse practices, and enduring relevance in the modern world.

Origins and Philosophical Foundations:

The term "Sanatana Dharma" translates to "eternal dharma" or "eternal truth." It encapsulates the idea of a timeless and universal cosmic order that underpins the universe and governs all aspects of existence. While the term itself predates the emergence of Hinduism as a formal religion, it serves as a foundational concept in Hindu thought, emphasizing the eternal nature of truth and the cyclical nature of existence.

Sanatana Dharma traces its origins to the ancient civilizations of the Indian subcontinent, where it evolved over millennia through the synthesis of diverse cultural, religious, and philosophical traditions. Its roots can be found in the ancient texts known as the Vedas, which are among the oldest sacred scriptures in the world. The Vedas contain hymns, rituals, and philosophical insights that form the basis of Hindu thought and practice.

Central to the philosophy of Sanatana Dharma is the concept of dharma, which encompasses the moral and ethical duties that govern individual conduct and social order. Dharma is seen as the foundation of righteous living and is upheld through adherence to principles such as truthfulness, compassion, nonviolence, and duty.

Key Teachings and Beliefs:

Sanatana Dharma encompasses a diverse range of beliefs, practices, and philosophical schools of thought. At its core, however, are several key teachings that form the foundation of Hindu spirituality:

Brahman: The ultimate reality in Hinduism is Brahman, the unchanging, infinite, and impersonal essence that pervades the universe. Brahman is considered the source and sustainer of all existence and is beyond the limitations of time, space, and individual identity. Atman: At the heart of Sanatana Dharma is the concept of Atman, the individual soul or self. According to Hindu philosophy, Atman is eternal and identical to Brahman in essence. Realizing the true nature of Atman is central to spiritual liberation and self-realization. Karma: The law of karma is a fundamental concept in Hinduism, which states that every action has consequences that affect future experiences and lifetimes. Individuals accumulate karma through their thoughts, words, and deeds, and the quality of their karma determines their future destiny. Samsara and Moksha: Hinduism teaches that the soul undergoes a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth known as samsara, driven by the accumulation of karma. Liberation from this cycle, known as moksha, is the ultimate goal of human life and is achieved through spiritual realization and union with Brahman. Yoga: Yoga is a spiritual practice that encompasses a variety of techniques and disciplines designed to cultivate self-awareness, mental clarity, and spiritual growth. The four main paths of yoga—Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga, and Jnana Yoga—offer different approaches to achieving spiritual liberation. Diverse Practices and Rituals:

Sanatana Dharma encompasses a wide range of rituals, ceremonies, and devotional practices that vary across regions, communities, and lineages. These practices are often deeply rooted in tradition and serve as a means of connecting with the divine, honoring ancestors, and cultivating spiritual awareness.

Some common rituals and practices in Hinduism include:

Puja: Puja is a ritual worship ceremony that involves offering prayers, flowers, incense, and food to deities and divine beings. It is typically performed at home or in temples and is a central aspect of daily religious life for many Hindus. Havan: Havan, also known as homa or yagna, is a fire ritual performed to invoke divine blessings and purify the environment. It involves the offering of ghee, grains, and other sacred substances into a consecrated fire while chanting Vedic mantras. Festivals: Hinduism is known for its vibrant and colorful festivals, which celebrate various deities, seasons, and cultural traditions. Some of the most widely celebrated Hindu festivals include Diwali, Holi, Navaratri, and Janmashtami. Pilgrimage: Pilgrimage holds a special significance in Hinduism, with millions of devotees undertaking journeys to sacred sites and temples across India and beyond. Popular pilgrimage destinations include the holy cities of Varanasi, Rishikesh, Tirupati, and Amarnath. Enduring Relevance and Global Impact:

Despite its ancient origins, Sanatana Dharma continues to exert a profound influence on contemporary society and culture, both in India and around the world. Its teachings on spirituality, morality, and the interconnectedness of all life resonate with people of diverse backgrounds and faith traditions.

In recent decades, Hinduism has experienced a resurgence of interest and visibility on the global stage, with a growing number of practitioners, scholars, and spiritual teachers sharing its teachings and practices with a wider audience. Yoga and meditation, in particular, have gained popularity as tools for physical and mental well-being, drawing people from all walks of life to explore the rich heritage of Hindu spirituality.

Moreover, Hinduism's emphasis on pluralism, tolerance, and the pursuit of truth has contributed to its ability to adapt and evolve in response to changing social, political, and cultural dynamics. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, the principles of Sanatana Dharma offer valuable insights into building a more harmonious and sustainable global community based on mutual respect, understanding, and compassion.

In conclusion, Sanatana Dharma stands as a timeless and profound spiritual tradition that continues to inspire and uplift millions of people worldwide. Its teachings on the nature of reality, the purpose of life, and the path to liberation offer profound insights into the human condition and provide a guiding light for those on a quest for truth, meaning, and spiritual fulfillment.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Herodotus and the “Second Master” Abu Nasr al-Farabi

“In this respect, Herodotus’ historiography is just the opposite of classical logography. With genuine impartiality, the historian noted down, recorded, traced what was good and what was less so, so much so that he hunted down and exhibited quasi-organic connections between the Greek and Bararian civilizations- which was already a sign that difference instead of opposition was being highlighted. Thus, Herodotus categorically affirmed that a certain number of Greek divinities had barbarian origins: “The names of almost all the gods also came to Greece from Egypt. My inquiries led me to discover that they are non-Greek in origin, but it is my belief that they came largely from Egypt” (II, 50).

This shows that the intuition of a commonality which ran counter to the mentality of the time, was really meaningful to Herodotus. The dissemination of remarkably postmodern declarations in his work, echoing al-Farabi’s analyses of the milla and the necessity to keep what we acknowledge as a common sphere because our individual beliefs are incommensurable, is most certainly disturbing. Thus, although it is true that “on becoming aware of history, our consciousness  opens out to a positive criticism which philosophical thinking has not yet access to”, one cannot but note that, accross centuries and cultures, the propensity of Herodotus’ historiography towards philosophy would by no means have seemed irrelevant to al-Farabi.14 Indeed, Farabi and Herodotus spoke the same language, the language of wisdom and respect, as one can see when the “Father of History”, exposing the reasons for consecration of barbarian rites (the Egyptian rites in this case), expressed himself as follows: “[I]f I should tell why they are sacrosanct, I would cross into the topic of divine matters, which I am especially trying to avoid. Up till now, I only mentioned this subject when I was forced to, and even then I merely touched its surface.” (Histories II, 65).

If one must avoid tackling “divine matters”, it is because men will never cure themselves of the deep conviction they have in the matter, namely that they are the only ones to possess the “true” religion, even though they were to make the effort to compel themselves to go through the compared merits of the beliefs of everybody. As the value of the religious is incommensurable, it would be better to keep it at a distance and not to attempt comparisons or value judgements which would be by definition unfounded and totally irrelevant.”

Soumaya Mestiri  “Herodotus and al-Biruni: The Power of  Commonality”, in  “Arab-Muslim Civilization in the Mirror of  the Universal. Philosophical Perspectives”, collective work, Unesco 2010

Abu Nasr al-Farabi (870-950) was major Muslim philsopher of Iranian or Turkish origin. He is perhaps the founder of the falsafa, the Muslim philosophy of Aritotelian-Neoplatonic tradition. His works in the field of logic earned him the title of “Second Master” (after Aristotle) and in his two masterpieces (”The Virtuous City” and “The Political Regime”) he presented a magisterial synthesis of metaphysics, cosmology and political philosophy. Moreover, al-Farabi was a gifted musician and an important theoretician of music.

Muslim intellectual of the classical era of Islam (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Farabi )

Soumaya Mestiri is Tunisian philosopher, professor of philosophy at the University of Tunis, with work on contemporary political philosophy (especially John Rawls) and feminism, but also on classical Islamic philosophy (especially al-Kindi and al-Farabi)

[skinfeeler]

i read twisted road to genocide by henri zukier today. the original published paper published in 1994.

it was an interesting read in a couple ways i hadn’t expected. while i feel that its portrayal of functionalism wasn’t exactly fair — functionalists are (to my knowledge and limited methodological expertise) mostly not ‘fluke historians’ and i feel a lot of this paper could have been written in a way that it would fit the archetypal functionalist canon, or at least the newer groupshift synthesis — there still were a lot of rebuttals of rhetoric that exists now still in some shape or form. turns out that the ‘financial anxiety’ type of apologia has existed for a long time, as noted under the ‘economic hardships’ section in the enumeration of various attempts to explain away necessary insights about the holocaust. i don’t think one can really say that ‘history repeats itself’ (or could be at risk to) in a methodologically sound sense, but it was certainly a great overview overview of rebuttals of those who would seek to replicate its horrors with the qualities of balance in cadence and formulaism that i find lacking in many papers. i will probably send it to family too since so far i’ve had little success in convincing anyone but my siblings of the structural complicity that was present in general but especially in the netherlands specifically. hopefully a well-cited academical source not written by the family’s problem child might do more to sway them. i visited the ‘resistance museum’ in amsterdam last summer. i kind of knew what to expect but it was disheartening to see it match the propaganda (mostly in the form of fictional quasi-historical narratives read to children in my circles, including me) in which a certain volksgeist of lionised mass resistance (of protestant bent) was attributed to the netherlands which seems largely unsusceptible to anything in the realm of coherent  histiography. this holds true even with the elucidation that many ministers preaching against the nazis and collaboration were also communists (who in this museum were framed as ‘socialists’ to be equated with the ‘national-socialists’, and therefore any and all communism in any advocates at all was erased) with every present piece of history (clippings of newspapers, pamphlets, photographs, and so on and so forth) framed with the appropriate text to soothe the sensibilities of visitors who were seemingly presumed to be gentile and generally culturally christian (and therefore, not queer or communist) and to appropriate both self-defense of targeted communities as well as leftist resistance (which of course largely overlapped) to this particular contingent.

no mention was made of the connections between say, calvinism and the general complicity of civil servants in doing the administrative work — wordly powers are not to be questioned, as all power derives from god according to paul of tarsus — that precipitated the majority of jewish people in the netherlands being murdered, with one of the highest death rates per capita in europe. while the netherlands wasn’t mentioned in this article, denmark was, which largely appears to have exhibited the opposite qualities in at least the bureaucracy and thus also largely yielded inverse results. there is more to say on this with regards to the dutch history of (ethno)religious segregation/pillarisation/federalism and the particular role that dynamic played in our country’s history (and continues to, with some would-be social planners with ambiguous intentions wanting islam to become a new ‘pillar’), but that’s not really what i want to focus on right now.

simply put, i could declare myself content with being more critical than my culturally christian family and the narrative of the culturally christian netherlands in general, especially as i am exiled from these structures and therefore have little personal interest in defending them— or even from refraining to attack them. however, especially after reading this paper, i have to come to the conclusion that i haven’t really developed beyond these relatively straightforward insights (even if they are rare in my country) in any real way for a few years now. what i think was extremely valuable in this article for me was not only the denunciation of the anti-sociological assertion that good and evil are essential properties of a human being but building on that, that they are ‘nurtured qualities of the mind’. i do not agree with this proposition without caveats for reasons beyond the scope of this piece of writing, however, the way that zukier expounds on this is, i believe, of timeless relevance. the nazis constantly stressed the horrors of their actions and indeed many battalions weeded out those too eager to engage in them — as one example people who volunteered to perform executions were summarily dismissed — but nevertheless viewed them perhaps not even so much as duties in service of some larger goal. however, first, crucially, considerations of such were seen and treated as largely external to any notion of morality or ideology worth considering, which he expounds on at length over the course of the history of nazi germany.

here lies something i think is crucial to any such person or people who see themselves as grand architects of ideology and the future (and i myself have been partial to this at some points): you cannot let yourself become callous to the existence of such forces of which you are not the primary target. there is no excuse for letting orthogonal ideological interests outweigh the threat of mass oppression and violence, especially in a time where such things are emergent again. there is responsibility in what projects one considers themselves part of and in the scope of these projects, to root out such indifference. even in light of certain zionist histiographies who have constructed a new continuity to integrate the holocaust in a historical and metaphysical scheme that leads from there to redemption through the state of israel in the levant (quoting zukier almost verbatim), one cannot allow themselves to be caught into cooperating with this sophistry where to disagree with such narratives must necessarily co-implicate indifference (or even hostility) to the people involved. no antizionist or antitheist schema can permit any form of ideological reductionism or bargaining of the still very real threat of genocide which may very well become institutional in a number of countries in the near future, as it has before.

to acknowledge this much in spite of the muddying of this issue by bad faith actors (whether in the form of zionist genocide enthusiasts or white supremacists and their useful idiots who seek to bargain or deny the holocaust) is necessary for everyone, and i very much also assert this to myself as an un-christian (and queer and trans and so forth) but still nevertheless gentile person. this much is clear regardless of any and all complex geopolitical reasonings which in the scope of this particular issue are really only worth mentioning in the abstract, even if they are very much worth discussing on their own terms— indeed, criticisms must exist which separate the struggle against bigotry from certain imperialist and pro-family agendas and to refuse such actors the monopoly on these issues. i’ll make sure to send this piece to my various academical peers and to discuss this with them to keep in mind even as we strive towards other common goals together— which must be and are by definition synonymous with exactly this refusal to equate the two. however, as established, defining and stating one’s owns interests is hardly enough when it comes to this kind of subject, and failure to do so cannot be tolerated, and this i insist to any fellow adversaries of organised religion who might read this.

[cincinnatusvirtue]

Culture in Focus: Al-Andalus; an overview of Muslim rule in  The Medieval Iberian Peninsula (Spain/Portugal) (711-1492 AD) Part I: A confluence of peoples and traditions...

The historical memory of Medieval Europe is varied in terms of focus and broader knowledge in the modern era.  The cultures and various peoples that existed during the centuries known as the Middle Ages are varied and rich in complex interwoven societies.  The focus of this post shall be what constituted the primary polity for much of the Medieval period in the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe, in modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and even the south of France.  Though we more or less regard these countries today as traditionally bastions of the Roman Catholic religion with Latin based Romance languages.  The fact is from the early 8th to nearly the end of 15th centuries, the Iberian Peninsula had been dominated by an Islamic polity, one in which Arabic was the lingua franca among the elites and the majority population of parts of the peninsula were Muslim, with Christians and Jews living and interacting within that society too, at times relatively harmoniously and other times violently.  A well honed hierarchy was established between the three Abrahamic religions and a complex society was formed that lead to some of the most advanced and cultured learning in language, literature, history, science, math, art, religion, philosophy and economics during the Middle Ages took place. That society and region became known as Al-Andalus, the Arabic word from which the region of southern Spain known today as Andalusia takes it name.

Al-Andalus came to be the confluence of many societies in an era so often viewed in black and white terms of an us versus them portrayal between Christianity and Islam.  Indeed, these two religions would drive events in and define many aspects of society in Al-Andalus but they were not the sole factors in its being.  In fact, it was the fall of the Western Roman Empire during the 5th century would in part set the stage for Al-Andalus.  The Roman Empire has been the world’s foremost political, cultural and military superpower, certainly in Europe for several centuries.  However, internal strife, corruption and civil war had lead to the empire being divided and co-ruled between two halves, a Western and Eastern half.  The empire had transitioned from Roman polytheistic paganism to Christianity with Rome itself being the symbolic head of Christianity with the Papacy.  However, the West and East divide became a more practical than just symbolic division as the years rolled on.  The Eastern capital became Constantinople and in time the Eastern Roman Empire known to history as the Byzantine Empire would persist in a largely Greek influenced context quite separate from the Latin influenced Western half although it would maintain Roman political machinations.  

The year 410 was regarded as a watershed year, Rome, the Eternal City itself was sacked for the first time in 800 years, by barbarians.  Namely, the migratory Germanic tribe known as the Visigoths.  The Visigoths and the related Ostrogoths were part of a Germanic barbarian confederation called by the Romans, the Goths.  They had possibly come from Scandinavia and northeastern Germany and moved down to the Balkans and eventually into Greece and Italy, alternately serving and fighting against the Romans as auxiliaries and eventually partial conquerors.  The Visigoths under their King Alaric sacked Rome after a siege in 410 AD.  Rome was not even the capital nominally of the empire at the time but the symbolic fall out was tremendous.  Migrations of peoples over the next couple of centuries became the dawn of the Early Middle Ages also known as the Dark Ages when classical antiquity of Greece and Rome was said to be lost on the greater whole of Europe for centuries to come.  Many of these migrations included Germans, Huns, Slavs and Avars among others.  The Visigoths eventually moved from Italy into the south of France and the Iberian Peninsula.  Long the Roman territories of Gaul and Hispania respectively, the locals were a mix of Celtic and Iberian peoples who intermixed with Romans and adopted Latin and other Roman cultural aspects.  Now the powerful Visigoths ended their migration and established their own kingdom, the Visigothic Kingdom, long promised by those in Rome they had once served.  Their Germanic language was the that of the political elite whereas the majority continued to speak the local dialect of Latin while the coexisting Jewish community spoke Hebrew and Aramaic.  These descendants of Roman Jews from Judea and Syria and parts of Roman North Africa settled in Hispania forming a community that became known today as the Sephardic Jews.  They were subjected to increasing persecution under their Christian overlords.  The Visigoths themselves eventually adopted Christianity and for the next 300 years ruled the bulk of the Iberian peninsula.

The Visigoths continued many Roman traditions, such as bathing, use of aqueducts and indeed the Latin dialect persisted among the majority of the populace with the Germanic Goth language being relegated to the German minority in power.  The Visigothic nobility was also quite learned and well versed in politics, history, philosophy and science, even later Muslim sources regarding the city of Seville attest to this, dispelling the notion that the ancient Germans were entirely barbarians with no education.  However there were also political rivalries and civil war amongst its leadership.  Overtime, the Visigoths were increasingly absorbed into the Hispano-Roman culture leaving only traces of their Germanic origins overall.  By the time of the 8th century AD, these civil wars would weaken the state for new invaders.

Elsewhere in the world was the Arabian Peninsula and the various Arab tribes that inhabited it, long pagan and polytheistic, they also had Jewish and later Christian influences among their varied nomadic tribes.  In the 7th century AD, an Arab named Muhammad begin preaching the core tenets of a new Abrahamic religion of which he was prophet, this religion became of course Islam and in its founders wake the new religion unified the Arabs and later spread rapidly throughout much of greater Eurasia and Africa, forming a religious-political empire known as a caliphate.  In the midst of the rise of Islam, the Eastern Roman Empire was at war with the Persian Sassanian Empire for control of the Middle East, wars which exhausted both empires and with little concentrated military force on their southern borders, the Muslim armies post-Muhammad advanced within a few decades time from Arabia into Persia and the borders of India to parts of Anatolia, almost all of Palestine, Syria and Egypt and across the whole of North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean in modern Morocco.  The Arab Muslim conquest overran Roman citizens who lived on the coast of North Africa and it also ran into locals, an Afroasiatic people who were the true native inhabitants of the Sahara Desert, various mountains and coastlines of North Africa.  These people went by many names and were quite varied, divided into tribes and kingdoms known variously as Numidians, Libyans and Mauri among other names but were collectively, ethnically and linguistically related.  They called themselves the Amazigh or “free people” but the Romans called them what translates today in English as the Berbers, a variation of the word barbarians.  The Arabs and the Berbers began a long and complex history during the Muslim conquest of North Africa.  Many Berbers gradually converted to Islam and many adopted Arab culture and language as part of a cultural synthesis, though the Berbers would retain their own ethnolinguistic and cultural traditions too.  They remain the majority population of North Africa outside of Egypt to this very day.  Also the view of all Muslims being Arab was challenged even in these early days.  Arabs, Berbers, Persians, other Iranians, Syrians and later Turks along with various Europeans who converted to Islam were all different in their culture and language even if united by their religion at least nominally.

The first major caliphate was the Rashidun dynasty, overthrown by the Umayyads in 661 who made Damascus their capital in Syria.  The Umayyads controlled lands bordering India in the east all the way to Morocco in the west.  It was in the year 711 AD that from Morocco, part of the caliphate’s African province that an Arab and Berber army would turn its eyes northward to Christian Europe, specifically the Iberian Peninsula under the increasingly divided Visigothic Kingdom.  A Berber general, by the name Tariq Ibn Ziyad lead an expeditionary force into Hispania, by order of the Arab governor of the city of Tangier, Musa Ibn Nusayr, under the overall rule of Caliph Al-Walid I.  The army was made up of mostly Berbers newly converted to Islam and consisting of excellent light cavalry and numbered roughly 7,000 or so troops.  The Muslim army in the name of Umayyad Caliphate was according to legend helped by a renegade European count named Julian of Ceuta who supposedly wanted to avenge the dishonoring of his daughter (meaning rape) by the hands of the Visigoth king, Roderic.  Julian supposedly ferried and provided the Muslims with intelligence in an effort to overthrow the Visigoths.  The extent of truth to this tale is debated but it is the commonly cited source for the Muslim invasion of Iberia.

Tariq landed in April 711 AD near the modern day British territory of Gibraltar, indeed the famed Gibraltar Rock, one of the Pillars of Hercules in antiquity gets its name Gibraltar from Tariq himself (Djabal Tarik). His force began raiding and sacking Iberian towns, necessitating a Visigoth response.  Roderic met the Muslim force within a few months with an army numbering 25,000.  Exact sources on the battle that followed, known as the Batlle of Guadalete in July 711 aren’t definite in its details.  Most typically it is said that Roderic lead his troops in the center pushing against the Muslim force, only to be betrayed and abandoned by his subordinates on the wings due to their own personal reasons and deceit supposedly prearranged.  The Berber cavalry charged at the “sudden” opening on the now abandoned Visigoth center and what followed was a surrounding and destruction of the Visigoth force that remained loyal to Roderic, the king himself being slain, dying valiantly in battle.  Visigoth losses were high while the Berbers lost nearly 3,000 of their own men.  Those who betrayed Roderic were eventually pursued and slain too by the Muslim forces who got fresh Berber and Arab reinforcements from Tangiers.  The military rank and file was predominantly Berber with Arab and Arabized Berbers in command.  However, the Arabs and Berbers had an ethnic and cultural tension that persisted not only in the military but would exist throughout Al-Andalus’s history.  Arabs typically though numerically inferior were viewed as the top of the hierarchy, with Berbers and other non-Arab Muslims enjoying a second tiered but still relatively privileged placement in Al-Andalus society, though more on this social hierarchy and its implications later on.  For now, the Muslim conquest spread rapidly in Iberia like almost anywhere else.  The truth lies in the fact that civil war had indeed weakened the Visigoths and their disunity against a mostly unified force was their undoing.  Many cities were taken in rapid succession, most notably Cordoba which was to become the center piece and capital of Al-Andalus in the coming years and indeed an important Islamic city on par with Damascus and Baghdad, rivaling Constantinople in terms of size.  Tariq served as temporary governor of Iberia as the Visigoths fled north retreating to the mountains of the Spanish and French border, the Pyrenees.  Musa Ibn Nusayr took over governorship in 713 though both were recalled by the Caliph back to Syria in 714 where they lived out their remaining days.

The Muslim foothold on Iberia was firmly established within a couple year span, forming the basis for a new society, Al-Andalus.  With its new Muslim overlords of Arab and Berber extraction, its Christian majority of mostly Hispano-Roman origin, their former Visigothic rulers and a Sephardic Jewish community that had been long persecuted by the Visigoths and other Christians, new questions were being raised...What would this new society look like?  Could these various peoples coexist?  How far would Al-Andalus and by extension Muslim rule spread into Europe? Especially since Muslim Arabs had attempted and failed to take Constantinople in the east on more than one occasion, this expansion into Iberia was seen as a vindication of sorts.  Iberia had become a confluence of at least five different peoples with three religions between them, the coming decades would answer the aforementioned questions in the cementing of a new polity...

[a--god--in--ruins]

so there’s this theory (propogated by christians) that saturn is actually evil and is the god the jews secretly worship. but this is bullshit.

saturn is the good. he is the second sun. the true sun. the black sun. he was the ruler over the golden age of mankind. look at mithraism. look their grades of initiation. there are seven of them. the patron of the sixth grade is sol (the sun) himself. but there is still another grade above that. the seventh grade. and this grade’s patron is saturn. saturn is ranked above sol. and the name of this rank is the “Father”. he is frequently depicted alongside mithras, sometimes in a passive role as overseer/witness and sometimes in a more active role as he hands the dagger over to mithras with which he was slay the bull, thus subtly conducting him.

who is saturn really? saturn is cronus is chronos is aion. remember that. like i said, he was the ruler of the golden age in which humans were free and good and lived in paradise in which all was held in common and men lived in harmony with nature and in a state of perpetual celebration. but before that, he had castrated and overthrew his tyrant of a father, uranus, the king of the universe. he was the only one with the balls to do so. he was also a god of wealth and bounty and abundance and agriculture. also worth noting that when he was eventually overthrown by his son jupiter/zeus, he fled to italy and became the first king of latium/rome, and as such was the first realization of imperium on earth (i won’t get into the implications here. that’s for another time.). and again, under his rule humanity prospered. he brought law and order and civilization to mankind. he was also a god of death and destruction. one of his consorts was known as “lua mater” (mother destruction). saturn was honored with offerings of human sacrifice in the form of gladiatorial combat. saturn was a complex god. he was a god of contradictions. he was a god of creation and destruction. he was a god of life and death. he was a god of order and liberation and revolt. 

saturnalia was a holiday in which the status quo was subverted. it was a celebration of light and life and rebirth and an attempt to replicate the golden age under saturn’s rule, in which all men were treated as brothers and there was only feasting and drinking and freedom and revelry. also it’s proximity to the solstice and sol invictus’ birthday are hard to ignore. saturn was also closely associated with janus, to the point where they are often equated. and perhaps most importantly, he was also god of time. ever-hungry, all-consuming time (consuming even his own offspring), its creative and destructive faculties. of cycles, transitions, boundaries, seasons, order, flux, flow, etc. and in his aion form, unbounded, infinite time. also, marcus messala, an ancient roman, claimed that aion and janus were one and the same. saturn is also father of truth and father of aether. aether literally means “burning/shining” and the sun/fire is considered a material analogue to this spiritual fire. light/sun/fire is sacred to heraclitus (and aryans in general). he refers to the cosmos itself as “an ever-living fire” and he equates fire to zeus as the divine ordering principle of the universe by referring to it as “the thunderbolt that steers the course of all things.” i will touch more upon these things later.

anyway, what about mithras? mithras is undeniably a solar deity. he his referred to as sol invictus and he often equated with sol/helios. this is known. what’s less known is his connection to phanes (whose name means “shining”). not only are the two explicitly equated in text and inscription (in which mithras is also identified with zeus btw.) but they are often depicted with similar imagery (youthful appearance, emerging from a rock/egg, encircled by a zodiacal ring, etc. aion is also frequently depicted with a zodiacal ring). it’s also worth noting that phanes is equated with dionysus who is equated with pan. sometimes he (phanes) is depicted with hooves, relating him to pan explicitly. also worth mentioning is that jupiter/zeus and phanes (both equated to mithras) are both offspring of saturn/cronus/chronos/aion. and in the orphic hymns helios (mithras) is again equated with zeus.

so then there’s this third figure that is associated with mithraism. the monstrous lion-headed god. unequivocally a god of time. but more than that, this god is a synthesis of mithras and saturn. this monstrous deity is an all-encompassing god of light and time. he is always depicted with imagery relating to both saturn and mithras and even other gods. it becomes impossible to ignore all the recurring symbolism. the lions, snakes, bulls, crows, sickles, staffs, fire, globes, keys, zodiac, whips, wings, scepters, thunderbolts, etc. also the recurring themes of time, cycles, light, life, death, rebirth, cannibalism, sacrifice, chaos, order, liberation, fertility, power, change, flux, flow, unity, creation, destruction, etc. this god is a god of light and time. the father of all, the giver of life, the guarantor of the cosmic order, the ceaseless hunger, the all-consuming, the eternal flame, the creator and destroyer. eternal, divine, absolute. the all. basically the demiurge, but without the negative connotations of the christian gnostics. and don’t pretend like i’m talking nonsense equating and synthesizing all these gods. gods being distinct and yet the same is no foreign concept to aryans. just look at the trinity. the trinity is the same idea. one god but with multiple aspects. it’s an aryan imposition upon a jewish religion. but i won’t get into that right now. i can write a whole other post all about how christianity is a grotesque amalgamation of aryan and jewish ideas. my point is, you can’t act like the idea of gods being one and multiple simultaneously is ridiculous, especially if you’re a christian who believes in the trinity.

okay, and what about this talk about a “second” “truer” sun? well, throughout western mysticism there are esoteric but definite references to the idea of a second sun existing. a spiritual/noetic counterpart to the material sun. perhaps the most famous and obvious example is plato’s allegory of the cave where plato explicitly equates his form of the good with a sun existing in his world of forms, existing beyond our material universe, illuminating being itself much like the sun illuminates the material world around us. then we have the chaldean oracles, in which they designate another “solar world” beyond our own composed of “perpetual light”. they talk about a noetic sun existing in this world, which they refer to as “time of time”. they also equate god to dionysus and refer to him as the father (remember, saturn is the father of zeus/jupiter/phanes/etc and his grade in the mithraic mysteries is the father.). then philo, in his “de opificio mundi”, he makes reference to a sun “above the heavens” whose light is invisible to the naked eye and only perceptible by the mind and whose light he refers to as “divine reason” and “the image of God”. then in plotinus’ fourth ennead he makes reference to two suns; our mundane sun, and then another sun that exists in the divine realm which he equates to nous/intellect. then we have julian in his “hymn to helios” where he makes several references (directly and indirectly) to two types of sun, the invisible/intelligible and the visible/material. his hymn actually corroborates a lot of my thoughts above. in it he also suggests that the names used to refer to multiple gods actually refer to mithras-helios. anyway, i digress. point is there are several hints of the existence of two suns. one which is material and illuminates the mundane world, and one which is noetic and exists in a solar realm beyond our own and is the source of all. and the latter is always superior and conducts the former. this second, truer, noetic, purifying, divine sun is the black sun.

[wisdomrays]

THE GENERATION OF HOPE: Part-1

The generations of hope, which are, with respect to the present, the representatives of science, knowledge, faith, morality, and art, are also the architects of the spirits of the people who will succeed us. They will pour out to the needy hearts the purest inspirations of their hearts, which are nourished in the higher realms and they will bring forth the newest formations in all sections of society. The inauspiciousness and waste, the insanity, obsessions, and delirium of successive generations in our near past occurred, to a great extent, because they had not met such a generation of hope.

In contrast to this, the sense of nationality and religion, which is the common ideal of our people, should be based on a foundation. The foundation should be above all sorts of fantasies, it should exceed the truth of individual spirits, and it should be of a strong faith, of established thought, of sound morality and of virtue that is acknowledged and owned by all souls. It should be stronger than the strongest of all foundations. This is a moral movement, which each and every day leads in the same direction, which is on the course of its own richness of spirituality and understanding of reality, which is open to all kinds of change and new attempts, which revolves around God's pleasure, which is completely immune to considerations of interest and profit, and which will promise the desired salvation to the future generations. Otherwise, while our intellectual world goes down such a twisted path, while our hearts hold a faith that has not yet acquired certainty (yaqin), and while they are in utter confusion and disorder, while our minds see so many diverse methods and concepts that have multiple views of civilization, it seems impossible for us to claim the ownership of a spirit and essence—the real property of our nation—to take it under our protection, and to pass it safely to the future generations like a trustworthy keeper.

Many have witnessed and know quite well our near past, the critical periods in which we lost the values that belonged to us. We thought a great deal of producing a new style and philosophy of life for ourselves by combining so many diverse understandings and interpretations, so distant from one another, and so many thoughts that contradict one another. Alas! We have wasted so many lives and are still consoling ourselves with the delusion that we are producing something. As we have not been able to do this so far, it would be impossible for us to do it from now on if we carry on in the same way. For without embracing the roots of spirituality and meaning of our own lives, it will not be possible to reach a new synthesis in thought and a fresh style in expressing ourselves. During this period, far from reaching a new synthesis and style, we have experienced a continuous nausea because of the split in our understanding and feelings and the effects of fluctuating contradictions in our soul. Of course, all the opportunities we received from time to time and the potential strengths and powers we had were completely wasted, lost, and came to naught.

Although it may have seemed that we accomplished some things in the last few centuries, we have not been able to present convincing or admirable work in terms of our own faith, our way of thinking, morality, culture, art, economics, or in our way of administration. Even though there have been some achievements in this period, they proved to be nothing more than "fantasy" or "superficial" things initiated to arouse the desires of youth. These achievements went no further than a couple of dozen insignificant wishes and desires when compared to our real needs, such as the interpretation of the age, an evaluation and appreciation of knowledge and science, a comprehension of the spirit of concord and alliance (wifaq and ittifaq), and resolving and overcoming the needs and wants which have bent us double for a long time. Our salvation from such narrow views and meager thoughts which enslave our senses and hold us prisoner can only be realized by the heroes of understanding, insight, and God-consciousness, who are conscious of and realize the age we live in, who are lovers of the truth, who are inspired by a longing for knowledge, who are bent under the burden of the true difficulties and troubles of today and of those anticipated in the future, whose acts are the reflection of their inner life and words, whose promises are the breaths of their heart, of people who are able to see beyond the horizon, who feel pain in the actual undesired state and dim future of people, who suffer in order to lift and raise generations to higher levels and shed tears for them like Job, who share the present and future pains and distress of the generation, and who appreciate their happiness and pleasures as the work and gifts of God, becoming ever more thankful for these and being elevated with that thankfulness. These heroes of God-consciousness will take their strength and inspiration from our life and centuries of colorful history, they will breathe into us the spirit of being a nation true and purer than the purest, they will thus enthuse our youth with faith, hope, and ideals of action, and will produce new canals and watercourses in the pool of our national ideals which has been stagnant and inactive in the fatal dam of a long and terrible extinction.

And then we, as the nation, will run to the place of worship where we lost in our hearts through such canals and courses, will shed tears of reunion; by returning to our homes which are as warm as the corners of Paradise, we will meet the reflections of the Paradise we lost long ago; by rediscovering our own schools whose pillars are the search for truth and the love of knowledge, we will meet and be re-introduced to creation through the outlets of schools which are open to the universe; by loving all human beings we will learn how to share everything; by living through more agitation for others we will embrace everybody on the diamond hills of our hearts; by observing and looking into the creation we will be enthused by the sense of art, and in our relations with people we will think with deep inner concerns and sighs, drenched in tears and wrenched by palpitations, and thus express ourselves.

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

While some continue to complain about the profound effects of indoctrination into the totalistic worldview of the Moon ideology,  it is puzzling that they seem  unconcerned about the  mind control and ideological indoctrination inflicted from all directions outside the Moon movement on society at large. After all, it is difficult to not notice that a massive world-wide combination of educational institutions, media, the entertainment industry, government agencies, computer companies,  the United Nations and its accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are all involved in the indoctrination of the masses into a totalitarian, one world government ideology. Are the effects of indoctrination in the Moon ideology dangerous in comparison to the effects of indoctrination into the totalitarian one world government ideology?    When considering this, take into account that the totalitarian, one world government ideology promotes and facilitates various lifestyles and practices considered to be sinful according traditional Christian standards, whereas the Moon ideology, whether it be true or not, upholds traditional Christian morality and takes a hard line against sin.

The one world government indoctrination program begins in elementary school with a planned, step-by-step process of replacing the traditional family-taught beliefs, morality, Biblical values and world view with a new way of thinking designed to support the totalitarian world government agenda [see 'Brainwashing in America']   The techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on American school children to bring about these results. These include emotional shock and desensitization*, psychological isolation from sources of support, stripping away defenses, manipulative cross-examination of the individual's underlying moral values, and inducing acceptance of alternative values by psychological rather than rational means.

The goal of education is no longer to teach the kind of literacy, wisdom and knowledge we once considered essentials of responsible citizenship.  It is to train world citizens--a compliant international workforce, willing to flow with change and uncertainty. These citizens must be ready to believe and do whatever will serve a  government determined 'common good' or 'greater whole'.  Educators may promise to teach students to think for themselves, but if these state educators continue what they have started, then tomorrow's students will have neither the facts nor the freedom needed for independent thinking.  Like Nazi youth, they will be taught to react, not to think, when told to do the unthinkable.

Are the effects of indoctrination into the Moon ideology really so dangerous in comparison to the effects of the ongoing state run indoctrination into the totalitarian one world government ideology?  

__________________________

*A common method used in training students to reject truth is emotional shock therapy which is described in the following example:  Ashley, a California tenth-grader, heard her teacher announce the following writing assignment: 'You're going to consult an oracle. It will tell you that you're going to kill your best friend. This is destined to happen, and there is absolutely no way out. You will commit this murder. What will you do before this event occurs? Describe how you felt leading up to it. How did you actually kill your best friend?'  Ashley became very upset. Why would her English teacher tell her to imagine something so horrible. 'I don't want to do this.', she told herself and long after she had told this to her parents, the awful feelings continued.

This method of emotional shock therapy has become standard fare in public schools from coast to coast. It produces cognitive dissonance -- mental and moral confusion -- especially in students trained to follow God's guidelines. While classroom topics may range from homosexual or occult practices to euthanasia and suicide, they all challenge and stretch a student's moral boundaries. But why?

'[Our objective] will require a change in the prevailing culture--the attitudes, values, norms and accepted ways of doing things,' says Marc Tucker, the master-mind behind the school-to-work and 'workforce development' program implemented in every state. Working with Hillary Clinton and other globalist leaders, he called for a paradigm shift--a total transformation in the way people think, believe, and perceive reality. This new paradigm rules out traditional values and biblical truth, which are now considered hateful and intolerant. (See "Clinton's War on Hate Bans Christian Values") All religions must be pressed into the mold of the new global spirituality.  Since globalist leaders tout this world religion as a means of building public awareness of our supposed planetary oneness, Biblical Christianity doesn't fit. It is simply too 'exclusive' and 'judgmental.'

Immersing students in imaginary situations that clash with home-taught values confuses and distorts a student's conscience. Each shocking story and group dialogue tends to weaken resistance to change. Biblical absolutes simply don't fit the hypothetical stories that prompt children to question and replace home-taught values. Before long, God's standard for right and wrong is turned upside-down, and unthinkable behavior begins to seem more normal than the Christian tradition that formed the basis of western civilization.

But it takes more than a twisted conscience to produce compliant world citizens. New values must replace God's timeless truths, as described in the following example:

 Matt Piecora, a fifth grader from the Seattle area, was told to complete the sentence, 'If I could wish for three things, I would wish for…'  Matt wrote 'infinitely more wishes, to meet God, and for all my friends to be Christians.'  Matt's wish didn't pass. The teacher told him that his last wish could hurt people who didn't share his beliefs. Matt didn't want to hurt anyone, so he agreed to add 'if they want to be.'  Another sentence to be completed began, 'If I could meet anyone, I would like to meet…'.

Matt wrote: 'God because he is the one who made us!' The teacher told him to add 'in my opinion.' When Matt's parents saw his work, they noticed the phrases that had been added to Matt's sentences and asked,  'Why did you add this?'. 'The teacher didn't want me to hurt other people's feelings,' he answered. 'But these are just your wishes…'  'I thought so, Mom.'  Matt looked confused. Later, the teacher explained to Matt's parents that she wanted diversity' in her class and was looking out for her other students. But the excuse didn't make sense. If the papers were supposed to 'express the students' diverse views,' why couldn't Matt share his views? Didn't his wishes fit? Or was Christianity the real problem?  'I try to instill God's truths in my son,' said Matt's father, 'but it seems like the school wants to remove them.'

 He is right. The old Judeo-Christian beliefs don't fit the new beliefs and values designed for global unity. The planned oneness demands 'new thinking, new strategies, new behavior, and new beliefs'  that turn God's Word and values upside-down and no strategy works better than the old dialectic (consensus) process explained by Georg Hegel, embraced by Marx and Lenin, and incorporated into American education during the nineteen eighties.  Directed group discussion based on the dialectic (consensus) process is key to the transformation. Professor Benjamin Bloom, called 'Father of Outcome-based Education', summarized it as follows:

'The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students.  ....a large part of what we call good teaching is the teacher's ability to attain effective objectives through challenging the students' fixed beliefs and getting them to discuss issues.'  Matt's last comment was especially threatening to the teacher. His statement, 'God made us' is an absolute truth. It can't be modified to please the group. Therefore it doesn't fit the consensus process -- the main psycho-social strategy of the new national-international education system designed to mold world citizens.  It demands that all children participate in group discussions and agree to: · be open to new ideas · share personal feelings · set aside home-taught values that might offend the group · compromise in order to seek common ground and please the group. · respect all opinions, no matter how contrary to God's guidelines · never argue or violate someone's comfort zone

First tested in Soviet schools, this mind-changing process required students in the USSR, China and other Communist nations to 'confess' their thoughts and feelings in their respective groups. Day after day, trained facilitator-teachers would guide these groups toward a pre-planned consensus. Opposite opinions or ideas -- 'thesis' and 'antithesis' -- were blended into ever-evolving higher 'truths'. Each new truth or 'synthesis' would ideally reflect a blend of each participant's feelings and opinions. In reality, the students were manipulated into compromising their values and accepting the politically correct Soviet understanding of the issue discussed. Worse yet, the children learned to trade individual thinking for a collective mindset. Since the concluding consensus would probably change with the next dialogue, the process immunized them against faith in any unchanging truth or fact. This revolutionary training program was officially brought into our education system in 1985, when President Reagan and Soviet President Gorbachev signed the U.S. - U.S.S.R. Education Exchange Agreement. It put American technology into the hands of Communist strategists and, in return, gave us all the psycho-social strategies used in Communist nations to indoctrinate Soviet children with Communist ideology and to monitor compliance for the rest of their lives. Today, American children from coast to coast learn reading, health, and science through group work and dialogue. Most subjects are 'integrated' or blended together and discussed in a multicultural context. Thus, fourth graders in Iowa 'learn' ecology, economy, and science by 'real-life' immersion into Native American cultures. They role-play tribal life and idealize the religion modeled by imaginary shamans. Seeking common ground with the guidance of a trained facilitator-teacher, they share their beliefs, feelings, and 'experiences' with each other. They might agree that 'there are many gods' or 'many names for the same god' and compare the exaggerated spiritual thrills of shamanism with their own church experiences. Which religion would sound most exciting to the group? The consensus would merely be a temporary answer in a world of 'continual change' -- one of many steps in the ongoing evolution toward better understanding of truth -- as defined by leaders who envision a uniform global workforce and management system operating through compliant groups everywhere.     http://www.inplainsite.org/html/mind_control_in_schools.html

[aaronsmithtumbler]

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers

Sometimes I think it's weird how all our great cultural and philosophical institutions were founded by wrestlers. But the more I think about it, the less surprising it gets.

The overt meaning of wrestling is a competition of strength. But the esoteric meaning of wrestling is the triumph of myth over reality. This we derive from kayfabe, aka "haven't you heard professional wrestling is fake?". Kayfabe is the outrageous storylines, the larger-than-life heroes and villains, the crowd always getting what will keep it in its seat a little longer. Kayfabe is the unspoken agreement not to rock the boat by insisting on a mere physical tussle when the world of ideas and narratives is so much more compelling.

Those who understand this become wielders of power. Did you know Donald Trump was in WWE wrestling? It's true. He never set foot in the ring, but he was a frequent guest star in wrestling storylines, usually as the meddling billionaire who would sponsor challengers or try to take over the wrestling league. He was good at it, too - he's one of only nine non-wrestlers to be inducted into the Wrestling Hall Of Fame. Is it too much of a stretch to say that's where he honed his craft - the craft of building narratives that were more attractive than boring old reality, and that would convince people to suspend their disbelief long enough to put him on top?

The Sumerians say civilization itself began with a wrestling match, when the god-king Gilgamesh (representing civilization) defeated his arch-enemy, the wild beast-man Enkidu (representing Nature). But Gilgamesh and Enkidu became suspiciously good friends as soon as the match ended. Was it real or kayfabe? Is civilization itself a sort of kayfabe? Does money only have value because we think it does? Is the government only legitimate because we think it is? How did Gilgamesh beat Enkidu anyway? Whether civilization is really more powerful than nature is an open question - but whether 30th century BC civilization was more powerful than nature seems a little more dubious. Did the gods fix the match in favor of a crowd favorite?

All of philosophy is footnotes to Plato, and Plato was a wrestler. I say "Plato", but his real name was Aristocles - "Plato" was his wrestling stage name; it meant "broad-shouldered". He was pretty good - kept almost making the Olympics - but almost doesn't cut it, and eventually he quit in favor of a career in philosophy. And so of course he comes up with the theory that ideas are more real than reality. Kayfabe again.

Modern Western thought is the Christian synthesis of Plato’s Greek philosophy with Israelite religion - and "Israelite" means "those who wrestle". Jacob was walking in the desert one evening when he came across an angel who challenged him to a wrestling match. All night long they wrestled, and when the dawn came, the angel declared that he should now call himself Yisra-el, "he who wrestles with God". And so on all through Judaism and Christianity. The kabbalistic meaning of "Vince McMahon" is "victorious son of man", and I can't help noticing that the Resurrection seemed sort of, well, scripted. You've got your face, Jesus. You've got your heel, Satan. It looks like Jesus is down for the count. But everything seems a little too choreographed, and - wait, was the High Priest's name really Kayafa? Is that a kayfabe reference?

If God wrestled with Jacob, does that make God Himself a wrestler? What if it does? The Hindus say that the world is maya, illusion. It is God playing a game with Himself, hiding Himself from Himself, for stakes that are infinite and zero at the same time. All of the players are God, and all of them are marching to a divine script, but the outcome is predetermined. The answer to the problem of suffering is that no one really suffers, the answer to the problem of death is that no one really dies. It's all just a game. And the game is wrestling. Wrestling is fake. But don't talk about it too loudly. Wrestle = Raziel = Secret Of God. You're not supposed to break kayfabe.

[pamphletstoinspire]

A LANDSCAPE WITH DRAGONS - The Battle for Your Child’s Mind - Part 3

A story written by: Michael D. O’Brien

________

Chapter III

A Child’s Garden of Paganism

Culture and the Search for Truth

Traditionally, the arts of man have been the medium in which his ideas about life are enfleshed, so as to be examined and understood more fully. In practically all cultures throughout human history, art has been intimately allied with religion, asking the great questions about existence:

“What is Man? Who am I? Why am I? Where am I? And where am I going?”

These questions may be expressed overtly or subconsciously but no one can gaze upon the works of an amazing variety of peoples and civilizations without recognizing that in depictions ranging from the primitive to highly sophisticated, the human soul strains toward an understanding of its ultimate meaning.

Cro-Magnon man crouching in the caves of Lascaux knew that he was something more than just a talking beast, though he would not have been able to articulate this awareness in modern terms. When he smeared charcoal and pigment on the stone walls, depicting the heaving gallop of deer and bison, he was performing a task that has rarely been surpassed for sheer style, beauty and purity of perception. This is a meeting between the knowable and the mysterious unknown, dramatized in the hunt—one creature wrestling for the life he would extract from the death of another. This is more than a news item about food gathering. This is more than a tale about filling the stomach. This portrait speaks to us across thousands of years with an immediacy that communicates the rush of adrenaline, terror, exultation, feasting, power, gratitude, and longing. Depicted here is the search for permanence, and also a witness to the incompleteness that greets us again each morning. This is a probing of the sensitive, mysterious roots of life itself. And the little stick men chasing the galloping herds across the wall are a message about where prehistoric man placed himself in the hierarchy of creation. That he could paint his marvellous quarry, that he could thus obtain a mastery over the dangerous miracle, must have been a great joy and: a puzzle to him. That he portrayed his quarry as beautiful is another message. The tale is only superficially about an encounter with raw animal power. The artist’s deeper tale is about the discovery of the power within himself—man the maker, man the artist! This was not prehistoric man watching primitive television. This was religion.

But primitive religion never stops at the borderlands of mute intuitions about mystery That mythical figure of the “noble savage” never existed, never was innocent. Because man is fallen land the world inhabited with evil spirits that wrestle for his soul, terror and falsehood have always played central roles in pagan religions. It would be impossible here to attempt even a rough outline of the horrors of early pagan cults, to describe their viciousness, the despair of their sacrificial victims, and their shocking synthesis of all that is dehumanizing and degrading in unredeemed human nature. We need mention only a few of the bloodthirsty deities — Moloch, Baal, Astarte, Quetzalcóatl, for example — to recall how very dark the pagan era was.

Man was created “in the image and likeness of God” (Gen. 1:26). Saint John Damascene once wrote that when man fell, he lost the likeness of God, but he did not lose the image of God. For this reason it remained possible, even before the corning of Christ, for man to search for the truth. Thus, as more complex civilizations arose and language and perceptions expanded, man began to reflect more upon the natural world and upon his own extraordinary nature. A kind of natural theology emerged, building upon what he perceived in the order of creation. In time he began to ask himself if the beauty and harmony he saw everywhere about him were pointing to something much higher than the things available to his senses. Thus was philosophy born—the search for truth, the search for wisdom. And though Greek religion never entirely shook off its “mystical” undercurrents (so similar to Indian mysticisms passion to escape the world of sense and suffering, the bodily existence that it saw as a wheel of torment), it gradually approached a less brutal though still imperfect reading of reality. Through Plato especially, the Greek mind turned away from the intoxicating world of appearance toward an other-world of idealized Forms. These eternal Forms, Plato taught, were the dwelling place of “the very Being with which true knowledge is concerned, the colorless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to the mind, the pilot of the soul” (Phaedrus). This was “true Beauty, pure and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colors and vanities of human life” (Symposium). A more idealized, more humane kind of paganism was emerging, though it still contained elements of life-denying escapism.

With only their intellects and imaginations to guide them, the classical Greeks arrived at an understanding that man does not create himself, nor does he create the world around him on which he depends. Life is a gift, and man owes a debt to the mysterious divine power responsible for it. They accepted that man is flawed and incapable of perfecting himself but believed that by adherence to the powers of reason and beauty he could approach the gods and share in their divine life. Thus, Greek art, preoccupied with embodying myths in harmonious forms, was the visual expression of Greek philosophy.

While the classical pagans were gradually coming closer to an approximate understanding of the shape of existence through natural law, God was drawing another people to that truth through pure revelation. The Hebrews, a small, despised race of Semitic nomads fully immersed in the hot spiritual swamps of the East, could: not yet avail themselves of the cool northern light of reason. They needed God’s direct intervention.

The sacrifice of Isaac was the seminal moment that inaugurated, and the image that represents, the rise of the Western world. It was a radical break with the perceptions of the old age of cultic paganism. When God led Abraham up the mountain of Moriah, he was building upon a well-established cultural pattern. Countless men were going up to the high places all around him and were carrying out their intentions to sacrifice their children. But God led Abraham by another way, through the narrow corridors of his thinking, his presumptions about the nature of reality This was not a typical pagan, greedy for power, for more sons, or for bigger flocks. This was an old man who by his act of obedience would lose everything. He obeyed. An angel stayed his hand, and a new world began. From then on, step by step, God detached him from his old ways of thinking and led him and recreated him, mind and soul. And thus, by losing everything; he gained all. God promised it. Abraham believed it. Upon this hinges everything that followed.

The Old Testament injunction against graven images was God’s long-term method of doing the same thing with a whole people tint: he had done in a short time with Abraham. Few if any were as pure as Abraham. It took about two thousand years to accomplish this abolition of idolatry, and then only roughly, with a predominance of failure. Idolatry was a very potent addiction. And like all addicts, ancient man thought he could not have life without the very thing that was killing him.

Idolatry tends in the direction of the diabolical because it never really comes to terms with original sin. It acknowledges man’s weakness in the face of creation, but it comes up with a solution that is worse than the problem. The idolater does not understand that man is so damaged at a fundamental level that occult power cannot heal him. Magic will not liberate him from his condition. It provides only the illusion of mastery over the unseen forces, the demons and the terrors, fertility and death. Ritual sex and human sacrifice are stolen moments of power over, a temporary relief from submission to. They are, we know by hindsight, a mimicry of divinity, but pagan man did not know that. He experienced it as power sharing, negotiating with the gods. To placate a god by burning his children on its altars was a potent drug. We who have lived with two thousand years of Christianity have difficulty understanding just how potent. God’s absolute position on the matter, his “harshness” in dealing with this universal obsession, is alien to us. We must reread the books of Genesis, Kings, and Chronicles. It is not an edifying portrait of human nature.

When God instructed Moses to raise up the bronze serpent on a staff, promising that all who looked upon it would be healed of serpent bites, he used the best thing at his disposal in an emergency situation, a thing that this half-converted people could easily understand. He tried to teach them that the image itself could not heal them, but by gazing upon it they could focus on its word, its message. The staff represented victory over the serpent, and their faith in the unseen Victor would permit the grace to triumph in their own flesh as well as in their souls. And yet, a few hundred years later we see the God-fearing King Hezekiah destroying Moses’ bronze serpent because it had degenerated into a cult object. The people of Israel were worshiping it and sacrificing to it. Falling into deep forgetfulness, they were once again mistaking the message for the One who sent it. The degree to which they were possessed by the tenacious spirit of idolatry is indicated by numerous passages in the Old Testament, but one of the more chilling ones tells of a king of Israel, a descendent of King Davids, who had returned to the practice of human sacrifice. The Old Testament injunction against images had to be as radical as it was because ancient man was in many ways a different kind of man from us. That late Western man, post-Christian man, is rapidly descending back into the world of the demonic, complete with human sacrifice on an unprecedented scale, is a warning to us about just how powerful is the impulse to idolatry.

The Incarnation and the Image

Jesus Christ was born into a people barely purified of their idolatry. Through a human womb God came forth into his creation. God revealed an image of himself, but so much more than an image—a person with a heart, a mind, a soul, and a face. To our shock and disbelief, it is a human face. It is our own face restored to the original image and likeness of God.

The Old Testament begins with the words, “In the beginning”. In the first chapter of John’s Gospel are the words of a new genesis.

In the beginning was the Word,  and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Here we should note not only the content but the style. The text tells us that Jesus is man and that he is God. But it does so in a form that is beautiful.

Because the Lord had given himself a human face, the old injunction against images could now be reconsidered. Yet it was some time before the New Covenant took hold and began to expand into the world of culture. Jewish Christians were now eating pork and abandoning circumcision. Paul in Athens had claimed for Christ the altar “to the unknown God”. Greek Christians were bringing the philosophical mind to bear upon the Christian mysteries. Roman converts were hiding in the catacombs and looking at the little funerary carvings of shepherds, seeing in them the image of the Good Shepherd. Natural theology began to flower into the theology of revelation. Doves, anchors, fish, and Gospel scenes were at first scratched crudely in the marble and mortar, then with more precision. Hints of visual realism evolved in this early graffiti, but it took some generations before these first buds of a visual art blossomed into a flowering culture. That it would do so was inevitable, because the Incarnation was Gods radical revelation about his divine purposes in creation. Christianity was the religion of the Eucharist, in which word, image, spirit, and flesh, God and man, are reconciled. It is the Eucharist that recreated the world, and yet for the first two centuries the full implications were compressed, like buried seed, waiting for spring.

When the Edict of Milan (A.D. 313) liberated the Church from the underground, an amazing thing happened: within a few years churches arose all over the civilized world. As that compressed energy was released, the seed burst and flowered and bore fruit with an astonishing luxuriance in art and architecture. The forms were dominated by the figure of Christ, whose image was painted on the interior of church domes—the architectural dome representing the dome of the sky, above which is “the waters of the universe”, above which is Paradise. This was no longer the little Roman shepherd boy but a strong Eastern man, dark, bearded, his imperial face set upon a wrestler’s neck, his arms circling around the dome to encompass all peoples, to teach and to rule “the entire cosmos. He is the “Pantocrator”, the Lord reigning over a hierarchical universe, enthroned as its head — one with the Father-Creator and the Holy Spirit. His hands reach out to man in a gesture of absolute love and absolute truth. And on these hands we see the wounds he bears for us.

This is religion. This is art. This is culture. It is a powerful expression of the Christian vision of the very structure of reality itself. Because of the Incarnation, man at last knows his place in the created order of the universe. Man is damaged, but he is a beloved child of the Father. Moreover, creation is good, very good. It is beautiful, suffused with a beauty that reflects back to him who is perfect beauty. It is permeated by grace, the gift of a loving Creator. From this time forward material creation can never again be viewed with the eyes of the old pagan age. It is Gods intention that matter is neither to be despised, on the one hand, nor worshiped, on the other. Neither is it to be ignored, suppressed, violated, or escaped. “All creation is groaning in one great act of giving birth”, says Saint Paul (Rom. 8:22). Everything is to be transfigured in Christ and restored to the Father. Man especially is to be restored to the original unity that he had “in the beginning”.

The New Gnosticism

Man is free to refuse grace. When he does so, he inevitably falls back into sin and error. But because he is a creature of flesh and spirit, he cannot survive long without a spiritual life. For that reason whenever he denies the whole truth of his being, and at the same time rejects the truth of the created order, he must construct his own “vision” to fill the gaping hole within himself. Thus, because the modern era by and large has rejected the Christian revelation and its moral constraints, we are seeing all around us the collapse back into paganism. There are countless false visions emerging, but among the more beguiling of them is the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, which in our times is enjoying something of a comeback. Its modern manifestation has many names and many variations, including a cold rationalist gnosticism (science without conscience) that claims to have no religious elements whatsoever.1 But the more cultic manifestations (their many shadings number in the thousands) can be loosely grouped under the title “New Age Movement”. In order to understand its power over the modern mind we need to examine its roots in ancient Gnosticism.

Gnostic cults predate Christianity, having their sources in Babylonian, Persian, and other Eastern religions, but they spread steadily throughout the Middle East and parts of Europe, corning to prominence during the second century A.D. By the latter half of the third century, their power was in sharp decline, due in no small part to the influence of the teachings of the early Church Fathers, notably Saint Irenaeus. Irenaeus links the Gnostics to the influence of the magician Simon Magus, mentioned in Acts 8:9, where Saint Luke says that Simon “used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria”. This same Simon offered money to the apostles in an attempt to buy the power of the Holy Spirit. When he was rebuked by Peter, he apparently repented, but second-century sources say that his repentance was short-lived and that he persisted in the practice of magic. Early Church writers refer to him as the first heretic; Irenaeus and others call him the father of Gnosticism.2

The Gnostics continued to have influence until the eighth century and never entirely disappeared from the life of the Western world. Strong traces of Gnosticism can be found in the great heresies that plagued the early Church, in Manichaenism (a cult to which Saint Augustine belonged before his conversion), in kabbalism, medieval witchcraft, occult sects, Theosophy, Freemasonry, and offshoots of the latter.

Gnosticism was in essence syncretistic, borrowing elements from various pagan mystery religions. Its beliefs were often wildly contradictory. For example, some Gnostic groups were pantheistic (worshiping nature as divine), and others, the majority, were more strongly influenced by Oriental dualism (that is, the belief that material creation is evil and the divine realm is good). Despite these confusing differences, they shared in common the belief that knowledge (from the Greek word gnosis) was the true saving force. Secret knowledge about the nature of the universe and about the origin and destiny of man would release a “divine spark” within certain enlightened souls and unite them to some distant, unknowable Supreme Being. This Being, they believed, had created the world through Seven Powers, sometimes called the Demiurge. The initiate in the secret knowledge possessed a kind of spiritual map that would guide him to the highest heaven, enabling the soul to navigate the realms of the powers, the demons, and the deities who opposed his ascent. If the initiate could master their names, repeat the magic formulas and rituals, he would by such knowledge (and sheer force of his will) penetrate to the realm of ultimate tight.

Superficially, Gnosticism resembles the Christian doctrine of salvation, but the spirit of Gnosticism is utterly alien to Christianity. The two are fundamentally different in their understanding of God, man’s identity, and the nature of salvation. Cultic gnosis was not, in fact, a pursuit of knowledge as such; it was not an intellectual or scientific pursuit, but rather a supposed “revelation” of hidden mysteries that could be understood only by a superior class of the enlightened. In a word, it was “mystical”. But this mysticism could never come to terms with material creation in the way the Christian faith had. Even the “Christian” Gnostics found it impossible to reconcile their concept of salvation with a historical redeemer, nor could they accept the resurrection of the body. They could only attempt a crude grafting of the figure of Christ into their mythology. In their thinking, Jesus was no more than a divine messenger who brought gnosis in a disguised, symbolic form to simple-minded Christians. The Gnostic Gospel, they believed, was the unveiling of the higher meaning. They were the first perpetrators of the idea that “all religions are merely misunderstood mythologies” — a catchphrase that in our own times has hooked large numbers of New Age devotees, agnostics, and even some naive Christians.

G. K. Chesterton, who was involved briefly with the occult during his youth and later became one of this century’s greatest apologists for the faith, understood the powerful seductions of counterfeit religion. The new heretics, he maintained, were not for the most part purveyors of bizarre sects; they were rather fugitives from a decaying Protestant liberalism or victims of the inroads made by Modernism into the Catholic Church. They were groping about in the dark trying to strike lights from their own supposed “divine spark”, and the effort could appear heroic. The exaltation of the rebel against organized religion, Chesterton knew, was really a romantic illusion. At the time he wrote his book Heretics (published in 1905), the illusion did not appear to be a widespread evil, but he foresaw that it would be the breeding ground for an apostasy that would spread throughout the entire Western world. Each succeeding generation would be fed by a large and growing cast of leading cultural figures who rejected Christianity and made disbelief credible, even admirable. Chesterton understood that culture is a primary instrument of forming a people’s concept of reality. And he warned that when shapers of culture slough off authentic faith, they are by no means freed to be objective. They merely open themselves to old and revamped mythologies. When men cease to believe in God, he observed, they do not then believe in nothing; they will then believe in anything.

Chesterton prophesied that the last and, greatest battles of civilization would be fought against the religious doctrines of the East. This was an odd prophecy, because at the time the influence of both Hinduism and Buddhism was minor, and devotees of the European occult movements were few in number. Yet within a century we find a great many people in the arts, the universities, the communications media, psychology, and other “social sciences” exhibiting strong attraction to, and promoting pagan concepts of, the cosmos. During the past three decades these ideas have flowed with great force into the mainstream of Western culture, surfacing in all aspects of life and even invading Catholic spirituality. One now sees among professed religious, clerics, educators, and lay people a persistent fascination with Jungian psychology, which is based in no small part on Hinduism and ancient Gnosticism. Those who are in doubt of this should read Carl Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which includes a section of Gnostic reflections titled “Seven Sermons to the Dead”, written when he was in his early forties. Consider also the following passage from his later work The Practice of Psychotherapy: “The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman and demonic, but superhuman, spiritual, and in the classical sense of the word, ‘divine’.” That Christians give this pseudo-scientific theorizing credibility is symptomatic of grave spiritual confusion. We should not be surprised that many people immersed in Jungianism are also attracted to astrology, Enneagrams, and other “mystical” paths that promise self-discovery and enlightenment. That large numbers of Christians now seem unable to see the contradiction between these concepts and orthodox Christianity is an ominous sign. The new syncretism has been romanticized as the heroic quest for ultimate healing, ultimate unity, ultimate tight — in other words, esoteric “knowledge” as salvation.3

Many Christians are becoming Gnostics without realizing it. Falling to the primeval temptation in the garden of Eden: “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil”, they succumb to the desire for godlike powers, deciding for themselves what is good and what is evil. The error of Gnosticism is that knowledge can be obtained and used to perfect oneself while circumventing the authority of Christ and his Church. Using a marketing technique that proves endlessly productive, Satan always packages this offer with the original deception, by proclaiming that God and the Church do not want man to have knowledge because it will threaten their power and by asserting that God is a liar (“You will not die”). Authentic Christianity has no quarrel with genuine science, with the pursuit of knowledge for good ends. But because the Church must maintain the whole truth about man, she warns that unless the pursuit of knowledge is in submission to the pursuit of wisdom, it will not lead to good; if it is divorced from God’s law, it will lead to death.

A people cut off from true spiritual vision is condemned to a desolation in which eventually any false spiritual vision will appear religious. Man cannot live long without a spiritual life. Robbed of his own story, he will now listen to any He that is spun in a flattering tale. This is one of the long-term effects of undermining our world of symbols. It is one of the effects of assuming that ideas are mere abstractions—a very dangerous misconception, as the tragic events of our century have proved so often.

Recently, a young artist showed me her new paintings. She is an intelligent and gifted person, and the work was of high quality, visually beautiful. With particular pleasure she pointed out a painting of a woman with dozens of snakes wriggling in her womb. It was a self-portrait, the artist explained. Judaism and Christianity, she went on to say, had unjustly maligned the serpent. And in order to rehabilitate this symbol, it was necessary to take the serpent into her womb, to gestate it, and eventually to bear it into the world as a “sacred feminine icon”. I pointed out thai the meanings of symbols are not merely the capricious choices of a limited culture. We cannot arbitrarily rearrange them like so much furniture in the living room of the psyche. To tamper with these fundamental types is spiritually and psychologically dangerous because they are keystones in the very structure of the mind. They are a language about the nature of good and evil; furthermore, they are points of contact with these two realities. To face evil without the spiritual equipment Christianity has given us is to put oneself in grave danger. But my arguments were useless. She had heard a more interesting story from a famous “theologian”.

This is one of the results of forgetting our past. The record of salvation history in the Old Testament is primarily about the Lord’s effort to wean man of idolatry and to form a people capable of receiving the revelation of Jesus Christ. It was a long, painfully slow process marked by brilliant moments and repeated backslides into paganism. It bears repeating: when Hezekiah inherited the throne, smashed the pagan shrines, and broke up the bronze serpent that Moses had made, the people of God had for centuries already seen abundant evidence of God’s authority and power. What had happened to them? Why did they have such short memories? Was Hezekiah overreacting? Was this a case of alarmism? Paranoia, perhaps?

The bronze serpent, after all, had been made at God’s command. Hezekiah’s act must be understood in the context of the fierce grip that the spirit of idolatry had over the whole world. The people had succumbed to the temptation to blend biblical faith with pagan spirituality. They had forgotten the lesson learned by their ancestors in the exodus from Egypt:

When the savage rage of wild animals overtook them, and they were perishing from the bites of writhing snakes, your wrath did not continue to the end. It was by way of reprimand, lasting a short time, that they were distressed, for they had a saving token to remind them of the commandment of your Law. Whoever turned to it was saved, not by what he looked at, but by you, the universal savior. . . . And by such means you proved to our enemies that it is you who deliver from every evil. . . . For your sons, not even the fangs of venomous serpents could bring them down; your mercy came to their help and cured them. . . . One sting — how quickly healed! — to remind them of your utterances, rather than, sinking into deep forgetfulness, they should be cut off from your kindness. - Wisdom 16: 5-12

What has happened to the people of our times? Why do we have such short memories? It is because over-familiarity and the passage of time blur the sharp edges of reality. Minds and hearts grow lax. Vigilance declines. Again and again man sinks into deep forgetfulness. Serpents and dragons are now tamed like pets by some, worshiped by others. The writer of the book of Revelation has something to say about this. He reminds us with a note of urgency that we are in a war zone. Every human soul is in peril; our every act has moral significance. Our danger increases to the degree that we do not understand the nature of our enemy. Saint John wrote us a tale drawn from a vision of what will come to pass on this earth and in our Church. It was given in a form that can be imparted to the soul of a child or to those who have become as little children, but not in a form that can be mastered by those who fail to approach it with reverence. In chapter 12, John tells us that a dragon has a passion to devour our child:

A great sign appeared in the sky a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. Because she was with child, she cried aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. Then another sign appeared in the sky: it was a huge dragon, flaming red, with seven heads and ten horns; on his head were seven crowns. His tail swept a third of the stars from the sky and hurled them down to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, ready to devour her child as soon as it was born.

The early Church Fathers taught that this passage has a twofold meaning: on one level it refers to the birth of Christ; on another it refers to the Church as she labors to bear salvation into the world. This child is, in a sense, every child. The Church is to carry this child as the image of God, transfigured in Christ, and to bring him forth into eternal life. She groans in agony, and the primeval serpent hates her, for he knows that her offspring, protected and grown in her womb, will crush his head.

________

1 This is a false claim, because some scientific theories exhibit the qualities of religious myth and Sanction that way in the thought of many supposedly objective minds, For those interested in learning more about this trend, I suggest five scholarly studies: Eric Voegelin’s Science, Politics, and Gnosticism and his The New Science of Politics, Thomas Molnar’s The New Paganism, Wolfgang Smith’s Cosmos and Transcendence and his Teilhardism and the New Religion, While all these books are a useful contribution to the study of Gnosticism, they are not of equal merit. The latter two tides are unencumbered by certain presumptions that mat the first three.

2 See A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, ed. David Lyle Jeffrey (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), p. 714.

3 Readers who wish to learn more about this tragic development should read Fr. Mitchell Pacwa’s Catholics and the New Age (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant Publications, 1992).

[glittergummicandypeach]

Amy Coney Barrett’s religion is important—but irrelevant

(RNS) — Amy Coney Barrett's religion is important to her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. It's also irrelevant.

A Catholic, Barrett was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump on Sept. 26 to fill the seat vacated on the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Some who oppose Barrett's appointment argue that her beliefs will influence how she decides cases before the court.

Politics is the way in which we make decisions binding on the members of our political community. It is all about "What should we do?" — a moral question by its very nature. Any sentence with a "should" in it is a moral statement. It is judgment about what is right and what is wrong.

Should we increase the minimum wage? Should we withdraw from Afghanistan? Should we have Medicare for all? These are not only economic or military questions; they are also moral questions.

Not all moral issues are political issues, but all political issues are moral issues.

A distinction should be made, however, between personal and social morality. Personal morality affects only the individual (and perhaps another consenting adult); social morality covers those actions that impact others. Social morality is the domain of politics. Politics is the way in which we impose social norms on the community.

A distinction should be made between personal and social morality.

Whom I sleep with may be a moral issue, but it is not a political issue. Whom we execute as a society is both a moral and political issue.

For much of the history of the West, people have gotten their notions of what is right and wrong from Christianity, as mediated by their parents and culture. For the more sophisticated Catholic, Greek philosophy also played a role, thanks to theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, who believed that faith and reason could not be in conflict.

At its best, Catholicism fostered a culture of love of neighbor; at worst, it subjected the laity to the whims of the clergy.

The Catholic synthesis of faith and reason was broken by the Reformation, which made Scripture preeminent, and by the Enlightenment, which rejected religious input.

While both did much to free people from clerical authority, Protestantism developed its own brand of clericalism, and attempts to develop a religion-free morality produced totalitarianism on both the left and the right in 20th-century Europe.

To argue that a person’s religious beliefs are not or should not be influential in how they approach judicial questions shows an ignorance of history and politics.

Those who came to America from Europe brought with them this history and identity. Most continued to base their morality on Christianity, but many intellectuals were influenced by the Enlightenment.

American history is full of examples where religious beliefs influenced how Americans approached political issues, beginning with the Revolution and the Declaration of Independence ("all men are created equal").

The founders of our nation, who were Christians and Deists, recognized the importance of religion in people's lives but also recognized how religious disputes had torn Europe apart. Most believed that religion as a moral foundation is essential to the operation of a democracy. As a result, they decided that individuals should be free to choose their religion and declared that the government should not favor one religion over another.

People motivated by religious beliefs were involved in every major political movement in American history, including abolition, the Civil War, Reconstruction, free silver, labor unions, Temperance, women's suffrage, the New Deal, both world wars, civil rights and more. In most of these movements, believers were on both sides of the disputes. Many believers also made political decisions first and then found religious or moral reasons to back them up.

People motivated by religious beliefs were involved in every major political movement in American history.

People of different faiths, as well as people of no faith, joined together to support or oppose specific policy goals without having to share the same motivations. What mattered was agreement on policy goals, not motivation. Politics is about getting people to agree even if for different reasons. Moralists may care whether you do "the right thing for the wrong reason," but politicians only care that you do what they want.

This is why Barrett's religion is important but irrelevant. Her religion may influence her views of the law, but the same is true of almost every member of the court. Remember, Ginsburg had a quote from Deuteronomy on her office wall: "Justice, justice shall you pursue."

What matters is how a nominee views the law, not why she views it that way. What matters are her decisions, not her motivations.

Both Democrat and Republican senators know all they need to know about what kind of Supreme Court justice Barrett will be by looking at her decisions, her writings and her talks. She taught at Notre Dame Law School for 15 years and has been on the U.S. Court of Appeals for three years. They do not need to delve into her religion to decipher how she thinks.

Senators know, for instance, what she thinks about Roe v. Wade, the Affordable Care Act, gun control and many other issues. Whether she belongs to a religious group like the People of Praise, which once referred to women as "handmaids," is irrelevant.

It would be a serious mistake for Democrats to talk about Barrett's religion because it will open them up to accusations of anti-Catholicism from Republicans. If Democrats are serious about appealing to Catholic swing voters, they will not antagonize them by attacking Barrett's religion, which is important but irrelevant.

This content was originally published here.

[superhalfrussian]

The Secret History of The World and How to Get Out Alive is rapidly being acknowledged as a classic with profound implications for the destiny of the human race. With painstakingly researched facts and figures, the author overturns long-held conventional ideas on religion, philosophy, Grail legends, science, and alchemy, presenting a cohesive narrative pointing to the existence of an ancient techno-spirituality of the Golden Age which included a mastery of space and time: the Holy Grail, the Philosopher's Stone, the True Process of Ascension. Laura provides the evidence for the advanced level of scientific and metaphysical wisdom possessed by the greatest of lost ancient civilizations - a culture so advanced that none of the trappings of civilization as we know it were needed, explaining why there is no 'evidence' of civilization as we know it left to testify to its existence. The author's consummate synthesis reveals the Message in a Bottle reserved for humanity, including the Cosmology and Mysticism of mankind Before the Fall when, as the ancient texts tell us, man walked and talked with the gods. Laura shows us that the upcoming shift is that point in the vast cosmological cycle when mankind - or at least a portion of mankind - has the opportunity to regain his standing as The Child of the King in the Golden Age. If ever there was a book that can answer the questions of those who are seeking Truth in the spiritual wilderness of this world, then surely The Secret History of the World and How to Get Out Alive is it. https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-How-Alive/dp/1897244169/

[pope-francis-quotes]

24th June >> (@ZenitEnglish) #Pope Francis #PopeFrancis Full Remarks at ‘Theology After Veritatis Gaudium’ Encounter in Naples, Italy. ‘So what is the task? It must be in harmony with the Spirit of the Risen Jesus…’

Here is the Vatican-provided translation of the discourse given by Pope Francis, on June 21, at the meeting on the theme: “Theology after Veritatis gaudium in the context of the Mediterranean”, promoted by the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Southern Italy (Naples, 20 to 21 June 2019):

***

Cardinals,

Dear brother bishops and priests,

Dear professors and dear students!

I am glad to meet with you today, and to take part in this conference. I warmly reciprocate the greeting of the dear brother Patriarch Bartholomew, a great precursor of Laudato si’ – a precursor by many years – who wished to contribute to the reflection with his personal message. Thank you Bartholomew, dear brother.

The Mediterranean has always been a place of transit, exchange, and sometimes even conflict. We know of many. This place today raises a number of questions, often dramatic. They can be translated into some questions we asked ourselves at the Abu Dhabi interreligious meeting: how can we care for one another as one human family? How can we nurture a tolerant and peaceful coexistence that translates into authentic fraternity? How can we ensure acceptance in our communities of the other and of those who are different from us since they belong to a religious and cultural tradition different from ours? How can religions be forms of brotherhood rather than walls of separation? These and other questions demand to be interpreted on several levels, and demand generous commitment to listening, to study and comparison to promote processes of liberation, peace, brotherhood and justice. We must convince ourselves: it is about initiating processes, not making definitions of spaces, occupying spaces… Initiating processes.

A theology of justice and dialogue

During this conference you first analyzed contradictions and difficulties in the space of the Mediterranean, and then you asked what the best solutions would be. In this regard, you asked what theology would be adequate to the context in which you live and work. I would say that theology, particularly in such a context, is called to be a theology of acceptance and to develop an authentic and sincere dialogue with social and civil institutions, with universities and research centres, with religious leaders and with all the women and men of goodwill, for the construction of the peace of an inclusive and fraternal society and for the protection of creation.

When the Proemio of Veritatis gaudium mentions the deepening of kerygma and dialogue as criteria for renewing studies, we mean that they are at the service of the journey of a Church that increasingly places evangelization at the centre. Not apologetics, not manuals – as we have heard – evangelizing. At the centre there is evangelization, which does not mean proselytism. In the dialogue with cultures and religions, the Church announces the Good News of Jesus and the practice of evangelical love which He preached as a synthesis of all the teaching of the Law, of the visions of the Prophets and of the will of the Father. Dialogue is above all a method of discernment and proclamation of the Word of love which is addressed to each person and which in the heart of each person wants to take up residence. Only in listening to this Word and in the experience of the love that it communicates can the actuality of the kerygma be discerned. Dialogue, understood in this way, is a form of acceptance.

I would like to reiterate that “spiritual discernment does not exclude existential, psychological, sociological or moral insights drawn from the human sciences. At the same time, it transcends them. Nor are the Church’s sound norms sufficient. We should always remember that discernment is a grace – a gift. … Ultimately, discernment leads to the wellspring of undying life: to know the Father, the only true God, and the one whom he has sent, Jesus Christ (cf. Jn 17:3)” (Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et exsultate, 170).

The schools of theology are renewed with the practice of discernment and with a dialogical way of proceeding, capable of creating a corresponding climate, both spiritual and in terms of intellectual practice. It is a dialogue both in posing problems and in the search for solutions together. A dialogue capable of integrating the living criterion of Jesus’ Pasch with the movement of analogy, which reads links, signs and theological references in reality, in creation and in history. This involves the hermeneutical assumption of the mystery of the journey of Jesus that leads him to the cross and to the resurrection and to the gift of the Spirit. It is indispensable to assume this Jesuit and Paschal logic to understand how historical and created reality is questioned by the revelation of the mystery of God’s love. Of that God who in the history of Jesus manifests Himself – every time and within every contradiction – to be greater in love and the ability to recover from evil.

Both movements are necessary, complementary: a movement from below upwards that can dialogue, with a sense of listening and discernment, with every human and historical demand, taking into account the full range of the human; and a movement from above to below – where “on high” is Jesus raised on the cross – allowing, at the same time, to discern the signs of the Kingdom of God in history and to understand prophetically the signs of the anti-kingdom that disfigure the soul and human history. It is a method that allows – in a constant dynamic – to compare each human instance and to understand which Christian light illuminates the folds of reality and which energies the Spirit of the Risen Crucifix is inspiring, from time to time, here and now.

The dialogical way of proceeding is the way to arrive where paradigms, ways of feeling, symbols, representations of people and peoples are formed. To arrive there – as “spiritual ethnographers” of the soul of peoples, let’s say – in order to be able to dialogue in depth and, if possible, contribute to their development by announcing the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, whose fruit is the ripening of an increasingly broad and inclusive fraternity. Dialogue and the proclamation of the Gospel, that can take place in the ways outlined by Francis of Assisi in the Regula non Bullata, just the day after his journey in the Mediterranean East. For Francis there is a first way in which one simply lives as a Christian: “One way is that they do not make quarrels or disputes, but are subject to every human creature for the love of God and confess to being Christians” (XVI: FF 43). Then there is a second way in which, always docile to the signs and action of the Risen Lord and to his Spirit of peace, the Christian faith is announced as a manifestation in Jesus of God’s love for all men. I am struck by Francis’s advice to the friars: “Preach the Gospel; if necessary also with words”. This is witness!

This docility to the Spirit implies a style of life and proclamation without a spirit of conquest, without the will to proselytize – this is the plague! – and without an aggressive refutation. A method that enters into dialogue “from within” with men and their cultures, their stories, their different religious traditions; a method that, consistent with the Gospel, also includes witness up to the sacrifice of life, as shown by the luminous examples of Charles de Foucauld, the monks of Tibhirine, the bishop of Oran Pierre Claverie and so many brothers and sisters who, with the grace of Christ, were faithful with meekness and humility and died with the name of Jesus on their lips and mercy in their hearts. And here I am thinking of non-violence as a horizon and knowledge of the world, to which theology must look as its constitutive element. The writings and practices of Martin Luther King and Lanza del Vasto and other “artisans” of peace help us here. He helps us and encourages the memory of Blessed Giustino Russolillo, who was a student of this Faculty, and of Don Peppino Diana, the young parish priest killed by the Camorra, who also studied here. And here I would like to mention a dangerous syndrome, the “Babel syndrome”. We think that the “Babel syndrome” is the confusion that originates in not understanding what the other says. This is the first step. But the real “Babel syndrome” is that of not listening to what the other says and believing that we know what the other person thinks and what the other person will say. This is the plague!

Examples of dialogue for a theology of hospitality

“Dialogue” is not a magic formula, but certainly theology is helped in its renewal when it takes it seriously, when it is encouraged and favoured between teachers and students, as well as with other forms of knowledge and with other religions, especially Judaism and Islam. Theology students should be educated in dialogue with Judaism and Islam to understand the common roots and differences of our religious identities, and thus contribute more effectively to building a society that values diversity and fosters respect , brotherhood and peaceful coexistence.

Educate students in this. I have studied in the time of decadent theology, of decadent scholasticism, at the time of manuals. Between us it was a joke, all the theological theses were tried with this scheme, a syllogism: 1. Things seem to be like this. 2. Catholicism is always right. 3. Ergo … That is a theology of a defensive, apologetic type, enclosed in a manual. We joked like that, but they were the things that were presented to us at that time of decadent scholasticism.

Seeking a dialogic peaceful coexistence. With Muslims we are called to dialogue to build the future of our societies and our cities; we are called to consider them partners to build a peaceful coexistence, even when there are shocking episodes by fanatical groups who are enemies of dialogue, such as last Easter’s tragedy in Sri Lanka. Yesterday the Cardinal of Colombo told me this: “After I did what I had to do, I realized that a group of people, Christians, wanted to go to the Muslim neighbourhood to kill them. I invited the Imam with me, by car, and together we went there to convince the Christians that we are friends, that those are extremists, that they are not ours”. This is an attitude of closeness and dialogue. Forming students to dialogue with Jews implies educating them in the knowledge of their culture, their way of thinking, their language, in order to better understand and live our relationship on a religious level. In theological faculties and ecclesiastical universities courses in Arabic and Hebrew language and culture are to be encouraged, as well as mutual understanding between Christian, Jewish and Muslim students.

I would like to give two concrete examples of how the dialogue that characterizes a theology of hospitality can be applied to ecclesiastical studies. First of all, dialogue can be a method of study, as well as teaching. When we read a text, we dialogue with it and with the “world” of which it is an expression; and this also applies to sacred texts, such as the Bible, the Talmud and the Koran. Often, then, we interpret a particular text in dialogue with others of the same epoch or of different epochs. The texts of the great monotheistic traditions in some cases are the result of a dialogue. You can give cases of texts that are written to answer questions on important life issues posed by texts that preceded them. This is also a form of dialogue.

The second example is that dialogue can be accomplished as a theological hermeneutics at a specific time and place. In our case: the Mediterranean at the beginning of the third millennium. It is not possible to read this space realistically if not in dialogue and as a bridge – historical, geographical, and human – between Europe, Africa and Asia. It is a space in which the absence of peace has produced multiple regional and global imbalances, and whose pacification, through the practice of dialogue, could instead greatly contribute to initiating processes of reconciliation and peace. Giorgio La Pira would tell us that it is a question, for theology, of helping to build a “great canopy of peace” over the entire Mediterranean basin, where the different children of the common father Abraham can live together in mutual respect. Do not forget the common father.

A theology of hospitality is a theology of listening

Dialogue as theological hermeneutics presupposes and involves conscious listening. This also means listening to the history and experiences of the peoples who face the Mediterranean space in order to be able to decipher the events that connect the past to today and to be able to capture their wounds along with their potential. In particular, it is a matter of grasping the way in which Christian communities and individual prophetic existences have known – even recently – how to incarnate the Christian faith in contexts sometimes of conflict, minority and plural coexistence with other religious traditions.

This listening must be deeply internal to cultures and peoples also for another reason. The Mediterranean is precisely the sea of hybridization – if we do not understand this fusion we will never understand the Mediterranean – a geographically closed sea with respect to the oceans, but culturally always open to encounter, dialogue and mutual inculturation. Nevertheless, there is a need for renewed and shared narratives that – starting from listening to the roots and to the present – speak to people’s hearts, narratives in which it is possible to recognize oneself in a constructive, peaceful and hope-generating way.

The multicultural and multi-religious reality of the new Mediterranean is formed with these narratives, in the dialogue that comes from listening to the people and texts of the great monotheistic religions, and especially in listening to young people. I am thinking of the students of our faculties of theology, of those of the “lay” universities or of other religious inspirations. “Once the Church – and, we can add, theology – sets aside narrow preconceptions and listens carefully to the young, this empathy enriches her, for ‘it allows young people to make their own contribution to the community, helping it to appreciate new sensitivities and to consider new questions’” (Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christus vivit, 65). To appreciate new sensitivities: this is the challenge.

The deepening of the kerygma is achieved with the experience of dialogue that comes from listening and which generates communion. Jesus Himself announced the kingdom of God in dialogue with every type and category of people of the Judaism of his time: with the scribes, the Pharisees, the doctors of the law, the publicans, the learned, the simple, the sinners. He revealed to a Samaritan woman, in listening and in dialogue, the gift of God and His own identity: He opened to her the mystery of His communion with the Father and of the overabundant fullness that flows from this communion. His divine listening to the human heart opens this heart to welcome the fullness of Love and the joy of life. Nothing is lost with dialogue. You always earn. We all lose in monologue.

An interdisciplinary theology

A theology of acceptance which, as an interpretative method of reality, adopts discernment and sincere dialogue, needs theologians who know how to work together and in an interdisciplinary form, overcoming individualism in intellectual work. We need theologians – men and women, presbyters, lay people and religious – who are historically and ecclesially rooted and, at the same time, open to the inexhaustible novelties of the Spirit, who know how to escape the self-referential, competitive and, in fact, blinding logic that often also exists in our academic institutions and is very often hidden in theological schools.

In this continuous journey of going out of oneself and meeting with the other, it is important that theologians are men and women of compassion – I highlight this: that they are men and women of compassion – touched by the oppressed life of many, by the slavery of today, by social wounds, violence, wars and the enormous injustices suffered by so many poor people who live on the shores of this “common sea”. Without communion and without compassion, constantly nourished by prayer – this is important: theology can only be done “on one’s knees” – theology not only loses its soul, but loses its intelligence and ability to interpret reality in a Christian way. Without compassion, drawn from the Heart of Christ, theologians risk being swallowed up in the condition of the privilege of those who place themselves prudently outside the world and share nothing risky with the majority of humanity. Laboratory theology, pure and “distilled” theology, distilled like water, distilled water, which knows nothing.

I would like to give an example of how the interdisciplinarity that interprets history can be a deepening of the kerygma and, if inspired by mercy, can be open to trans-disciplinarity. I refer in particular to all the aggressive and belligerent attitudes that have marked the way of inhabiting the Mediterranean space by peoples who called themselves Christians. Here we find the colonial attitudes and practices that have shaped the imagination and policies of these peoples, and the justifications for all kinds of wars, and all the persecutions committed in the name of a religion or an alleged racial purity or doctrinal. We have also carried out these persecutions. I remember, in the Chanson de Roland, after winning the battle, the Muslims were lined up, all, in front of the baptism pool, on the baptismal pile. There was one with a sword there. And they made them choose: either we baptize you, or goodbye! You go the other way. Or baptism or death. We have done this. Compared to this complex and painful history, the method of dialogue and listening, guided by the evangelical criterion of mercy, can greatly enrich interdisciplinary knowledge and interpretation, also bringing out, by contrast, the prophecies of peace that the Spirit has never failed to inspire.

Interdisciplinarity as a criterion for the renewal of theology and ecclesiastical studies involves a commitment to continually revisit and re-examine tradition. Revisit tradition! And question it again. In fact, listening as Christian theologians does not take place by starting from nothing, but from a theological heritage that – right inside the Mediterranean space – has its roots in the communities of the New Testament, in the rich reflection of the Fathers and in multiple generations of thinkers and witnesses. It is that living tradition that has come down to us that can help illuminate and decipher many contemporary issues. Provided however that it is re-read with a sincere desire to purify the memory, that is, knowing how to discern how much was the vehicle of God’s original intention, revealed in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and how much instead was unfaithful to this merciful and saving intention. Let us not forget that tradition is a root that gives us life: it transmits life so that we can grow and flourish, and bear fruit. We often think of tradition as a museum. No! Last week, or the other, I read a quote by Gustav Mahler that said: “Tradition is the guarantee of the future, not the keeper of the ashes”. That is nice! We live tradition like a living tree, it grows. Already in the fifth century, Vincenzo di Lérins had understood it well: the growth of faith, of tradition, with these three criteria: annis consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate. It is tradition! But without tradition you cannot grow. Tradition is necessary to grow, like the root of the tree.

A theology in a network

Theology after Veritatis gaudium is a theology in a network and, in the context of the Mediterranean, in solidarity with all the “castaways” of history. In the theological task that awaits us, let us remember Saint Paul and the path of early Christianity that links the East with the West. Here, very close to where Paul landed, it cannot be forgotten that the Apostle’s journeys were marked by obvious critical moments, such as in the shipwreck in the middle of the Mediterranean (Acts 27: 9ff). Shipwreck that makes one think of that of Jonah. But Paul does not flee, and may even think that Rome is his Nineveh. He may think of correcting Jonah’s defeatist attitude by redeeming his escape. Now that Western Christianity has learned from many mistakes and critical issues of the past, it can return to its sources hoping to be able to bear witness to the Good News to the peoples of the East and of the West, of the North and of the South. Theology – keeping the mind and heart fixed on the “merciful and compassionate God” (cf. Gn 4: 2) – can help the Church and civil society to resume the road in the company of many castaways, encouraging Mediterranean populations to refuse any temptation to reconquer or to close up their identity. Both tendencies are born of, feed on and grow out of fear. Theology cannot be carried out in an environment of fear.

The work of the theological faculties and ecclesiastical universities contributes to the building of a just and fraternal society, in which the care of creation and the construction of peace are the result of collaboration between civil, ecclesial and interreligious institutions. It is first of all a work in the “evangelical network”, that is in communion with the Spirit of Jesus which is the Spirit of peace, the Spirit of love at work in creation and in the hearts of men and women of good will of every race, culture and religion. Like the language used by Jesus to talk about the Kingdom of God, so, similarly, interdisciplinarity and networking make it possible to favour discernment of the presence of the Spirit of the Risen One in reality. Starting from an understanding of the Word of God in its original Mediterranean context, it is possible to discern the signs of the times in new contexts.

Theology after “Veritatis gaudium” in the context of the Mediterranean

I have emphasized Veritatis gaudium greatly. I would like to publicly thank here, because he is present, Msgr. Zani, who was one of the authors of this document. Thank you! What then is the task of theology after Veritatis gaudium in the context of the Mediterranean? So what is the task? It must be in harmony with the Spirit of the Risen Jesus, with His freedom to go around the world and to reach the peripheries, even those of thought. Theologians have the task of always encouraging the meeting of cultures with the sources of Revelation and Tradition. The ancient frameworks of thought, the great theological syntheses of the past are mines of theological wisdom, but they cannot be applied mechanically to current questions. It is a matter of treasuring them to find new ways. Thanks to God, the first sources of theology, that is, the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, are inexhaustible and always fruitful; therefore one can and must work in the direction of a “theological Pentecost”, which enables women and men of our time to listen “in their own language” to a Christian reflection that responds to their search for meaning and full life. For this to happen some assumptions are indispensable.

First of all, we need to start from the Gospel of mercy, that is, from the announcement made by Jesus Himself and from the original contexts of evangelization. Theology is born in the midst of concrete human beings, who meet the gaze and heart of God, Who goes in search of them with merciful love. Even engaging in theology is an act of mercy. I would like to repeat here, from this city where there are not only episodes of violence, but which preserves many traditions and many examples of sanctity – as well as a masterpiece by Caravaggio on the works of mercy and the witness of the saint doctor Giuseppe Moscati – I would like to repeat what I have written to the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University of Argentina: “Good theologians too, like good shepherds, smell of the people and of the street and, with their reflection, pour oil and wine on the wounds of men. Theology is the expression of a Church that is a ‘field hospital’, which lives her mission of salvation and healing in the world! Mercy is not only a pastoral attitude, but it is the very substance of the Gospel of Jesus. I encourage you to study how, in the various disciplines – dogmatics, morals, spirituality, law and so on – the centrality of mercy can be reflected. Without mercy, our theology, our law and our pastoral care run the risk of collapsing into bureaucratic pettiness or ideology, which by its nature seeks to domesticate mystery”1. Theology, through mercy, defends itself from the domestication of mystery.

Secondly, a serious assumption of history within theology is needed, as an open space for the encounter with the Lord. “The ability to glimpse the presence of Christ and the path of the Church in history make us humble, and they take away from us the temptation to take refuge in the past to avoid the present. And this was the experience of many, many scholars, who started out not I would say as atheists, but a little agnostic, and then found Christ. Because history cannot be understood without this strength.”2.

Theological freedom is necessary. Without the possibility of experiencing new paths, nothing new is created, and no room is left for the newness of the Spirit of the Risen One: “For those who long for a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for nuance, this might appear as undesirable and leading to confusion. But in fact such variety serves to bring out and develop different facets of the inexhaustible riches of the Gospel” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, 40). This also means an adequate revision of the ratio studiorum. On the theological freedom of reflection I would make a distinction. Among scholars, we must move forward with freedom; then, ultimately, it will be the magisterium that says something, but a theology cannot be done without this freedom. But in preaching to the People of God, please do not hurt the faith of the People of God with disputed questions! The disputed questions remain only among theologians. It is your job. But to the People of God it is necessary to give the substance that nourishes the faith and that does not relativize it.

Finally, it is essential to have light and flexible structures, which show the priority given to reception and dialogue, to inter- and trans-disciplinary work and in networks. Statutes, internal organization, teaching methods and the organization of studies should reflect the appearance of the “outbound” Church. Everything must be oriented to the times and so as to promote as far as possible the participation of those who wish to study theology: in addition to seminarians and religious, also lay and religious women and men. In particular, the contribution that women are giving and can give to theology is indispensable, and their participation must therefore be supported, as you do in this Faculty, where there is a good participation of women as teachers and as students.

This beautiful place, home of the Theological Faculty dedicated to Saint Aloysius, whose feast is celebrated today, is a symbol of a beauty to be shared, open to all. I dream of theological faculties where the conviviality of differences is lived, where a theology of dialogue and acceptance is practiced; where theological knowledge is experienced as multi-faceted instead of as a static and disembodied sphere. Where theological research is able to promote a challenging but compelling inculturation process.

Conclusion

The criteria of the Proemio of the Apostolic Constitution Veritatis gaudium are evangelical criteria. Kerygma, dialogue, discernment, collaboration, network – I would also add parrhesia, which has been cited as a criterion, which is the capacity to be at the limit, together with hypomoné, to tolerate, to be at the limit to go forward – these are elements and criteria that translate the way in which the Gospel was lived and announced by Jesus and with which it can also be transmitted today by His disciples.

Theology after Veritatis gaudium is a kerygmatic theology, a theology of discernment, mercy and acceptance, which is placed in dialogue with society, cultures and religions for the construction of peaceful coexistence of people and peoples. The Mediterranean is the historical, geographical and cultural matrix of kerygmatic acceptance practiced with dialogue and mercy. Naples is an example and a special laboratory of this theological research. I wish you good work!

____________________________________

[1] Letter to the Grand Chancellor of the “Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina” on teh centenary of the Faculty of Theology, 3 March 2015.

[2] Address to participants in the conference of the Association of teachers of Church history, 12 January 2019.

[Vatican-provided text]

24th JUNE 2019 16:04PAPAL TEXTS

[ahndijuly]

A Tough Mind & A Tender Heart Sermon by Martin Luther King Jr.

A French philosopher said, “No man is strong unless he bears within his character antitheses strongly marked.”  The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites.   Not ordinarily do men achieve this balance of opposites.  The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic.  The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant.  Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble.  But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.  The philosopher Hegel said that truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis that reconciles the two.

Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites.  He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world, where they would confront the recalcitrance of political officials and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order.  He knew that they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism.  So he said to them, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the mist of wolves.”  And he gave them a formula for action, “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”  It is pretty difficult to imagine a single person having, simultaneously, the characteristics of the serpent and the dove, but this is what Jesus expects.  We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

I

Let us consider, first, the need for a tough mind, characterized by incisive thinking, realistic appraisal, and decisive judgment.  The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false.  The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning.  He has a strong, austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.

Who doubts that this toughness of mind is one of man’s greatest needs?  Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking.  There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.  Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

This prevalent tendency toward soft mindedness is found in man’s unbelievable gullibility.  Take our attitude toward advertisement.  We are so easily led to purchase a product because a television or radio advertisement pronounces it better than any other.  Advertisers have long since learned that most people are soft minded, and they capitalize on this susceptibility with skillful and effective slogans.

This undue gullibility is also seen in the tendency of many readers to accept the printed word of the press as final truth.  Few people realize that even our authentic channels of information – the press, the platform, and in many instances the pulpit – do not give us objective and unbiased truth.  Few people have the toughness of mind to judge critically and to discern the true from the false, the fact from the fiction.  Our minds are constantly being invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and false facts.  One of the great needs of mankind is to be lifted above the morass of false propaganda.

Soft-minded individuals are prone to embrace all kinds of superstitions.  Their minds are constantly invaded by irrational fears, which range from fear of Friday the thirteenth to fear of a black cat crossing one’s path.  As the elevator made its upward climb in one of the large hotels of New York City, I noticed for the first time that there was no thirteenth floor – floor fourteen followed floor twelve.  On inquiring from the elevator operator the reason for this omission, he said, “This practice is followed by most large hotels because of the fear of numerous people to stay on a thirteenth floor.”  Then he added, “The real foolishness of the fear is to be found in the fact that the fourteenth floor is actually the thirteenth.”  Such fears leave the soft mind haggard by day and haunted by night.

The soft-minded man always fears change.  He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new.  For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.  An elderly segregationist in the South is reported to have said, “I have come to see now that desegregation is inevitable.  But I pray God that it will not take place until after I die.”  The soft-minded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.

Soft mindedness often invades religion.  This is why religion has sometimes rejected new truth with a dogmatic passion.  Through edicts and bulls, inquisitions and excommunications, the church has attempted to prorogue truth and place an impenetrable stone wall in the path of the truth-seeker.  The historical-philological criticism of the Bible is considered by the soft minded as blasphemous, and reason is often looked upon as the exercise of a corrupt faculty.  Soft-minded persons have revised the Beatitudes to read, “Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God.”

This has also led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion.  But this is not true.  There may be a conflict between soft-minded religionists and tough-minded scientists, but not between science and religion.  Their respective worlds are different and their methods are dissimilar.  Science investigates; religion interprets.  Science gives man knowledge that is power; religion gives man wisdom that is control.  Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values.  The two are not rivals.  They are complementary.  Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism.  Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.

We do not need to look far to detect the dangers of soft mindedness.  Dictators, capitalizing on soft mindedness, have led men to acts of barbarity and terror that are unthinkable in civilized society.  Adolf Hitler realized that soft mindedness was so prevalent among his followers that he said, “I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.”  In Mein Kampf he asserted:

By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that Heaven is hell – and hell, Heaven.  The greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed.

Soft mindedness is one of the basic causes of race prejudice.  The tough-minded person always examines the facts before he reaches conclusions; in short, he postjudges.  The tender-minded person reaches a conclusion before he has examined the first fact; in short, he prejudges and is prejudiced.  Race prejudice is based on groundless fears, suspicions, and misunderstandings.  There are those who are sufficiently soft minded to believe in the superiority of the white race and the inferiority of the Negro race in spite of the tough-minded research of anthropologists who reveal the falsity of such a notion.  There are soft-minded persons who argue that racial segregation should be perpetuated because Negroes lag behind in academic, health, and moral standards.  They are not tough minded enough to realize that lagging standards are the result of segregation and discrimination.  They do not recognize that it is rationally unsound and sociologically untenable to use the traffic effects of segregation as an argument for its continuation.  Too many politicians in the South recognize this disease of soft mindedness that engulfs their constituency.  With insidious zeal, they make inflammatory statements and disseminate distortions and half-truths that arouse abnormal fears and morbid antipathies within the minds of uneducated and underprivileged whites, leaving them so confused that they are led to acts of meanness and violence that no normal person commits.

There is little hope for us until we become tough minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance.  The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft mindedness.  A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.

II

But we must not stop with the cultivation of a tough mind.  The gospel also demands a tender heart.  Tough mindedness without tenderheartedness is cold and detached, leaving one’s life in a perpetual winter devoid of the warmth of spring and the gentle heat of summer.  What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hardheartedness?

The hardhearted person never truly loves.  He engages in a crass utilitarianism that values other people mainly according to their usefulness to him.  He never experiences the beauty of friendship, because he is too cold to feel affection for another and is too self-centered to share another’s joy and sorrow.  He is an isolated island.  No outpouring of love links him with the mainland of humanity.

The hardhearted person lacks the capacity for genuine compassion.  He is unmoved by the pains and afflictions of his brothers.  He passes unfortunate men every day, but he never really sees them.  He gives dollars to a worthwhile charity, but he gives not of his spirit.

The hardhearted individual never sees people as people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever-turning wheel.  In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands.  In the massive wheel of big city life, he sees men as digits in a multitude.  In the deadly wheel of army life, he sees men as numbers in a regiment.  He depersonalizes life.

Jesus frequently illustrated the characteristics of the hardhearted.  The rich fool was condemned not because he was not tough minded, but rather because he was not tenderhearted.  Life for him was a mirror in which he saw only himself, and not a window through which he saw other selves.  Dives went to hell not because he was wealthy, but because he was not tenderhearted enough to see Lazarus and because he made no attempt to bridge the gulf between himself and his brother.

Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove.  To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish.  To have dovelike without serpentlike qualities is to be sentimental, anemic, and aimless.  We must combine strongly marked antitheses.

We as Negroes must bring together tough mindedness and tenderheartedness, if we are to move creatively toward the goal of freedom and justice.  Soft-minded individual among us feel that the only way to deal with oppression is by adjusting to it.  They acquiesce and resign themselves to segregation.  They prefer to remain oppressed.  When Moses led the children of Israel from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land, he discovered that slaves do not always welcome their deliverers.  They would rather bear those ills they have, as Shakespeare pointed out, than flee to others that they know not of.  They prefer the “fleshpots of Egypt” to the ordeals of emancipation.  But this is not the way out.  Soft-minded acquiescence is cowardly.  My friends, we cannot win the respect of the white people of the South or elsewhere if we are willing to trade the future of our children for our personal safety and comfort.  Moreover, we must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.

And there are hardhearted and bitter individuals among us who would combat the opponent with physical violence and corroding hatred.  Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace.  I am convinced that if we succumb to the temptation to use violence in our struggle for freedom, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be a never-ending reign of chaos.  A Voice, echoing through the corridors of time, says to every intemperate Peter, “Put up thy sword.”  History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations that failed to follow Christ’s command.

III

A third way is open to our quest for freedom, namely nonviolent resistance, which combines tough mindedness and tenderheartedness and avoids the complacency and do-nothingness of the soft minded and the violence and bitterness of the hardhearted.  My belief is that this method must guide our action in the present crisis in race relations.  Through nonviolent resistance we shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system.  We must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as citizens, but may it never be said, my friends, that to gain it we used the inferior methods of falsehood, malice, hate, and violence.

I would not conclude without applying the meaning of the text to the nature of God.  The greatness of our God lies in the fact that he is both tough minded and tenderhearted.  He has qualities both of austerity and of gentleness.  The Bible, always clear in stressing both attributes of God, expresses his tough mindedness in his justice and wrath and his tenderheartedness in his love and grace.  God has two outstretched arms.  One is strong enough to surround us with justice, and one is gentle enough to embrace us with grace.  On the one hand, God is a God of justice who punished Israel for her wayward deeds, and on the other hand, he is a forgiving father whose heart was filled with unutterable joy when the prodigal son returned home.

I am thankful that we worship a God who is both tough minded and tenderhearted.  If God were only tough minded, he would be a cold, passionless despot sitting in some far-off Heaven “contemplating all,” as Tennyson puts it in “The Palace of Art.”  He would be Aristotle’s “unmoved mover,” self-knowing but not other-loving.  But if God were only tenderhearted, he would be too soft and sentimental to function when things go wrong and incapable of controlling what he has made.  He would be like H. G. Well’s loveable God in God, the Invisible King, who is strongly desirous of making a good world but finds himself helpless before the surging powers of evil.  God is neither hardhearted nor soft minded.  He is tough minded enough to transcend the world; he is tenderhearted enough to live in it.  He does not leave us alone in our agonies and struggles.  He seeks us in dark places and suffers with us and for us in our tragic prodigality.

At times we need to know that the Lord is a God of justice.  When slumbering giants of injustice emerge in the Earth, we need to know that there is a God of power who can cut them down like the grass and leave them withering like the Greek herb.  When our most tireless efforts fail to stop the surging sweep of oppression, we need to know that in this universe is a God whose matchless strength is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of man.  But there are also times when we need to know that God possesses love and mercy.  When we are staggered by the chilly winds of adversity and battered by the raging storms of disappointment and when through our folly and sin we stray into some destructive far country and are frustrated because of a strange feeling of homesickness, we need to know that there is Someone who loves us, cares for us, understands us, and will give us another chance.  When days grow dark and nights grow dreary, we can be thankful that our God combines in his nature a creative synthesis of love and justice that will lead us through life’s dark valleys and into sunlit pathways of hope and fulfillment.

[ashleytoland-blog]

Project 2: Word Research

Personality Words Research: Definition, Etymology, Synonyms

Crazy Oxford Living Dictionaries:

1. (Adj.) Mad, especially as manifested in wild or aggressive behavior 1.1 Extremely angry 1.2. Foolish

2. Extremely enthusiastic

3. Archaic (of a ship or building) full of cracks or flaws; unsound.

Origin: Late 16th century (in sense ‘full of cracks’): from craze + -y.

Synonyms: mad, insane, out of one's mind, deranged, demented, not in one's right mind, crazed, lunatic, non compos mentis, unbalanced, unhinged, unstable, disturbed, distracted, mad as a hatter, mad as a March hare, stark mad

Urban Dictionary:

1. Often misinterpreted as a bad characteristic, crazy is used to describe people that are random, hyper, creative, and flat-out fun to hang out with. 2. Used to describe someone with serious mental issues that often affect their interaction with other people

Compassionate

Oxford Living Dictionaries:

1. Feeling of sympathy or concern for others.

Origin: Late 16th century: from compassion + -ate, influenced by archaic French compassioné feeling pity.

Synonyms: pitying, sympathetic, empathetic, understanding, caring, concerned, solicitous, sensitive, tender-hearted, soft-hearted, warm-hearted, warm, loving, tender, gentle, merciful, lenient, tolerant, considerate, thoughtful, kind, kindly, kind-hearted, humanitarian, humane, charitable, benevolent, good-natured, well disposed, big-hearted

Urban Dictionary: 1. Inclined to pity or mercy

Assertive

Oxford Living Dictionaries:

1. Having or showing a confident and forceful personality.

Origin: North American English

Synonyms: confident, forceful, self-confident, positive, bold, decisive, assured, self-assured, self-possessed, believing in oneself, self-assertive, authoritative, strong-willed, insistent, firm, determined, commanding, bullish, dominant, domineering, assaultive

Urban Dictionary:

1. To do what you want to do, in an aggressive yet not overbearing way. To go for what you want.

Shameless

Oxford Living Dictionaries:

1. (of a person or their conduct) characterized by or showing a lack of shame; barefaced or brazen

Origin: Old English sc(e)amlēas (see shame, -less). (Negation of) Old English sc(e)amu (noun), sc(e)amian ‘feel shame’, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch schamen (verb) and German Scham (noun), schämen (verb).

Synonyms: flagrant, blatant, barefaced, overt, brazen, brash, audacious, outrageous, undisguised, unconcealed, transparent unabashed, unashamed, without shame, unembarrassed, unblushing, unrepentant:: brazen, bold, forward, immodest, indecorous, wanton, abandoned

Urban Dictionary: Having no shame

Progressive

Oxford Living Dictionaries:

1. (Adj.) (of a person or idea) favouring social reform. 2.1 favoring innovation or change.

1. (Noun) An advocate of social reform

Origin: Early 17th century: from French progressif, -ive or medieval Latin progressivus, from progress- gone forward, from the verb progredi (see progress).

Synonyms: modern, liberal, advanced, forward-looking, forward-thinking, go-ahead, enlightened, enterprising, innovative, up-and-coming, new, dynamic, avant-garde, modernistic, disruptive radical, left-wing, reforming, reformist, revolutionary, revisionist, progressivist

[Excerpt] Progressive Thinking: A Synthesis of Progressive Values, Beliefs, and Positions [Retrieved from: ThinkProgress.org]: As progressives, we believe that everyone deserves a fair shot at a decent, fulfilling, and economically secure life.  We believe that everyone should do his or her fair share to build his life through education and hard work through active participation in public life.  We believe that everyone should play by the same set of rules with no special privileges for the well-connected or wealthy.

ThinkProgress.org: Four Pillars of Progressive Thinking:

Freedom 2. Opportunity 3. Responsibility 4. Cooperation

Mom/Mother

Oxford Living Dictionaries:

1. [Mother]  A woman in relation to her child or children.

Origin: Old English mōdor, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch moeder and German Mutter, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin mater and Greek mētēr.

Synonyms: female parent, materfamilias, matriarch, biological mother, birth mother, foster mother, adoptive mother, stepmother, surrogate mother.

Urban Dictionary: The woman who loves you unconditionally from birth, the one who puts her kids before herself and the one who you can always count on above everyone else. Just telling her your problems makes you feel better because mom's always know how to make it all go away. Even if you fight, know that she's just looking out for your best interests.

Feminist/Feminism

Oxford Living Dictionaries:

1. Feminist: A person who supports feminism

1. Feminism: (mass noun) The advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes

Origin:

[Feminist] Late 19th century: from French féministe, from Latin femina woman. [Feminism] Late 19th century: from French féminisme.

Synonyms: Decent Human Being

Urban Dictionary:

[Feminist] Someone who believes in the radical notion that women are people.

[Feminism] The belief that women are and should be treated as potential intellectual equals and social equals to men. These people can be either male or female human beings, although the ideology is commonly (and perhaps falsely) associated mainly with women.The basic idea of Feminism revolves around the principle that just because human bodies are designed to perform certain procreative functions, biological elements need not dictate intellectual and social functions, capabilities, and rights.  Feminism also, by its nature, embraces the belief that all people are entitled to freedom and liberty within reason--including equal civil rights--and that discrimination should not be made based on gender, sexual orientation, skin color, ethnicity, religion, culture, or lifestyle.Feminists--and all persons interested in civil equality and intellectuality--are dedicated to fighting the ignorance that says people are controlled by and limited to their biology.

Stoner

Note: Prescription IAW MMMP 

Oxford Living Dictionaries:

1. A person who regularly takes drugs, especially cannabis. Merriam-Webster: 1. A person who habitually uses drugs or alcohol

Synonyms: addict, dopehead, druggie (also druggy), fiend, freak [slang], head, hophead [slang], hype [slang], junkie (also junky), doper, user (First Known Use) 1971

Urban Dictionary: Slang for somebody who smokes cannabis, often. Most people would talk them down as if they are better, though they often consume poisons such as alcohol and caffeine. Stoners are generally a friendly minority, peaceful, and harmless. Synonyms: stoner, pothead, junkie, junky, toker

Dysfunctional Veteran

“Dysfunctional Veteran” (DV) is a term used colloquially among former American service members who encounter acute or chronic periods of maladjustment in transition from military service.  The attitudes and experiences unite the identified population and seek to radically (and most often, offensively) destigmatize the common mental health and socioeconomic struggles endured after military service.

WARNING: The content of the following page is considered offensive and vulgar.  I do not condone any of the negative attitudes or explicitly support the views and opinions of this page, nor am I directly involved with the organization professionally. 

Dysfunctional Veterans™  Community

https://www.facebook.com/DysfunctionalVeterans/

Mission Statement: Dysfunctional Veterans is a brotherhood and sisterhood of veterans rooted in sarcasms and the things that remind us we are not alone. We strive to entertain those who served, to offend those who never did. We know there is no better sense of warped humor than that of a veteran. We endeavor to bring quality information that is easily misconstrued and offensive to the civilian populace. A Veteran is a person who understands life’s intangibles of freedom, justice and democracy. The Veteran’s motto is to live and let live. But, if a Veteran had to choose between servitude and conflict, the true Veteran would once again answer the call to duty.

[cabiba]

As a writer who identifies as a leftist, and who sympathizes with Noam Chomsky’s anarcho-syndicalism on a root personal level, I should theoretically be joining the chorus of critics who have decided that Jordan Peterson is a reactionary.

In fact, Jordan Peterson has plenty of followers on the left, but watching the media climate surrounding his book release, you’d think he appeals only to the most reactionary, hyper-masculine discontents of the modern world. To be fair to the journalists, it is true that there are two Jordan Petersons. There is the lecturer, who juxtaposes mythological and religious themes with psychology and evolutionary biology, presenting a synthesis of science and religion, and then there is the social media culture warrior. Watching Peterson’s lectures versus watching snippets of him online, in recent interviews, you are watching two different men. It’s what the digital era does to people – it fragments them. Hundreds of hours of brilliant speeches are to be judged based on a few soundbites on Mic or Vice, or whatever dense abstractions can be made to look absurd by a political writer with no interest in Peterson’s field, such as Nathan Robinson.

But Peterson’s critics have barely engaged with his basic claims. Maps of Meaning is an attempt to take the wisdom of religion and ancient cultures and explain, through a contemporary lens of modern psychology, what these cultures got right. It is an attempt to revive the past as a source of deep knowledge, not wreckage to be discarded at the altar of scientific materialism, or a postmodern presentism.

Jordan B Peterson

Peterson’s argument is simple: repeated cultural symbols, in large part, represent aspects of our psychobiological nature, and many of these symbols have been expressed universally across cultures through myths, legends and archetypes.  Such symbols may include the snake swallowing its own tail (chaos) and the heroic individual (the Self emerging out of chaos). This Jungian work may be difficult to read, and to validate empirically, but it is not subjective mist. Its basic assumptions derive from neuroscience, evolutionary biology and developmental psychology. Unlike postmodern thought, Peterson’s work is built on synthesising what we know from the behavioural sciences with the vast accumulated record of mythological story-telling and what these stories tell us about human nature. It is an ambitious project that no other public intellectual has dared to provide in an age that is exhausted and cynical of grand narratives.

In a better world, Peterson’s critics would be helping him refine his theories and hone his argumentation, moving our cultural conceptions of human nature forward. Instead, the caliber of his critics, and their desire to completely dismiss Peterson as a fraud, have created parallel worlds that do not meet.

Of course, criticism of any public intellectual is always going to occur. Any person who promotes their ideas in the public sphere is going to be scrutinised, often robustly. But the hatchet jobs on Peterson have possessed a particularly malicious tone. One wonders if Western intellectuals as a class have simply become complacent, fat, and soft-in-the-head. In The Guardian and The Baffler, Peterson is a “charlatan”, who uses “quackery”, and is obsessed with “conspiracy theories” of postmodern dominance.

And yet, the “conspiracy” of a postmodern intellectual class becomes a reality when the mere mention of basic scientific facts is condemned as reactionary and immoral. There is a sickly resistance to science among the left-leaning media class, where solid psychometric findings are treated as a matter of moralizing opinion. No doubt, to Peterson’s critics, such findings as average sex differences in occupational interest, or in personality traits such as agreeableness, classify as “pseudoscience.” And no doubt to Peterson’s critics, the notion that cognitive ability, or intelligence, is not arbitrary, and is also heritable, is also “pseudoscience” despite the fact that findings on intelligence are some of the most robust and replicable in all of social science.

These science-blind assumptions do real damage. If we assume that cognitive ability doesn’t matter, and build a society on ruthless ideas of meritocracy where only the cognitive elite can succeed, we will produce a broken system that will produce many, many losers. If boys and men are repeatedly told that masculinity is essentially “toxic” and in need of suppression, this may produce a society of angry, repressed men. At every level of our civilization, human biology is relevant, and engaging with it thoughtfully could not be of more critical importance. If we can’t be honest about the biological aspects of our nature now, how will we possibly deal with debates going into the future? Discussions around gene editing, cognitive enhancement, even artificial intelligence and automation are more crucial than ever. But if we cannot even agree on the basic scientific facts about our own fallible nature, how can we possibly agree on the right ways to proceed?

In an article titled “Jordan Peterson’s Bullshit” published in the Marxist magazine Jacobin, Harrison Fluss dismisses “real differences between men and women” without even attempting to address the research, let alone counter it.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/02/jordan-peterson-enlightenment-nietzsche-alt-right

Fluss’s viewpoint is so ideologically hammer-headed that his hit piece on Peterson argues that the tragedy of being does not come “from an inherently unknowable and mysterious world. It comes from capitalism.” Perhaps, if he had listened to Peterson’s lectures, he would understand that dramatic inequality not only preceded the industrial era, but also preceded the existence of humankind. If we want to do something about it (which we do), why pretend that suffering itself was a capitalist invention?

What is behind this near-uniform reaction from the moralizing, young, intellectual, media class? I almost certainly know what it is: guilt.

Living in a world of inequality, material and otherwise, inspires a profound sense of guilt that can only be suppressed by rejecting all claims to material hierarchy, human nature, and all the tragic inequalities that follow. It’s a sensible impulse, from the perspective of public virtue. I’m sure it feels like the right thing to do. But for the interests of building a cohesive society through the pursuit of truth, it could not be more maladapted.

I identify much more as a leftist than a conservative or a liberal. I have, for most of my life, opposed capitalism, and considered the capitalist world to be akin to fallen nature, a corrupted Eden. But the fatal problem for the left is that these grand, large-scale beliefs offer nothing in the way of defeating personal nihilism and cosmic futility. Peterson’s ideas, and the psychology of religion put forth in Maps of Meaning, resonate with me at a level much deeper than politics. Peterson’s lectures strive to illustrate the soul of the individual, something that is ultimately more compelling than any collective scheme to save the world from itself.

The problem is simple: journalists guilty about inequality portray Peterson as an anti-trans, Cold War lunatic. Then, people who read that commentary and end up watching videos from his Biblical Series, or his Maps of Meaning lectures, do not find a right-wing radical. Instead, they find a passionate lecturer against authoritarianism who is deeply invested in a symbolic, archetypal understanding of human nature. Now, they realize that all these left-leaning outlets have lied to them. Instead of exposing a bigot, they’ve smeared a serious scholar.

Then, the ordinary person’s distrust of the left only deepens.

https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/976203033511120902

Even Peterson’s radically-titled videos, such as “Identity Politics and the Marxist Lie of White Privilege”, do not focus on race, and are instead long lectures about individualism and the history of the Soviet Union. Yes, I find it unlikely that modern social justice movements have much in common with Stalin or Mao, and I think Peterson overestimates the organization and power of the modern left. But when complicated individuals, particularly existentialist Christians who argue for “Darwinian pragmatism”, are judged by a few soundbites, it creates an intellectual atmosphere of stagnation and spiritless conformity.

After all, those who consider acknowledging sex differences to be sexist cannot possibly be allowed to dictate the limits of acceptable discourse. Those who think that intelligence is an entirely subjective construct should not be allowed sit on the sidelines and tell everyone to get an elite education, drowning themselves into debt trying to learn skills they may not even be able to learn. The US military does not induct anyone with an IQ below 83 explicitly because intelligence is real, and predicts meaningful outcomes.

But to the postmodern left, all of this is completely, and totally taboo. There is no such thing as a “universal human nature” that is influenced by biology. To suggest that would be to “reinforce the status quo” and to suggest that, as Cathy Newman said, “we should model our societies in the image of the lobster”.

Peterson is accused of raising a postmodern boogeyman, but his core claim about postmodernism is true. In postmodern literature, there is no truth outside of discourse. The implications of that are devastating – it means that any scientific findings that make us uncomfortable do not emerge from objective reality, but are themselves constructs, or products of “straight white male bias”. If it is discovered that men and women differ in their interests, occupational choices or in certain personality traits, those findings are already part of a “discourse” on sexism, and cannot be objective. If you want to ruin Western civilization and break the sciences, you’d do no better than to make people believe that the scientific method is a tool of oppression.

The neo-Marxist addition to postmodernism may also seem sloppy, until you understand that any scientific inquiry confirming differences amongst people is ideologically incompatible with the Marxist faith that a world can exist with total equality. Marxist assumptions about a world without any natural hierarchy or limitations suppress a real understanding of individual differences. Worse, they also harm the working class by pretending that equality of outcome is possible, that men and women are identical, and that issues such as cognitive ability are only a concern of “fascists”. They destroy the study of society by attributing all difference to social oppression rather than actually understanding the issues at hand.

But the self-deception doesn’t end there. The choir of critics are utterly confused – they wish to argue that Peterson is a reactionary who is opposed to Enlightenment values, but at the same time they dismiss entirely his empirical work as a research psychologist, and practical experience as a clinician. These writers want to present Peterson’s illustration of the dominance hierarchies of lobsters as the equivalent of “pick-up artists” who fetishize domination and victory—as if there isn’t an entire field of science devoted to understanding the deep evolutionary significance of animal behavior. Here, the left’s scientific illiteracy is again painful. The authors of The Baffler’s “A Serious Man” cite “lazy science”, and consider problematic the notion that all people share an “innate psychobiological basis” which gives rise to universally appealing mythological narratives. They decry the notion that there could be such a thing that constitutes human nature, and consider it a reactionary attempt to avoid “alter[ing] our customs through rational critique”.

But this is all backwards! In order to alter anything, we must first understand it. To propose that an innate psychobiological human nature, which has been reflected in our cultural and mythological symbols, is a problem rather than a depiction, is the reason why the left is so incapable of changing the world. Carl Jung wrote in The Undiscovered Self that human beings, without knowledge of their individual and universal nature, will always collapse their rationality into the appeal of fascism and self-destructive movements. The Undiscovered Self is a deep appeal for knowledge of our universal human nature. Such knowledge, argued Jung, would be the basis from which an individual could behave thoughtfully.

This is the founding notion of Peterson’s project, as simply as it can be put: to offer self-knowledge in place of ideological fantasies of overthrowing the world.

Self-knowledge can only emerge from an honest confrontation with nature. Peterson simply points to biological mechanisms, hierarchies and differences that have been produced by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and argues that this is the foundation we have to work with.

To be clear, I do not think that hundreds of millions of years of Darwinian evolution determines the future – but I also cautiously understand that if we seek to change ourselves, we cannot lie to ourselves about what our history has entailed. There is cooperation in nature, but as individuals, distinct from one another, we require judgements, values and hierarchies to differentiate ourselves and find meaning. If everyone is the same, and no hierarchies of quality can be established, then life returns to chaos: the Ouroboros, the ancient symbol of the snake swallowing its own tail, the place where there is no objectivity, no knowledge, only warmth and desire.

A 17th-century depiction of the serpent eating its own tail.

And once we go there, we’re living in denial, and the world will bully and beat us, and we will lack any defense other than the eternal cry that capitalism is responsible for it all, and so leftist ideology itself becomes a self-perpetuating hell where nothing can be done. The individual level, as Peterson, Jung, Emerson, Rumi and countless other thinkers in dialogue with both nature and the ephemeral soul understood, is the place to focus your attention. Until individuals are honest, the sum total of those individuals will be a mess of self-deception.

The blank slate journalists, in rejecting human nature and its individual manifestations, are rejecting their power to change the world they despise. As long as the media class dismisses descriptive analogies of human society and biological hierarchy as innately wrong for moral reasons, we will be no better than the religious dogmatists who rejected inconvenient science centuries ago.

So finally, I put forward a plea to my fellow travelers on the left, who view our ancient biological nature as an obstacle to progress: we must first come to terms with material reality and human nature if we ever seek to change it. Until we do that, we’ll remain culturally stagnant, and the most unscrupulous actors on the far right, and in totalitarian governments, will seize upon dominance hierarchies and difficult scientific studies to justify their horrible crimes. The left needs to get on board with understanding human nature, because it is through understanding, not denial, that real progress can be made.

Alexander Blum’s writing focuses on politics, mysticism and fiction. Visit his website here and follow him on Twitter @AlexanderBlum0.