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[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

An ethnie only actually needs ancestor worship and race worship, since those reinforce the rational side of ethnonationalism. Anything else, like morality, needs to be grounded in pure reason to avoid its discarding in the event that the 'religion' itself is discarded by some foolish generation at a later time. As many safeguards need to be added to the new social order to ensure that no such unraveling occurs, e.g., explicitly racial constitutions or other foundational documents of the new society. It should be assumed that future generations will quite rapidly seek to undo whatever it is that we achieve, just as the generations preceding ours and including our own have quite rapidly undone what our ancestors have achieved. We should assume that the next generations will be total idiots as these preceding ones have been, who will squander everything, and continue from this worst case scenario.

This is why the Burkean social contract is superior to the Rousseauian social contract. Burke's social contract acknowledges that there is a pact between the dead, the living and the unborn, whereas Rousseau only acknowledges one of those three: the pact between the living. It so happens that the pact between the living is the most useless one of the three for us, but not for the enemy, for whom it is the only one that matters.

The living have a pact with the dead: To ensure that the things that they created continue on and are not undone. Because the West does not acknowledge a pact with the dead, we see absolutely zero problem with handing over our ancestors' accomplishments to others despite the fact that such a handing over would to them seem to be impossible: something that in their time could only happen via coercion.

The living also have a pact with the unborn. Again, because the West does not acknowledge a pact with them, either, we see absolutely zero problem with condemning them to a third-world existence as marginalized minorities within their own homelands. Instead, we go through a number of processes: denial (it isn't really our homeland, it belongs to everyone and/or they won't actually live as marginalized minorities, etc.) or justifications (future Whites deserve it because of the real or presumed actions of past Whites, nobody I know will be around to see it so I don't really care, etc.).

Just reconstruct an explicitly racialist Paganism complete with the kind of ancestor worship that still goes on in places like Indonesia (because of how weak Islam is there: the overwhelming majority of Indonesian 'Muslims' have synthesized Islam with their indigenous beliefs in a way that Islam has been largely been wiped out in all but name) and in historical places like pre-Islamic Iran where ancestor worship went on until it became haram.

Lastly, religions that place great emphasis upon souls have the potential for great harm, simply because they are an obvious pathway to egalitarian nonsense like 'judge by the content of one's character (i.e. mind or soul) and not by colour (i.e. body or gene)'. But the belief that souls are unequal along racial lines is practically unverifiable (how can you measure what you cannot even see?), whereas the belief that bodies/genes are unequal along racial lines is very easy when egalitarianism is absent, and was indeed widely held throughout the overwhelming majority of human history. Basically, a more physicalist worldview is required (I'm a physicalist-leaning dualist, moving ever-further in the physicalist direction, far away from the kind of metaphysical idealism of the likes of Berkeley or Kastrup, that Keith Woods has dangerously entertained). It is also why NatSoc > Fascism. The Fascist (and Evolian) worldview downplays the body/gene, and thus provides an obvious pathway back to egalitarianism. Base nothing of immense importance on the metaphysical, only use the metaphysical to reinforce the rational (e.g. use ancestor worship to cement an ethnonationalism already solidly argued for using pure reason). Indeed, I call for a new culture rather than a new religion per se.

Lastly, all the Socratic stuff like Neoplatonism falls afoul of what I have said above: the necessity of the rejection of any creed that places the soul over body/metaphysical over physical. A biological 'Master Race' is far more convincing than an unverifiable notion of being 'God's Chosen' as the Jews peddle. Belief in the latter is only useful for those inferior peoples who would fail miserably if they were judged by the standards of the former, but who feels the need to argue for the supremacy of his soul if he is already superior in his gene?

Wasn't it Nietzsche who believed that that was exactly why Socratic philosophy began? Because Socrates himself was inferior in body and gene, he created the slave morality that instead prioritized souls so that those who were inferior could believe themselves equal or even superior, i.e. by simply changing the rules of the game such that appearances now mislead and the 'real' value of a person lies in something hidden and unverifiable? This is why we have egalitarianism: because we seldom judge the worth of men on anything ascriptive, we assume all men to be blank slates of equal worth... precisely because of all these wretched philosophers.

[–]NeoRail 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

There are some very important problems I have to point out with your post. First, it appears that your starting point is the assumption that future generations will not only prove completely incapable of sustaining the tradition and direction imparted by previous generations, but also that they will even go as far as oppose and substitute those with their own vapid innovations. From this view, which presupposes having zero faith in the future of your people, stems your idea that you have to coercively force the future generations onto the path that you think is best, more or less against their will, by imposing all sorts of lifeless, legal and structural safeguards. This is a very foolish view, because whenever a people is constrained by structures that they do not willingly respect, they hate and destroy them. The USA today still has a liberal constitution that guarantees a number of freedoms, yet these freedoms are viewed with contempt even at the highest levels of government and are constantly suppressed despite the structural foundations of the country. The problem of the continuity of a society and a civilisation does involve legal, political and structural factors, but it is chiefly an existential and spiritual problem. If the people no longer want to freely affirm the values and ideas of the society they live in, then we are talking about a dead civilisation, that trudges on exclusively on inertia and is doomed to collapse sooner or later.

Your views on the soul also betray tremendous historical ignorance. Doctrines that acknowledge the existence of the soul are radically, extremely inegalitarian, and we have historical evidence of this dating back to Plato, at the very least. No two souls are the same, and each differs from each on the basis of character, personality, dignity, wisdom, virtue, nature, affinities, capacity and lastly, content - much of which is received organically from a traditional society. Your demand for deciding on an exclusive preference for either body or soul is also completely unjustifiable and would have disastrous intellectual consequences for anyone who takes it seriously, because each of those is obviously important in its own way. Not to mention that rather than souls, your problem seems to be with the definition of human beings as interchangable, atomised and purely rational actors, which is a decidedly modern definition and has nothing to do at all with the traditional concept of the soul.

Wasn't it Nietzsche who believed that that was exactly why Socratic philosophy began? Because Socrates himself was inferior in body and gene, he created the slave morality that instead prioritized souls so that those who were inferior could believe themselves equal or even superior, i.e. by simply changing the rules of the game such that appearances now mislead and the 'real' value of a person lies in something hidden and unverifiable? This is why we have egalitarianism: because we seldom judge the worth of men on anything ascriptive, we assume all men to be blank slates of equal worth... precisely because of all these wretched philosophers.

Socrates was a veteran hoplite warrior renowned for bravery, and also a sage who was considered to possess a sacred power. I have no idea how he could possibly be associated with slave morality or egalitarianism. That is complete nonsense. Socrates promoted hierarchy, tradition and excellence in both body and spirit. In the Socratic dialogues, he clearly outlines the differences between souls and identifies various attributes that can be used to judge the quality of a soul, including, for example, memory, reasoning, character and virtue. This has absolutely nothing to do with egalitarianism or with "blank slates", which, again, have far more to do with the myth of universal rationality and man as a purely rational actor.

As a concluding thought, I would like to point out that, genetically, Europeans are exactly the same as they were a century ago, but in terms of character they could not be more different. It might be worth pondering where that difference in character came from, and how it could possibly be reconciled with a "physicalist" or "biocentric" social perspective.

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Regarding your first paragraph: Just as America's classical liberals assumed that subsequent generations would destroy classical liberalism, it should be assumed by today's 'Dissident Right' that subsequent generations would destroy the ethnostate. Anything short of assuming the worst case scenario is simply to repeat the Founders' mistakes: ones which would have easily been rectified by ensuring that the Constitution was far more concrete than the vague seven articles than they gave; for example, by ensuring that the established Republic was explicitly racial rather than making the few vague statements that they made about 'free White men', which were in hindsight obviously grossly insufficient.

We have few historical examples of where an ideational state has been founded—and indeed the ethnostate shall in part be ideational: it cannot be just White, but also ideologically White-positive—and we should be heeding their mistakes rather than ignoring them out of the foolish view that people will know better in the ethnostate. They won't. They will quickly become comfortable and they will squander it. To say anything else is to learn nothing from America.

And indeed America rapidly moved away from the Founders' ideal. The Founders largely opposed political parties, and yet parties became rapidly entrenched not long after, especially after the 1830s. Washington himself claimed that it was impossible to govern without God and the Bible, and yet America has thrown all of that out long ago. America's attempts at 'innovation', its continued (albeit much weakened) belief in a guaranteed, unilinear 'progress', etc. are part and parcel with its decline.

In short, I think you have taken a good stab at summarizing some part of my views on this matter, and I simply disagree upon the value-judgement that you have applied to them. It is correct to have 'zero faith', to have layer upon layer of safeguards of all kinds applied such that not a single fundamental core idea, policy, value and all else that is of immense importance is alterable. To say anything otherwise strikes me as:

1) Refusing to learn lessons from history, particularly from the American experiment;

2) Compromising with liberalism too deeply, particularly by placing a 'faith' that I consider completely unwarranted in human nature.

I particularly disagree with that last sentence of yours, for if (and in the hypothetical ethnostate, this will happen at some point) that future generations will after a time no longer wish to affirm White-positivity and any other core, non-negotiable value in order to pursue the path of liberalization all over again, then it is clearly my view that a totalitarianism unlike anything that Man has ever witnessed must be applied to them, lest they again pursue those paths that we are following, ones that they must under absolutely no circumstance whatsoever also follow.

Regarding this essentially metaphysical question to which your second paragraph is devoted: modern egalitarianism has clearly benefited from the kind of Cartesian view in which the soul, whose existence is unverifiable, is in fact the true self, and in which the body is akin merely to any other object in the physical world, albeit one to which our souls have a special relationship (e.g. introspective access). Because the properties of something whose existence is unverifiable are also unverifiable, Cartesianism perfectly augments egalitarianism. For without being able to verify these properties which would allow us to distinguish between souls, we are wont to assume that each soul is simply equal. If one cannot measure, for example, the 'goodness' or any other quality of a soul (and one cannot), the human mind will simply reason that each soul is equal in its goodness.

This is what I mean when I state that I am a physicalist-leaning dualist moving further towards the physicalist position most popular in the sciences. Physicalism is simply a much better stance for the justification of hierarchy, and for the abolishing of the ruinous ideal of equality, because the existence of bodies and their qualities is verifiable. That is what I mean when I write that a 'Master Race' is far more convincing than its analogue, 'God's Chosen'. Jews roleplay as a spiritual Master Race because few would ever believe them if they claimed to be a biological Master Race. Whites, however, do not need to roleplay as a spiritual Master Race, because they, unlike Jews, can convince themselves that they are indeed a biological Master Race, just as they had done in NatSoc Germany. And Whites, if challenged on their claim, can simply list their numerous biological advantages, whereas Jews can only state something along the lines of 'our souls are superior to yours', which is clearly an unverifiable claim and not a fit enough ideological safeguard for an ethnostate to justify why its people are both different and valuable enough not to be assimilated to extinction into the amorphous dull brown mass of 'humanity'.

I should add that, if it is not already clear, I was arguing against Cartesianism. I don't think that the Socratic conception is what people have in mind when they think about souls, therefore I consider the Socratics' views, and all views that differ from this predominant Cartesian view, irrelevant. Christians, for example, are always using this blank slate Cartesian soul as a justification for their racial egalitarianism, and I see physicalism as being the solution to that problem. This, I think, is what your last sentence there means: I am indeed dealing with the 'modern definition' precisely because that is the one which is here in the world today, and I am not dealing with this 'traditional concept' precisely because that one is not.

What you have done in your second paragraph is essentially to claim that I have set up a false dichotomy between the preferencing the metaphysical and preferencing the physical. And indeed I preference the latter. However, much of my post also claims that the metaphysical is useful insofar as it reinforces these arguments (e.g. ancestor worship reinforces ethnonationalism). But the metaphysical is only ever instrumentally useful. What I clearly oppose is the preferencing of the metaphysical over the physical, not the metaphysical per se. I am obviously opposed, for example, to the ethnostate being solely justified on religious or otherwise non-physicalist grounds. However, the non-physicalist entities of souls and so forth are not a threat unless they threaten to supplant race (the ethnostate would obviously be no more if a religious identity took precedence over a racial one, since a religious identity leaves open the possibility that racial outsiders can become part of the in-group via conquest, conversion, etc.). One historical lesson of European colonialism is that religious identities are ruinous for the race, because the Christianization of nonwhites made them a part of the in-group and thus helped facilitate contemporary multiculturalism by reducing the distance between us and them.

Regarding Socrates, I believe this to be an argument against Nietzsche rather than myself. I do not proclaim to be an expert either on Nietzsche or the Socratics, so I will leave that one to those who better know of Nietzsche's claim that Socrates was a kind of 'father' of slave morality who simply ruined the more ascriptivist, physicalist worldview of his time, in which people were judged by verifiable physical qualities rather than unverifiable spiritual ones. I believe that Nietzsche made a similar claim about the Jews.

Regarding the change in character, I think it is very much reconcilable with a physicalist worldview. What you may ascribe to the changes in the soul, I may simply ascribe to changes in the brain and to changes in the sociological 'collective consciousness'. I simply take what was once explained by philosophy and prefer to explain it by psychology, sociology, and not necessarily by biology. Obviously, if you are positing a dichotomy in which what cannot be explained by philosophy must be explained by raw biology, which is how I am reading it, then I would declare that false. The social in particular cannot be reduced entirely to the biological or individual-psychological despite Weberianism and 'methodological individualism' suggesting that it can, an observation to which sociologists owe Durkheim. I am definitely not as scientistic as Dutton, who clearly reduces everything to biology, a worldview which both suggests and reinforces an extreme physicalism very well. However, such a view is one I find much more believable (as well as vastly more useful) than its effective antithesis in extreme idealism, if forced into a dichotomous choice between the two. I should also add that dualist stances are very useful for enabling transsexualism, transspeciesism and transracialism, since the idea that 'true' self is in fact not simply the body leaves open the possibility that the 'true' self is in some way at odds with the body: the soul is 'trapped' in a body of the wrong species, race or sex. Physicalism makes ascriptivist, essentialist views of humans easier: if there is no 'true' self other than the body, it is much more difficult to justify those ideas.

I should add that I appreciate your response, which has very much served to exercise my mind on these questions.

[–]NeoRail 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I can only reiterate some of my points from earlier - laws are instituted, obeyed and repealed by men. They have no autonomous value or power, and mean nothing without an active, affirmative will to enforce them. No law or structure can force a civilisation to hold to a course that it does not wish to hold to. The only thing that truly matters in the long term is precisely the maintenance and nurturing of an active and affirmative attitude in the future generations, who must be able to hold to the direction imposed by their predecessors with or without any external, structural supports.

Furthermore, having "zero faith" and assuming that future decline and collapse are inevitable automatically negates the meaning of doing anything to improve the situation in the present. This is a serious problem that you appear to have overlooked.

It is correct to have 'zero faith', to have layer upon layer of safeguards of all kinds applied such that not a single fundamental core idea, policy, value and all else that is of immense importance is alterable.

Will can also hold certain things to be unalterable, and will is far more effective than legal coercion. To have "zero faith" in a continuity of will essentially means giving up on this most vital ingredient. Again, look at what has happened to American Constitution worship. It exists even today, yet it is completely ineffectual, because vast portions of the population, including the ruling class, simply no longer care about or respect it. That's the difference will makes.

The problem with what you are saying about Cartesianism is that Descartes' conception of the soul is precisely a reduction to the reasoning faculty alone. This has nothing at all to do with the traditional concept of the soul, or with what most people mean when they use the term, especially in its more poetic sense. I can't even imagine how there could possibly be such a thing as a "good Cartesian soul" or "bad Cartesian soul", because an abstract reasoning faculty can by definition only hold correct or incorrect beliefs, but has no qualitative properties like "good" or "bad".

the existence of bodies and their qualities is verifiable

Moral qualities are also perfectly verifiable, they are just completely ignored in all the fields that matter today.

I should add that I am arguing against Cartesianism. I don't think that the Socratic conception is what people have in mind when they think about souls, therefore I consider it irrelevant. Christians, for example, are always using this blank slate Cartesian soul as a justification for their racial egalitarianism, and I see physicalism as being the solution to that problem. This, I think, is what your last sentence there means: I am indeed dealing with the 'modern definition' precisely because that is the one which is here in the world today, and I am not dealing with this 'traditional concept' precisely because that one is not.

Then maybe you should stop fighting ghosts and instead plainly state that you oppose rationalist materialism instead of traditionalist "idealism" or however you classify this. That modern Christians do not actually accept the doctrines of Christianity is quite besides the point. You are undermining your own argument here.

Your position on metaphysics is also unacceptable, because despite what you say, you do reject metaphysics as such. What you want is a cynically constructed metaphysics, devised for Machiavellian, political ends. It has nothing to do with genuine inquiry into the nature of absolute reality. You also have a lot of misconceptions about religion that I do not have the time to address in full here. I will limit myself to saying that you are reading too much into religion in general, when your only model seems to be Christianity. Prior to Christianity, pretty much every European ethnoreligion that neopagans today reduce to a form of materialist-biological racism in primitive, superstitutous form actually prioritised the soul over the body. This still did not prevent ethnoreligions from working as ethnoreligions.

Regarding the change in character, I think it is very much reconcilable with a physicalist worldview. What you may ascribe to the changes in the soul, I may simply ascribe to changes in the brain and to changes in the sociological 'collective consciousness'.

This is where we would go into another topic, and would need to examine various interesting problems that crop up with this view. For example, the people who maintain that Europeans have an innate, biological, genetically conditioned character, namely to be naturally assertive, creative, brilliant, honourable, disciplined, restrained, composed, etc. run into the issue of having to explain how it could be possible for those same Europeans, with those same genetics, to lose all of these qualities in barely a century. The others, who would reject the idea that there is such a thing as biologically conditioned character and instead examine the problem from a perspective of collective psychology, run into a different issue, namely, blank slatism, particularly in all the fields that matter. If a group of people can so radically negate and invert its values and character in just a couple of generations, what does this imply about the idea of innate personality, character, qualities etc? There are also other very major problems with physicalism and especially with its relation to cognition and psychology, but the one just examined is probably the most interesting one for the purposes of this sub.

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Furthermore, having "zero faith" and assuming that future decline and collapse are inevitable automatically negates the meaning of doing anything to improve the situation in the present. This is a serious problem that you appear to have overlooked.

No, this has nothing to do with the fatalism of which have read into my words. That would be like saying that all totalitarian systems are in some way fatalistic because they have no faith in humans left to their own devices, and thus suggesting (although not necessitating, since that would be an affirming the consequent fallacy) the belief that liberal systems are not fatalistic because they are the ones which have the most faith in humans left to their own devices. Obviously such a proposition (liberal = non-fatalist; illiberal = fatalism) I consider nonsense. My views can be totalitarian and anti-fatalistic and yet 100% congruent, which is exactly what they are. To anyone who disputes this, was NatSoc Germany fatalistic? The aim would be to ensure that the ideal state lasts for as long as is possible and is as powerful as possible, for which every safeguard is required, not that it lasts forever (an impossibility).

I am sure that our understanding of metaphysics differs in the next paragraphs, because I frankly have no idea what you mean by 'reject metaphysics'. I suspect you mean 'genuine inquiry into the nature of absolute reality' as you mention soon after without presenting it as an explicit definition, and if so, this serves no absolutely purpose whatsoever in the construction or longevity of any nation-state. Humans have never made any serious advancement in metaphysics, which is precisely why it remains a philosophical field and has not progressed to a science, and it is unlikely (and unverifiable) that their inability to do so in some way has shortened the lifespan of some civilization, society, nation-state, etc. In short, metaphysics in your sense has no bearing upon the 'Dissident Right' or its projects, and the extremely poor ability of humans to answer metaphysical questions has nothing to do with current ills, and therefore finding the solutions to these questions has nothing to do with curing them. So what you have done, it seems, is accuse me of being disinterested in uncovering 'absolute reality', to which I respond:

1) Humans know little or nothing about absolute reality: they can't even disprove solipsism or determinism, they are miserable failures at philosophy and their attempts at it are all are laughable and unfruitful;

2) Humans have not been in any verifiable way harmed by their lack of metaphysical knowledge;

3) As a subset of humans, the lack of metaphysical knowledge has in no verifiable way contributed to our problems (for example, mass immigration would still happen with a perfected metaphysics, because mass immigration is largely ethical and not metaphysical, the perfection of metaphysics would not end mass immigration, and so forth);

4) Ergo, it is highly rational not to place such questions very high on our list of priorities, and they can be left to future generations to ponder.

And thus you are (in part) correct when you state:

a cynically constructed metaphysics, devised for Machiavellian, political ends

Indeed, because:

1) I contend that metaphysics in your sense is essentially unknowable without receiving help from something superhuman, and the idea of an 'absolute reality' that is just waiting to be uncovered is an unverified proposition and essentially a matter of faith, a faith which I tend to lack because I attribute little faith into human reasoning. This does not mean that 'absolute reality' does not exist, but only that humans may learn about it not from their own reason, only from something else: a God, AI, aliens, etc. could reveal it to them, but the idea that they can work it out for themselves strikes me as nonsense because they have made zero progress towards doing this despite all of the time that they have had;

2) Because human metaphysical meandering has generated no objective knowledge about the world, it has no intrinsic value, only instrumental value (e.g. as a political tool, as you suggest);

In other words, I do not see the value of 'genuine inquiry into the nature of absolute reality' at the present time. Your position seems to be that of someone who sees excess value in his own field of expertise precisely because it is his own field of expertise, and thus it is the 'lens' through which you view the world. And that is understandable. But as someone who is far more invested in the social sciences and for whom philosophy is merely a tool to perfect science, it should also be understandable that I do not accord much value to philosophizing, and accord much more value to science.

Your last paragraph seems to go into the structure-agency debate and all sorts of things upon which I have no strong opinion. Your last sentence, I presume, hints into the usual qualia thing upon which most physicalists (Churchland, Jaegwon Kim, for two) believe will simply be answered in time given further scientific advancement. Keith Woods, however, rejects physicalism on those grounds, thus following the same path as Chalmers and that Jackson followed for a time before fully converting to physicalism, but this is a path that I find myself increasingly likely to reject as I age. I think that physicalism is both more correct (and more instrumentally useful) than idealism, though I retain certain dualistic beliefs (hence, my self-identification as a 'physicalist-leaning dualist', and I imagine, later a 'dualist-leaning physicalist' given more time and thought).

I will leave this as the last comment, because I suspect that there is a great deal of difference between our definitions here. We already have determined that your concept of 'soul' is Socratic and mine is Cartesian (a minimalistic conception, a non-spatial entity that exists, that thinks, that predates and outlives the body and which is probably far more streamlined than whatever the Socratics believe it is), upon which we have already wasted words, and thus I suspect that our exchange is deeply ridden with misunderstanding each other's positions regarding what actually constitutes 'metaphysics' and so forth. A proper debate would require strict definitions of every philosophical term used in order to ensure that we're actually on the same page.

[–]NeoRail 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Liberalism is indeed not at all fatalistic in this particular sense of the word you are using, because liberals believe in a linear, progressive movement towards ever growing prosperity and freedom. Your views, on the other hand, are very fatalistic. In your very first post you suggest that a future totalitarian state system should be designed to control a society of idiots, completely incapable of political thought or loyalty of any kind. There most certainly are types of "non-fatalist" totalitarianism - yours is not one of those. As to totalitarianism more broadly, I believe the concept of the organic state is superior to the totalitarian one precisely because of the totalitarian tendency to standardise and micro-manage in a misguided attempt to mitigate, control or avoid moral failure - a problem which requires a totally different approach. A further question to look at on this topic would be why any political activist, today or in the future, should bother to exert great effort in working for the future of what, according to you, would be an idiotic and contemptible mass without loyalty or will of any kind. I do not know anyone who would willingly and selflessy work for the sake of ungrateful idiots. This is a very fundamental problem with your view.

I am sure that our understanding of metaphysics differs in the next paragraphs, because I frankly have no idea what you mean by 'reject metaphysics'. I suspect you mean 'genuine inquiry into the nature of absolute reality' as you mention soon after without presenting it as an explicit definition, and if so, this serves no absolutely purpose whatsoever in the construction or longevity of any nation-state.

If we don't need to account for reality when constructing our societies, what's the problem with liberalism? It seems that your only problem with a world based on lies and pure power is that you want to control the lies and the power instead. Unfortunately, your political opponents have the power, and by the looks of it, according to your view, they are complete justified. Not to mention that some things, such as metaphysical inquiry, have an autonomous value that exists independently of any political ends, although metaphysics certainly could exert its influence over politics as well.

Humans have never made any serious advancement in metaphysics

This is incorrect. It would be more accurate to say that most humans have proven completely incapable to appreciate any serious advancements made in metaphysics. Great achievements abound, starting with the ancient world. Vedanta and Neoplatonism are even discussed in this very thread. I must also object to the rest of your four points. Points 2 and 3 falsely suggest that there is a disconnection between metaphysics and ethics (and by extension, presumably the rest of practical life). No such separation exists. To give a very basic example, Christian metaphysics and conceptions about God and the afterlife determined everything about morality, politics, culture etc. in the Middle Ages. I can partially agree with your fourth point - metaphysical inquiry is not immediately necessary for political success, although the outright rejection and hostility to metaphysics is not necessary either. There is also not much to "ponder", because a lot of the work is already done.

The issue with your cynical approach to metaphysics is that the normal relationship between metaphysics and social norms is that the latter are derived and justified on the basis of the former. Your desire to do the opposite may have some short term political benefits, but is fundamentally incoherent in the long term and undermines the very foundation of civilisation and the human personality. I do not think that you have seriously tried engaging with metaphysics, because if you had then I am sure you would know that "human reason" is not the only, or even the main tool in the examination of metaphysical problems. A study of metaphysics and epistemology is also very important in order to even define what it means to "know" something - the materialist scientific definition of knowledge that you have repeatedly used in your posts, for example, has a far narrower application that is commonly believed.

But as someone who is far more invested in the social sciences and for whom philosophy is merely a tool to perfect science, it should also be understandable that I do not accord much value to philosophizing, and accord much more value to science.

The insurmountable problem with this is that science is a branch of natural philosophy, which is itself a branch of philosophy in general. Science certainly has its rightful place, but it is still just a branch of philosophy, and is fatally dependent on the field of philosophy. There are many questions which science is completely incapable of answering, simply because that is not what it is meant to do.

Your last paragraph seems to go into the structure-agency debate and all sorts of things upon which I have no strong opinion.

But you should have an opinion on it, because the example I provided exposes a major problem with the physicalist perspective.

I will leave this as the last comment, because I suspect that there is a great deal of difference between our definitions here. We already have determined that your concept of 'soul' is Socratic and mine is Cartesian (a minimalistic conception, a non-spatial entity that exists, that thinks, that predates and outlives the body and which is probably far more streamlined than whatever the Socratics believe it is), upon which we have already wasted words, and thus I suspect that our exchange is deeply ridden with misunderstanding each other's positions regarding what actually constitutes 'metaphysics' and so forth. A proper debate would require strict definitions of every philosophical term used in order to ensure that we're actually on the same page.

In principle, I agree that a good debate would require precise definitions, but in this specific case I think you are being a bit disingenuous since it seems pretty clear to me that you understood exactly what I meant. Nevertheless, I am glad you enjoyed our exchange, judging from what you said earlier. I hope that you will reconsider your position on materialism in the future, or at least that what I have said will be useful to you in some manner or another.

[–]TheJamesRocket 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is why the Burkean social contract is superior to the Rousseauian social contract. Burke's social contract acknowledges that there is a pact between the dead, the living and the unborn, whereas Rousseau only acknowledges one of those three: the pact between the living. It so happens that the pact between the living is the most useless one of the three for us, but not for the enemy, for whom it is the only one that matters.

I have always had this belief myself, but I never knew there was a name for it. I believe that we have a responsibility to both the dead and the unborn. We should act with some consideration for them.

I find the Liberal belief that we have no responsibilitys to anyone (and that we can run around and do whatever we want) to be degenerate and childish. Its just an excuse to engage in all kinds of hedonism.

[–]Nombre27 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Excellent comment. Hadn't heard of the other social contract. Not surprising given how illiberal it is by today's standards.

Very interesting compilation of information that you've laid out here. Would you mind sharing any books or sources that you drew upon to come to these conclusions or their synthesis?

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The two main things worth referencing:

Regarding the Burkean social contract: most or possibly all of his writings on this topic are in Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke basically criticizes this earlier, more liberal (and ironically, exclusive, and thus in a strange sense less liberal) Rousseauian social contract.

Because it seems impossible to move away from Social Contract Theory and back towards theories of Divine Right, I imagine that we are essentially stuck in this mode of thinking, and thus that the Burkean social contract is the closest thing we really have to ridding ourselves of existing social contracts. The Burkean version is obviously vastly superior for ethnonationalism, since 'the dead' practically entirely coincides with our race (i.e. our ancestors) and 'the unborn' largely coincides also with our race. Thus I think it is a satisfactory substitute.

Regarding the soul: Most or possibly all of the writings upon which I am grounding my reasoning are found in Descartes' excellent Meditations on First Philosophy. The conception of soul that Descartes outlines is also more similar to the kind of soul that people believe in today compared to whatever the Socratics believed, and thus more relevant to our times. However, I think it is also one that provides an obvious gateway to both egalitarianism and to trans-whatever.

Firstly, due to the scientific unverifiability of the soul's existence and its properties (which essentially holds true for any conception of the soul) which leads us to assume that they are essentially equal, because it is only through differing properties that we are able to differentiate between them and thus consider that some souls may be superior to others to begin with. In the absence of observable differing properties between two objects, we assume them to be the same (e.g. race denialism thrives on observable genetic differences being quite small); ergo, egalitarianism. However, the body's existence (which is all there is in physicalism) is obviously verifiable and thus does not have this problem.

Secondly, due to the possibility that the 'true' self (soul) in some way may have properties incongruent with the 'false' self (body) into which it has been ensouled. If one has a 'true' self and a 'false' self, it leaves open the possibility perhaps the species, race, sex, etc. of one differ from the other. I believe it is Keith Woods who mentioned at some point that trans-anything relies on this type of metaphysical dualism, since trans-anything always relies on a certain type of reasoning: 'I appear to be this (human, male, White, etc.), but this is false, and I am "really" that!' (e.g. attack helicopter trapped inside a human body, female trapped inside a male body, black trapped inside a White body, etc.). I am thus not alone in having made this observation. However, monism (i.e. both idealism and physicalism, but not dualism) also prevents much of this because they do not bifurcate selves into two potentially incongruent entities to begin with.

Regarding metaphysical idealism: Berkeley refers to Bishop George Berkeley, who approached idealism from a Christian perspective. Kastrup refers to the contemporary philosopher of Brazilian extraction, Bernardo Kastrup, who approaches idealism from a scientistic perspective, and whose work has received some attention from Keith Woods.

[–]Nombre27 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you for this detailed write up. I'll check out those reading recommendations.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

An ethnie only actually needs ancestor worship and race worship, since those reinforce the rational side of ethnonationalism.

The terrestrial worship is insufficient, there must also be an equal regard for what is above. There's no disputing that star worship is rational, conferring a sense of proportion. Or as Himmler declared in a speech, "He must once again look with deep reverence into this world. Then he will acquire the right sense of proportion about what is above us".

In Against the Galileans, Julian argued that it had been natural for the ancient societies, without exception, to embrace star worship. Similar sentiment can also be read in Thomas Paine's Age of Reason. They both declare that the original worship consists of contemplating reality, which Julian deemed as a "freedom from passion" and Goethe characterized as a "freedom from fear". In Wilhelm Meister's Travels, Goethe relates that the primitive regard for what is above was the prerequisite for revering what is below, the earthly life.

The explanation was that the stars remained eternally fixed in their circuit, perfect and unchanging as the laws of nature. This actually laid the foundation for Hitler's struggle principle: "a universe in which planets and suns follow their orbits, where moons and planets trace their destined paths" (Mein Kampf). Celsus and Plotinos noted that the omission of reverence for the stars was peculiar to later generations of Jewish-Christians.

Anything else, like morality, needs to be grounded in pure reason to avoid its discarding in the event that the 'religion' itself is discarded by some foolish generation at a later time.

A conception of right (part of a Weltanschauung, or view of life) must be grounded in idealism. "Pure" reason is a Kantian fiction. Schopenhauer points out that the intellect is merely a tool devoid of content. Hitler denounced the intellect as "a mere external phenomenon without inner value."

As many safeguards need to be added to the new social order to ensure that no such unraveling occurs, e.g., explicitly racial constitutions or other foundational documents of the new society.

That's approximating the cynical thinking of the Catholic Church and Soviet Union, that the masses cannot think for themselves and must be protected from conflicting truths.

It should be assumed that future generations will quite rapidly seek to undo whatever it is that we achieve... We should assume that the next generations will be total idiots as these preceding ones have been, who will squander everything, and continue from this worst case scenario.

That's a faulty premise to start from. NeoRail has already sufficiently addressed how, logically, this line of reasoning leads to the employment of coercive methods. More specifically, the formation of a priestly caste, which has always counteracted the desired goal.

This is why the Burkean social contract is superior to the Rousseauian social contract.

The same Rousseau who turned to ancient Sparta as his model for rebuilding Western civilization and who laid down the best indictments for democracy and liberalism?

Schopenhauer would've been revolted by how Edmund Burke reduced the principle of religion to a system where god exclusively functions as a paymaster, dishing out reward and punishment. In a letter, Thomas Jefferson expressed his disgust for how Edmund Burke had mingled his seemingly virtuous actions with repulsive motives (as evidenced from Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution).

Just reconstruct an explicitly racialist Paganism complete with the kind of ancestor worship...

Jefferson wrote a treatise comparing Jesus' doctrines with the ancients, in which he noted that they had cultivated a regard for the country, family, and friends, but fell short of social benevolence. Apollonios of Tyana drew attention to how compared to humans, the sparrows practiced social benevolence. Goethe indicated that Christianity, after it had been purged of its defects, ought to become the final religion since it had helped usher in the rehabiliation of the criminal element.

It should be noted that Jefferson was regarded by the eugenicist Hans F. K. Guenther as one of the last genuine Indo-Europeans.

Lastly, religions that place great emphasis upon souls have the potential for great harm, simply because they are an obvious pathway to egalitarian nonsense like 'judge by the content of one's character (i.e. mind or soul) and not by colour (i.e. body or gene)'.

Stoicism, which places such emphasis, remained the only stabilizing edifice in ancient Greece. In Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, he acknowledges the importance of the racial aspect, but also lays stress on the mental link between humans: "What links one human being to all humans: not (common) blood, or birth (seed), but mind. And... that an individual’s mind is God and of God."

Basically, a more physicalist worldview is required (I'm a physicalist-leaning dualist, moving ever-further in the physicalist direction, far away from the kind of metaphysical idealism of the likes of Berkeley or Kastrup, that Keith Woods has dangerously entertained).

Physicalism (the view that only physical matter/ physical world exists) is an errant life view, it has nothing to do with a world view conception. Most Christians are physicalists. Their "spiritual world" has nothing to do with Materialism (world view) since it's the only other world which exists for them. Originally, Materialism was the acceptance of innumerable worlds (Demokritos, Epicurus). Why did Jefferson embrace the Epicureans while rejecting the Platonists?

Indeed, I call for a new culture rather than a new religion per se.

Your proposition actually has very little to do with culture (whatever exerts an ennobling effect on a people's development, whether in the arts or science), but remains tethered to basic necessities of civilization (history, literature, laws, politics, etc.).