Reactionary Metaphysics III: Are All Souls Created Equal?

One of the underlying assumptions of modern metaphysics is the equality of all souls. This means that within a nation or an ethnic group, and between nations and ethnic groups, all people have souls and all souls are created equal.

Jews, of course, do not believe this to be case and quite emphatically believe that they are superior on a metaphysical level to all other peoples, because they are a nation of priests chosen by Yahweh, their ethnic egregor/deity, to rule the world, as chronicled in the Old Testament, then the Talmud and the various Kabbalistic teachings.

But let’s ignore them for now as best we can.

In stark contrast, Christians believe that an African who accepts Christ into his heart becomes the same in the eyes of God as a Frenchman with several hundred generations of Christian continuity in his family, community and so on. Furthermore, a retarded Frank incapable of doing much other than drooling is imbued with the same soul quality as a French philosopher like Voltaire or Descartes (very probable, come to think of it, seeing as they were Liberals) or perhaps someone more worth of a positive comparison like a French general. Evangelicals, however, even go so far as to claim that the Jews are immediately saved by dint of being born Jewish and therefore being the Chosen People of Yahweh, and so, have a separate, express-lane pass into heaven. Hmm, I promised not to bring up the Jews, didn’t I? Oh well.

But the point here is simple: the doctrine of soul equality is a radical proposition that we take for granted because of the metaphysics that we adopted at some point in our history.

But how do we go about proving it one way or the other?

Well, the short answer is that we don’t. This is simply a metaphysical given that we are told that we have to accept on faith. Most of us aren’t really being harangued into believing it nowadays because we already assume it for the most part or reject the concept of souls entirely if we are inclined to materialist thinking. The equality of souls and their equal distribution across the world population is also considered to be part and parcel of being a religious or spiritually-inclined person. As I’ve argued before, the current way of looking at anything from Science! to politics and religion is the result of nothing more than simple brand capture. A man might use search engines, but he doesn’t necessarily need to use Google. Most people, however, use Google and have a hard time switching, going so far as to use the term “Googling” to refer to searching for things on the internet in general. But that doesn’t mean that other search engines using different algorithms do not exist. Other approaches to Science! and politics and religion also exist, just waiting for us to rediscover them again.

In much the same way that the only way to test a new chemical compound is through the use of chemistry or the results of a social policy through statistics or a new computer program through running a simulation, the only way to test any metaphysical prior, really, is through the use of the technology/various techniques of mysticism. The faith-based religions of the world, however, demand that the faithful believe the mystical experience of people that have come before, and trust the religious authorities to accurately convey their findings to the flock. It boils down to a matter of trust in the experts, really. But these priors are not being tested and verified and pressure-tested over the centuries because they are locked in place and fundamental to the entire religious structure that has been built around them. Once the priors are settled on, an entire Theology is spun out using logic and then, voila, we have a full-fledged religion. This process applies to politics as well. Constitutions are nothing more than declarations of political faith/dogma upon which a given political system is then built upon.

Point being: there are ways of thinking about spirituality that do not presuppose any of the metaphysical priors of modern Christianity such as the idea that the Hebrew deity created the world in 6 days or the dogma that all people possess equal souls. Re-examining our metaphysical priors and adopting new ones might lead to benefits that few have considered yet.

We can consider the metaphysics of the various schools of Gnostic thought that founded early Christianity as an example. There is a distinct school of Christian thought that traces its lineage from Paul (and the Greek mystery schools before him) and that makes its way into Neoplatonic, Marcionite, the gospel of Mark and other gnostic schools. Nowadays, the closest thing that we have to a living, mystical Christian tradition is the Hesychast school of Orthodox monks, who, amusingly often begin their written works by vehemently denying that they are gnostic in any way shape or form, but then go on to outline very similar concepts.

But that is a topic for another time.

Now, the Gnostics believed that there were non-souled people in our midst. These are sometimes referred to as pre-Adamics or Sarkics and are explained as being a form of higher animal and not fully human. The modern analogue is the term “normie” or “NPC”, which is so beloved on the interwebs by the youth. Then, there are people with nascent soul potential - who were referred to as psychics. Finally, there are people with fully realized souls, who are rare, and referred to as pneumatics.

This is in stark contrast with Nicene Christianity, which is radically egalitarian with its presuppositions i.e., it’s metaphysical priors. With Gnostic metaphysical priors, however, soul equality is no longer a priori bestowed upon everyone. Gnostic thinking postulates soul hierarchy and inequality on a metaphysical plane.

This is similar to right-wing thinking, which, boiled down to one of its most fundamental premises, is based on the idea of inequality in all things. Races are unequal, nations are unequal, people within those nations are unequal and this inequality is considered to be natural and good and not something to be squashed or legislated away. A right-winger has no problems noticing and embracing the reality of inequality on the material plane. He believes that society ought to lean into this reality and not fight against the grain with utopian projects that try to bend the rules of reality through the use of laws and the employment of increasingly complex technologies.

Right-wingers often even go so far as to pray for an apocalyptic collapse within their lifetimes.

The underlying assumption there is that, being more in tune with the laws of nature, they would have no problem in the new, more grounded reality following the collapse of the built-up systems of control that Liberalism has erected to maintain its grip on power. But few right-wingers have gone all the way in their thinking and attacked the dogma of soul equality. This may seem like an inconsequential oversight, but nothing could be further from the case.

All ideas have their roots in metaphysics. They then branch out into things that affect our everyday lives, like a tree growing down from the heavens of which we are but the individual leaves.

Let me stress the following: I’m not saying that anyone ought to switch over to Gnosticism or Buddhism or Shamanism or anything of that nature. Frankly, I don’t think “believing” in one set of dogmas over another makes a lick of difference on one’s spiritual development one way or the other. Me, personally, I am simply partial to any spiritual school that promotes a hands-on approach to spirituality and the metaphysical assumptions of Gnosticism strike me as being inherently more compatible with right-wing thinking. But, I could have brought up the example of Shinto or Hinduism to make my point just as easily. I’m not proselytizing here - no, I’m trying to encourage a thought experiment around the following question: would reintroducing inequality on the metaphysical plane have profound effects on our thinking and undermine the very foundations of the modernity project? It seems obvious that the trickle-down implications would certainly be profound. “God loves us all the same,” would certainly no longer be taken seriously as an argument in favor of tolerant treatment for hostile ethnic groups, sexual deviants and the dregs of society.

Hopefully, I have convinced you that it’s an idea at least worth considering.

Now, we have covered three topics in our metaphysics series so far:

• the Belief vs the Knowing approach to spiritual matters

• the worship model and it’s potential pitfalls

• the possibility of changing our metaphysical priors

These points critique the approach to spirituality and religion that we adopted at some point in our history and that doesn’t seem to be doing the trick for us now.

Having laid down the necessary groundwork, I hope to go beyond critiquing and deconstructing and to start proposing concrete alternatives in the next installment.

Thanks for sticking it out until the end. Feel free to condemn my soul to Hell in the comments below.