Over at WSJ, there is an article about The Late, Great American WASP by Joseph Epstein.
I won’t say much about the article itself. The author is essentially talking about an enlightened aristocracy as related to ethnocentric nationalism, plutocratic ruling elite, landed gentry, primogeniture and noblesse oblige. It’s an interesting topic, but the author simplifies and in doing so falsifies history a bit. Still, the topic should be discussed for its continuing relevance.
My purpose here, however, is simply to make note of a couple of comments. The two commenters were speaking to a more side issue that is another interesting topic. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this side issue, but I thought I’d share it because I found it curious.
Frank Pecarich, in his comment, offered a quote by Collin Cleary:
“Even within the most modern of Western men – yes, even within our politically correct academics – we still see some glimmer of the old, Indo-European thematic nature. One sees this, of course, in the polemical nature of Leftist scholarship. And, as Ricardo Duchesne has pointed out, their critique of the West embodies the perennial Western negativity about itself, and Western “self-doubt.” This may be the hardest point for Right-wing critics of the Left to understand. The suicidal self-hatred of Western Left-wingers is something that seems utterly mad, and defies explanation.
“Of course many Right-wingers do, in fact, have a ready explanation: the self-hatred that currently grips Europeans, and European-Americans, is a kind of plague germ spread by non-Europeans who wish to manipulate us for their own ethnic self-interest. But such manipulation would be impossible if Europeans did not already exhibit an innate capacity for ruthless, sometimes suicidal self-criticism. The anti-Western animus of the European Left may be foolish, dishonest, and disastrous – but it is not un-Western.”
I’m not familiar with Collin Cleary. I wondered what was the larger argument he is making, but the source of the quote wasn’t offered. Fortunately, a quick web search brought up the article which begins with that quote. Cleary is a neo-pagan of the neo-reactionary variety. His argument is basically that left-wingers take too far what is otherwise fundamentally true and good about the Western tradition. This he describes as our “tragic flaw”, individual freedom brought to its self-defeating extreme.
It seems a bit melodramatic with the author’s description of the “suicidal self-hatred of Western Left-wingers”. Still, I’m intrigued by the general idea of the “old, Indo-European thematic nature”. In this view, the Left isn’t un-Western and as such neither is it un-American. However it is described or judged, it can claim an ancient lineage of sorts.
In response to that quote, James Nedved wrote:
Very interesting. I never thought about that in relation to Leftist criticism of the West, that “even it” is really part of the Western “tradition” as it were.
We in the West when you think of it do have a penchant for self-criticism on BOTH the “Jerusalem” and “Athens” side of our patrimony: Jerusalem: search our hearts, find our sin and get rid of it. Athens: Socrates was the original asker of the question, “What is the right way to live?” (An aside: If he would have just shut up, he wouldn’t have had to drink the hemlock.)
Both sides of our patrimony ask us to criticize ourselves / our laws / our “way” to find and then to prove (in the sense of “test”) ourselves.
With this comment, Nedved adds another layer of Western tradition from two other sources of the Mediterranean variety. Levantine Judeo-Christianity obviously didn’t originate in Europe, but it has become so syncretized with the “old, Indo-European thematic nature” that is impossible to separate the two. Protestantism is very much an European creation and Calvinism particularly embodies the attitude of self-doubt and harsh judgment. As for the Greek influence (by way of Hellenism and Rome), we have another strain of Axial Age influence that later fully bloomed in the Enlightenment Era. Combined, the doubting prophets and philosophers were overlaid upon the ancient dark imagination of the European pagans.
In a The Phora discussion thread about Cleary’s article, someone with the username Petr wrote:
I myself would be ready to acknowledge and celebrate the genius of Aryan peoples (as a non-Aryan Finn myself ), but yet I think that writers like this often overstate their generally correct case concerning the exceptional altruism and idealism of Indo-European peoples by over-generalizing and not noting similar traits in other peoples as well.
Here, for example, the brazen attitude of Leftist polemics is attributed to Aryan high spirits. But in other New Right writings, Jewish or Semitic fanaticism is blamed for that same thing…
The Jews had enough suicidal idealism to rebel repeatedly against the might of Rome, inspired by their messianic ambitions, until they were almost destroyed. On the other hand, the Asiatic Aryan peoples of Persia and India do not seem to have displayed that Faustian individualist attitude that writers like Cleary seem to consider as typically Indo-European.
That is a good point. Cleary is a true believer seeking to defend his conception of European traditionalism. His analysis, although interesting in parts, is ultimately apologetics and should be taken as such. Even so, I’m always fascinated by exploration of origins.
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Marmalade 
Domi333 said
marmalade,
it’s always been like that…have you heard about ‘our lady of guadalupe’ appearing on the hill of Tonantzin(trad. Goddess)?
and yes, spirituality is nameless, I once read a piece which said that the mother goddess appearing as Kwan Yin to Chinese, Mary to Europeans etc, she appears in forms common to the people living nearby…
I also think you touched on the ‘God is a jealous god’ topic…so then wouldn’t there be other gods to make him jealous? monotheism and polytheism are related…Allah was high God become only god, JHWH-God may have been El or Ea(poss. combination of both)
ahh i see now, we can express belief without being dogmatic and through different expressions, one loves one’s wife and mother just like one expresses spirituality on different levels and in different(sometimes contradictory)ways…
Peace
Marmalade said
Howdy Domi333,
You’re a very new member of Gaia. I’m glad you found my blog and responded.
I’ve read a little about the story behind ‘our lady of guadalupe’, but I haven’t looked into it much. Have you ever heard of the Evil Saint? I have a picture of him and I find him very fascinating.
As for goddesses, I most definitely feel there is immense connection with the Virgin Mary and all the other Marys. I’ve read that some of the Black Madonnas in Europe were probably originally statues of Isis that were bought from traders. The churches that bought them assumed they were statues of the Madonna. Maybe they saw it as the Madonna because the imagery of the Madonna was based on pagan goddesses in the first place.
Yep about the El and Ea origins of JHWH-God. And yep I think you get what I was saying about love and belief.
Blessings,
Marmalade
Nicole said
Ben, I think that we tend to be polytheists, really, even when we think of ourselves as monotheists. the important thing is to realize the unknowable God behind all the “gods” or knowable one God. it’s when we think that the God or gods we “know” is/are all there is, that it gets out of balance. cause that is just the tiny bit of the elephant in the parable of blind men that we can touch. love and light
Marmalade said
Yep, right you are. We do forget that there is an essential common truth behind all “gods”. But we also forget that there is an essential common truth within all people. When we’re in love(with a god or a person), we can become unbalanced. We become focused on our love object and forget all else.
Song of the day:
Let the Mystery Be
by Iris Dement
Domi333 said
What do you mean by the evil saint?
and also you just went into two concepts: deus absconditus(hidden god) from Thomas Aquinas…or deus otiosus(idle god) yet not hidden… then we have the closer active forces in the universe- relating to shakti(creative forces) in hinduism…anyways, as long as we experience whatever it is, that’s what’s important..
Dom
FastDart said
You guys rock my world. I am one in Spirit and remember that my source is always available.
Marmalade said
Dom,
Two names of the Evil Saint are San Simón and Maximón. They’re also related to the Santa Muerte, a female personification of death. Maximón is a combination of Mayan deities, Judas Iscariot and Pedro de Alvarado, the conquistador of Guatemala. He represents evil, but he is also a protector of sinners. As such, he is a favored saint amongst prostitutes. San Simón is similar, but his name may be a reference to Simon the Magus.
These saints are revered by some Catholics in Central America even though they aren’t aknowledged by the Catholic church. I’ve read about a festival where a statue of the Evil Saint and a statue of Jesus are paraded through the streets and then meet in confrontation… of course, Jesus always wins. 🙂
“as long as we experience whatever it is, that’s what’s important”
True. Experience is the important aspect, but there is another aspect that motivated my posting this blog in the first place. We need to trust our own experience over dogmatic interpretations and cultural expectations, and we must continually return to our own direct experience and question our own direct experience. In doing this, we need to remain humble in our limited understanding and open to new understandings. We must remember that our experience is filtered by unconscious assumptions and beliefs, that we’re caught in collective reality tunnels.
Domi333 said
OK, I know a bit of Maximon, the mayans never totally abandoned their old beliefs, there was a lot of syncretism, an evil saint who’s evil yet protects sinners, that’s a strange paradox…then again the mayan and aztec gods weren’t pure god or evil they were powerful beings(maybe not quetzalcoatl, my fav.)
yes, experience is limited by all that…i think i meant that what we ultimately perceive to be true(although we may keep changing), after breaking through what we have learnt to believe, subconscious motivations etc. Buddha once said: With our thoughts we make the world.(and we are living in the world of our underlying assumptions etc.)
Ben, do you believe that ultimately most people are totally stuck in these ‘collective reality tunnels’, then ultimately how do we know what is really real?
the subjective perceived truth versus the objective reasoning
Marmalade said
BTW you rock too FastDart!
Okay, Dom..
“i think i meant that what we ultimately perceive to be true(although we may keep changing), after breaking through what we have learnt to believe, subconscious motivations etc.”
I think I agree with what your pointing at here. I sense there is a truth to be perceived.
“do you believe that ultimately most people are totally stuck in these ‘collective reality tunnels’, then ultimately how do we know what is really real?”
I do believe we are for the most part stuck in reality tunnels, but I don’t feel it has to be a bad thing. I feel there is something inherently good to the world even if I don’t fully understand it. Reality is infinitely creative and will always defy the mind that attempts to constrain it with knowledge, but its a fun game to play anyways. We don’t ever know what is really real. We just can have experiences that feel real and we can have faith in our own experiences. And from that we live our lives. Mystery trumps all, but we too are Mystery!
“the subjective perceived truth versus the objective reasoning”
Simply put, I don’t believe those are the only two choices… nor do I believe that those two choices are entirely distinct.
So, what do you think of reality tunnels and the possibility of knowing reality?
Nicole said
hi dom! thanks for joining the God Pod! i can see it will be fun having you with us!
Ben, getting back first to your response to my comment, yes, you are right about getting unbalanced when we are in love… that’s what you see in “Jesus freaks” – i remember my Jesus freak days – and that’s what happens when you get lost in the gaze of anoher human being and you can’t eat or sleep, can’t work, can’t think of anything else but that person.
thanks be to God for falling out of love! lol
so, on to your dialogue with Dom. fascinating stuff here about the evil saints. the latin culture is so interesting around religion, with the Days of the Dead and so on… but i wasn’t aware of the evil Saints, reminds me of the movie The Saint with Val Kilmer, a modernising of the old British book/series, and this Saint’s past as an orphan preached at by priests at how they were bastard children of sinful women etc… anyway there is more than meets the eye to that movie, don’t know if you and Dom have seen it.
now, here’s something else new to me. reality tunnels… i do think that many people i know struggle to know what is real. first of all, the media are so all pervasive, and benumb and bemuse people in TV, movies, internet, gaming, newspapers, radio shows… these are not reality but webs of overlapping mental/emotional/spiritual constructs that inform how we think about and live our actual lives to the point that i wonder if we really “see” our lives or live them, or just sleep walk through them.
Marmalade said
Sweet dear Nickel,
Yeah, we become unbaanced in love… but that is what makes it so much fun. 🙂 The “Jesus freaks” aren’t wrong. They just need to step their love up a notch. If they’d truly lose themselves in love Sufi-style, then there’d be no problem. Superficial love of God makes God into a symbol of the ego. Deep love of God transforms the ego.
And there is power in falling out of love. For the mystic, this is the Dark Night of the Soul…. what felt so good, so right disappears… a sense of abandonment and loss, emptiness and loneliness. On the human level, to really love someone means a willingness to let them go. The sorrow comes from the fact that even though the object of love is gone love itself remains. Its difficult to learn to sit still in the fires of love. At first, we love God. Then, we realize God is love, that God isn’t elsewhere to be loved but right here in our hearts.
so, on to your comments about my dialogue with Dom. I haven’t watched The Saint. But becasue you like it, I’ve put it in my Netflix queue. So, I’ll be watching it soon.
Ahhh… something new for you… lovely reality tunnels. I think I probably first learned about them from reading Robert Anton Wilson years ago. Timothy Leary coined the term, but it was RAW who popularized it. There are many other ideas and terms that are simiar. Maybe I’ll blog about it sometime. It is a fascinating subject.
Domi333 said
These reality tunnels, would they justify the interlocking of separate minds in the same stream? I guess, people who are close to each other tend to have a strong mental connection…
Objective and subjective analysis, rightly so would not be so concrete and distinct as only ways of seeing things, they both interlock…one needs to be subjectively experiencing something to look at it objectively(or the observer’s paradox, even though the observer can affect the subject)
There could be a possibility that we’re stuck in a plato’s cave-matrix paradox, yet even exiting the cave, would that too be real? defining what is ‘real’ and what is ‘true’ is not exactly constant, an anomaly can come and become the force for a paradigm shift…but it’s the way that we personally want to see things…
Would it be personally possible to traverse these reality tunnels and affect their comings and goings? or maybe I’m just getting a bit far out…
Marmalade said
Dom – All that you said sounds good to me. Feel free to go as far out as you like. If you’re familiar with Robert Anton Wilson, then you know that the out goes quite far. 🙂
Reality tunnels can be applied to almost anything.
At its most basic, they’re the psychological and bio-sensory limitations of our individuality. But you can step this up to include the social in terms of paradigms. If you don’t take it any further, then its not anything too far out, nothing that goes beyond mainstream understandings of ‘reality’.
However, once you start considering how much overlap there is between the objective and subjective, you’re stepping into different territory. If reality has a collective/consensual factor and if perception is an act of creativity, then reality tunnels aren’t merely something we’re stuck in, not just something that happens to us, not simply the limits of the way the world is.
So, there is the modest view of reality tunnels that says that objective analysis and observation can allow us to see beyond our reality tunnels. And there is the radical view of reality tunnels that says that even objective reality is just another reality tunnel.
Its not a matter of what is absolutely real, of what is the correct view. Reality is about how we relate and the motivation that is behind our way of relating. Subjective experience and objective analysis are both useful to the degree they help us achieve our goals in relating better to the world and to others… however we define those things.
Nicole said
uh huh, still making me pay for that Binyamin eh? lol well, at least i’m worth five cents!
Yeah, unbaanced in love is so much fun – i just love totally losing it in my life. 🙂 I agree with you about losing self in love Sufi-style, that deep love of God transforms the ego. That’s my path!
And the power in falling out of love, Dark Night of the Soul, been there last year with God, this year with ___, “what felt so good, so right disappears… a sense of abandonment and loss, emptiness and loneliness. On the human level, to really love someone means a willingness to let them go. The sorrow comes from the fact that even though the object of love is gone love itself remains. Its difficult to learn to sit still in the fires of love.”
It gets easier. The first time I very deeply loved and let go, it really really hurt for the first three or four years. This time, I was much better prepared so while there are days or hours or moments when it is harder, I accept it thoroughly so the fires pass through me. I don’t resist as much so suffer much less.
“At first, we love God. Then, we realize God is love, that God isn’t elsewhere to be loved but right here in our hearts.” Yes, yes, more and more I know that deeply to be true.
Glad to hear you will be watching The Saint soon, just because I like it! 🙂 Thank you, and I very much look forward to your comments. I think I shall add mention of that to the God Pod discussion of the Illusionist, because it too is about smoke and mirrors…
Every day there is something new for me! But the reality tunnels are especially enticing. I must get more into Robert Anton Wilson, I keep hearing about him on the I-I pod mostly. Good old Timothy Leary, eh? If you do want to blog about it, that would be so cool and you know i will read, mark, learn and inwardly digest. :).
I agree, from the sound of them, they sound far from something to be “stuck” in, something that is gloriously freeing. Wheeeee!
– – –
Comments from the forum thread:
Re: Labels, Religion, and Falling in Love
Nicole said Apr 22, 2008, 5:44 PM:
Wow, this is interesting… 🙂 as having recently fallen intensively in love, I thought i should comment on this.
You make an excellent point about conversion being like falling in love, and there are also many things in life like conversion, for example joining a new company and being really excited about it, or doing the job you are used to and getting a whole new perspective on it.
I think that as humans we filter our experiences through our physicality, so we often interpret our strong feelings romantically when they perhaps are quite different, operating on a spiritual or mental or different kind of emotional level.
What do you all think?
Peace and light,
Nicole
Re: Labels, Religion, and Falling in Love
Marmalade said Apr 23, 2008, 2:42 AM:
As for conversion, Buddhism has an interesting take. When the Buddha became enlightened, some of the Hindu gods(according to the Buddhists) showed deference. In Tibetan Buddhism, some of the deities are considered to be converted from the Bon religion.
This makes sense. In the ancient world, when a people were defeated it was assumed that the god of the people was defeated. So, if a people were converted, they very well might see it as their god being converted… that is submitting to the power of a ‘greater’ god. Conversion isn’t always through love.
Related to this, is a Jungian idea that I think I may have mentioned to you before. Jung said that a person wasn’t genuinely a Christian until they had faced the pagan gods within themselves. This is very intriguing… an internal conversion of archetypes?
Blessings,
Marmalade
Re: Labels, Religion, and Falling in Love
Nicole said Apr 23, 2008, 3:23 AM:
love and light,
nicole
Re: Labels, Religion, and Falling in Love
Dave [no longer around] said Apr 23, 2008, 4:28 AM:
These 5 words are extremely important… and reflect the specific reason I have difficulty with Integral Theory.
IMHO, Integral is too focused on evolution, and not transformation. Evolution suggests a slow, methodical, concerted effort to develop new physiological and psychological capabilities for increasing consciousness and spiritual awareness. I am not sure, but evolution also suggests moving up a hierarchy of archetypes… one to the other to the other.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Every being on this planet, has it within themselves, to “complete their evolution’ in an instantaneous transformation. Some call it enlightenment, others born again. Whatever one calls that… it is a transformation of consciousness… a quantum leap… rather than an evolutionary one.
Appreciate your thoughts.
Dave
Re: Labels, Religion, and Falling in Love
Nicole said Apr 23, 2008, 5:34 AM:
I’m not sure why you see integral this way. To me it definitely is more of a quantum theory, transformation kind of approach. Transformation is not always instant though. For example when the new testament speaks of us being transformed into the likeness of God it is something that takes our whole life and is not complete. Experiences of enlightenment that we have are states not permanent. That is why we are exhorted to work out our salvation with fear and trembling though we can be initially saved in the blink of an eye. The working through of that takes much longer.
Love and light
Nicole
Re: Labels, Religion, and Falling in Love
Negoba said Apr 23, 2008, 9:40 AM:
Similarly, we may see less and less traditional “conversions” but we will see more and more episodes of people falling in love with traditions that are new to them. And that seems ok to me.
I agree that “tranformation” or “diversification” seem better substitutes for the word “evolution.” Despite Wilber’s (sometimes reasonable) meandering about the Mean Green Meme, I still have suspicions of linear heirarchy. The word evolution itself implies linear, up, more, better, bigger. And it’s not that transformation doesn’t include that. It’s just that it’s that and more. Similarly, I wish the field started by Darwin wasn’t named “evolution” because that’s not really the best descriptor. Perhaps his “On the Origin of Species” is better, but of course that’s too many words and not catchy enough.
Enough rambling….till tonight
Re: Labels, Religion, and Falling in Love
Marmalade said Apr 23, 2008, 11:26 AM:
As for integral, I don’t think that transformation and development need be opposed. But integral does seem more focused on development because it can more easily be mapped. Ultimately, though, development is transformative because each new stage is emergent.