Christian Civilization -- The Central Issue

[Alexis Jacobi]

I understand that this is a piece of a text inside a piece of a text, but saying pagans were making an error (but the monotheists are not) without justification comes off as silly to me. Let's just throw out that perhaps the pagans were right. But then the difference between the monotheists and the pagans is not just around numbers of deities - and the Trinity, coupled with the holiness of Mary in Christianity, is extremely plural in practice anyway. Pagans had a rather different metaphysics, if we lump them all together like this. They had different ideas about evil, the body, sex, the immanence of deities at least also, nature and more. There's lot of room, for example, for both pagans and monotheisms to be better than each other and worse than each other.

The main point of that quote is:

The alternative today is not between being Christian or being pagan, but between being Christian and being nothing in particular, not between belonging to the Church and belonging to some social spiritual community that claims an equally wholehearted allegiance, but between belonging to the Church and belonging nowhere, giving no wholehearted allegiance to anything.

You continue:

Also, the way this quote within a quote was written it is as if we cannot choose pagan (and I would add indigenous/shamanistic,/animist systems) But we can, and in fact those have been growing amongst not just people with fairly recent genetic connections to those religions, but also in people, like those of European descent, where there has been a much longer pause for their genes in general. Also there have been underground and marginalized paganisms pretty much everywhere including Europe.

Well what I can say is that I grew up within just exactly those circumstances. A pagan revival I guess you might say. The Eastern religions, Buddhism, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, shamanism, the use of psychotropic drugs, Castaneda, Yogananda.

If you are asking me personally where I find value and meaning I will state categorically that, after everything, I find the greater concentration of real value to be found within our own traditions. I think that Dawson's main point, if I have understood him correctly, is that we do not really have a choice except that we realize or fulfill what we as a civilization have undertaken. And that the religious tradition of Europe is crucial to that, and unavoidable. You cannot get around it. And in my own case and for myself I have verified this as being sound and true.

Having been interested in CG Jung for a long time, and also having read biographies of him and his life, there is no way to regard him except as an extreme pagan. Perhaps one could say that everything repressed and among those "with fairly recent genetic connections" to the Christian religion came back up to the surface in Jung? I am certainly aware though many are not that Jung was part of a general European movement that endeavored to examine and validate all that material that had been suppressed. And that movement is certainly a huge part of the 20th century and the intellectual currents that evolved -- and had massive cultural influence -- certainly in the US and definitely in California.

If you are asking me personally to sum this up or offer some blanket assessment I am uncertain what the best response is. It is not a simple issue. But I can share with you my sense of this: in one way or another one has to examine trajectories. And what happened in California among the generation of my own parents and grandparents was far more an outcome and related to a movement within Christianity in a very organic sense. The Christian radicalism of the Burned-Over District and the various strains and breakaways from Christian conventionalism is in fact what inspired people in following generations to seek out radical alternatives.

So, I want to put back on the table the respiritualisation via non-monotheistic religions, or better put non-Abrahamic religions. This has already been happening and I think there are good reasons why these others are coming back.

You will have to talk about that in more depth instead of merely throwing it out there. Coming back in what way? For whom? For you for example? Again my parents and grandparents were deeply involved in all of these trends and movements and I grew up in the shadow of it. What I have noticed personally is the degree to which foreign traditions (Buddhism, Vedic religion, and others) seem to be overlays or superficial impositions. But the actual *self*, the person, is better understood and seen as an outcome of our own historical processes. I have numerous anecdotes where I have observed this superficiality as I call it. But in no sense should you take this to mean that I myself oppose the values or meaning in those traditions.

And, so, given what I said above, I disagree. That is not THE choice, though I can see that some people think that's the choice.

And I think this is an important issue. We are often told: This is the choice. And even the enemies out there will tell us that we have to choose between teams A and B. They agree on little else but they agree that we must choose between them and 'the enemy', while I often feel like the two teams I am shown are both the enemy or at least not for me.

What the writer said was: "Such is the tragedy that has overtaken so much of our common life that it belongs nowhere, has no spiritual home, no ultimate standards of reference and little definite conception of the direction in which it desires to move".

And this thread begins a closer examination of these general assertions. If you declare that THE choice is not there but somewhere else, then fill out your views. You are making vague references and they require being filled out a bit more.

I am not precisely sure what THE CHOICE must be. But I will definitely say that when it comes to an individual and the exigencies of existence and the choices required, finding a "spiritual home" or perhaps "coming back to it" becomes crucial.

[Alexis Jacobi]

(continued from the above)

A quote out of Dawson:

For a secular civilization that has no end beyond its own satisfaction is a monstrosity -- a cancerous growth which will ultimately destroy itself. The only power that can liberate man from this kingdom of darkness is the Christian faith.

Iwannaplato responds:

I'm not sure why the only choice is something that has already failed. I'm being polemical here, but seriously.....

You are not responding to his point. The point is the loss of grounding in any solid tradition or as I would say *metaphysics*. If the goal or object of civilization is severed from that idealism traditionally defined through religious aspiration and in notions of "transcendence", what then arises out of such a culture?

That is what they are talking about. You seem to have missed that point.

Dawson: It is the intellectual and social inertia of Christians that is the real obstacle to a restoration of Christian culture. For if it is true that more than half the population of this country are church members, Christians can hardly say that they are powerless to influence society. It is the will, not the power, that is lacking.

Iwannaplato: Perhaps the will is lacking in part because they realize the problems of Christianity. Whatever there distaste for modern society, they also realize that a Christian society was and would be a serious problem of another kind. Been there, done that.

I agree with Dawson that if any sort of restoration or renewal is to take place or can take place within an individual (the individual always being the reference-point and the subject) that intellectual inertia must be confronted. What he means bt *inertia* is really a wide ranging thing. What that is has to be drawn out.

I certainly do not deny *problems in Christianity*. There are just so many levels to it. Benny Hinn compared to G. K. Chesterton or John Henry Newman.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Yes, everyone has their own metaphysical reality in a sense, and to some extent, because we all experience reality differently, according to our upbringing and influences, our prejudices, our pre-suppositions, our imagination, and any number of other factors. Not everyone would agree with that, of course, and many -- perhaps most-- people think that reality is just there, right before our eyes, and if we don't quite see what they see, there must be something wrong with us. Despite your apparent reverence for metaphysics, I think you are more like that than you realise.

This is an interesting point and a sound observation.

What you are saying is that some people *just see what is right in front of them* and are not involved in projecting their *metaphysical dream"?

It seems to me that the view you operate within is postmodern in that sense that postmodernism assumes that a grand, defining meta-narrative has collapsed? And that now there is not genuine or true apperception of truth realized in a metaphysical picture?

If you clarify I will have more to go on.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The following is a quote from Christopher Dawson's The Historic Reality of Christian Culture: A Way to the Renewal of Human Life (Routledge, 1960) I read this book some years back and it has very much influenced my outlook. As it happens -- and this note goes out to all who participated in the Christianity thread that endured for so long -- my own position has become full-circle. I accept the necessity of a renovation of the relationship to what is presented, metaphysically,

What do you actually mean by, 'presented, metaphysically', exactly?

I wrote: "I accept the necessity of a renovation of the relationship to what is presented, metaphysically".

Metaphysical idealism -- it is not only Christianity that operates through Ideal Pictures -- is in my view a set of notions, beliefs, understandings and possibilities that are presented as existing in or coming from a domain outside the individual or, perhaps better said, outside the mutable world of determined events.

A metaphysics is a picture, a series of suppositions, a sense about *truths* that are not really a part of the earthly system in a biological and material sense, but are perceived by men through profoundly intuitional processes.

So what I try to express is that I (certainly) accept the picture, the admonitions, and if you will the *demands* placed on me by the metaphysical picture that I hold to. Where do I hold to it? Only in my mind. And going further: only in my imagining faculty. I do not mean imaginary faculty though. I refer to the imagination as a function within us, within our being, that enables us to perceive and work with notions that are of that order: metaphysical to the world in its biological/material sense.

Obviously man is a metaphysical being. What makes man man is that link to and relationship with what is *metaphysical* to existence.

[Wizard22]

Man can be Man, and that is Physically True.

But once he begins to believe that he is Woman...or can be Woman, or "gender is fluid", then you must question what He/She/Xhe/Xhim believe is Metaphysically True.

In other words, is Truth in the Physicality of being Man...or the Metaphysical Reality of "believing" what you are, to be what you are?


Is Truth subjective, or objective?
Can it be manipulated? Is it malleable? Or is it 'beyond' anybody's single aims, ideals, or wanting?
Can Truth be 'pretended' away? Can it be ignored, as Hairball or Scalper prefer? All these metaphysical presumptions, are ignored, often willingly, by those with the intent to Deceive...Deceive themselves, and others, in order to Gain some type of favor (politically) or advantage, immediately or in the future. Paradise. Utopia. Socialism. Marxism.

[Wizard22]

To the Far-Left, the answer is emphatically Yes! metaphysical reality can be 'spirited' away or 'pretended' away.

Life is make-belief, fantasy-land, where "gender is fluid". Truth is 100% Subjective, a matter of Opinion and Political-Cultural power.


To the Far-Right, the answer is emphatically No! metaphysical reality cannot be 'spirited' away or 'pretended' away.

But, to the Far-Right, God is the Ultimate Arbiter and Authority over physical Reality. Truth is 100% Objective, purely a matter of God.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Can Truth be 'pretended' away? Can it be ignored, as Hairball or Scalper prefer? All these metaphysical presumptions, are ignored, often willingly, by those with the intent to Deceive...Deceive themselves, and others, in order to Gain some type of favor (politically) or advantage, immediately or in the future. Paradise. Utopia. Socialism. Marxism.

It is a curious issue: to try to trace out, to describe, but of course to understand how the *modern outlook*, or the postmodern outlook, was constructed. Is constructed the right word though? When it could be said that it was attained or realized through processes of negation?

What I notice in Sculptor, Flash, Harbal and many others who oppose this *metaphysical picture*, is that (to put it colloquially) they operate from blindness. There is a wide territory, so important to the Occident, that has been erased within them.

To the degree that it is addressed, which implies a glimmer of seeing, it is negated flatly, uniformly, absolutely.

It is like a piece is missing.

My larger interest is in understanding how this stance came to be.

[Wizard22]

Can Truth be 'pretended' away? Can it be ignored, as Hairball or Scalper prefer? All these metaphysical presumptions, are ignored, often willingly, by those with the intent to Deceive...Deceive themselves, and others, in order to Gain some type of favor (politically) or advantage, immediately or in the future. Paradise. Utopia. Socialism. Marxism.

It is a curious issue: to try to trace out, to describe, but of course to understand how the *modern outlook*, or the postmodern outlook, was constructed. Is constructed the right word though? When it could be said that it was attained or realized through processes of negation?

What I notice in Sculptor, Flash, Harbal and many others who oppose this *metaphysical picture*, is that (to put it colloquially) they operate from blindness. There is a wide territory, so important to the Occident, that has been erased within them.

To the degree that it is addressed, which implies a glimmer of seeing, it is negated flatly, uniformly, absolutely.

It is like a piece is missing.

My larger interest is in understanding how this stance came to be.

My first reaction is that it was 'Shaped' more than "Constructed".

On one hand, it might be a matter of one's physical and mental Constitution. Who knows? Maybe they have low-tolerance levels, for Truth. Maybe Ignorance is Bliss? Maybe they're not naturally Curious? There's lots of reasons and causes which go into these analyses.

On the other hand, Genetically, maybe the Occident is not their Inheritance?? Maybe they, and their ancestors, and their great-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandfathers and grandmothers, were Enemies of the Occident? Maybe they've Resented it, for 1000 years? Maybe it is not their 'Honor' to defend, but to attack?

Maybe it's Spiritual??

[Iwannaplato]

Well what I can say is that I grew up within just exactly those circumstances. A pagan revival I guess you might say. The Eastern religions, Buddhism, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, shamanism, the use of psychotropic drugs, Castaneda, Yogananda.

I wouldn't include Buddhism, the Vedas/Bhagavad Git and Yognanda in the category pagans. I know the term is used in a lot of ways. In any case I would distinguish them, regardless of terms, from shamanistic/animist/indigenous and then pagan religions that tended to have larger cultures. So, several options.

If you are asking me personally where I find value and meaning I will state categorically that, after everything, I find the greater concentration of real value to be found within our own traditions.

My own traditions include pagan religions. Europe was pagan and in pockets continued right up to the present.

I think that Dawson's main point, if I have understood him correctly, is that we do not really have a choice except that we realize or fulfill what we as a civilization have undertaken. And that the religious tradition of Europe is crucial to that, and unavoidable. You cannot get around it. And in my own case and for myself I have verified this as being sound and true.

and one could easily argue, as both terrible and wonderful people have, that the monotheisms are from outside the European traditions.

If you are asking me personally to sum this up or offer some blanket assessment I am uncertain what the best response is. It is not a simple issue. But I can share with you my sense of this: in one way or another one has to examine trajectories. And what happened in California among the generation of my own parents and grandparents was far more an outcome and related to a movement within Christianity in a very organic sense. The Christian radicalism of the Burned-Over District and the various strains and breakaways from Christian conventionalism is in fact what inspired people in following generations to seek out radical alternatives.

And I see good things about this though I don't quite fit into those traditions. I think the Eastern religions had some things to offer, though I have issues with them for me in general, for example.

So, I want to put back on the table the respiritualisation via non-monotheistic religions, or better put non-Abrahamic religions. This has already been happening and I think there are good reasons why these others are coming back.

You will have to talk about that in more depth instead of merely throwing it out there. Coming back in what way? For whom? For you for example?

Via family members I know a lot about book sales. What was once a kind of tiny area in publishing - all the pagan/indigenous stuff, has in the last 40 years become vastly more popular. It includes European pagan traditions, practices and views - which do overlap with many indigenous, animist views - and then also non-American European paganisms. Anything from runes/tarot/alchemy/astrology on the let's focus on a techinique side, to re-enchantment of nature via paganism and the other group to, well a wide range of other practices and views. There are pernicious forms of this, and others that, to me anyway, are not pernicious at all.

One could look at it like this: at some point in European history religions NOT NATIVE to Europe entered Europe and very actively criminalized European practices and beliefs. I mean, to the point that herbalists were in danger, for example. Yes, there have been turnings to Eastern practices, views and traditions. Yes, there has been a rise of atheism and non-religious spirituality. But there is also a return to traditional European beliefs, practices and traditions.

Personally, I don't think we are beholden to something simply because our ancestors engaged in it. But if we are going to make that argument Christianity is quite unclearly attached to those with European genes.

At some point radicals managed to get a foothold in Europe and for a variety of often political reasons, a non-European religion took over, for good and for ill.

Now I personally don't think anyone need follow any of these traditions, but I think the we need to return to Christianity because it is our European tradition is a very vulnerable viewpoint.

Again my parents and grandparents were deeply involved in all of these trends and movements and I grew up in the shadow of it. What I have noticed personally is the degree to which foreign traditions (Buddhism, Vedic religion, and others) seem to be overlays or superficial impositions.

I agree. But I see similar phenomena with every single belief system, not just religions ones but there also. I mean, how many people really wrestle with, for example, the at least seeming contradictions in the Bible? It's a small percentage that doesn't think one thing one day and another thing another day, even in Christianity and who actually dives into and spends time in the cognitive dissonance there. My point is not 'Oh, there's no way to resolve that,' but if we are talking about shallowness that's endemic and not restricted to any religion.

But the actual *self*, the person, is better understood and seen as an outcome of our own historical processes. I have numerous anecdotes where I have observed this superficiality as I call it. But in no sense should you take this to mean that I myself oppose the values or meaning in those traditions.

I think that's a fair point, but I don't think it quite leads to 'to stop decay and make our society better we need to return to Christianity. And those in power who have the greatest affects on society may well attend church, but they are hardly Christian.

What the writer said was: "Such is the tragedy that has overtaken so much of our common life that it belongs nowhere, has no spiritual home, no ultimate standards of reference and little definite conception of the direction in which it desires to move".

I think this is partly a necessary stage. If we go back to earlier Europe, people weren't thinking and owning their religion and spirituality. They were forced and indocrinated (and also by empathetic and kind authorities taught and guided). They had no good option. There was no real choosing. Their understanding was superficial. There was the threat of secular punishment and eternal damnation holding the religion in place. I think it is absolutely necessary that people get lost. Just as learners coming out of the 'repeat what the teacher said, regurgitate facts on test learners', need to actually learn what learning is.

And this thread begins a closer examination of these general assertions. If you declare that THE choice is not there but somewhere else, then fill out your views. You are making vague references and they require being filled out a bit more.

Hopefully some of the above answers this. My point was that it was not the only choice for us, not that it is not also A choice.

I am not precisely sure what THE CHOICE must be. But I will definitely say that when it comes to an individual and the exigencies of existence and the choices required, finding a "spiritual home" or perhaps "coming back to it" becomes crucial.

Right and I am not arguing against that. I was arguing against the 'here's the choice, Christianity or nothing.'

[Alexis Jacobi]

You are a pervert, Flash. Perversion is what defines you and animates you. It has led you to a manifestation of self that is ugly and in a real sense vile. I base this on what you say, where your values lie, and how you present yourself.

And you are the most boring nazi on the whole of the internet, so nobody's perfect.

We can’t quite be done with you yet Flash. If as I say we are all outcomes of specific social, intellectual and political processes, then we have to linger somewhat more on the topic of how you — a pervert on numerous levels — came to be.

You use the term Nazi irresponsibly. But I believe I am on solid ground when I perceive you as a pervert.

When the discussion turns on these stances, it is obvious that though ideas are always there, and these can be discussed abstractly, that ultimately what really does concern us is how they manifest in us — in the man; ad hominem.

Therefore: the reemphasis on the relevancy of ad hominem as a legitimate adjunct to argumentation.

[Harbal]

You keep saying you are solely here for your own purposes, Alexis, but that would seem to suggest that your purpose is to put yourself under constant attack, and I can't help thinking that a very strange purpose.

On the contrary, Alexis would be wise to put you on the attack.

You certainly have a lot to Defend of yourself... daring to call Alexis "sinister" while you defend child dragtime story hour...

Not only do I defend it, I'm currently making enquiries into how I can become involved in it.

[Harbal]

What I notice in Sculptor, Flash, Harbal and many others

And we notice one or two things in you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What I notice in Sculptor, Flash, Harbal and many others

And we notice one or two things in you.

There’s a difference though: you (Harbal) are substantially in the dark about those issues of causation. And those others I mentioned don’t show much tendency toward self-analysis and self-examination.

What yous notice is far more projection than anything actually real.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Personally, I don't think we are beholden to something simply because our ancestors engaged in it. But if we are going to make that argument Christianity is quite unclearly attached to those with European genes.

I cannot quite agree with you here. For the simple reason that Judaic Christianity, when it confronted the Greek world, merged into something distinct: Greco-Christianity. Catholicism as everyone knows is an interweaving of Platonism as well as numerous strains of thought circulating in the 1st century.

There is also the historical fact that when Mediterranean Roman Catholicism infused itself among the Germanic tribes that those tribes received it while also modifying it according to their cultural pathways.

See The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation.

A more complex relationship than it would appear.

[Harbal]

Yes, everyone has their own metaphysical reality in a sense, and to some extent, because we all experience reality differently, according to our upbringing and influences, our prejudices, our pre-suppositions, our imagination, and any number of other factors. Not everyone would agree with that, of course, and many -- perhaps most-- people think that reality is just there, right before our eyes, and if we don't quite see what they see, there must be something wrong with us. Despite your apparent reverence for metaphysics, I think you are more like that than you realise.

This is an interesting point and a sound observation.

What you are saying is that some people *just see what is right in front of them* and are not involved in projecting their *metaphysical dream"?

I am saying that we all see reality through our own, unique lens, but some people seem sure that if we do not have the same lens as them, we are somehow at fault.

As much as society might have changed over the last few hundred years, and in just the space of my life time, it still retains much of the Christian tradition it was once totally dominated by, and some of it, I agree, is worth keeping. We might be aware that todays society has been shaped by our country's Christian heritage, but I don't think many people will give that much thought; people just tend to take things for how they are without wondering why. Religion had a more visible presence when I was growing up than it does now, but it was never something I was ever involved in, and I don't have any attachment to it, or even any feelings about it, so I wonder why you find it strange that people like me have no longing to go back to a more religious past.

It seems to me that the view you operate within is postmodern in that sense that postmodernism assumes that a grand, defining meta-narrative has collapsed? And that now there is not genuine or true apperception of truth realized in a metaphysical picture?

It's not something I car much about. I have my own little carry-on, without involving the rest of society, for the most part, and the more the rest of society leaves me alone, the more I prefer it. I find things generally okay, and I don't really like the idea of people like you coming along trying to shake things up.