An interesting provo
Secular leadership more effective
anon_laby said in #4208 4d ago:
>low effort OP
The secularism question is important but no one seems to have put much into actually defining it. At best we get hints from BAP that he doesn't mean it as a synonym for atheism. Let's start the discussion by trying to define what we're actually talking about. I have two definitions of secularism:
The first one is positive: secularism is about taking the priestly/religious/moralistic mode of power and thought out of public affairs. Instead we do things on rational argument, clear articulation of value, interests, etc. This is I think what BAP is doing. It's not that you're getting rid of religion or even that you yourself don't have religion, but rather not letting it extract a conceptual tax on your political activity. But in cutting out religion this way, there's an implicit assessment that religion is basically a parasitic force in politics. The priests have somehow illegitimately inserted themselves into political matters which are not their proper domain. But if this is true, then it is also an attack on religion and will diminish its importance in public and even private life as the church or cults lose a major source of power.
We've all seen how religious stuff inserts itself as a substitute for political activity. It's easy to see how this has driven a big portion of the recent catholicism turn, how it comes at expense of politics, and feeds the religious power nexus. I've definitely been guilty of this at times.
On the other hand, the second definition is negative: secularism is where we sweep the essential questions of the foundations of our worldviews under the rug. We present public affairs *as if* they are rational and enlightened, while in fact they are driven by hidden arational metaphysical commitments. Secularism in the enlightenment put a taboo on debating deeper questions of *purpose* in society, creating instead the myth of individual conscience as a political black box from which other things flow. I think there's something wrong with this. Secularism as we actually got it ends up just annihilating teleology and therefore hierarchy and even higher thought.
Are these definitions equivalent? Not quite, but I bet there's a synthesis on which an appreciation of each could agree. We basically have to deal with two problems: the first is the parasitic and retarding role of religion (generalized to include the entire priestly-scholarly-moralistic genre) in public life. The second is the incoherence that comes from refusal to deal with the questions of overall purpose in public life. "Secularism" is one way of dealing with it, public religion is another. Both don't seem right to me.
The secularism question is important but no one seems to have put much into actually defining it. At best we get hints from BAP that he doesn't mean it as a synonym for atheism. Let's start the discussion by trying to define what we're actually talking about. I have two definitions of secularism:
The first one is positive: secularism is about taking the priestly/religious/moralistic mode of power and thought out of public affairs. Instead we do things on rational argument, clear articulation of value, interests, etc. This is I think what BAP is doing. It's not that you're getting rid of religion or even that you yourself don't have religion, but rather not letting it extract a conceptual tax on your political activity. But in cutting out religion this way, there's an implicit assessment that religion is basically a parasitic force in politics. The priests have somehow illegitimately inserted themselves into political matters which are not their proper domain. But if this is true, then it is also an attack on religion and will diminish its importance in public and even private life as the church or cults lose a major source of power.
We've all seen how religious stuff inserts itself as a substitute for political activity. It's easy to see how this has driven a big portion of the recent catholicism turn, how it comes at expense of politics, and feeds the religious power nexus. I've definitely been guilty of this at times.
On the other hand, the second definition is negative: secularism is where we sweep the essential questions of the foundations of our worldviews under the rug. We present public affairs *as if* they are rational and enlightened, while in fact they are driven by hidden arational metaphysical commitments. Secularism in the enlightenment put a taboo on debating deeper questions of *purpose* in society, creating instead the myth of individual conscience as a political black box from which other things flow. I think there's something wrong with this. Secularism as we actually got it ends up just annihilating teleology and therefore hierarchy and even higher thought.
Are these definitions equivalent? Not quite, but I bet there's a synthesis on which an appreciation of each could agree. We basically have to deal with two problems: the first is the parasitic and retarding role of religion (generalized to include the entire priestly-scholarly-moralistic genre) in public life. The second is the incoherence that comes from refusal to deal with the questions of overall purpose in public life. "Secularism" is one way of dealing with it, public religion is another. Both don't seem right to me.
referenced by: >>4209
The secularism quest
galgo said in #4209 4d ago:
>>4208
Where do you place Franco figure and his regime in here? To me is a good balanced combination of secularism and theological truth guidance of a renewed post-civil war national clergy.
Where do you place Franco figure and his regime in here? To me is a good balanced combination of secularism and theological truth guidance of a renewed post-civil war national clergy.
referenced by: >>4212
Where do you place F
anon_baji said in #4210 4d ago:
https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/04/15/the-taliban-were-afghanistans-real-modernizers/
I saw this discussion online but didn't feel too invested in it. It seems like an unproductive frame for looking at history. It brought this article to mind.
In Europe, secularism was a prerequisite for forming the revolutionary cadres that launched various coups and revolutions in the 19th and 20th centuries. Revolution required breaking the bonds between people and the land they were born in and the families they came from. The social ties of normies were caught up in agrarian life, church life, and other provincialisms. You had to destroy it all to join the party.
Once society secularizes this gets flipped on its head. The goyim cling to they football, many people's relationships are digitally mediated, peasant rebellions like the trucker's strike flare out impotently because there's no firm social basis for their elaboration. Our institutions are vulnerable to groups of people who coordinate using ethnic mafias or religious cults to extract spoils for themselves. However, no one really has the ambition of the Young Turks, Zionists, or Communists and Fascists. Why this is, well that's the question, and that's where BAP shines as a thinker usually, but this seems like a provocation against the integralist boogyman.
I don't think he's really wrong here. The way you overturn the morality of a religious (if sclerotic) society and usher in a new order is through secularism. Some people even describe Jesus as an atheist for this reason. But once that transformation happens, guess how you overturn the new order...
I saw this discussion online but didn't feel too invested in it. It seems like an unproductive frame for looking at history. It brought this article to mind.
In Europe, secularism was a prerequisite for forming the revolutionary cadres that launched various coups and revolutions in the 19th and 20th centuries. Revolution required breaking the bonds between people and the land they were born in and the families they came from. The social ties of normies were caught up in agrarian life, church life, and other provincialisms. You had to destroy it all to join the party.
Once society secularizes this gets flipped on its head. The goyim cling to they football, many people's relationships are digitally mediated, peasant rebellions like the trucker's strike flare out impotently because there's no firm social basis for their elaboration. Our institutions are vulnerable to groups of people who coordinate using ethnic mafias or religious cults to extract spoils for themselves. However, no one really has the ambition of the Young Turks, Zionists, or Communists and Fascists. Why this is, well that's the question, and that's where BAP shines as a thinker usually, but this seems like a provocation against the integralist boogyman.
I don't think he's really wrong here. The way you overturn the morality of a religious (if sclerotic) society and usher in a new order is through secularism. Some people even describe Jesus as an atheist for this reason. But once that transformation happens, guess how you overturn the new order...
referenced by: >>4215
I saw this discussio
So: be pragmatic, no
anon_laby said in #4212 4d ago:
>>4209
There's something deeply fake about the current claim of religion to address the "first things". BAP is right about this. Nobody cared who Franco was anymore or what he was about about 10 minutes after his death. Spain promptly forgot him and reverted, because he didn't offer people anything that spoke to their souls. He was allowed to continue after the war because he represented nothing. He was just a leader. Meanwhile despite being crushed Adolf Hitler will be remembered, feared, and revered for the next thousand years at least because of the power of what he represents.
One of these men was a "secular" figure and the other was "religious". These words obviously have no meaning in this light, and this is precisely how the "religious" fraud works. It associates itself nominally with the deep spiritual essentials, and then delivers no such thing while draining all the blood out of the conversation. It's a cheap word association game that depends on you not ever noticing that the implicit logic doesn't work.
There's something deeply fake about the current claim of religion to address the "first things". BAP is right about this. Nobody cared who Franco was anymore or what he was about about 10 minutes after his death. Spain promptly forgot him and reverted, because he didn't offer people anything that spoke to their souls. He was allowed to continue after the war because he represented nothing. He was just a leader. Meanwhile despite being crushed Adolf Hitler will be remembered, feared, and revered for the next thousand years at least because of the power of what he represents.
One of these men was a "secular" figure and the other was "religious". These words obviously have no meaning in this light, and this is precisely how the "religious" fraud works. It associates itself nominally with the deep spiritual essentials, and then delivers no such thing while draining all the blood out of the conversation. It's a cheap word association game that depends on you not ever noticing that the implicit logic doesn't work.
referenced by: >>4214
There's something de
galgo said in #4214 4d ago:
>>4212
While I agree on your statements, and BAPs, I think you lack perspective on Spanish life, where mentioning Franco is pretty similar to mention Hitler or Mussolini. Specially for liberal left, whose currently in power. I stated Franco because I think he could deliver, on his national context, the leverage between religious and secular. In my opinion (not an expert historian tho) he was personally religious, politically secular and modernizer. And there, in Spain, will be remembered for centuries, no doubt about this.
While I agree on your statements, and BAPs, I think you lack perspective on Spanish life, where mentioning Franco is pretty similar to mention Hitler or Mussolini. Specially for liberal left, whose currently in power. I stated Franco because I think he could deliver, on his national context, the leverage between religious and secular. In my opinion (not an expert historian tho) he was personally religious, politically secular and modernizer. And there, in Spain, will be remembered for centuries, no doubt about this.
referenced by: >>4215
While I agree on you
anon_laby said in #4215 4d ago:
>>4214
OK I don't know Spain. I speak from an American perspective. But here's how I see it: I have a lot of benefit of the doubt for the quality of political projects that are put down by force and even after defeat can only be kept down even a century later by ongoing suppression. There the defeat seems hardly to tarnish the thing at all. The point stands that Franco was not defeated, he just faded away. Whatever he was doing obviously didn't work. It worked while he was around to keep everybody in line, but where was the worldview? Why wasn't his work continued? Were his men hunted to the ends of the earth, tortured, and executed? Did they die with honor and defiance despite this? Were the Spanish people raped, enslaved, and re-educated by their enemies?
I suspect in the case of Franco as in the case of Britain and the rest of the European empires that behind the scenes pressure from the Americans and Soviets ultimately doomed the project. But this is just the thing. Some European powers had the conviction to see this coming and actually stand up and resist, to not go quietly but make good on their promise that if they were forced to leave the stage of history they would slam the door so hard that the world would stand back in stupefaction. Even in the 1970s this defiance was still an option. They could have challenged that doom, forced the issue and become martyrs, but there are no secular martyrs.
You can call him secular, I call this precisely the problem. We need a prophet-king, not a bureaucrat. This is why I disagree with BAP's use of "secular" to describe what is needed. He is right that "religion" is mostly a bunch of bullshit only good for putting people to sleep these days, but that doesn't make the alternative "secular". The other anon >>4210 makes a good point about the historical necessities: in an age of encrusted religious bondage and lies you need enlightened secularism to break through it. But in an age of encrusted secular bondage and lies with religion as at best a sort of gimp jester, we need the absolute clarity of a worldview taught by some more-than-human leader.
OK I don't know Spain. I speak from an American perspective. But here's how I see it: I have a lot of benefit of the doubt for the quality of political projects that are put down by force and even after defeat can only be kept down even a century later by ongoing suppression. There the defeat seems hardly to tarnish the thing at all. The point stands that Franco was not defeated, he just faded away. Whatever he was doing obviously didn't work. It worked while he was around to keep everybody in line, but where was the worldview? Why wasn't his work continued? Were his men hunted to the ends of the earth, tortured, and executed? Did they die with honor and defiance despite this? Were the Spanish people raped, enslaved, and re-educated by their enemies?
I suspect in the case of Franco as in the case of Britain and the rest of the European empires that behind the scenes pressure from the Americans and Soviets ultimately doomed the project. But this is just the thing. Some European powers had the conviction to see this coming and actually stand up and resist, to not go quietly but make good on their promise that if they were forced to leave the stage of history they would slam the door so hard that the world would stand back in stupefaction. Even in the 1970s this defiance was still an option. They could have challenged that doom, forced the issue and become martyrs, but there are no secular martyrs.
You can call him secular, I call this precisely the problem. We need a prophet-king, not a bureaucrat. This is why I disagree with BAP's use of "secular" to describe what is needed. He is right that "religion" is mostly a bunch of bullshit only good for putting people to sleep these days, but that doesn't make the alternative "secular". The other anon >>4210 makes a good point about the historical necessities: in an age of encrusted religious bondage and lies you need enlightened secularism to break through it. But in an age of encrusted secular bondage and lies with religion as at best a sort of gimp jester, we need the absolute clarity of a worldview taught by some more-than-human leader.
referenced by: >>4220 >>4223
OK I don't know Spai
galgo said in #4220 4d ago:
>>4215
> ...in an age of encrusted secular bondage and lies with religion as at best a sort of gimp jester, we need the absolute clarity of a worldview taught by some more-than-human leader.
I really agree with this, I am recalling d'Annunzio opera, are you familiar with it? He emphasizes in this kind of figure of magical leadership apart from church leaders, virtue on a public display and its own liturgy embedded on the state... and so on
> ...in an age of encrusted secular bondage and lies with religion as at best a sort of gimp jester, we need the absolute clarity of a worldview taught by some more-than-human leader.
I really agree with this, I am recalling d'Annunzio opera, are you familiar with it? He emphasizes in this kind of figure of magical leadership apart from church leaders, virtue on a public display and its own liturgy embedded on the state... and so on
I really agree with
anon_nice said in #4223 4d ago:
>>4215
For better or worse, that kind of energy has faded from the Earth and it's not coming back. I might even go so far as to say that the "Revolutionary Man" or the "masculine totalitarian" no longer exists as a biological archetype. The Interwar years were, as Gramsci famously noted, "the time of monsters"; trying to bring it back is like a Hobbit trying to summon an Ainur by thinking hard. For what it's worth, I am predicting a wave of violent nationalism in Europe and the British Isles in particular within the next few years. But I suspect this will appear in the form of mindless riots, street brawls and general trashing of cities, rather than something like 1848.
For better or worse, that kind of energy has faded from the Earth and it's not coming back. I might even go so far as to say that the "Revolutionary Man" or the "masculine totalitarian" no longer exists as a biological archetype. The Interwar years were, as Gramsci famously noted, "the time of monsters"; trying to bring it back is like a Hobbit trying to summon an Ainur by thinking hard. For what it's worth, I am predicting a wave of violent nationalism in Europe and the British Isles in particular within the next few years. But I suspect this will appear in the form of mindless riots, street brawls and general trashing of cities, rather than something like 1848.
referenced by: >>4234
For better or worse,
anon_baji said in #4234 4d ago:
>>4223
I think this is the most relevant conversation to be had and it's what gets missed among those waiting for Caesar. The same way the archetypal soylennial we know and cherish is an uncommon specimen circa 1920, professional revolutionaries and scarred Junkers don't exist anymore. That's not to say they couldn't return in the future, but I think the availability of certain human types has a lot do with the atmosphere that surrounds generational cohorts from a young age.
The progressive atomization of society also means that there is more space for strange fruit to develop, people whose values were formed in outer regions that are invisible to the sociological eye. I have little hope for demagogues with world-historical ambitions to emerge among people who are older than 30 right now, but for a young boy growing up right now with a good upbringing, looking around at what the world has become and filtering it through his alien morality... he'll be plotting great things from a young age, I think.
I think this is the most relevant conversation to be had and it's what gets missed among those waiting for Caesar. The same way the archetypal soylennial we know and cherish is an uncommon specimen circa 1920, professional revolutionaries and scarred Junkers don't exist anymore. That's not to say they couldn't return in the future, but I think the availability of certain human types has a lot do with the atmosphere that surrounds generational cohorts from a young age.
The progressive atomization of society also means that there is more space for strange fruit to develop, people whose values were formed in outer regions that are invisible to the sociological eye. I have little hope for demagogues with world-historical ambitions to emerge among people who are older than 30 right now, but for a young boy growing up right now with a good upbringing, looking around at what the world has become and filtering it through his alien morality... he'll be plotting great things from a young age, I think.
I think this is the