The early Roman Republic was democratic republic with notions of equality. Rome under the Christians was an undemocratic empire with huge disparities in wealth.
Paul was certainly not for equality when it came to women. Also, the equality before God was already established in Zoroastrianism. So Paul could not have invented it.
Trannies and their supporters have a low birthrate. A pagan Roman complained they will decline because the barbarians and Christians have a high birth rate.
Economic inequality in America is much higher than 60 years ago.
"Paul was certainly not for equality when it came to women." This is true, his position on women was pretty red-pilled.
Trannies and their liberal supporters have a low birth rate, but they don't really propagate via birth but via indoctrination and molestation, i.e. they convert the children of conservatives.
> "Also, the equality before God was already established in Zoroastrianism. So Paul could not have invented it."
Paul was a Jewish subject of a Roman Caesar - not a Zoroastrian. I feel like acting akin to a pedantic historian, but it is my impression that there is a difference. Zoroastrians did not expect the people outside their empire to recognise their good - until they came to conquer them, of course. Whereas Paul saw no trouble converting the subjects of Rome from their native gods (and even Emperor worship) to Yeshua. And it's not like Paul was expecting the Roman Caesar to convert to his creed (Paul was not some new sovereign renovating the cult to his liking).
That said, it is curious to note that the Christians did eventually come to associate their Jewish religion with the Roman Empire, and concerted efforts at Christianisation beyond their borders only came with Charlemagne (war-like) and the accursed Anglos (peaceful).
> "The early Roman Republic was democratic republic with notions of equality. Rome under the Christians was an undemocratic empire with huge disparities in wealth."
The Mammon-worship of the empire is another topic, tangential to the pollution of blood and the corruption of the moral character. Yet it is a mistake to call Christian self-abnegation healthy. After all, their distrust of the riches might well have contributed to the fall of Rome. And they could not build a good society in its place, chemically castrating their children the moment Luther translated the Bible and medicine developed the drugs.
Christianity spread Eastward from the start. Christianity was once the dominant religion in the Middle East. Western Christianity was once the backwater of the Christian world.
Reputedly, the apostle Thomas went to India. Nestorian Christianity sent missionaries as far as Mongolia.
See "The Lost History of Christianity" by Philip Jenkins.
I know all that. What you're missing is my ability to cut off the irrelevant parts of history. The Eastern Roman Empire became largely irrelevant starting with the Justinian plague. Not to say that the West rose immediately after - it took a millennium to build itself up. But in the mean time, Byzantium was vanquished without a trace, with the Turkic realm in its place.
It is one thing to debate philosophy and theology, where all views are effectively eternal. It is another matter to consider the worldviews which had any effect in reality. Mongolia, for one, has always been an irrelevant backwater, a heaven's scourge for China's sins in the better times. Whereas the legacy of the Greeks only lives on in Russia - a similarly irrelevant shithole, akin to Poland or Armenia.
What are your predictions in the next 5-10 years? Is there any safety in the world if you are considered the wrong skin tone or wrong sexual orientation? Skin tone is something one can’t hide or change.
Hi Deb, I think in prior decades there were places to flee to but not really in the current era. Australia and New Zealand had some of the worst COVID lockdowns in the world, and they've both banned gun ownership while swarming their countries with non-integrating nonwhites. Europe isn't any better. I think rural areas will likely hold out longer than urban areas, for whatever that's worth, and the more self-sufficient one can be in terms of their living and food supplies the better off you'll be.
Specific predictions are a tricky matter; it's hard to know from the outside of their plots until they unleash their chosen plot de jure. Globohomo operates using many developed contingencies that they can roll out depending on political necessity. For example, they rolled out COVID in 2020 because they needed Trump gone and to institute permanent vote by mail. But they likely had that plan for decades ready to go and dusted it off. They have many other contingencies ready to go when needed. All these top level guys do is plot and come up with new plans to consolidate their power and crush their enemies.
With that caveat, my predictions for the next 5-10 years are that globohomo will roll out central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) under the guise of either a fake banking crisis, or otherwise spread it more slowly via introducing it in the form of welfare. CBDCs will be used to micromanage individual behavior (enforced by woke AI) to an extent greater than any other in human history.
I think there is a decent chance that globohomo pushes the right into a corner -- perhaps by charging Trump with treason for 1/6 and putting him in prison for life or giving him the death penalty, or through other measures (87,000 new armed IRS agents?) -- in order to cause them to rise up, after which globohomo will use the military to brutally crush them.
That's all cute, although why not emigrate to Slovakia? Incidentally, this is why I think in my most tinfoil-hat fears a nuclear war with Poland possible - because Poland is just a large Slovakia.
I agree with much of this, but think it’s more precise to speak of an inversion of Christian values. You allude to this in the post when you point to atheists and communists being essentially crypto-Christians.
The problem started in 1054, when the Western Church split from the Eastern Church, believing that the West could function under an authoritarian pope, who himself owned land and property. Thus, the Church pivoted from concerns about Heaven and Eternity, and towards materialist endeavours. Their pontiff was no longer subject to obedience at a council of bishops.
Essentially, the Roman Catholics wanted to create a heaven on Earth. This is the fruit of that.
One small quip: there is no evidence that Paul’s letters were meant to rule up the Jewish population against the Roman elite. Indeed, Paul was persecuted by his own people and some of his writings might even be labelled ‘anti-Semitic’ by today’s standards.
A short read is the first 30 pages or so of Seraphim Rose’s “Orthodox Survival Guide,” which has references to other authors should you desire further reading.
The issue with this view is that there is no "Eastern church", historically & geopolitically speaking. There was the rump Roman Empire in Greece, and later there emerged the primitive Russian Empire in the north-eastern wilderness. That's it. We cannot realistically conjecture that they would have behaved differently in the conditions of Western Europe simply because they never had the power and the riches of Italy or the Netherlands to "develop" (a loaded term, I know).
Meta-speaking, talking about Orthodox Christianity is an American meme. I'm a Galician living in Galicia, people here are effectively Orthodox (Greek Catholics are Orthodox in ritual, subservient to the Pope, with local schizophrenias such as creationsim). So what? Poland itself should be viewed as a sad excuse for Catholicism, as its heart was in Italy.
And the irony is that it was the German Protestant reaction to the pagan Renaissance in Italy that led to this precipice of transvestitism. The Italians themselves were forging themselves to regain the splendour of antiquity, as per Nietzsche (Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli, etc.). But then they were embroiled in that futile struggle with the German monk.
(The last paragraph must have been written possessed by the animus of il Duce.)
I agree. There was One Church until the 11th Century. After this, there was a division between Eastern and Western churches. The theological and cultural differences, which had already come to a head by the 10th Century, became even more distinct following The Great Schism.
'Effectively Orthodox' is meaningless. The Eastern Catholics joined the Pope for political reasons. The entire Roman Catholic project is a political one, with theology as a secondary concern. This is confirmed by the history of the 'Catholic Church,' beginning with Charlemagne.
The Renaissance was an aberration, as you say, but it was a result of The Roman Catholic Church schismating from its Orthodox heritage.
Excellent post! Very interesting. I believe it was philosopher Don Marguis, or his bud Archy the Cockroach, who said, "If meek inherit the earth someone has to run it for them"
The balance is found in the concept of natural rights, which must adhere to the principal of non contradiction, that is, ones natural right must not contradict another's natural right. Life, liberty, speech etc. You never know from where greatness will arise.
Beyond that, let the cream rise to the top.
It seems that all is lost until there is a transvaluation. This is unlikely without a catastrophic collapse.
Hi Broken, I'm a little weary of the concept of natural rights because I associate it both with egalitarianism and libertarianism (the latter of which can only work in a homogenous, high trust society). I ultimately think "rights" are ultimately upheld at the point of a gun, and to lose sight of that is to invite in decadence and complacency...I agree with you that a transvaluation of values seems highly unlikely without a major crisis.
Government is force. The question is how can that force be constrained. (If you think it should). I think the american framework is close, but has gone off the rails. Not sure how to rectify the short comings.
Egalitarianism is simply the disguise use by those seeking domination to hide behind. I do not think they are sincere in the slightest. They are sociopaths.
Agree that a common framework is required, and the ability to articulate that is the primary target of the unification of corporate and governmental power.
> "Egalitarianism is simply the disguise use by those seeking domination to hide behind. I do not think they are sincere in the slightest. They are sociopaths."
Said by every single Marxist ever! They simply cannot believe that the Christians are genuinely this stupid and suicidal. But they are. The Anglos destroyed their empire for the sake of poor Slavic Jews. The Americans not only refused to exterminate the Japanese and Chinese when they could, they even proceeded to humiliate themselves in Afghanistan because they could not bring themselves to kill the Asiatics.
Now their empire crumbles because they fed China, their founding stock is being replaced with Mexicans, Jews and women, and it's still apparently some nefarious power play! Yes, these "sick psychopaths" are so "sick" - right when their paedophile rings are being uncovered, and glorious Jewish men are left hanging in their cells due to the whorish Me2 campaign (Epstein did nothing wrong).
Agreed! I know some people would still pull a Hillary Clinton and think 1984 was about why people should trust the government, but I still can't help but feel that if more people just read Harrison Bergeron, 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and their ilk, the general populace would at least be in slightly better shape. People need to at least watch Idiocracy! haha
I'm not an english speaker. what do you mean by " The central bank owning Rothschilds and their allies", is the central bank the owner or the property ?
totally agree with you, it's the formulation that puzzled me, I would have said the central bank owned by the Rothschilds" or "the Rothschilds-owned Central Banks"
anyway, the article is great and I fully agree on everything....I had heard about this Tom Holland but I did not appreciate how radical he could be in his positions, i'm amazed he's not canceled by the loonies....
Thank you, and nice links (although it looks like Romain hasn't tweeted in a couple of years). Yes, I like Guillaume Faye and the Nouvelle Droite...I regularly link to this post by the blogger Kynosarges about the weakness of the populist right: https://news.kynosarges.org/full-speed-into-the-void/
Kynosarges is a follower of the Nouvelle Droite...
The warrior-priests could be seen as the soyboy cucks of our SJW days. Or the Catholic knights in Prussia who weren't even permitted to rape the locals. Or the fanatical Bolsheviks. (All I'm saying is that "priest" is a ridiculously unclean word for Nietzsche.)
YES. Been thinking this for a while… Egalitarianism is a religious doctrine that comes straight out of Christianity, has been part of it from the beginning, and it makes absolutely no sense from a materialist perspective. This is my favorite of Yarvin’s themes; progressivism makes the most sense if you think about it as a Christian sect. I’ve grown increasingly sympathetic toward Christians/Christianity; they’ve been right on so many culture war issues. But I am simply incapable of believing in it myself, and even if it might actually be good for some people, I don’t believe a Christian revival could save the West. It’s how we ended up here in the first place; what’s to stop it from happening again? The solution to a lie isn’t a better more useful lie; only the truth will set you free. And the truth is that we are products of evolution, and as such, “equality” is literally incoherent. We differ as individuals and groups on everything that matters, and our psychology is attuned to differences in status. Both dominance/deference and the egalitarian impulse may be parts of our nature, and these need to be balanced, because hierarchies can indeed become tyrannical and exploitative, but they are also the only way complex social organization is possible. And if there is anything that could be considered “intrinsically” good, not just what someone happens to prefer, it must be self-sustaining. See Robert Wright’s Nonzero. “Good” that can’t propagate itself, ie that leads to a failure to reproduce, ultimately causes there to be less goodness in the universe, and anything that causes there to be less goodness in the universe can’t really be good after all. (In theory, it could and probably does spread as a parasitic meme, continuing to spread to other minds even as it effectively sterilizes its hosts, but natural selection will catch up. There’s a lag, but maybe not as many suppose. I think it will noticeable over the next century; those who have children will be those who WANT to have them, and so whatever traits are correlated with, like I suspect temperamental traits that make people consciously want children and/or be resistant to anti-natalist ideologies… It will be them, not the meek, who will inherit the earth.)
I much appreciated this. I have been consumed of late, how to upend (transvalue) society to save it. We are on a trajectory of the loss of America and the West, an America where no one remembers either, and all the knowledge and literature of 2500 years is as dust.
Though I read Kynosarga's piece too, and I was following along until his finis, that we have to become European again. I think that is wrong. We cannot return to the Faustian. What transvaluing happens here has to be fundamentally American, i.e. something based on the old but wholly new.
Hi RGK, I understand and respect your approach, many share it. But it is a deontological approach -- i.e. it accepts Christ's resurrection at face value and then tries to make sense of the world based on that belief as the cornerstone of the worldview. My approach is looking at things via cause-and-effect, judging beliefs by the fruit that it bears, and so it is a fundamentally different approach. There is plenty of good that has come from Christianity, as long as the egalitarianism has been kept in check...
Hi RGK, sure. The way I like to review religious institutions -- and all institutions, really, including secular ones -- is by exploring the real-world results of those institutions, which can be both good and bad, usually both and in varying degrees and ways. Then I ask why and how did those results happen and develop in that way? In other words, I start with looking at the results and then I work backwards to the theology, not starting with the theology and then trying to explain the world from it.
Through these judgments I have developed a worldview, which I then test recursively based on its predictive power for the future. If a future event doesn't turn out the way I expected, then I try to update my worldview to accommodate the event. Sometimes these updates are minor, sometimes major (although not many major updates these days).
Here's an example. Based on demographic changes Islam is rapidly expanding and Christianity is rapidly contracting throughout Europe, and trends indicate that this will continue. What is it about the nature of Christianity and Islam that has led to this outcome so far (in addition to other factors, of course)? Then delve into specific religious doctrines, etc...
Hi RGK, thanks for the question. My perspective starts with material observation which leads to certain spiritual conclusions, specifically gnosticism. My approach so far has been the following:
1. Observance of material reality leads one to the following understanding: that this reality is full of pain and suffering (ala Schopenhauer and the Buddhists), that everything material is impermanent and there is nothing we can hold onto for support other than perhaps our values. Everything material has a cause leading to God as a first-cause.
2. From observing the behavior of our current elites, we can see they seem inspired by what can best be described as a creative demonic energy -- an energy to destroy and invert values, to lie and steal at every opportunity, an atheistic, hypocritical and fully materialist energy. Because every energy has a counter-balance, that also gives weight to there being a non-materialist, spiritual God.
3. Reading history indicates that it has always been this way (i.e. evil elites in control) and perhaps will always be this way. This goes hand in hand with Matthew 4:8 where the Devil offered Jesus dominion over all the nations of the earth, which Jesus declined, but the offer implied that the Devil had the means to fulfill it.
4. This means that the Devil (or what I think of as the Demiurge) is in charge of material reality, and that the God of light and justice is either absent from the material plane or at minimum does not hold sway here. Evil rules here and will continue to rule here, and we must find solace through non-material means.
5. Hence, gnosticism.
There are a number of posts covering the details of this argument if you wish to explore further:
Item 4: Possible that demonic authority is granted w/parameters, a la Job?
In Job’s troubles, YHWH remained Sovereign and defined the extent to which “Evil” could touch Job’s person and property.
From an earthly perspective, it appeared that “bad circumstances” were destroying Job and that—if “God” existed—God was “powerless” to prevent calamity.
I loved this essay. It reminds of the debate on the far right that is roughly about whether the goal should be to change minds or whether it should be to gain power. I don't think it's an either or, but I've been of the mind that we really need to stem the tide of leftist thought and start to make inegalitarian, meritocratic and self-favoring ('America First', 'white people built the modern world and have a lot more to be proud of than ashamed of') ideas more popular and publicly acceptable. I think the overreach of the left is starting to accomplish this but it's really surprising how difficult it is to make these ideas, that I think most people implicitly agree with, explicit and publicly acceptable.
Nice comment, Rowan, and I agree it's not an either/or. That being said, the difficulty in effectuating real change stems, in my opinion, from people's failure to recognize that their beliefs are not rooted in reason, intellect or science (the way everyone wants to think their beliefs are), but rather from the blindly retained ethics and morals of a long-since-discarded religious faith whose rotten corpse currently manifests in an all-pervasive, all-encompassing nihilism. If people begin to understand that their belief in egalitarianism are irrational and faith-based, perhaps real change becomes possible...
Nice diagram of cultural changes, but still skeptical of the proposed governing mechanisms and overall model of the system. Be interested in seeing how variables like energy use per capita and average population density map out against degree of egalitarianism 'penetration'. I suspect instead that increased (labor-free and decision-free) production in the economic system over time took the average level of environmental pressure off people so that what they did, and how well they did it, came to matter much, much less than in it did in the past. Currently (well, that may be slowly changing now) people like those that constitute the modern 'left wing' have plenty of time, energy, and opportunity to artificially fill in the empty spaces in their lives with all kinds of odd imaginings and cultural constructions based on those imaginings. If this is a correct interpretation, it very well might be a blessing they're culturally 'infected' with the relatively harmless tenets of Christianity; i.e., it could possibly be worse.
Are you implying the England and Germany of the 1930s to be technologically different? Because the ideologies they ended up adopting proved to be absolutely irreconcilable. Blaming everything on the material (=economic, race is matter, too) conditions is pure Marxism.
Nah, I'm saying the technological and economic slack [western urban] people have allows them to follow their fantasies. These fantasies used to be markedly different from place to place, but now these imaginings are more homogeneous. Marxism has nothing to do with this hypothesis -- except that it also was (and is) an economically and technologically- permitted fantasy for some people.
But that's the thing, technology is an enable of culture, yet the underlying culture can be diametrically opposite. Some countries use trains to transport migrants in, others - to transport the Jews out (gassing them in the process, IIRC).
It's uniquely ironic, to say the least, to see a Gnostic complain about leftism and blame Christianity for it.
The Bible is the least leftist book in existence.
Read the Old Testament. The Mosaic Law is the perfect blueprint for a nationalist, patriarchal state.
Read the New Testament. Jesus upholds the Law and condemns those who would set it aside [Matthew 5:17-19] and the Apostle Paul, even though he pointed out that it is faith and not works what brings salvation, declared the Law and the Commandments "holy, just and good" [Romans 7:12] and defined sin as a transgression of the Law [Romans 7:7]
And not only did the Reformation NOT cause leftism in any way, shape or form, it actually provided the best antidote for it in Calvinism, which destroys a pillar without which leftism cannot stand: the conceit of believing in free will. You'll see that "Leftist Protestantism" is in fact the complete opposite of Protestantism (being the Jesuit-created heresy of Arminianism, which then became Baptism, Quakerism, Methodism, etc). Puritans used to publicly hang Quakers (Mary Dyer and her ilk), and now they're called Protestants???
Leftism has three pillars: belief in free will, belief in metaphysics (the soul/the spiritual world) and the victimhood mentality. Neither of those are in the raw text of the Bible.
Hi lurker, thanks for the comment. God as portrayed in the NT has an entirely different outlook than the God portrayed in the OT. The acknowledgment of this dichotomy formed the basis for Marcionism, which was quite popular at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism Marcion had preserved Paul's letters and is the basis for why we can read them today, interestingly enough... With respect to Protestantism, I attempted to address it in Part 2 of the following: https://neofeudalism.substack.com/p/deeper-societal-trends-predating . I hope you find this helpful.
First of all, thank you for answering politely to my comment. Although my tone is quite vehement, I only comment because you are clearly intelligent and well read and therefore capable of changing opinions.
>God as portrayed in the NT has an entirely different outlook than the God portrayed in the OT
Absolutely wrong. Not only the NT diligently fulfills the prophecies of the OT (the coming of the Messiah, the grafting of the Gentiles into the Covenant, etc), the NT cannot even EXIST without the OT. From what else can it derive its authority?
If YHWH is the "evil" God of the Gnostics, what legitimacy does Jesus have, as the son of the "evil" God who fulfills the prophecies of the prophets of the "evil" God?
>Marcion had preserved Paul's letters and is the basis for why we can read them today
From the very link you gave me, Wikipedia: Marcion POSSIBLY wrote the first Christian canon, which is a canon that not only rejects the OT (I've already mentioned why rejecting the OT is sawing the branch you are standing on) but also several Pauline epistles (for a supposed "true follower of Paul", it smells funky)
But let's just take some of the Pauline writings he did include in his own canon.
In the Book of Romans, Paul clearly states that the Law is not only holy, just and good (see my first comment), but also the standard which defines sin (as per my first post), but also contains a strict defense of the GOD OF MOSES [Romans 9:14-21] where he solves once and for all the problem of evil with the very simple observation that, if God is the creator of the universe, HE CAN DO WHATEVER HE PLEASES WITH HIS CREATION, just how a potter has the right to do whatever he wants with his clay. Attempting to apply any moral standard to the Creator implies that there is an idea, a moral standard above the Creator that can judge Him. This is not the Bible, this is naked Platonism. And what a surprise, Marcion was a Platonist (i.e, a Pagan)
Let's take another book recognized by Marcion's canon: 1 Corinthians.
In 1 Corinthians 11:1-12, Paul clearly defends a very patriarchal view of the sexes. Not only is his view sourced from the Old Testament (compare 1 Corinthians 11:7 with Genesis 1:27) but it implies that the ontology of the human is based on its physical (material) characteristics, in that case the sexual organs. This goes against every Gnostic teaching ever, since for them, the material body is nothing but a meat prison created by the evil Demiurge that must be escaped.
You seem to be quite right-wing, being against anti-racism, feminism, transsexualism and the like. But then you seem to defend Gnosticism, which is a belief without whom none of these ideologies would exist. Am I missing something here?
Hi lurker, thanks again for your comment. I don't mind tough questions; I would only suggest that if you get emotionally triggered by certain content, that may mean that you yourself have unconscious/subconscious issues that you still need to work through. If I read content that triggers me -- even horrible content -- that usually means I have something inside myself I need to resolve (of course, I try to stay away from content I vehemently disagree with, but I also don't generally get emotionally triggered by it).
With respect to gnosticism, I have an upcoming post delving into it which may hopefully answer some of your questions. But essentially the use of the word "gnostic" has multiple meanings. The first use of the term is basically a smear by exoteric Christians against those they don’t like, including against each other. According to scholar Ioan Culianu:
"Once I believed that Gnosticism was a well-defined phenomenon belonging to the religious history of Late Antiquity. Of course, I was ready to accept the idea of different prolongations of ancient Gnosis, and even that of spontaneous generation of views of the world in which, at different times, the distinctive features of Gnosticism occur again.
I was soon to learn, however, that I was a naif indeed. Not only Gnosis was gnostic, but the Catholic authors were gnostic, the Neoplatonic too, Reformation was gnostic, Communism was gnostic, Nazism was gnostic, liberalism, existentialism and psychoanalysis were gnostic too, modern biology was gnostic, Blake, Yeats, Kafka were gnostic….I learned further that science is gnostic and superstition is gnostic…Hegel is gnostic and Marx is gnostic; all things and their opposite are equally gnostic."
Basically, the core use of this interpretation is an accusation that one’s opponents are using the pursuit of an Ideal as an idol that is not the ineffable Godhood - whether that be environmentalism/Gaia worship, race, economic equality/communism, etc. Through the pursuit of this Ideal - usually a secularized, blind devotional religious energy - with the correct understanding or outlook, adherents believe they can bring Heaven to Earth materially. I believe this first definition is how you are using the term.
However, there is a second definition of gnosticism which is how I use the term. Under this second definition gnosis is the understanding that this material realm is controlled by a malevolent Demiurgic creator (and/or a bumbling one; one of it’s common names, Yaldabaoth, means “the childish god”) and that by adopting an attitude of asceticism, humility and philosophical pessimism, by grappling with the contradictions inherent within this reality to try to achieve a higher-level synthesis, by trying to perfect our own phenotypes via our own unique spiritual, intuitive journeys, a gnosis that has to be personally and mystically experienced and not merely learned via exoterism, one may hope to spiritually ascend from this realm either on earth or at least in the afterlife.
I'll delve into this further in the upcoming post and will be happy to address further questions you have there...
Don't worry, I have an extreme emotional tolerance for crazy esoteric views of all types and I do share your second definition of Gnosticism, which is why I oppose it.
I'll set aside the fact that you do not address my scriptural arguments and ask you questions about Gnosticism as you see it.
If the material world is the corrupt plaything of an evil Demiurge and our purpose is to escape it:
On what grounds can you condemn transsexuals mutilating their bodies, coal-burners spitting on their heritage, vegans depriving their body of nutrients, and all the rest of the leftist panoply? They're just prisoners shitting up their prisons.
On what grounds can you condemn murder or suicide? At worst, if you believe in reincarnation, the dead just move from one prison to another one, and at best, you liberate them/yourself from the cycle of suffering of material existence.
Hell, if I believed YHWH to be an evil Demiurge, I would actually promote all of those things, to spite Him and oppose the Laws that He wrote. Which is what those in charge promote.
Now, I invite you to do a full 180º and see things this way:
YHWH is the Creator of everything (which means He cannot be judged because no one is above Him).
He created the world to be "the scenario of His game".
He created mankind to be the characters of that "game".
He told mankind the objective of the "game" (be fruitful and multiply and take dominion of the Earth, as per Genesis 1:28) and also created Satan and Sin so that there would be a permanent struggle within mankind to "drive the plot".
Then He took a random tribe, the Israelites, and blessed them with "the insider's manual" in the form of the Law and the Prophets of the Bible, in order to show the world how great can an unassuming nation be if they swear fealty to the Creator and play according to the "rules of the manual", and how utterly can such a nation be doomed when they disobey the rules.
Then comes the New Testament and Jesus, who, aside from offering a permanent way to "win the game" through the perfection of the sacrificial system, also took away the privileges of the Jews and told his apostles to freely offer them to any nation who was willing to receive them [Matthew 21:43 and 18:19-20]
And what do we see in history? That the more a nation obeys the Bible, the more prosperous and powerful it becomes (notice how the Great Divergence/European Ascendancy and the Reformation seem to go hand in hand), and that as soon as those great European nations thought they didn't need YHWH anymore, YHWH punished them by leaving them in the hands of the most depraved tyrants ever to exist.
Hi lurker, given time limitations I am attempting to focus on what stood out to me from your response. Regarding the scriptural arguments I offered some of the the NT references that speak to the core of egalitarianism within the post.
You wrote, "Attempting to apply any moral standard to the Creator implies that there is an idea, a moral standard above the Creator that can judge Him." I don't agree that God's actions from within the Bible cannot or should not be judged -- I think we have to use our reason as best as we see it while still leaving room for being wrong if or when life proves us as such, as you are correct that we are small, fallible creatures. Otherwise it is simply turning off our reason with blind belief, which I reject; reason and belief should be synthesized to become a more complete person.
"On what grounds can you condemn transsexuals mutilating their bodies, coal-burners spitting on their heritage, vegans depriving their body of nutrients, and all the rest of the leftist panoply? They're just prisoners shitting up their prisons. On what grounds can you condemn murder or suicide? At worst, if you believe in reincarnation, the dead just move from one prison to another one, and at best, you liberate them/yourself from the cycle of suffering of material existence."
I oppose those things because they make idols out of that which is not God -- transsexuals make idols out of their body, vegans making idols out of animal ethics. This world is fallen and will remain so; intense devotion to an Ideal will not lead to freedom but rather to disappointment. Typically gnostics are quite pacifistic (see the Cathars for example), but I believe we still have to live in this world and I prefer not to be a victim within it (a topic of another future post) - but that doesn't mean that prosperity or power can or should be linked to God's favor. Regarding "winning the game", it only looks to me like Islam is winning it based on immigration and demographic trends...
Strange you forgot where Paul says the the Law is the source of sin, or something close.
He, or the writings to him attributed, never tires of making the statement that Christ brought humankind beyond the stage where it had to obey the Law (a half-slave stage), to that wherein it obeys the Spirit.
See, here's the problem: your comment is comprised of one sentence that is true (but you removed it out of its context in order to misrepresent its meaning) and another one that is outright false. And of course, in both cases, you don't bother to quote the passages.
I'll spoonfeed you: The quote you took out of context was Romans 8:2.
The Law is the source of sin for the simple reason that it sets the standards for sin. It's in the very previous chapter [Romans 7:7], which by the way, I already quoted in my first comment.
Now, disobeying the Law results in death, and because of Original Sin we all die. YHWH graciously set up a system where His Son would be incarnated into a human and live a sinless life, yet receive the consequences of the sins of the Elect and die on the Cross (see the Levitical sin offerings involving unblemished animals), so that those same Elect will be blessed by the Spirit and eventually be resurrected with a new body untainted by Original Sin and therefore immortal.
This does not mean, however, that the Law is unnecessary, because we still all live in sinful bodies in a fallen world (i.e, slaves to sin) and we need the bindings of the Law to restrict and punish our sinful natures in order to have some semblance of a functional society until Judgement Day comes.
I can't believe that I have to explain that laws are necessary.
The only people who pretend they don't need the Law are those who don't want to be held accountable by it.
The early Roman Republic was democratic republic with notions of equality. Rome under the Christians was an undemocratic empire with huge disparities in wealth.
Paul was certainly not for equality when it came to women. Also, the equality before God was already established in Zoroastrianism. So Paul could not have invented it.
Trannies and their supporters have a low birthrate. A pagan Roman complained they will decline because the barbarians and Christians have a high birth rate.
Economic inequality in America is much higher than 60 years ago.
"Paul was certainly not for equality when it came to women." This is true, his position on women was pretty red-pilled.
Trannies and their liberal supporters have a low birth rate, but they don't really propagate via birth but via indoctrination and molestation, i.e. they convert the children of conservatives.
> "Also, the equality before God was already established in Zoroastrianism. So Paul could not have invented it."
Paul was a Jewish subject of a Roman Caesar - not a Zoroastrian. I feel like acting akin to a pedantic historian, but it is my impression that there is a difference. Zoroastrians did not expect the people outside their empire to recognise their good - until they came to conquer them, of course. Whereas Paul saw no trouble converting the subjects of Rome from their native gods (and even Emperor worship) to Yeshua. And it's not like Paul was expecting the Roman Caesar to convert to his creed (Paul was not some new sovereign renovating the cult to his liking).
That said, it is curious to note that the Christians did eventually come to associate their Jewish religion with the Roman Empire, and concerted efforts at Christianisation beyond their borders only came with Charlemagne (war-like) and the accursed Anglos (peaceful).
> "The early Roman Republic was democratic republic with notions of equality. Rome under the Christians was an undemocratic empire with huge disparities in wealth."
The Mammon-worship of the empire is another topic, tangential to the pollution of blood and the corruption of the moral character. Yet it is a mistake to call Christian self-abnegation healthy. After all, their distrust of the riches might well have contributed to the fall of Rome. And they could not build a good society in its place, chemically castrating their children the moment Luther translated the Bible and medicine developed the drugs.
Christianity spread Eastward from the start. Christianity was once the dominant religion in the Middle East. Western Christianity was once the backwater of the Christian world.
Reputedly, the apostle Thomas went to India. Nestorian Christianity sent missionaries as far as Mongolia.
See "The Lost History of Christianity" by Philip Jenkins.
I know all that. What you're missing is my ability to cut off the irrelevant parts of history. The Eastern Roman Empire became largely irrelevant starting with the Justinian plague. Not to say that the West rose immediately after - it took a millennium to build itself up. But in the mean time, Byzantium was vanquished without a trace, with the Turkic realm in its place.
It is one thing to debate philosophy and theology, where all views are effectively eternal. It is another matter to consider the worldviews which had any effect in reality. Mongolia, for one, has always been an irrelevant backwater, a heaven's scourge for China's sins in the better times. Whereas the legacy of the Greeks only lives on in Russia - a similarly irrelevant shithole, akin to Poland or Armenia.
What are your predictions in the next 5-10 years? Is there any safety in the world if you are considered the wrong skin tone or wrong sexual orientation? Skin tone is something one can’t hide or change.
Hi Deb, I think in prior decades there were places to flee to but not really in the current era. Australia and New Zealand had some of the worst COVID lockdowns in the world, and they've both banned gun ownership while swarming their countries with non-integrating nonwhites. Europe isn't any better. I think rural areas will likely hold out longer than urban areas, for whatever that's worth, and the more self-sufficient one can be in terms of their living and food supplies the better off you'll be.
Specific predictions are a tricky matter; it's hard to know from the outside of their plots until they unleash their chosen plot de jure. Globohomo operates using many developed contingencies that they can roll out depending on political necessity. For example, they rolled out COVID in 2020 because they needed Trump gone and to institute permanent vote by mail. But they likely had that plan for decades ready to go and dusted it off. They have many other contingencies ready to go when needed. All these top level guys do is plot and come up with new plans to consolidate their power and crush their enemies.
With that caveat, my predictions for the next 5-10 years are that globohomo will roll out central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) under the guise of either a fake banking crisis, or otherwise spread it more slowly via introducing it in the form of welfare. CBDCs will be used to micromanage individual behavior (enforced by woke AI) to an extent greater than any other in human history.
I think there is a decent chance that globohomo pushes the right into a corner -- perhaps by charging Trump with treason for 1/6 and putting him in prison for life or giving him the death penalty, or through other measures (87,000 new armed IRS agents?) -- in order to cause them to rise up, after which globohomo will use the military to brutally crush them.
That's all cute, although why not emigrate to Slovakia? Incidentally, this is why I think in my most tinfoil-hat fears a nuclear war with Poland possible - because Poland is just a large Slovakia.
I agree with much of this, but think it’s more precise to speak of an inversion of Christian values. You allude to this in the post when you point to atheists and communists being essentially crypto-Christians.
The problem started in 1054, when the Western Church split from the Eastern Church, believing that the West could function under an authoritarian pope, who himself owned land and property. Thus, the Church pivoted from concerns about Heaven and Eternity, and towards materialist endeavours. Their pontiff was no longer subject to obedience at a council of bishops.
Essentially, the Roman Catholics wanted to create a heaven on Earth. This is the fruit of that.
One small quip: there is no evidence that Paul’s letters were meant to rule up the Jewish population against the Roman elite. Indeed, Paul was persecuted by his own people and some of his writings might even be labelled ‘anti-Semitic’ by today’s standards.
Hi Ignatius, do you have a preferred book on the Western Church split from the Eastern Church? I would be interested in reading it.
The theory surrounding Paul (which is Nietzsche's) is fleshed out more here: https://neofeudalism.substack.com/p/deeper-societal-trends-predating
Start with Lecture 2 here
https://saintkosmas.org/orthodox-survival-course
A short read is the first 30 pages or so of Seraphim Rose’s “Orthodox Survival Guide,” which has references to other authors should you desire further reading.
The issue with this view is that there is no "Eastern church", historically & geopolitically speaking. There was the rump Roman Empire in Greece, and later there emerged the primitive Russian Empire in the north-eastern wilderness. That's it. We cannot realistically conjecture that they would have behaved differently in the conditions of Western Europe simply because they never had the power and the riches of Italy or the Netherlands to "develop" (a loaded term, I know).
Meta-speaking, talking about Orthodox Christianity is an American meme. I'm a Galician living in Galicia, people here are effectively Orthodox (Greek Catholics are Orthodox in ritual, subservient to the Pope, with local schizophrenias such as creationsim). So what? Poland itself should be viewed as a sad excuse for Catholicism, as its heart was in Italy.
And the irony is that it was the German Protestant reaction to the pagan Renaissance in Italy that led to this precipice of transvestitism. The Italians themselves were forging themselves to regain the splendour of antiquity, as per Nietzsche (Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli, etc.). But then they were embroiled in that futile struggle with the German monk.
(The last paragraph must have been written possessed by the animus of il Duce.)
I agree. There was One Church until the 11th Century. After this, there was a division between Eastern and Western churches. The theological and cultural differences, which had already come to a head by the 10th Century, became even more distinct following The Great Schism.
'Effectively Orthodox' is meaningless. The Eastern Catholics joined the Pope for political reasons. The entire Roman Catholic project is a political one, with theology as a secondary concern. This is confirmed by the history of the 'Catholic Church,' beginning with Charlemagne.
The Renaissance was an aberration, as you say, but it was a result of The Roman Catholic Church schismating from its Orthodox heritage.
Excellent post! Very interesting. I believe it was philosopher Don Marguis, or his bud Archy the Cockroach, who said, "If meek inherit the earth someone has to run it for them"
We have become a parody of Harrison Bergeron.
The balance is found in the concept of natural rights, which must adhere to the principal of non contradiction, that is, ones natural right must not contradict another's natural right. Life, liberty, speech etc. You never know from where greatness will arise.
Beyond that, let the cream rise to the top.
It seems that all is lost until there is a transvaluation. This is unlikely without a catastrophic collapse.
Hi Broken, I'm a little weary of the concept of natural rights because I associate it both with egalitarianism and libertarianism (the latter of which can only work in a homogenous, high trust society). I ultimately think "rights" are ultimately upheld at the point of a gun, and to lose sight of that is to invite in decadence and complacency...I agree with you that a transvaluation of values seems highly unlikely without a major crisis.
Three thoughts.
Government is force. The question is how can that force be constrained. (If you think it should). I think the american framework is close, but has gone off the rails. Not sure how to rectify the short comings.
Egalitarianism is simply the disguise use by those seeking domination to hide behind. I do not think they are sincere in the slightest. They are sociopaths.
Agree that a common framework is required, and the ability to articulate that is the primary target of the unification of corporate and governmental power.
> "Egalitarianism is simply the disguise use by those seeking domination to hide behind. I do not think they are sincere in the slightest. They are sociopaths."
Said by every single Marxist ever! They simply cannot believe that the Christians are genuinely this stupid and suicidal. But they are. The Anglos destroyed their empire for the sake of poor Slavic Jews. The Americans not only refused to exterminate the Japanese and Chinese when they could, they even proceeded to humiliate themselves in Afghanistan because they could not bring themselves to kill the Asiatics.
Now their empire crumbles because they fed China, their founding stock is being replaced with Mexicans, Jews and women, and it's still apparently some nefarious power play! Yes, these "sick psychopaths" are so "sick" - right when their paedophile rings are being uncovered, and glorious Jewish men are left hanging in their cells due to the whorish Me2 campaign (Epstein did nothing wrong).
I think about Harrison Bergeron all the time. It’s become upsettingly prescient.
Agreed! I know some people would still pull a Hillary Clinton and think 1984 was about why people should trust the government, but I still can't help but feel that if more people just read Harrison Bergeron, 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and their ilk, the general populace would at least be in slightly better shape. People need to at least watch Idiocracy! haha
'ones natural right must not contradict another's natural right. Life, liberty, speech etc.'
Still living in judeo-christian fairy land
I'm not an english speaker. what do you mean by " The central bank owning Rothschilds and their allies", is the central bank the owner or the property ?
Hi Jordan, the central banks of the world are owned by a very small number of families. I explain the structure here: https://neofeudalism.substack.com/p/goals-motivations-and-strategies
totally agree with you, it's the formulation that puzzled me, I would have said the central bank owned by the Rothschilds" or "the Rothschilds-owned Central Banks"
anyway, the article is great and I fully agree on everything....I had heard about this Tom Holland but I did not appreciate how radical he could be in his positions, i'm amazed he's not canceled by the loonies....
You should check Romain d'Aspremont, it's his twitter (https://twitter.com/R_Aspremont) and he has a few talks in english...he si ideologically close to the now dead Guillaume Faye who theorized archeo-futurism (https://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Faye)
Thank you, and nice links (although it looks like Romain hasn't tweeted in a couple of years). Yes, I like Guillaume Faye and the Nouvelle Droite...I regularly link to this post by the blogger Kynosarges about the weakness of the populist right: https://news.kynosarges.org/full-speed-into-the-void/
Kynosarges is a follower of the Nouvelle Droite...
This is why I would write these grammatical constructs hyphenated, i.e., "the central-bank-owning Rothschilds" in this case.
I like the symbols these ideas create. The warrior, the priest and the warrior priest.
The warrior-priests could be seen as the soyboy cucks of our SJW days. Or the Catholic knights in Prussia who weren't even permitted to rape the locals. Or the fanatical Bolsheviks. (All I'm saying is that "priest" is a ridiculously unclean word for Nietzsche.)
YES. Been thinking this for a while… Egalitarianism is a religious doctrine that comes straight out of Christianity, has been part of it from the beginning, and it makes absolutely no sense from a materialist perspective. This is my favorite of Yarvin’s themes; progressivism makes the most sense if you think about it as a Christian sect. I’ve grown increasingly sympathetic toward Christians/Christianity; they’ve been right on so many culture war issues. But I am simply incapable of believing in it myself, and even if it might actually be good for some people, I don’t believe a Christian revival could save the West. It’s how we ended up here in the first place; what’s to stop it from happening again? The solution to a lie isn’t a better more useful lie; only the truth will set you free. And the truth is that we are products of evolution, and as such, “equality” is literally incoherent. We differ as individuals and groups on everything that matters, and our psychology is attuned to differences in status. Both dominance/deference and the egalitarian impulse may be parts of our nature, and these need to be balanced, because hierarchies can indeed become tyrannical and exploitative, but they are also the only way complex social organization is possible. And if there is anything that could be considered “intrinsically” good, not just what someone happens to prefer, it must be self-sustaining. See Robert Wright’s Nonzero. “Good” that can’t propagate itself, ie that leads to a failure to reproduce, ultimately causes there to be less goodness in the universe, and anything that causes there to be less goodness in the universe can’t really be good after all. (In theory, it could and probably does spread as a parasitic meme, continuing to spread to other minds even as it effectively sterilizes its hosts, but natural selection will catch up. There’s a lag, but maybe not as many suppose. I think it will noticeable over the next century; those who have children will be those who WANT to have them, and so whatever traits are correlated with, like I suspect temperamental traits that make people consciously want children and/or be resistant to anti-natalist ideologies… It will be them, not the meek, who will inherit the earth.)
Fascinating post!
I much appreciated this. I have been consumed of late, how to upend (transvalue) society to save it. We are on a trajectory of the loss of America and the West, an America where no one remembers either, and all the knowledge and literature of 2500 years is as dust.
Though I read Kynosarga's piece too, and I was following along until his finis, that we have to become European again. I think that is wrong. We cannot return to the Faustian. What transvaluing happens here has to be fundamentally American, i.e. something based on the old but wholly new.
Respectfully, for all the focus on Paul, Zoroastrianism, Rome, and various philosophers, “Christianity” in its essence comes down to Christ/Messiah.
Specifically, to His resurrection.
That’s the proverbial—and literal—game changer concerning all of humanity over all eternity.
Hi RGK, I understand and respect your approach, many share it. But it is a deontological approach -- i.e. it accepts Christ's resurrection at face value and then tries to make sense of the world based on that belief as the cornerstone of the worldview. My approach is looking at things via cause-and-effect, judging beliefs by the fruit that it bears, and so it is a fundamentally different approach. There is plenty of good that has come from Christianity, as long as the egalitarianism has been kept in check...
Thx for responding.
Can you flesh out your “cause-and-effect” paradigm?
I see the Cross/Crucifixion/Resurrection as the quintessential CAE moment in an eternity that envelopes time, space, and matter.
It is the primary and secondary witnesses to the resurrection that persuade me.
Hi RGK, sure. The way I like to review religious institutions -- and all institutions, really, including secular ones -- is by exploring the real-world results of those institutions, which can be both good and bad, usually both and in varying degrees and ways. Then I ask why and how did those results happen and develop in that way? In other words, I start with looking at the results and then I work backwards to the theology, not starting with the theology and then trying to explain the world from it.
Through these judgments I have developed a worldview, which I then test recursively based on its predictive power for the future. If a future event doesn't turn out the way I expected, then I try to update my worldview to accommodate the event. Sometimes these updates are minor, sometimes major (although not many major updates these days).
Here's an example. Based on demographic changes Islam is rapidly expanding and Christianity is rapidly contracting throughout Europe, and trends indicate that this will continue. What is it about the nature of Christianity and Islam that has led to this outcome so far (in addition to other factors, of course)? Then delve into specific religious doctrines, etc...
Thanks for clarifying.
Please correct me if I’m off target here:
Would it be accurate to say that your “world view” (perspective, etc.) is concerned solely with material reality—observable outcomes, data, etc.?
I want to understand where (if anywhere) non physical (“spiritual” or whatever term you would use) aspects of existence fit in (or do not fit in).
Thx in advance.
Hi RGK, thanks for the question. My perspective starts with material observation which leads to certain spiritual conclusions, specifically gnosticism. My approach so far has been the following:
1. Observance of material reality leads one to the following understanding: that this reality is full of pain and suffering (ala Schopenhauer and the Buddhists), that everything material is impermanent and there is nothing we can hold onto for support other than perhaps our values. Everything material has a cause leading to God as a first-cause.
2. From observing the behavior of our current elites, we can see they seem inspired by what can best be described as a creative demonic energy -- an energy to destroy and invert values, to lie and steal at every opportunity, an atheistic, hypocritical and fully materialist energy. Because every energy has a counter-balance, that also gives weight to there being a non-materialist, spiritual God.
3. Reading history indicates that it has always been this way (i.e. evil elites in control) and perhaps will always be this way. This goes hand in hand with Matthew 4:8 where the Devil offered Jesus dominion over all the nations of the earth, which Jesus declined, but the offer implied that the Devil had the means to fulfill it.
4. This means that the Devil (or what I think of as the Demiurge) is in charge of material reality, and that the God of light and justice is either absent from the material plane or at minimum does not hold sway here. Evil rules here and will continue to rule here, and we must find solace through non-material means.
5. Hence, gnosticism.
There are a number of posts covering the details of this argument if you wish to explore further:
- Meditations on the problem of evil: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/meditations-on-the-problem-of-evil
- Philosophical pessimism: A denial of history as progress: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/philosophical-pessimism-a-denial
- Ruminations on the nature of the soul: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/ruminatons-on-the-nature-of-the-soul
I hope that you find this helpful...
Outstanding. Thank you for the detailed response.
Item 4: Possible that demonic authority is granted w/parameters, a la Job?
In Job’s troubles, YHWH remained Sovereign and defined the extent to which “Evil” could touch Job’s person and property.
From an earthly perspective, it appeared that “bad circumstances” were destroying Job and that—if “God” existed—God was “powerless” to prevent calamity.
Thx.
Rereading this essay today, I realize that without integrating these insights into my worldview, I was blind to the nature of what holds us back. Thank you for laying this out so well, and for linking to it from https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-meaning-crisis-meaning-and-decadence
I loved this essay. It reminds of the debate on the far right that is roughly about whether the goal should be to change minds or whether it should be to gain power. I don't think it's an either or, but I've been of the mind that we really need to stem the tide of leftist thought and start to make inegalitarian, meritocratic and self-favoring ('America First', 'white people built the modern world and have a lot more to be proud of than ashamed of') ideas more popular and publicly acceptable. I think the overreach of the left is starting to accomplish this but it's really surprising how difficult it is to make these ideas, that I think most people implicitly agree with, explicit and publicly acceptable.
Nice comment, Rowan, and I agree it's not an either/or. That being said, the difficulty in effectuating real change stems, in my opinion, from people's failure to recognize that their beliefs are not rooted in reason, intellect or science (the way everyone wants to think their beliefs are), but rather from the blindly retained ethics and morals of a long-since-discarded religious faith whose rotten corpse currently manifests in an all-pervasive, all-encompassing nihilism. If people begin to understand that their belief in egalitarianism are irrational and faith-based, perhaps real change becomes possible...
This is an interesting but disturbing piece. It merits an article length reply -- which I have posted yesterday:
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/populism-is-the-way?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Nice diagram of cultural changes, but still skeptical of the proposed governing mechanisms and overall model of the system. Be interested in seeing how variables like energy use per capita and average population density map out against degree of egalitarianism 'penetration'. I suspect instead that increased (labor-free and decision-free) production in the economic system over time took the average level of environmental pressure off people so that what they did, and how well they did it, came to matter much, much less than in it did in the past. Currently (well, that may be slowly changing now) people like those that constitute the modern 'left wing' have plenty of time, energy, and opportunity to artificially fill in the empty spaces in their lives with all kinds of odd imaginings and cultural constructions based on those imaginings. If this is a correct interpretation, it very well might be a blessing they're culturally 'infected' with the relatively harmless tenets of Christianity; i.e., it could possibly be worse.
Are you implying the England and Germany of the 1930s to be technologically different? Because the ideologies they ended up adopting proved to be absolutely irreconcilable. Blaming everything on the material (=economic, race is matter, too) conditions is pure Marxism.
Nah, I'm saying the technological and economic slack [western urban] people have allows them to follow their fantasies. These fantasies used to be markedly different from place to place, but now these imaginings are more homogeneous. Marxism has nothing to do with this hypothesis -- except that it also was (and is) an economically and technologically- permitted fantasy for some people.
But that's the thing, technology is an enable of culture, yet the underlying culture can be diametrically opposite. Some countries use trains to transport migrants in, others - to transport the Jews out (gassing them in the process, IIRC).
"Enable" is a good word to use here because spoiled children can get into all sorts of trouble. There's a whole book, first published in 1950, that presciently explores this theme -- "The Lonely Crowd". It's available for free download on Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.187299). Something brief to read that gets to the same point was posted today here on substack: https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/are-the-inmates-now-running-the-world
It's uniquely ironic, to say the least, to see a Gnostic complain about leftism and blame Christianity for it.
The Bible is the least leftist book in existence.
Read the Old Testament. The Mosaic Law is the perfect blueprint for a nationalist, patriarchal state.
Read the New Testament. Jesus upholds the Law and condemns those who would set it aside [Matthew 5:17-19] and the Apostle Paul, even though he pointed out that it is faith and not works what brings salvation, declared the Law and the Commandments "holy, just and good" [Romans 7:12] and defined sin as a transgression of the Law [Romans 7:7]
And not only did the Reformation NOT cause leftism in any way, shape or form, it actually provided the best antidote for it in Calvinism, which destroys a pillar without which leftism cannot stand: the conceit of believing in free will. You'll see that "Leftist Protestantism" is in fact the complete opposite of Protestantism (being the Jesuit-created heresy of Arminianism, which then became Baptism, Quakerism, Methodism, etc). Puritans used to publicly hang Quakers (Mary Dyer and her ilk), and now they're called Protestants???
Leftism has three pillars: belief in free will, belief in metaphysics (the soul/the spiritual world) and the victimhood mentality. Neither of those are in the raw text of the Bible.
Hi lurker, thanks for the comment. God as portrayed in the NT has an entirely different outlook than the God portrayed in the OT. The acknowledgment of this dichotomy formed the basis for Marcionism, which was quite popular at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism Marcion had preserved Paul's letters and is the basis for why we can read them today, interestingly enough... With respect to Protestantism, I attempted to address it in Part 2 of the following: https://neofeudalism.substack.com/p/deeper-societal-trends-predating . I hope you find this helpful.
First of all, thank you for answering politely to my comment. Although my tone is quite vehement, I only comment because you are clearly intelligent and well read and therefore capable of changing opinions.
>God as portrayed in the NT has an entirely different outlook than the God portrayed in the OT
Absolutely wrong. Not only the NT diligently fulfills the prophecies of the OT (the coming of the Messiah, the grafting of the Gentiles into the Covenant, etc), the NT cannot even EXIST without the OT. From what else can it derive its authority?
If YHWH is the "evil" God of the Gnostics, what legitimacy does Jesus have, as the son of the "evil" God who fulfills the prophecies of the prophets of the "evil" God?
>Marcion had preserved Paul's letters and is the basis for why we can read them today
From the very link you gave me, Wikipedia: Marcion POSSIBLY wrote the first Christian canon, which is a canon that not only rejects the OT (I've already mentioned why rejecting the OT is sawing the branch you are standing on) but also several Pauline epistles (for a supposed "true follower of Paul", it smells funky)
But let's just take some of the Pauline writings he did include in his own canon.
In the Book of Romans, Paul clearly states that the Law is not only holy, just and good (see my first comment), but also the standard which defines sin (as per my first post), but also contains a strict defense of the GOD OF MOSES [Romans 9:14-21] where he solves once and for all the problem of evil with the very simple observation that, if God is the creator of the universe, HE CAN DO WHATEVER HE PLEASES WITH HIS CREATION, just how a potter has the right to do whatever he wants with his clay. Attempting to apply any moral standard to the Creator implies that there is an idea, a moral standard above the Creator that can judge Him. This is not the Bible, this is naked Platonism. And what a surprise, Marcion was a Platonist (i.e, a Pagan)
Let's take another book recognized by Marcion's canon: 1 Corinthians.
In 1 Corinthians 11:1-12, Paul clearly defends a very patriarchal view of the sexes. Not only is his view sourced from the Old Testament (compare 1 Corinthians 11:7 with Genesis 1:27) but it implies that the ontology of the human is based on its physical (material) characteristics, in that case the sexual organs. This goes against every Gnostic teaching ever, since for them, the material body is nothing but a meat prison created by the evil Demiurge that must be escaped.
You seem to be quite right-wing, being against anti-racism, feminism, transsexualism and the like. But then you seem to defend Gnosticism, which is a belief without whom none of these ideologies would exist. Am I missing something here?
Hi lurker, thanks again for your comment. I don't mind tough questions; I would only suggest that if you get emotionally triggered by certain content, that may mean that you yourself have unconscious/subconscious issues that you still need to work through. If I read content that triggers me -- even horrible content -- that usually means I have something inside myself I need to resolve (of course, I try to stay away from content I vehemently disagree with, but I also don't generally get emotionally triggered by it).
With respect to gnosticism, I have an upcoming post delving into it which may hopefully answer some of your questions. But essentially the use of the word "gnostic" has multiple meanings. The first use of the term is basically a smear by exoteric Christians against those they don’t like, including against each other. According to scholar Ioan Culianu:
"Once I believed that Gnosticism was a well-defined phenomenon belonging to the religious history of Late Antiquity. Of course, I was ready to accept the idea of different prolongations of ancient Gnosis, and even that of spontaneous generation of views of the world in which, at different times, the distinctive features of Gnosticism occur again.
I was soon to learn, however, that I was a naif indeed. Not only Gnosis was gnostic, but the Catholic authors were gnostic, the Neoplatonic too, Reformation was gnostic, Communism was gnostic, Nazism was gnostic, liberalism, existentialism and psychoanalysis were gnostic too, modern biology was gnostic, Blake, Yeats, Kafka were gnostic….I learned further that science is gnostic and superstition is gnostic…Hegel is gnostic and Marx is gnostic; all things and their opposite are equally gnostic."
Basically, the core use of this interpretation is an accusation that one’s opponents are using the pursuit of an Ideal as an idol that is not the ineffable Godhood - whether that be environmentalism/Gaia worship, race, economic equality/communism, etc. Through the pursuit of this Ideal - usually a secularized, blind devotional religious energy - with the correct understanding or outlook, adherents believe they can bring Heaven to Earth materially. I believe this first definition is how you are using the term.
However, there is a second definition of gnosticism which is how I use the term. Under this second definition gnosis is the understanding that this material realm is controlled by a malevolent Demiurgic creator (and/or a bumbling one; one of it’s common names, Yaldabaoth, means “the childish god”) and that by adopting an attitude of asceticism, humility and philosophical pessimism, by grappling with the contradictions inherent within this reality to try to achieve a higher-level synthesis, by trying to perfect our own phenotypes via our own unique spiritual, intuitive journeys, a gnosis that has to be personally and mystically experienced and not merely learned via exoterism, one may hope to spiritually ascend from this realm either on earth or at least in the afterlife.
I'll delve into this further in the upcoming post and will be happy to address further questions you have there...
Don't worry, I have an extreme emotional tolerance for crazy esoteric views of all types and I do share your second definition of Gnosticism, which is why I oppose it.
I'll set aside the fact that you do not address my scriptural arguments and ask you questions about Gnosticism as you see it.
If the material world is the corrupt plaything of an evil Demiurge and our purpose is to escape it:
On what grounds can you condemn transsexuals mutilating their bodies, coal-burners spitting on their heritage, vegans depriving their body of nutrients, and all the rest of the leftist panoply? They're just prisoners shitting up their prisons.
On what grounds can you condemn murder or suicide? At worst, if you believe in reincarnation, the dead just move from one prison to another one, and at best, you liberate them/yourself from the cycle of suffering of material existence.
Hell, if I believed YHWH to be an evil Demiurge, I would actually promote all of those things, to spite Him and oppose the Laws that He wrote. Which is what those in charge promote.
Now, I invite you to do a full 180º and see things this way:
YHWH is the Creator of everything (which means He cannot be judged because no one is above Him).
He created the world to be "the scenario of His game".
He created mankind to be the characters of that "game".
He told mankind the objective of the "game" (be fruitful and multiply and take dominion of the Earth, as per Genesis 1:28) and also created Satan and Sin so that there would be a permanent struggle within mankind to "drive the plot".
Then He took a random tribe, the Israelites, and blessed them with "the insider's manual" in the form of the Law and the Prophets of the Bible, in order to show the world how great can an unassuming nation be if they swear fealty to the Creator and play according to the "rules of the manual", and how utterly can such a nation be doomed when they disobey the rules.
Then comes the New Testament and Jesus, who, aside from offering a permanent way to "win the game" through the perfection of the sacrificial system, also took away the privileges of the Jews and told his apostles to freely offer them to any nation who was willing to receive them [Matthew 21:43 and 18:19-20]
And what do we see in history? That the more a nation obeys the Bible, the more prosperous and powerful it becomes (notice how the Great Divergence/European Ascendancy and the Reformation seem to go hand in hand), and that as soon as those great European nations thought they didn't need YHWH anymore, YHWH punished them by leaving them in the hands of the most depraved tyrants ever to exist.
Hi lurker, given time limitations I am attempting to focus on what stood out to me from your response. Regarding the scriptural arguments I offered some of the the NT references that speak to the core of egalitarianism within the post.
You wrote, "Attempting to apply any moral standard to the Creator implies that there is an idea, a moral standard above the Creator that can judge Him." I don't agree that God's actions from within the Bible cannot or should not be judged -- I think we have to use our reason as best as we see it while still leaving room for being wrong if or when life proves us as such, as you are correct that we are small, fallible creatures. Otherwise it is simply turning off our reason with blind belief, which I reject; reason and belief should be synthesized to become a more complete person.
"On what grounds can you condemn transsexuals mutilating their bodies, coal-burners spitting on their heritage, vegans depriving their body of nutrients, and all the rest of the leftist panoply? They're just prisoners shitting up their prisons. On what grounds can you condemn murder or suicide? At worst, if you believe in reincarnation, the dead just move from one prison to another one, and at best, you liberate them/yourself from the cycle of suffering of material existence."
I oppose those things because they make idols out of that which is not God -- transsexuals make idols out of their body, vegans making idols out of animal ethics. This world is fallen and will remain so; intense devotion to an Ideal will not lead to freedom but rather to disappointment. Typically gnostics are quite pacifistic (see the Cathars for example), but I believe we still have to live in this world and I prefer not to be a victim within it (a topic of another future post) - but that doesn't mean that prosperity or power can or should be linked to God's favor. Regarding "winning the game", it only looks to me like Islam is winning it based on immigration and demographic trends...
Strange you forgot where Paul says the the Law is the source of sin, or something close.
He, or the writings to him attributed, never tires of making the statement that Christ brought humankind beyond the stage where it had to obey the Law (a half-slave stage), to that wherein it obeys the Spirit.
See, here's the problem: your comment is comprised of one sentence that is true (but you removed it out of its context in order to misrepresent its meaning) and another one that is outright false. And of course, in both cases, you don't bother to quote the passages.
I'll spoonfeed you: The quote you took out of context was Romans 8:2.
The Law is the source of sin for the simple reason that it sets the standards for sin. It's in the very previous chapter [Romans 7:7], which by the way, I already quoted in my first comment.
Now, disobeying the Law results in death, and because of Original Sin we all die. YHWH graciously set up a system where His Son would be incarnated into a human and live a sinless life, yet receive the consequences of the sins of the Elect and die on the Cross (see the Levitical sin offerings involving unblemished animals), so that those same Elect will be blessed by the Spirit and eventually be resurrected with a new body untainted by Original Sin and therefore immortal.
This does not mean, however, that the Law is unnecessary, because we still all live in sinful bodies in a fallen world (i.e, slaves to sin) and we need the bindings of the Law to restrict and punish our sinful natures in order to have some semblance of a functional society until Judgement Day comes.
I can't believe that I have to explain that laws are necessary.
The only people who pretend they don't need the Law are those who don't want to be held accountable by it.