"even if we can't prevent the forces of tyranny from prevailing, we can at least "understand the force by which we are crushed." Simone WeilAlexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Apr 04, 2022 5:22 pm I am not sure who, if any here, are interested in 'the larger issues' and the 'larger conversation' which, as I see it, has a great deal to do with the Christian religion and identity that was once central to European identity, and the collapse of *belief in* Christianity in a wide range of senses: in metaphysics, and also as social policy, in self-definition with a nod to rising sentiments in pro of nationalism (which has many inflections).
What I wish to suggest to all who read here is that the entire, and far larger picture, needs to be viewed and taken into consideration. And by "larger situation" I mean the political and geo-political -- and ideological -- struggles that are manifesting right in front of us, day by day, with rising intensity.
To this end I will mention an article in the NYTs by Ezra Klein (though I can't imagine there are subscribers here) -- certainly a formidable exponent and apologist for American Liberalism -- which deals on a whole slew of unconventional, radical, and counter-propositional ideas that have, quite literally, exploded into the American scene as well as the European scene. These are ideas by so-called Radical Right thinkers and philosophers.
Here is a quote of one paragraph in the article. He references the recent book A World After Liberalism by Matthew Rose:
Here he quotes Rose himself:“A World After Liberalism” is a bracing place to begin this rediscovery, in part because so much of it takes place in liberalism’s era of ascendance, even as it came under violent threat. In the book, Rose profiles Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola, Francis Parker Yockey, Alain de Benoist and Samuel Francis, five thinkers of the 20th century far right who are experiencing a revival in today’s — increasingly near — right. Some of them reach into our world directly. To take one example, Evola, a not-quite-fascist Italian theorist, has been cited by Steve Bannon and was translated into Russian by Aleksandr Dugin, the philosopher and mystic now sometimes known as “Putin’s Rasputin.”
The argument of the anti-liberals goes something like this: Our truest identities are rooted in the land in which we’re born and the kin among whom we’re raised. Our lives are given order and meaning because they are embedded in the larger structure and struggle of our people. Liberalism and, to some degree, Christianity have poisoned our cultural soil, setting us adrift in a world that prizes pleasure and derides tradition. Multiculturalism, in this telling, becomes a conservative ideal: We should celebrate the strength in cultural difference, reject the hollow universalist pieties of liberals and insist on the preservation of what sets people apart.
So while we are, here, discussing the merit or non-merit of Christianity, around us, in fact, we are in the midst of tremendous upheavals in ideation about what Christianity means and indeed what purpose religion, and certainly the metaphysical idealism, has for all of us. In this reading then the collapse of Christian certainties, let's say, has opened our worlds (inside and outside) to mounting chaos and confusion. And struggle -- social conflict and even war -- looms as a prospect.In theory, liberalism protects individuals from unjust authority, allowing them to pursue fulfilling lives apart from government coercion. In reality, it severs deep bonds of belonging, leaving isolated individuals exposed to, and dependent on, the power of the state. In theory, liberalism proposes a neutral vision of human nature, cleansed of historical residues and free of ideological distortions. In reality, it promotes a bourgeois view of life, placing a higher value on acquisition than virtue. In theory, liberalism makes politics more peaceful by focusing on the mundane rather than the metaphysical. In reality, it makes political life chaotic by splintering communities into rival factions and parties.
The reason this all interests me definitely ties-in to the Larger Conversation here.
So it seems to me relevant and necessary to keep in mind that just as all *spiritual* ideas and religious ideas (and religious praxis) are undergoing on-going changes, these are mirrored in events circling around us.
Perhaps this is spinning out too far from the topic (?)
Humanity is being crushed and regardless of all these expert opinions, nothing gives the impression that the crushing can be avoided. Yet some are aware of the larger human problem and give indication for what the individual can do to serve the need to awaken to the human condition.
Jacob Needleman in the preface to lost Christianity describes the human situation
https://tiferetjournal.com/lost-christianity/
Collective society or what Plato called the Beast has a life cycle and will be crushed. But can.............But in fact, no such assumption of moral authority by secular humanism, has
taken hold or now seems in any way likely or justified. The modern era, the era of science, while witnessing the phenomenal acceleration of scientific discovery and its applications in technological innovation, has brought the
world the inconceivable slaughter and chaos of modern war along with
the despair of ethical dilemmas arising from new technologies that all
at once project humanity’s essence-immorality onto the
entire planet: global injustice, global heartlessness and the global
disintegration of the normal patterns of life
that have guided mankind for millenia. Neither the secular philosophies
of our epoch nor its theories of human nature—pragmatism, positivism,
Marxism, liberalism, humanism, behaviorism, biological determinism,
psychoanalysis–nor the traditional doctrines of the religions, in the way we have understood them, seem able to confront or explain the crimes of humanity in our era, nor offer wise and compassionate guidance through the labyrinth of paralyzingly new ethical problems.
What is needed is a either a new understanding of God or a new understanding
of Man: an understanding of God that does not insult the scientific
mind, while offering bread, not a stone, to the deepest hunger of the
heart; or an understanding of Man that squarely faces the criminal
weakness of our moral will while holding out to us the knowledge of how we can strive within ourselves to become the fully human being we are meant to be– both for ourselves and as instruments of a higher purpose.
But, this is not an either/or. The premise –or, rather, the proposal—of this
book is that at the heart of the Christian religion there exists and
has always existed just such a vision of both God and Man. I call it
“lost Christianity” not because it is a matter of doctrines and concepts
that may have been lost or forgotten; nor even a matter of methods of
spiritual practice that may need to be recovered from ancient sources.
It is all that, to be sure, but what is lost in the whole of our modern
life, including our understanding of religion, is something even more fundamental, without
which religious ideas and practices lose their meaning and all too
easily become the instruments of ignorance, fear and hatred. What
is lost is the experience of oneself, just oneself—myself, the personal
being who is here, now, living, breathing, yearning for meaning, for
goodness; just this person here, now, squarely confronting one’s own
existential weaknesses and pretensions while yet aware, however
tentatively, of a higher current of life and identity calling to us from
within ourselves. This presence to oneself is the missing element in
the whole of the life of Man, the intermediate state of consciousness
between what we are meant to be and what we actually are.
It is, perhaps, the one bridge that can lead us from our inhuman past
toward the human future..............
the essence of Christianity and the few who understand it, serve to lessen the catastrophes to come? We can only hope so.
