Interesting. I‘m a Christian that has a deep personal faith but struggles with the western cultural aspect of it, which is overwhelmingly feminine and emotionally driven.
I enjoyed reading The Church Effeminate by the Priest Leon Podles recently, even though I‘m not a Catholic. It summed up what I‘d been feeling very well.
Additionally, as you mentioned, we have to be careful not to blame the church too much for the sheep in our society. We live in a peasant society that has cultivated these people, and I think it has more to do with the industrial revolution and secular policies than Christianity.
I came for more of your excellent Marcionite meditations, and got this as a bonus.
The appeal of Nietzsche to the "right" -- from Mencken to Spencer and BAP -- has always puzzled me, for your reasons and others. He's pro-Jewish and anti-nationalist, specifically -- and sneeringly -- anti-German nationalism. So, of course, he would appeal to neo-nazi antisemites. Goyishe kop!
Hitler himself, of course, preferred Schopenhauer, whose books he carried in his knapsack during WWI. "I can do nothing with Nietzsche" he said to Leni Riefenstahl. But the myth is too useful for the Left and Right to die.
I think it's a combination of "owning the Left" (who have canonized N. as the patron saint of postmodernism), personal hubris (Spencer and BAP as crap supermen), and jackboot sniffing fetishism (costume Nazis). It's sort of like when the Right welcomed the Jewish Trotskyite intellectuals, because they were "anti-communists (actually, they just hated Stalin) and were so "schmart" they would add badly needed intellectual weight and respectability; as a result, they took over and turned the Right into Israel-first "neo" conservatism.
Nietzsche loved Jews, hated Germans, taught that "there is no truth" and, consequently, all that matters is the "health" of imposing your will on others. That's why he's lionized by the PC Left.
Admittedly, he didn't produce unreadable gibberish like the Left, but apart from being stylish there's really nothing there philosophically. He was an incel with the emotional stability of a 13 year old girl, and when he wasn't getting enough praise himself, as their disciple, he decided Schopenhauer and Wagner were big stupid heads and sucked, and the "truth" was exactly the opposite: instead of compassion, ruthlessness; instead of denial of the will, the Will to Power; oh, and Bizet's Carmen is better than Wagner's Ring. He did keep some ideas: both the Superman and the Eternal Return are plagiarized straight from Schopenhauer, just distorted or misunderstood. In short, there's nothing there.
The truth lies more on the side of Schopenhauer, both in metaphysics and morality. Even if you think something is wrong, "turning it upside down" is never productive. Marx said he did that with Hegel, which just turned metaphysical gibberish into economic gibberish.
Nietzsche's popularity on the academic Left is a sign of their intellectual vacuity and lust for violence. On the Right, it may be a case of, as Nietzsche said, when you gaze into the abyss (obsess about the Left) the abyss gazes back (you acquire their worst traits).
For a treatise on religion's role determining the courage of a nation there is oddly none better than one written by a British war correspondent covering Britain's subjugation and colonization of Burma in 1902, at the turn of the last century: H. Fielding-Hall's "The Soul of a People," London: Macmillan, 1909. It's an obscure, rare book - permit me to quote a few relevant paras:
"I think it is evident" Hall wrote, "that there is no quality upon which the success of a nation so much depends as upon its courage. No nation can rise to a high place without being brave; it cannot maintain its independence even; it cannot push forward upon any path of life without courage. Nations that are cowards must fail.
"I am aware that the courage of a nation depends, as do its other qualities, upon many things; its situation with regard to other nations, its climate, its occupations. I wish to take all such things as I find them, and to discuss only the effect of religion upon the courage of the Burman people, upon [their] fighting capabilities. That religion may have a very serious effect one way or the other, no one can doubt.
"We know what religion can do. We have seen how it can preach war and resistance and can organize that war and resistance. We know what 10,000 priests preaching in 10,000 hamlets can effect in making a people almost unconquerable, in directing their armies, in strengthening their determination. We know what Christianity has done again and again; what Judaism, what Mohammedanism, what many kinds of paganism, have done. And yet, for all the assistance [Buddhism] was to [Burma] in this war, the Burmese might well have had no faith at all.
"Truly, this is not a creed for a soldier, for a fighting-man of any kind. The Burmans have never made a cult out of bravery; it has never been a necessity to them; it has never occurred to them that [courage] is the prime virtue of a man. You will hear them confess in the calmest way, `I was afraid.' We would not do that; we should be much more afraid to say it. And the teaching of Buddhism is all in favor of this. Nowhere is courage--I mean aggressive courage--praised. Therefore the inherent courage of the Burmans could have no assistance from their faith in any way, but the very contrary: it fought against them.
"If such be the faith of a people, and if they believe their faith, it is a terrible handicap to them in any fight: it delivers them bound into the hands of the enemy."
I submit all the above as an aside, given your interest in the dynamics of power, and your modest desire to reform Christianity,
Great essay. Looking forward to more on this topic. I'm sure many will try to engage in historical and theological debates, but it appears that the intention of the series is to not get bogged down in that manner. I applaud your approach and downloaded Substack Reader expressly to follow.
This one I need to think about for a while (I sometimes wonder if it might be a good idea to disable comments for 48-72 hours after a post?) - but as to "castrated choir boys" - you know, don't you? - that that was done so their voices would not change - and they became male sopranos as adults - the combination of a large male chest cavity and a high pitched voice produced singers with remarkably powerful, agile soprano voices the likes of which we can barely imagine; the most famous singers of the 18C were "castratos" and some became hugely wealthy after opera stage careers in London and Italian cities. The original motivation was to avoid having females sing soprano parts in church music. In all - the "didling" issue is entirely distinct; the practice was discontinued before the mid-19C - and by the mid 18C it was widely considered to be abhorrent (see e.g. contemporary comment by Charles Burney). Still, I would say it did produce humans with remarkable abilities to create beautiful sounds - and as such is much less abhorrent than contemporary child mutilation practices done in pursuit of a demented, evil gender theory.
I'm not really sure about this take on Nietzsche. He wasn't much of a libertine - to the contrary, he was extremely abstemious in diet, avoiding alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine, and very particular and careful about what he ate to the point of obsession - he wrote about that extensively, suggesting that much bad philosophy was just indigestion. Despite having been cursed with a weak constitution, he overcame this with a program of rigorous exercise, building an impressive physique; his idea of a good time was going for a hike for several hours in the Italian alps. One should never trust a thought that came when sitting still, he believed.
His characterization of Christianity as a slave religion wasn't that it got in the way of diddling toddlers and dude weed, it was that it held up as an ideal the meek, the sick, the poor, and the physically weak. In the pagan understanding, 'good' meant strong, vigorous, ferocious, overflowing with vital energy; 'bad' was everything sick, weak, twisted, malformed, unhealthy, and poor in spirit. The revaluation of values that occurred with the rise of Christianity was essentially 'good' being recast as 'evil', and 'bad' inverted to 'good'. Christianity is a slave religion in this view precisely because it is morality from the viewpoint of those at the bottom of the natural hierarchy, who experience those at the top as oppressors; by inverting good and bad into evil and good, and getting the masters to accept this, the priestly class are able to displace the warrior nobility who would otherwise occupy the societal apex.
Given that, there isn't really a contradiction between the triumph of the priestly class and widespread use of choirboytoys. I suspect Nietzsche would have said it was inevitable, because the essential thing isn't the surface teachings of a priestly philosophy - which is merely the will to power of the priests - but the inner nature of the priests themselves, and what they secretly desire to do once they've taken power.
Christianity on the Jews: "... Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men" 1 Thessalonians 2
I am a gnostic Christian that doesn't believe in the Egyptian myth that a virgin can give birth. That rings as false as those trannies who believe a man can have periods and drop a baby out of its ass. I believe that Jesus, whose mother and father both were from royal families, was a radical that many hoped would end Roman rule over Israel and that's why he was crucified. Saul, the Christ-hating Roman, created a new religion that defied the teachings of Jesus, the rabbi who said he came to fulfill the law. I suspect he had no intention of being worshipped and, as a disciple of John the Baptist, simply believed in a strict interpretation of the Scriptures.
While I have known some very decent Christians, the fruit of a poisoned tree can't be healthy to eat.
A couple points: Bronze Age Pervert would argue vigorously against your statements regarding Nietzsche's alleged degeneracy. This is an important historical point which I hope gets resolved eventually, but the ideas should be considered on their merits regardless of their origin, impugning the character of the source is literally fallacious argumentation (Hitler's Autobahn and Stalin's punctual trains worked regardless of moral failings).
Christianity's morals and ethics are derived from Judaism and Greek philosophy/culture, both of which faiths conveniently ignore for political expediency. Ignoring those leads to moral degradation of society, which results in it's eventual downfall. The question of virtue is something I've been exploring recently and will publish on soon (not all behaviors promoted as virtues are necessarily so, some are good for the individual, some good for community, and some only benefit the rulers).
The metaphysics of Christianity is fucked because history in general is fucked. Islam has been trying to correct Christians on Christ as a prophet but not God (they make good logical arguments from the texts), but they don't take it far enough because then they have to admit their dogma is only slightly less fucked. To get an idea of what is arguably a more accurate history, read/listen to Mauro Biglino, listen about/read the Codex Aurea Linda, and listen about/read the Nag Hammadi codices.
Personally, my takeaway from all that is the historical Jesus did perform miracles (healing, etc.). This was because he had managed a high level of self-mastery in the tradition of the Hermeticists (or Kung-Fu, which literally means self-mastery), and the man known as Yesus also spawned the myth of the Buddah (same person). But, I am a heretic of the highest order, and only voice such things b/c I'm well armed and old enough to have disposed of nearly all of my fucks.
Evidently only about 30-50% of humanity has an inner monologue (a voice you debate with internally or use when forming ideas, I think the lower number is more accurate). This means more than 2/3rds of the population are NPCs/sheep, and should be recognized as such. Plan accordingly.
Can’t comment with any certitude on the genius part, but a brilliant writer you sure are!
💬 Libertinism is the enemy of strength, not Christian moderation. 🔥
The ‘turn the other cheek’ command applies exclusively to matters personal; it’s irrelevant in Schmittian (geo)political realm 🤷 To extrapolate beyond concept applicability domain = ‘what is usually referred to as a “category error” in thinking’ 😉
Thank you for a fine introductory essay, Rolo, and looking forward to the series.
Some very astute comments so far: let's hope debate remains worthy of those who recognise that we are all (hopefully) in a common cause. I am a Christian who has abandoned churchianity in toto, have some residual respect for C.I. Marcion also.
I have spent over 20 years in Buddhist and Islamic countries. Both are imho excellent for their people, and we should meet them as friends.
But Christianity is our European belief. The bloodless transition from Celtic Druidism for example is fairly remarkable, and was fine (more or less) until Rome pushed in. We also perhaps need to resolve the foolishness of two calendars, perhaps revert to Julian ?
The bible said that the Aryan Vedic God Ahura Mazda was YHWH. This is because Ahura Mazda was the God of the Persians. The Persians use to pay for sacrifices to YHWH at the Jerusalem temple because He was their God.
I. The Case For Reforming Christianity
Interesting. I‘m a Christian that has a deep personal faith but struggles with the western cultural aspect of it, which is overwhelmingly feminine and emotionally driven.
I enjoyed reading The Church Effeminate by the Priest Leon Podles recently, even though I‘m not a Catholic. It summed up what I‘d been feeling very well.
Additionally, as you mentioned, we have to be careful not to blame the church too much for the sheep in our society. We live in a peasant society that has cultivated these people, and I think it has more to do with the industrial revolution and secular policies than Christianity.
I came for more of your excellent Marcionite meditations, and got this as a bonus.
The appeal of Nietzsche to the "right" -- from Mencken to Spencer and BAP -- has always puzzled me, for your reasons and others. He's pro-Jewish and anti-nationalist, specifically -- and sneeringly -- anti-German nationalism. So, of course, he would appeal to neo-nazi antisemites. Goyishe kop!
Hitler himself, of course, preferred Schopenhauer, whose books he carried in his knapsack during WWI. "I can do nothing with Nietzsche" he said to Leni Riefenstahl. But the myth is too useful for the Left and Right to die.
I think it's a combination of "owning the Left" (who have canonized N. as the patron saint of postmodernism), personal hubris (Spencer and BAP as crap supermen), and jackboot sniffing fetishism (costume Nazis). It's sort of like when the Right welcomed the Jewish Trotskyite intellectuals, because they were "anti-communists (actually, they just hated Stalin) and were so "schmart" they would add badly needed intellectual weight and respectability; as a result, they took over and turned the Right into Israel-first "neo" conservatism.
Nietzsche loved Jews, hated Germans, taught that "there is no truth" and, consequently, all that matters is the "health" of imposing your will on others. That's why he's lionized by the PC Left.
Admittedly, he didn't produce unreadable gibberish like the Left, but apart from being stylish there's really nothing there philosophically. He was an incel with the emotional stability of a 13 year old girl, and when he wasn't getting enough praise himself, as their disciple, he decided Schopenhauer and Wagner were big stupid heads and sucked, and the "truth" was exactly the opposite: instead of compassion, ruthlessness; instead of denial of the will, the Will to Power; oh, and Bizet's Carmen is better than Wagner's Ring. He did keep some ideas: both the Superman and the Eternal Return are plagiarized straight from Schopenhauer, just distorted or misunderstood. In short, there's nothing there.
The truth lies more on the side of Schopenhauer, both in metaphysics and morality. Even if you think something is wrong, "turning it upside down" is never productive. Marx said he did that with Hegel, which just turned metaphysical gibberish into economic gibberish.
Nietzsche's popularity on the academic Left is a sign of their intellectual vacuity and lust for violence. On the Right, it may be a case of, as Nietzsche said, when you gaze into the abyss (obsess about the Left) the abyss gazes back (you acquire their worst traits).
For a treatise on religion's role determining the courage of a nation there is oddly none better than one written by a British war correspondent covering Britain's subjugation and colonization of Burma in 1902, at the turn of the last century: H. Fielding-Hall's "The Soul of a People," London: Macmillan, 1909. It's an obscure, rare book - permit me to quote a few relevant paras:
"I think it is evident" Hall wrote, "that there is no quality upon which the success of a nation so much depends as upon its courage. No nation can rise to a high place without being brave; it cannot maintain its independence even; it cannot push forward upon any path of life without courage. Nations that are cowards must fail.
"I am aware that the courage of a nation depends, as do its other qualities, upon many things; its situation with regard to other nations, its climate, its occupations. I wish to take all such things as I find them, and to discuss only the effect of religion upon the courage of the Burman people, upon [their] fighting capabilities. That religion may have a very serious effect one way or the other, no one can doubt.
"We know what religion can do. We have seen how it can preach war and resistance and can organize that war and resistance. We know what 10,000 priests preaching in 10,000 hamlets can effect in making a people almost unconquerable, in directing their armies, in strengthening their determination. We know what Christianity has done again and again; what Judaism, what Mohammedanism, what many kinds of paganism, have done. And yet, for all the assistance [Buddhism] was to [Burma] in this war, the Burmese might well have had no faith at all.
"Truly, this is not a creed for a soldier, for a fighting-man of any kind. The Burmans have never made a cult out of bravery; it has never been a necessity to them; it has never occurred to them that [courage] is the prime virtue of a man. You will hear them confess in the calmest way, `I was afraid.' We would not do that; we should be much more afraid to say it. And the teaching of Buddhism is all in favor of this. Nowhere is courage--I mean aggressive courage--praised. Therefore the inherent courage of the Burmans could have no assistance from their faith in any way, but the very contrary: it fought against them.
"If such be the faith of a people, and if they believe their faith, it is a terrible handicap to them in any fight: it delivers them bound into the hands of the enemy."
I submit all the above as an aside, given your interest in the dynamics of power, and your modest desire to reform Christianity,
С Рождеством!
Damn, Rolo... You have the best comments section on Substack. You sure know how to stir the pot!
Great essay. Looking forward to more on this topic. I'm sure many will try to engage in historical and theological debates, but it appears that the intention of the series is to not get bogged down in that manner. I applaud your approach and downloaded Substack Reader expressly to follow.
This one I need to think about for a while (I sometimes wonder if it might be a good idea to disable comments for 48-72 hours after a post?) - but as to "castrated choir boys" - you know, don't you? - that that was done so their voices would not change - and they became male sopranos as adults - the combination of a large male chest cavity and a high pitched voice produced singers with remarkably powerful, agile soprano voices the likes of which we can barely imagine; the most famous singers of the 18C were "castratos" and some became hugely wealthy after opera stage careers in London and Italian cities. The original motivation was to avoid having females sing soprano parts in church music. In all - the "didling" issue is entirely distinct; the practice was discontinued before the mid-19C - and by the mid 18C it was widely considered to be abhorrent (see e.g. contemporary comment by Charles Burney). Still, I would say it did produce humans with remarkable abilities to create beautiful sounds - and as such is much less abhorrent than contemporary child mutilation practices done in pursuit of a demented, evil gender theory.
I'm not really sure about this take on Nietzsche. He wasn't much of a libertine - to the contrary, he was extremely abstemious in diet, avoiding alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine, and very particular and careful about what he ate to the point of obsession - he wrote about that extensively, suggesting that much bad philosophy was just indigestion. Despite having been cursed with a weak constitution, he overcame this with a program of rigorous exercise, building an impressive physique; his idea of a good time was going for a hike for several hours in the Italian alps. One should never trust a thought that came when sitting still, he believed.
His characterization of Christianity as a slave religion wasn't that it got in the way of diddling toddlers and dude weed, it was that it held up as an ideal the meek, the sick, the poor, and the physically weak. In the pagan understanding, 'good' meant strong, vigorous, ferocious, overflowing with vital energy; 'bad' was everything sick, weak, twisted, malformed, unhealthy, and poor in spirit. The revaluation of values that occurred with the rise of Christianity was essentially 'good' being recast as 'evil', and 'bad' inverted to 'good'. Christianity is a slave religion in this view precisely because it is morality from the viewpoint of those at the bottom of the natural hierarchy, who experience those at the top as oppressors; by inverting good and bad into evil and good, and getting the masters to accept this, the priestly class are able to displace the warrior nobility who would otherwise occupy the societal apex.
Given that, there isn't really a contradiction between the triumph of the priestly class and widespread use of choirboytoys. I suspect Nietzsche would have said it was inevitable, because the essential thing isn't the surface teachings of a priestly philosophy - which is merely the will to power of the priests - but the inner nature of the priests themselves, and what they secretly desire to do once they've taken power.
Christianity on the Jews: "... Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men" 1 Thessalonians 2
I am a gnostic Christian that doesn't believe in the Egyptian myth that a virgin can give birth. That rings as false as those trannies who believe a man can have periods and drop a baby out of its ass. I believe that Jesus, whose mother and father both were from royal families, was a radical that many hoped would end Roman rule over Israel and that's why he was crucified. Saul, the Christ-hating Roman, created a new religion that defied the teachings of Jesus, the rabbi who said he came to fulfill the law. I suspect he had no intention of being worshipped and, as a disciple of John the Baptist, simply believed in a strict interpretation of the Scriptures.
While I have known some very decent Christians, the fruit of a poisoned tree can't be healthy to eat.
Good observations.
A couple points: Bronze Age Pervert would argue vigorously against your statements regarding Nietzsche's alleged degeneracy. This is an important historical point which I hope gets resolved eventually, but the ideas should be considered on their merits regardless of their origin, impugning the character of the source is literally fallacious argumentation (Hitler's Autobahn and Stalin's punctual trains worked regardless of moral failings).
Christianity's morals and ethics are derived from Judaism and Greek philosophy/culture, both of which faiths conveniently ignore for political expediency. Ignoring those leads to moral degradation of society, which results in it's eventual downfall. The question of virtue is something I've been exploring recently and will publish on soon (not all behaviors promoted as virtues are necessarily so, some are good for the individual, some good for community, and some only benefit the rulers).
The metaphysics of Christianity is fucked because history in general is fucked. Islam has been trying to correct Christians on Christ as a prophet but not God (they make good logical arguments from the texts), but they don't take it far enough because then they have to admit their dogma is only slightly less fucked. To get an idea of what is arguably a more accurate history, read/listen to Mauro Biglino, listen about/read the Codex Aurea Linda, and listen about/read the Nag Hammadi codices.
Personally, my takeaway from all that is the historical Jesus did perform miracles (healing, etc.). This was because he had managed a high level of self-mastery in the tradition of the Hermeticists (or Kung-Fu, which literally means self-mastery), and the man known as Yesus also spawned the myth of the Buddah (same person). But, I am a heretic of the highest order, and only voice such things b/c I'm well armed and old enough to have disposed of nearly all of my fucks.
Evidently only about 30-50% of humanity has an inner monologue (a voice you debate with internally or use when forming ideas, I think the lower number is more accurate). This means more than 2/3rds of the population are NPCs/sheep, and should be recognized as such. Plan accordingly.
Can’t comment with any certitude on the genius part, but a brilliant writer you sure are!
💬 Libertinism is the enemy of strength, not Christian moderation. 🔥
The ‘turn the other cheek’ command applies exclusively to matters personal; it’s irrelevant in Schmittian (geo)political realm 🤷 To extrapolate beyond concept applicability domain = ‘what is usually referred to as a “category error” in thinking’ 😉
Thank you for a fine introductory essay, Rolo, and looking forward to the series.
Some very astute comments so far: let's hope debate remains worthy of those who recognise that we are all (hopefully) in a common cause. I am a Christian who has abandoned churchianity in toto, have some residual respect for C.I. Marcion also.
I have spent over 20 years in Buddhist and Islamic countries. Both are imho excellent for their people, and we should meet them as friends.
But Christianity is our European belief. The bloodless transition from Celtic Druidism for example is fairly remarkable, and was fine (more or less) until Rome pushed in. We also perhaps need to resolve the foolishness of two calendars, perhaps revert to Julian ?
Happy Orthodox Christmas.
Agnosticism might be the best religion.😁
Are you going to lump in Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy together throughout this series?
Would have commented on your latest post but I'm a poorfag.
You asked a question: "The Bakhmut attacks make no sense and are costing both Russia and Ukraine dearly"
Answer: Some unknown militarily important stuff, either that or the dwarves dug too deep and awakened something old and best left asleep and both sides really want it https://sonar21.com/what-is-ukraine-hiding-in-the-bakhmut-salt-mines/
One thing for sure, whatever's down there is really important, because they may be crazy/incompetent but they're not that crazy/incompetent.
The bible said that the Aryan Vedic God Ahura Mazda was YHWH. This is because Ahura Mazda was the God of the Persians. The Persians use to pay for sacrifices to YHWH at the Jerusalem temple because He was their God.