Caustic Ramblings

My short answer is: Yes it was, but not in the way most of us today typically understand what the word "revolution" entails. When many of us think "revolution" we think of a sudden bloody series of events that drastically changes the social structure and governing institutions of whatever state these events take place in; that, or the revolution-in-question simply involves a violent, sudden circulation of ruling elites.

I think it's rather obvious though that the so-called "American Revolution" was not a social or ideological revolution; it certainly wasn't anything like the French Revolution! I'd go so far as so say that the term revolution here is almost a misnomer. When compared to other wars and conflicts, the war that birthed the United States was more a war of secession (from the British Empire); of course we don't call it that because that term has taken on some rather icky connotations.

So what did change? Nearly all the preexisting social mores, customs, and institutions (sans the British control) of the American colonies stayed more or less intact after the war, plus the addition of the new US constitution and government organs. I would say that the American Revolution was simply a logical next step of a chain of events that had been set into motion a long time prior.

The purveyors of the current fashionable-but-revisionistic narrative are in the habit of brandishing claims like: (1) the American revolutionaries had a primary aim of throwing off the yoke of monarchy, (2) and that itself was such a revolutionary act for its time! Both of these are false claims. Many of the founders had no real ideological opposition to the concept of Monarchy; many in fact were willing to offer George Washington the crown! (admittedly though this would have broken the age-old formula of kingly rule by divine right, but I digress). And on yeeting monarchy itself? Been there, done that! The act of regicide and the replacement of monarchy with something else had already been field tested during the English Civil War, and the English crown was never quite the same after that. On top of that, the firmly-restored English monarchy was permanently de-fanged in the aftermath of the so-called "Glorious" Revolution of 1688. From then on, it was the growing influence of the merchant and artisan classes that came to dominate politics in Britain and its empire.

So what really happened was that the American colonies seceded from an imperial parliament, and one that was increasingly representing the interests of those aforementioned classes at the expense of the old aristocracy. What the US accomplished was simply continuation of events that had already been going on in Great Britain and abroad for about 150 years. But of course, history is always told by the victors. The great lies I mention above are deployed to paper over the fact that those convenient strawman antagonists of "enlightenment" liberalism, monarchy and aristocracy, had already been on the outs by the time the "American Revolution" happened. The merchants, yeoman farmers, lawyers, and artisans had been gaining political power for quite some time in the West, and the defeat of the British in America just made that official in one particular place.

Now what does make the American Revolution truly revolutionary is that it demonstrated that it was indeed possible to have an enduring state based on a political formula other than divine right rule (swapping this out for a piece of paper serving as sovereign), and of course it inspired peoples all over the rest of the Western world to rise up against the the old regimes.

I've gotten myself into a particular substack rabbit hole as of late. Specifically, on the topic of how "Monotheism" arose during late antiquity and how the many manifestations of this new movement interacted with the traditional cults of the Hellenic/Roman world.

The thesis of this substack author and the academics he cites is that the (once-popular) notion that "Monotheism" arose as uniquely-Judean phenomenon is simply dead wrong. In fact, according to this hypothesis, there was an indigenous "Pagan Monotheism" in and around the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East that become quite popular throughout Anatolia, Thrace, and Greece during the Roman era. The primary evidence for this is a cult that Christian church fathers referred to as the "Hypsistarians"; in reference to the object of their worship, Theos Hypsistos, which translates as, "God Most High" (sound familiar?)

Modern archeologists have found more than 300 inscriptions throughout the aforementioned geographic areas that can be linked to this cult. Some scholars in the past have claimed the Hypsistarians were simply gentile "God-fearers," i.e. Greeks and Romans who worshipped the Jewish god but were not actually a part of the Jewish community. The evidence from the inscriptions totally contradict such assertions, as we can see Hypsistarians venerating Apollo as an "Angel of God Most High." Nothing we know about their worship seems to point to them being Jews or Christians. If the Hypsistarian movement (and other similar cults) arose out of indigenous paganism then this would put to bed the once-popular notion that "God Most High" was a unique insight of the Judeans and that any religion or movement based on this concept somehow owes its origin to Judaism (the mere existence of Zoroastrianism already disproves that idea, but I do digress). Anyway, if these Hypsistarian folks poured one out for Apollo, they undoubtedly did as well for other pagan deities. To make a long story short, I think this three-part series of posts explains the hypothesis much better than I can:

https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/the-case-for-pagan-monotheism
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/the-hypsistarian-church-of-god-most
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/the-theology-of-the-hypsistarian

This is all quite so fascinating (as least I think so), but one objection I must voice is the use of the term "Monotheism" for this movement. To me, "Monotheism" simply means the belief in one and only one god. The author however expands the definition to include systems of belief that feature a "big G" God and include many "small g" gods. I understand this reasoning. He does this for pragmatic purposes, as he wishes to make a case for "uniting the right" of religious believers of various stripes. He sees the constant online infighting between Christians and Pagans as silly and counterproductive, and that they have more beliefs and goals in common than what might seem apparent. I get his intentions and I think they come from a good place. But the idealist in me is very sketchy about muddying the definition of words for the sake of practical or political expediency. Examining the concept of Monotheism though does open up its own can of worms: Is Christianity really Monotheist? (trinity, angels, saints, ect.). Is Zoroastrianism Monotheist or Di-theist? (that religion has a whole pantheon of divinities as well).

I instead propose a more neutral term, "Megatheism," to account for belief systems which have both the big-G God and little-g gods. This creates a very big tent that can include lots of different religions, philosophies, occult theories, ect. Embracing Megatheism can theoretically put to bed all the silly back-and-forth sniping "Monotheists" and "Polytheists" like to fling at one another. By this, great thinkers and sages like Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Cicero, Plutarch, Apollonius of Tyana, Valentinus, Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus, Porphyry, Julian the "Apostate" (among so many others), were Megatheists through and through.

One the above hypothesis as a whole, I see the Hypsistarian movement as being part and parcel of the broader (then ascendant) "Magian" culture that the German historian Oswald Spengler wrote much about. According to my own intuition-based headcanon, the original Magian "ground zero" was a region that spanned from Upper Mesopotamia to Central Anatolia. The ancient Assyrian city of Harran was a key nexus of what was then a new religious awakening. The original cultures to partake in Magianism were the Arameans, Chaldeans, Medes/Persians, Cilicians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, Thracians, Armeneans, and perhaps some other groups. The Jews were the first people to codify Magian ideas into a concrete, book-based religion, however none of the core elements of Magian spirituality originated with the Jews (they were however instrumental in spreading Magian religious sentiments around to many different locales).

One useful thing I can see coming out of this discourse is the possibility the we can finally put to bed the popular adherence to the silly idea that a single historically-marginal people had unique and exclusive access to correct ideas about the Divine and Divinity. What we do really need now is an intelligent and principled form of ecumenism; 1000 boats each going their own way does not a community make! In that sense, I believe the above substack author really does have his intentions in the right place.

When speaking about history, archaeology, culture, ect., “prehistoric” refers to the times/places beyond or before written historical records. In an Ancient European context, “historic” generally means cultures the Greeks and Romans wrote about, including their own. In Italy, the Romans didn’t start writing about their own past until relatively late in the game. Thus Roman writers and poets took many creative liberties with filling in the gaps of what they knew about their own history. Greek accounts do tell us about some of the peoples of ancient Italy they encountered as they explored the region and settled the southern part of the peninsula.

Prior to the spread of farming and herding throughout Europe, there were various hunter-gatherer cultures. With regard to Western and Central Europe, archeogeneticists today refer to these populations as Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG). The I2a Y-haplogroup is one of the most common male lineages found among WHGs and has survived over the millennia into modern European peoples. About 10,000 – 5,000 years ago, farmers and herders from the Middle East (primarily from Anatolia) started migrating into Europe in successive waves. These Neolithic newcomers split into two main groups, (1) a south group that traveled along the Mediterranean Littoral, eventually reaching Iberia and North Africa; and (2) a north group that entered the interior of Europe via the Danube river valley and gradually made their way through the dense forests of Central and Western Europe, all the way to the Atlantic coast. Archeogeneticists today refer to these populations as Early European Farmers (EEF). Starting around 5000 years ago there was a massive invasion of peoples from the Pontic/Caspian Steppe region into the interior of Europe. These were warlike pastoralists (primarily cowherders) who had developed military technology vastly superior to most of the peoples they encountered on their rude travels. These Steppe nomads, Western Steppe Herders (WSH), likely spoke the earliest Indo-European languages (IE), which they spread wherever they set foot.



The ancestral Italic language was likely the first form of IE speech in Italy. It was probably pastoralists from maybe the upper Balkans or Carpathian region who brought archaic Italic speech into the Italian peninsula; perhaps beginning around 2000 BCE. Their speech seems to have branched off from the same ancestral IE dialect that produced proto-Celtic. The first Italics were cattle herders and would have encountered sedentary peoples, i.e. Neolithic farmers (EEF + WHG mix), who had already been there for quite some time. Over time these peoples mixed, and by the Early Roman Republic period, genetic studies today tell us that the average person from Central Italy had an ancestry that was roughly 30% Steppe in origin, and 70% EEF + WHG. The modern population of Sardinia is perhaps the best genetic preservation of what the pre-IE peoples of Italy looked like, as their Steppe ancesty is the lowest among all modern Europeans; they have practically none of it.

This is a very brief summary, and primarily from a genetic and ethno-linguistic perspective. The Wiki (FWIW) article gives a ton more detail for anyone who is interested in delving deeper; be warned though, that the “scholarly consensus” these article defer to is constantly in flux and often subject to the sort of fad-based groupthink that dominates academic circles in the current era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Italy

Notable Peoples Ancient Italy: Late Bronze and Early Iron Age.

Polada Culture: The Bronze Age farmers of Northern Italy; their orgins likely stem from people who migrated (via the Alps) c. 2200 BCE from Southern Germany and Austria into the modern-day territories of Lombardy, Trentino, and Veneto. These farmers were skilled metallurgists and lived in pile dwellings, typically near lakesides and marshes. They may have fled their original homelands due to the rapid spread of the Bell Beaker (Western IE) culture further north. If this is the case then they probably would have spoken non-IE languages and had limited-to-no Steppe admixture. Or perhaps this culture was a cluster of different ethno-lingusitic groups that happened to have shared a similar material culture. If the later is the case then maybe some Polada groups were IE-speaking.


Pile dwelling replicas. BTW, who would want to live on a swamp?

Appenine Pastoralists: My best guess here is that the first Italic groups were associated with the Apennine cultural complex of Bronze Age Central and Southern Italy. These would have been cattle herders who led a very simple and rudimentary existence. Their religion would have been mostly animistic and featured the preservation of many very old IE deity names. Both the animism and IE deity names survived into the Roman period. Now did these herders mingle and integrate with the previous inhabitants (EEF + WHG farmers) in a forceful or peaceful manner? We don’t really know, though the R1b male lineages (most common among Western IE peoples) tend to stand out the most in modern Italians. So I think we can say there was a widespread replacement of male lines, though many of other male lineages remained in significant numbers, it wasn’t one of those “the invaders killed all the males” scenarios that seemed to have been a lot more common north of the Alps. In the historic period, the Greeks and Romans grouped the various Italic groups into distinct regional-ethnic categories like Latins, Umbrians, Oscans, Sicels, and Venetics. Of course the Romans owe their origins to one of the Latin tribes.

Terramare Culture: The most notable culture of the Bronze Age Po Valley (Padana) region, and probably an offshoot of the above-mentioned Polada. They lived primarily in marshy and lakeside areas, as evidenced by the pile dwellings they lived in (again, like the Polada). Materially speaking (because that’s all archaeology can really look at), there seems to have been a close connection between the Terramare and contemporary peoples of the Alps and Southern Germany. Really, the ancient history of so-called “Northern Italy” is coterminous with that of Central Europe. On the question of how much of an ethno-lingustic connection this culture had with the broader Urnfield complex is an open debate and we’ll probably never know anything definitive on that. I would venture to guess that they may have been ancestors of the later Etruscan civilization, or at least they were one ancestral component of what was actually a complex composite population. This culture came to an abrupt end around 1200 BCE, which is the time period we generally know as “the Bronze Age Collapse.” It was a time when everything seemed to be going to complete crap all over the map.

Nuragic Civilization: i.e. Bronze Age Sardinia, est. around 1700 BCE, and lasted up until Roman colonization in the 3rd century BCE. Seemingly the height of material development of the EEF/Neolithic peoples of Southern Europe, the Nuragics were able to learn and absorb various Bronze Age technologies, while retaining their own culture and language(s). Their island location protected them from large-scale invasions and migration events, so these people were able to adapt to changing conditions on their own terms. By the late Bronze Age they were an advanced seafaring civilization, and may have been one of the infamous “Sea Peoples” the Egyptians talked about in their records around the time of the Bronze Age Collapse; probably the Sherden. The most distinguishing feature these peoples left behind was their conical tower fortress, the nuraghe. The ruins of more than 7000 of these towers dot the modern Sardinian landscape. It seems like a lot of really cool and unique folklore from the ancient culture has survived up to the present day. As mentioned above, modern Sardinians have the least amount of Steppe ancestry of all present-day European peoples. They really are an intact preservation of the ancient Mediterranean Neolithic Farmer (EEF) genetic profile.

Villanova Culture: were the people (who branched off from the Central European Urnfield Culture) that introduced iron-working to the Italian peninsula. They're what archaeologists generally consider to be the earliest phase of Etruscan civilization. Most of their archaeological sites are in Tuscany c. 900-700 BCE, though we also see some in Latium, Emile-Romagna, and even a few in Southern Italy. Their origins are clearly due to a large-scale migration from somewhere north of Tuscany. We see here a population that possesses military and settlement practices similar to that of the Hallstatt culture (proto-Celts) of contemporary Central Europe. They specifically chose steep plateaus and flat hilltops for their primary town sites and fortified the heck out of them, once established. In other words, they had defense on the brain, which suggests they did not enter Central Italy in a very peaceful manner.


Eyyyyy, just here to protect your hills and plateaus for you, nothing to worry about.

So this group seems “very Indo-European” as far as its MO is concerned. But here’s the twist, the historical culture the Villanova peoples would evolve into, spoke a decidedly-non-IE language, i.e. Etruscan. The origins of the Etruscans have baffled historians from classical antiquity and the modern era alike. There have been lots of differing theories, opinions, and conjectures on the origin of the Etruscans, but that is beyond the scope of this summary. If I ever do a detailed look at the Etruscans, I’ll touch on that matter. The main point here is that the Villanova culture was THE culture of Iron Age Italy. The Etruscans and Romans (among other contemporary Italics) alike can thank their existence to them.

One final point is that recent historical genetics studies show that the Italic Latins and Etruscans of the late Iron Age were the same exact race of people, genetically speaking. Despite their very different languages, it would have likely been impossible to tell a Latin and Etruscan apart just by looking at physical appearance (unaided by clothing and jewelry, of course). On top of that, after the Roman Republic went into conquest-overdrive and gobbled up all of Italy, the Etruscans quickly assimilated into Roman culture, and it’s likely that many of the notable plebeian gens of Republican Rome were of Etruscan origin. The more advanced Roman priestly practices almost entirely come from the Etruscans, but that is whole different topic for a different time.

I noticed an interesting comment on the Ecosophia monthly Open Post a few weeks back. It touches on a topic that I think very often gets dodged or ignored in the collapse-sphere, perhaps with the exception of Jim Kunstler's blog; he certainly has the stones to bring up topics that make most modern people very uncomfortable. I too might ruffle a few feathers with what I have to say here. Anyway, I procrastinated a bit on writing up something about it, but I figured I'd do so sooner or later. Anyway here's the comment:

FWIW, I think that modern feminism has a limited shelf life for the following reasons:
(1) Much of “womens’ liberation” is an artifact of modernity, and will not survive its passing. The main reason women can use men like wallets and sperm banks, then discard them when they are through with them, is that such women are actually “married” to the State, via modern welfare systems. When modern welfare states go away, so will the above life strategy.
(2) Radical feminist women (and Wokesters in general) are not having children at replacement rates. The only people who are reproducing at or above replacement levels, are more traditional (and usually deeply religious) groups of people. Since “the future belongs to those who show up for it,” I expect that more traditional sex roles will be re-established for that reason alone, if no other.

I strongly agree with this analysis. IMO, it's much more coherent than the usual Mainstream Right's responses to feminism, which usually amounts to pegging feminism as some kind of Marxist conspiracy that cropped up in academia starting in the late 1960s and then spread like a cancer onto the whole society, devouring of the Holy American Dream one savory morsel at a time. In fact, feminism is one among many of the productive of the industrial age. By "feminism" I mean in the most general sense, gynocentric identity politics and its various ideological iterations and activistic incarnations. Since there are in fact many different "feminisms," from this point on I will speak of the general doctrine of "gender equality" rather than continuing to invoke the rather vague label "feminism."

But first, I'd like to point out MG's response to this comment above:

Martin, to my mind it’s a mistake to treat things as this kind of either/or binary. There wasn’t just one set of traditional sex roles — check out the history of women’s legal status sometime, and you’ll find (for example) that the Protestant Reformation saw a dramatic decline in women’s legal status, with women being deprived of legal rights they’d had for centuries. When the welfare state implodes, no question, things will change — but that doesn’t necessarily amount to a lurch straight back to Victorian attitudes, you know.

Now, I don't think any and all criticism of postmodern sexual mores must automatically harken back to Victorian takes on this issue, but yes, I do agree that there is no one monolithic doctrine or practice of traditional sex roles. That indeed is a valid observation to make. Though this is not the first time I've seen "Victorian" used as a Strawman-mascot for traditional sexual mores across all pre-industrial cultures. When used in this manner, I think "Victorian" serves as a quick and convenient deflection from genuine criticism of the so-called "Sexual Revolution" and its aftermath. I believe the points Martin made in his original comment certainly qualify as genuine criticism. In reality, it seems there is a whole wide world between the extremes of severe prudishness / sexual repression and "anything goes" hyper-individualistic licentiousness, and most of that generous terrain I'd say squarely falls within the realm of traditional family arrangements and sexual practices.

I'll explain further. Again, I'll agree that there is no one monolithic doctrine or practice of traditional sex roles among the world's great cultures, BUT there is most certainly a common set of patterns we can easily observe among all cultures that have developed into notable civilizations. (Greece/Rome, China, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, the Maya, among many others) They all valued marriage and stable family structures. NONE of them extolled the "virtues" of women or men running around and sleeping with a cornucopia of different partners. Few-to-none of them even tolerated the idea of sex before marriage. None of them promoted sterile/childless lifestyles as something positive or desirable for the average person. None of them ever advanced the idea that men and women are the same or that they should all work in the same occupations. NONE of these cultures championed women spending their most fertile years spending all day working outside of the household (maybe unless they were slaves or courtesans/prostitutes). No, those traits are those of our own modern industrial western culture. Some of these are also the sexual traits of a dying civilization (see: the fall of Rome). To defend the current/modern version of those attributes "just because!" is to engage in the sort of apologetics that involves lots of usage of the special pleading fallacy, or even the slippery slope argument like idea that any scaling back of modern gender egalitarianism means backsliding into the fields of that horrific Victorian strawman.

But back to the main theme of this post. The idea that men and women should be engaged in the same occupations is one that can only find fertile ground when we have machines and energy slaves doing most of our "back-breaking" work. The social classes today which most strongly promote "gender egalitarianism" are those comprised of people who mostly work in climate-controlled offices. We could say that office jobs are androgynous; which means they privilege neither the nature of men or women. If one's work-existence is limited to the office then they might indeed start believing that men and women can easily do all the same kinds of tasks. But take away the machines and their energy slaves and this delusion suddenly collapses like house of sand! Once we find ourselves back to those grueling pre-industrial conditions, then the sexual mores of olde' will be back with a vengeance. Men will be back to doing brawny jobs and women will go back to taking care of the household and other tasks that don't require a ton of muscle or life-threatening actions each day. But in general, men AND women will be working with their hands most of their waking hours. Both will be too busy and tired to be worrying about any sort of decadent or boutique identity politics; nor will there be any social media platforms left as an arena to spend one's waking hours fighting about these soon-to-be inconsequential abstractions. And no aspect of this impending future need involve any Victorian* neuroses. Neither does the future absence of a welfare state to subsidize the collapse of the family mean a return to Victorianism. But it does means that modern gender ideologies will cease to exist as anything the state (what remains of it) can or will enforce on the general populace.

Now, one more response in that threat I found to be interesting; one that ties into some of the points I made above:

It’s interesting when a couple makes a real attempt to live sustainably ‘off the grid’ (to a greater or lesser degree) they tend to go back to what some would term traditional gender roles. As you say, once you take away the safety net, and also machine labour, it is pretty simple that men are better/capable at some things and women are better at others, and thats where things tend to fall. Either sex has authority in their domain, and the other one helps out in ways they can.

What industrial society has done is to denigrate traditional womens ‘work’ and raised mens work to be overly important, so that a woman can only be ‘successful’ if she competes with men in the traditionally masculine fields. This is more to the benefit of the industrial system than individual women (or men).

Historically, mens task were actually less important day to day than womens. Mens tasks are traditionally high impact but only occur/succeed every now and then, like hunting, building the home, or defending the family.

Womens tasks were the care, maintenance and functioning of the family and without them the whole thing collapses.

Of course, these are generalisations and not locked binaries, and everyone has elements of male/female within them to a greater or lesser degree.

It would be interesting to follow up same sex couples living this way to see if the same thing happens depending on personal preference.

It's my view that the effort to confuse men's and women's work goes back to when Corporate America started admitting women into the workplace (and away from their families!!) en masse, and how they immediately framed this as a "women's empowerment" issue. No, in fact companies did this specifically to depress wages across the board. It's the old "scab labor" trick from the Robber Baron era. Only this time around, big business caught onto the idea that they could rebrand their labor-degrading practices as "social justice" causes. Ditto with illegal aliens doing manual labor jobs and any criticism of this practice is suddenly "racism." It's amazing how much the masses have bought into these lies and how easily they are fooled by these gimmicks time and time again. Though fortunately, more and more of us having been waking up to the truth on these matters.

I'll end this with the simple acknowledgement that this issue is super-sensitive and not easy to discuss around casual company. A "psychology of previous investment" (JHK term) has set in and now tens of millions of women (and many men) defend as a sacred cow the idea that the mass of women should spend their most fertile years being a cubicle serf. Supporting one's husband is now a high (cultural) crime, whereas being a slave to a corporate boss who doesn't give two flicks about the female employee in question is somehow ok. To me this attitude reeks as a type of Stockholm Syndrome plus lots of cognitive dissonance. But maybe that's just me.

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*It is in my view, that Victorianism could be seen as a modern-age culture movement. Its "mores" are more a cartoon caricature of the traditional family and its values than an authentic expression of how traditional families manifested in the older agrarian nobility the Victorians fancied themselves as emulating. In a nutshell, Victorianism was cultural movement that came about as a modern industrial merchant-class (middle class) attempt to crudely approximate older aristocratic culture norms from previous eras. In essence, a very upright LARP. We could say this movement was something akin to the Hellenistic-era moralists like the Stoics trying to combat the decaying culture of their own era.

Please forgive me if the following comes off as moralistic preaching, but I feel compelled to shout from the rooftops that I have no business telling other people how to live their lives. Nor do you. Specifically, I mean that I have no business providing unsolicited advice to strangers and casual acquaintances. Now, what about those people within my own little circle of immediate family and close friends? If I feel so inclined, I may offer a few pointers and other forms of light feedback on whatever is it they are doing or expressing, granted the person in question seems at all interested in what my opinion might be on whatever is troubling them. And even if the issue is something that’s bugging me quite a bit, I’ve learned over the years to tread lightly, and mind my own P’s and Q’s before gawking at the mote in an eye that is not mine.

I’m going to define Moralism here as the art and science of telling strangers how they should and shouldn’t conduct their own affairs. It’s an art and science usually based on some sort of religious or philosophical code, or simply whatever the prevailing social norms happen to be at the time. But first, we need to get definitions out of the way. What is a stranger? Well, pretty much the entirety of humanity, I’d have to say. I think I sort of get at this in the above paragraph. Since those of us who are inmates of the contemporary industrialized Western word are now mostly atomized, and thus without community-proper, anyone outside of our own personal bubbles is effectively a stranger.

When your Facts touch my Feelings

Am I going to get a bit cranky when I see someone wearing ratty sweat pants out in public, like say in the supermarket? Sure. How about those skin-tight, spandex “yoga pants” that are all the rage these days among young women? No comment. Ditto for vulgar displays of tattoos, piercings, and other forms of so-called “body art” that come off to some of us as an expression of self-vandalism rather than beauty. How about when someone dumps their garbage out their car window and onto the road? How about when someone drives like an utter maniac on the same road I happen to be driving on?

Fortunately there are laws and ordinances in place to address those last couple items. But I think you might be getting the point here. One of the great struggles of life here on this planet is dealing with how utterly obnoxious, rude, and self-unaware other people can be. Those behaviors which yield manifest externalities can be justifiably dealt with via the aforementioned legal process. But it’s the subtle things that often irk us the most. It’s when we attempt to legislate against those subtle transgressions of common decency that the problems start happening. This is when the situation calls for a priesthood of one type or another to determine when, where, and how to censure those behaviors and actions which don’t do any harm in a directly-measurable manner, but might do harm in the long term if not contained, according to the gut feelings of many members of the community. Now we get into the icky territory where facts and feelings collide and create an intractable mess.

Middle Class Insecurities

I’m going to assert that Moralism is a modern-day phenomenon. It’s a very middle class (bourgeois, in the old lingo) type of social control. Our Moralism arose long after the dissolution of the self-policing societies of yore. By this, I mean the clans, tribes, extended families, and other intimate forms of social organization; those that had no need to write down their systems of rules, obligations, and entitlements. Contrast this with the Nation State, which is an entirely modern creature. Or really, it’s the Polis expanded out onto a wider territory. The modern Nation State is the vain attempt to create a family where there’s only masses of strangers who happen to inhabit the same geographic expanse, speak the same language, and have some vague sense of common origin or collective purpose. It actually seems to work ok (to an extent) when everyone residing within the geographic expanse-in-question does in-fact speak the same language, follow the same type of religion, and most members of the nation look not too dissimilar from one another. But nothing beats the old-type family network, where the web of accountability and reciprocity was an up close and personal affair. Under this arrangement, transgressions against familial norms elicited face-to-face consequences. Compare this to the impersonal state of the modern era, where it’s some form of byzantine jurisprudence that has been put in place to deal with myriad forms of social turbulence which might arise.

Fear-based Righteousness

Now we might see that Moralism is the outer expression of an inner angst that goes something like, “THAT PERSON is behaving in a way that makes my blood boil but there is nothing I can actually do about it!! Arrrgh!!” That’s right, it’s the type of existential torment known as powerlessness.

The Old Ways would of course counter with this simple piece of advice, “If they’re not your family, why do you even care?”

I think I have to defer to the ancients on this one. Really, if you have no formal social connections with another person, and they are not directly doing harm to you, then why is their business your business? On what authority do you have the right to police their conduct?

The inner turmoil of the Moralist is one that is fueled by the loss of membership in meaningful social arrangements. When we feel a sense of powerless over our surroundings, fear starts to bubble up. And that fear grows until it finds a release. The is the stuff or moral panics and “mass formation” sorts of collective outbursts that end up making life miserable for anyone within earshot.

Moral Sovereignty

Back in the ancient past, it was the Clan Chieftain, or Tribal Elder, or Parish Priest (or some equivalent figure) who was tasked with nipping these things in the bud; they were empowered to take quick, decisive action before the petulant whiners and complainers of the tribe could slowly brew up a fresh batch of bubbling hysteria over this or that contentious issue. That Clan Elder, or Friendly Neighborhood Rabbi was probably on a first-name-basis with anyone in the community who mattered.

So fast forward back to our crappy today. Instead of getting all in tizzy about what the countless human abstractions around us are doing, why not find or join a family? (Whatever that Family is, it can take on many forms; blood relation need not be required) And then stopping stressing out about whatever harmless idiosyncrasies non-family might be acting out?

I suppose now I can boast about my blissful indifference to total strangers thumbing their nose at what is proper and decent.

This is a tentative 'speculative history' of Early Christianity I've been working on, according to my current level of knowledge and research on the religious climate of Late Antiquity Rome. This theory adopts a 'Christ Mythicist' view, which is the position that there was no 'historical Jesus' that closely matched the description of the Jesus Christ character we have in the Gospel narrative of the New Testament canon that is recognized by all variants of Mainstream Christianity that have survived to this day. The basic thesis here is that:

1. There were a great number of precursor sects, charismatic religious figures, movements, doctrines, and ideologies which led up to the formation of a distinctly-Roman Christianity; including but not limited to: The polytheistic cults of the Eastern Mediterranean and Neart East and the numinous symbolism each of them employed, Mystical Jewish sects like the Essenes and Nazarenes, Judeo-Platonic syncretistic philosophical works like those of Philo Judaeus, Alexandrian Greco-Egyptian syncretism in general, Jewish Messianic rebel movements, Jewish rabbis incorporating Stoic practices into their own teachings, ect.

2. The historical inspiration behind the Gospel narrative may have involved an Essene/Nazarene sect which played some role on the Judean revolt that began in 68 CE, and was crushed by the father-son team of Vespasian and Titus, with aid from the Herodian dynasty and allied monied interests from Alexandria. Much of this movement likely perished during the war, but the surviving elements may have spread to various Jewish diaspora communities throughout the cities of Asia Minor and other areas around the Eastern Mediterranean region. It may have been these groups who became the Ebionites. We can speculate this much: that that was probably nothing we'd today recognize as Christianity that existed during the 1st Century. Any precursor groups from that time would have been wholly Jewish in character. And then of course there was in abundance at that time, many pagan mystery cults that inspired the distinct Christianity that would form in the 2nd century.

3. Roman Chirstianity started off as a Judeo-Hellenic mystery cult during the early-mid 2nd century CE; the original structure consisted of an inner order of initiates who were able to understand the metaphors and symbolism of their "Jesus the Anointed" salvific figure that the outer teachings made references to. By this we could say that the cult had an outer order of hearers who received a more rudimentary set of teachings from the inner order; in summary, the outer circle would take spiritual and moral counsel from the inner clerical order of initiates. A religious scholar existing today who is able to time-travel back to their period would most certainly identify these first churches as being essentially 'Gnostic' in character according to contemporary definitions. Most of the initial converts to the early cult were probably thoroughly-Hellenzied diaspora Jews and gentile 'proselytes' (i.e. 'god-fearers') who had partially converted to Judaism, perhaps as a means of opting out of Roman civic society.

4. The mystery cult soon fanned out into a number of local churches scattered around the Eastern half of the Roman empire. it was in one of these churches, perhaps somewhere in an Asia Minor city where the first Gospel narrative was devised and written down. This was perhaps the first written codification of the Jesus story, which had prior been an oral legend. The scribes who penned the Gospel used a number of pre-existing literary sources, symbols, legends, and cultural motifs as a template to construct their own narrative. They re-imagined their Jesus savior figure as a parody of the life of the great first century sage and holy man, Apollonius of Tyana, combined with various stories of great Jewish rabbis from the last couple centuries prior. And for the narrative structure of the Gospel story, these scribes used the place-setting from Flavius Josephus's 'Wars of the Jews,' to provide a geographic venue for Jesus's preaching mission in the story. And finally, they employed the symbolism of the many dying-and-rising vegetation gods that were so common in the Near East during that time period. This first draft of the Gospel had many of the elements we would recognize centuries later in the version the state church would approve of as doctrinally-acceptable.

5. At some point early on there must have been a great number of schismatic movements, whereby a member (or several) from the inner order of initiates who had some sort of disagreement with the sect leadership, would split off and form their own new splinter sect. And it may have even been the case that in some instances, it was uninitiated hearers (undoubtedly ambitious and eager at the prospect of accumulating a band of followers) who branched off and formed their own churches, taking a more literalistic and matter-of-fact approach to the teachings. Lacking an understanding of the mystery symbolism and genuine spiritual teachings of the founding sect, these groups would fall back on a literal and legalistic reading of the Hebrew scriptures as a source of authority for their churches. Second century figures like Polycarp of Smyrna and Justin Martyr were probably the people who headed these counter-numinious splinter churches. Their doctrine was essentially a Stoic Judaism with a savior figure as the central focus. Some of these splinter churches took a middle ground between literalism and acknowledging mystery teachings. And among these groups, there were some that refused to acknowledge the authority of the Hebrew scriptures, much less the Mosaic laws contained within. It was Marcion of Sinope and his church which serves as a known historical example of the type of early church.

6. The early Churches which did retain their initiatory structures would increasingly incorporate Greco-Egyptian syncretistic ideas into their doctrines; ideas that were quite popular in Alexandria during the first several centuries of our common era. The Valentinian church doctrine and philosophy is likely quite indicative of what these churches were teaching at the time. These 'Gnostic' churches were certainly not so sectarian, exclusivist, and intolerant, like the more literalistic sects that would later coalesce into the state orthodoxy that formed in the 4th century. The Gnostic churches peacefully co-existed with other sects and mystery cults in what was then a vast sea of new religious movements. By the we would speculate that a wide swatch of early Christianity was indeed peaceful and respectful of the pluralistic religious climate of the Roman Empire in late antiquity. It just so happened that the more intolerant and dogmatic churches were the ones that contributed the most to the aforementioned orthodoxy that came about when Roman Christianity became THE state religion of Rome.

7. In summary, there was no one single Early Christianity, Early Christian Doctrine, or Early Christian church, going by the above facts and informed speculations. Rather, there was a constellation of different Christian sects, each having different doctrines and teachings. The Roman church's assertion that there was an unbroken chain of 'apostolic succession' going all the way back to the 1st century CE is a completely unfounded assertion, when we take all of the above information into consideration. There was especially not unbroken chain of doctrines and teachings going back that far that is ideologically compatible with any of the post-Nicene dogmas, proclamations, catechisms, ect. We know quite well from examining contemporary religious movements that the assertion of spurious lineages and pedigrees is all too common. Historical religious movements shouldn't be seen as being any exception to this general rule. And to claim that post-4th-century Roman Christianity is unique from this general trend would be a very clear use of the 'special pleading' fallacy.

One of the great tragedies of the Kali Yuga period we live in now (which probably began about 5000 years ago) is the act of powerful kings and emperors interfering in the religious affairs of the people; so often creating artificial state cults which syncretize and innovate doctrinal elements for the purpose of social control and political expediency, almost always at the expense of Truth, clarity, and genuine social harmony.



The late-stage Roman Emperor Constantine "the great," the ultimate creator of the religion we all recognize today as Christianity, was by no means the first to do this; in fact, he was likely just copying what Ardeshir Babkan, the founder of the Sassanian dynasty of Iran (his successor Shapur I tried to fix this via his patronizing of the prophet Mani, but to no avail), had done just 100 years prior as he stamped out all cults and priesthoods in existing in his empire that did not conform to a strict, dogmatic Zoroastrian orthodoxy; and thus Ardeshir empowered a centralized and power-hungry priesthood to control the social affairs of his empire (sound familiar?).

About 400 years prior to that in India, King Ashoka of the Maurya empire consolidated the various Buddhisms into a state-sanctioned religion with a centralized doctrine (some of which could be said to be a deviation from the Buddha's original teachings) and used this new religion as an instrument of his own foreign policy ambitions.

By this, we could maybe speculate that Ashoka was the first political actor to patronize an overtly salvationist missionary religion, and that centuries later Constantine was merely syncretizing Ashoka and Ardeshir's grand schemes together into the most ghastly of Chimera-like state religions ever to see the light of day. So if we're to believe the pious Catholics, and Orthodox (and even Protestants, funnily enough) at face value, the ensuing logical chain of statements would reveal something like this:

Jesus died so Constantine could use his name/brand to institute a totalitarian state cult with a monopoly on all forms of religious belief, practice, and expression. Yeah, sounds legit.

In reality, Constantine and his well-paid scribes merely renovated the old Roman polytheistic state religion into a vastly more centralized and ideologically intolerant system. Peer behind the new name plates on all the important offices and you might find a Triad Cult of Zeus/Jove, Helios/Mithras, and Dionysus/Osiris re-branded as "The Holy Trinity" to be worshiped using exclusively Christian semantics. And of course the feminine consort to this Holy Triad being Isis and her perma-baby Horus. And so to take Martin Luther's sentimentalism to its logical conclusion, we must ask the burning question: "Why must I worship these divinities through the intercession of this middle-man of semantic obscurantism? Why not simply evade this entire mess and go straight to the Gods?" Good question indeed; as one can quickly learn through direct experience, you can venerate the gods without the need of a centralized priesthood or a convoluted rat's nest of self-contradictory dogmas.

Lastly, we would have to call into question Judaism's founding narrative, which is most certainly not a reflection of what actually went down. Like the other religions mentioned above, Judaism mostly likely came about through a series of political acts. When we go digging deep enough, we might come to the conclusion that absolutely nothing resembling Judaism in modern form existed prior to the Babylonian exile-return period. And that period was an era of monumental geopolitical faultline shifts. And ditto for Islam.

I've been crisscrossing numerous theories in my head about how Christianity may have actually gotten its start; here I mean whatever was the real proto-Christianity that took root and spread around the Eastern area of the Roman Empire during the several centuries prior to its consolidation and codification as an official state doctrine with all the dogmas we recognize today as being mainstream Christianity.

Taking much inspiration from the so-called Mythicist school of critical Biblical scholarship, I'm pretty much now settled on the position that the personage of Jesus Christ, as depicted in the New Testament writings, was indeed a fictitious person and not a historical one. Now that is not to say that there were real people in and around 1st century CE Judea and the surrounding region that did not fit at least some aspects of the Jesus character. But that itself being true does not validate a literal, historical Jesus Christ.

So my basic working hypothesis now is that what we could today recognize as early forms of Christianity started during the early-mid second century somewhere in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. My best guess was somewhere in Asia Minor (Anatolia). And this first movement did not just emerge out of a vacuum, but rather it branched off from an existing continuum of religious sects. So this first proto-Christian church probably came about as a Hellenic-style mystery school for either Proselyte Jews (gentiles who converted to Judaism, which seemed to be a big thing at the time) or Hellenized Jews who had become somewhat lax on strict law-adherence. Either of those choices would point to a location where a Jewish diaspora community awash in Hellenic culture might have been. The Mystery School would have been the core inner-circle of this new church, and the outer outer would have been a lay community of congregants who most likely lacked much of any knowledge of the mystery rites and practices of the core group. And what set this group apart from similar off-Jewish sects of the time would have been the use of Jesus narrative of the Gospels that we would recognize today. Though the original gospel story would probably not have looked exactly like the 4 that got officially canonized during the post-Nicean era, it may have somewhat resembled Mark without the obviously-interpolated ending part. In fact, most critical Biblical researchers these days agree that the other two 'synoptic' Gospels, Matthew and Luke, were probably based on Mark (or a similar older version, like the supposed "Q" source text). In other words, Luke and Matthew have source dependency on Mark.

Now, what would have this group based their savior myth and other doctrines on? Most likely, on numerous sources, which would have been in abundance from within the existing religions of the time. Dying/rising vegetation deities had been a thing for quite some time all over the Mediterranean and Middle East for millennia. The concept of a savior-incarnate would have drawn from very old heroic myths, with perhaps a borrowing from the mystical traditions of India; the stories of Krishna and the Buddha would have certainly spread into the rather-cosmopolitan Roman Empire of the first several centuries CE. Secondly, in the great cosmopolitan hub of Alexandria, there had already been a number of Greco-Egyptian and Judeo-Hellenic syncretist movements underway; a lot of the Jews living there had become so thoroughly Hellenized that some of the intellectually and mystically-inclined among them would have started mixing the Greco-Egyptian hodgepodge doctrines into their own Hebraic beliefs. Proto-Christianity would have certainly drawn from something along these lines. In fact, it was probably Alexandria and Asia Minor that were the two main starting epicenters of the early Christian movements.

One thing that does seem clear from reading the Gospel narrative is the pro-Roman attitude oozing out of the text (in contrast to the virulently anti-Roman sentiment of Jewish messianic groups of the time). If not due to later redactions and interpolations, this attitude might suggest that the original Gospel writer favored a doctrine that was not antagonistic toward the Roman authorities. And if we accept an early-mid 2nd century CE time for the initial writing of the first gospel, this would overlap directly with the several Roman-Jewish conflicts of that time period. First the uprising that took place in Judea from 66-70, which the Romans totally crushed, under the command of Vespasian and Titus. And several decades after that was the diaspora rebellion of 115-117, which we today refer to as the Kitos War. And then finally was the Bar Kokhba revolt which took place from 132-136. In other words this period was one of intense conflict between a rather vocal Jewish minority and their Greek/Roman rulers and the all-but-ubiquitous Hellenistic culture. During the heat of these conflicts it might have very well been a death sentence in any of the diaspora communities to belong to any Jewish group or sect that was overtly-hostile to Roman authority. And conversely, it would have been advantageous for Jews of the period to adopt a Roman and Hellenic-friendly variant of their own religion. By the later portion of the second century we already see approach clearly reflected in the rather-Stoic writings of Justin Martyr, whom later Church authorities considered to be one of their founding fathers. Though whether or not Justin Martyr was in actuality someone we could classify as Chirstian is perhaps a mystery that will never be solved; as 4th century Church scribes with a penchant for memory-holing earlier writings which conflicted with the post-Nicene narrative, maybe have simply retconned Justin's writings to fit said narrative. Anyway, I digress.

So let's say this new Roman-friendly Jewish cult became quite the sensation during the period of Roman-Jewish conflicts. Surely, many diaspora Jews and gentile converts were quite averse to being seen as rebels or people hostile to Roman rule; yet at the same time they wished to practice a type of religiosity that at the core was quite at odds with the traditional Greco-Roman religion and pretty much every established "pagan" religion (Many Romans considered Jews to be atheists, owing to their disbelief and/or disregard of the Gods). What a tough position to be in. But here with proto-Christianity, these people found a balance of sorts. And this early cult may have had the patronage of wealthy Roman citizens, or at least a few affluent and literate Jews who were thoroughly Hellenized, culturally-speaking.

And now we get to one of the core reasons I consider the first Gospel document to have been composed during the 2nd century, at the earliest. In his book The Christ Conspiracy, author and researcher Joseph Atwill draws an undeniable number of parallels between the Gospel story and the historical account Flavius Josepus (the Jewish turncoat who became a fixture of the Flavian court after the war) of the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70. Now I don't go as far as Atwill and thus I refrain from jumping to the conclusion that proto-Christianity was a deliberate creation of the Flavian regime, but I do see the evidence he brings to the surface as supporting the hypothesis that whichever person or group wrote the first version of the Gospel narrative, probably used the works of Josephus as source material for at least composing the story's setting. No conspiracy theory is required to support this explanation. Any person or group with sufficient resources (like access to a major library) and basic literary acumen could have composed new religious texts using already-existent source works. (This is pretty much how all new religions come about anyway)

So by this we can speculate that the first wave of proto-Christian efforts had a wealthy sponsor or two. And now we arrive at the curious figure of Marcion of Sinope (Asia Minor), who was a very-wealthy shipping magnate said to have headed his own Church. Marcion was later disavowed and declared a 'heretic' by the post-Nicean state church. Anyway, a man like Marcion would have certainly had the resources to employ a few scribes and researchers; enough of an effort to throw together some new religious literature. From what little we know it seems that Marcion's variant of early Christianity took a rather anti-Torah approach and likely appealed to both Jews and Proselyte converts who had quite a zeal for Jewish-like religiosity, yet harbored little love for any pedantic approach to the Mosaic Law and the legalistic tradition built around it. By the 2nd century, the major cities of the Empire had become full of malcontents who were ripe to jump aboard any new social movement which postured itself as a rebuke to the established and decadent mainstream institutions of the time. Proto-Christianity would have been one among many movements of this type. Roman Mithraism, and the the Cults of Isis and Cybele, were among other examples of this type. As an overall trend, it seems there was a sort of "Orientalism" of late antiquity that took hold of the popular imagination.

We can see in the 'authentic' letters (epistles) of 'Paul' the forensic clues of how the first Christian groups likely spread around the map. I've seen Mythicist author and researcher Robert M. Price speculate that the 'Paul' of those epistles may have in fact been a pseudonym and alter-ego of Marcion himself; perhaps with the memory of a few authentic historical people tossed into this probable composite character of 'Paul'. We know from observing the ways new religious movements are formed in our current era, that contrived and concocted pedigrees and lineages is a common method of persuading new members of the religious group in question that the tradition is much older than it actually is. And we can easily apply this MO to the formation process of Christianity. Come to think of it, how are the supposed 'Apostles' any more real (in the literal sense) than HP Blavatsky's 'Mahatmas' or the 'Ascended Masters' of the various New Age groups which spawned from her fraudulent works?

So whomever this 'Paul' figure is supposed to represent, was the mean by which the Jesus story first spread around; it's evangelists started 'churches' in various locales and certainly after that there were a number of copycat movements purporting to be the original lineage. These various groups likely hit up the Jewish communities as their first targets of evangelizing and then after that, disaffected gentiles. The proto-Christian movement would have featured a wide spectrum of different beliefs, and most importantly, different approaches to interpreting and incorporating the Jewish Canon (i.e. the Old Testament) into their respective doctrines and practices. This would have run the gamut from outright Torah rejection (the Marcionites, various 'Gnostic' sects, among others) to full Torah adherence (Ebionites and similar groups). And somewhere in the middle would have been the approach of harmonizing the inclusion of the Torah and Tanakh and authoritative revelatory texts, while at the same time placing emphasis on and precedence of the new Christ revelation. This middle position seems to have been the basis of what would later evolve into the 'Orthodoxy' which the post-Nicean state church would champion. Another spectrum within Early Christianity to consider would have been the range of esotericism to literalism practiced within the group in question. Again, this differed a lot by group/sect. It very well may have been that the first proto-sect to spread the Gospel story around did indeed intepret it in a totally allegorical manner, and that the later literlization and historicization of that story was a corruption rather than something based on an authentic view of the earliest users of the Jesus myth.

Regarding the OT question, it's actually quite logical that the 4th century state Chuch would pick the middle approach, as it would be the most appealing to the greatest number of Christian. But as a result of this process, all the various Churches (and their differing doctrines) which would comprise early Christianity, would have to be harmonized, and thus homogenized, into a single unifying doctrine. And thus we see today why there are so many contradictions and plot holes on the NT canon when its looked at as a whole corpus.

So by this we can picture Early Christianity as being quite doctrinally-diverse, and not a homogeneous orthodoxy later Church historians would pretend it was. Much of what would have been authentic Early Christian belief and practice would have eventually been dumbed down or even lost as the state-sponsored orthodoxy both assimilated and snuffed out the earlier variants of Christianity. And thus, what we know today as Christianity should really be called Churchianity.

Someone recently asked me my opinion on the revisionist vs. reconstructionist approaches to modern paganism. Here's my response.

I'm more in the revisionist camp. To me, reconstructionist ethnic paganism is highly reductive, pedantic and pointless. An example would be groups who attempt to reconstruct not just Germanic or Nordic paganism but very specifically Anglo Saxon paganism. First, we have very little info on the exact pantheon or ritual practices of the Anglo Saxon culture, secondly, this culture was very short lived in any purely pagan form, as they invaded Britain in the 500s and were largely Christianized by the 800s. So that's like a 300 year window to reconstruct, which in the history of the British Isles is just a tiny blip...seems rather arbitrary. They might as well go Brythonic pagan, as the Celtic Britons had been established there for a much longer span of time.

We could say that the Anglo Saxon culture didn't simply cease to exist once the people were Christianized. As we know, there were more invasions to the Island (ex, the Vikings and later the Normans) and thus changes to the cultures. The things about cultures is that unless they are in very isolated/remote locations, they tend to change/shift quite a bit over time. The reconstructionist mentality assumes a static, unchanging culture....which is pretty divorced from reality.

A crucial part of Anglo-Saxon (i.e. English) culture includes the importation of Old Norse and Norman French language and culture into the overall mix. Fast forward to today and the modern English language happens to have a vocab that's about 70% derived from medieval French, and much of that French is derived from classical Latin. So we could say that a genuinely "Native English" pagan religion for today might have a lot of Latin/Roman elements to it, not just Germanic, much less a tiny snapshot of one particular Germanic localization frozen in time.

In closing, I'm of the belief that any purely antiquarian endeavor (like reconstrucitonist paganism) taking place today is nothing more than a LARP.

Just a rough idea I've had spinning around in my head as of late. This is a way of chopping up modernity into distinct periods. In my book, modernity begins after the effects of the Renaissance and Reformation each fully left their mark up the destiny of European culture. So, by this, modernity begins roughly around 1550 CE.

1550 - 1790 -- Early Modern Period
Cultural after-effects of the Renaissance, Printing Press, Oceanic Exploration of the World and Colonization, Protestant Reformation, Scientific Revolution, Classical Liberal Thinkers, Decline of Catholic Church, Spread of Occult/Esoteric and Fraternal Orders, Early Industrial Innovations

1790 - 1965 -- High Modern Period (Twilight of the Piscean Age)
Formation of the United States of America, Republicanism, French Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Mass Literacy, Spread and Institutionalization of Liberalism, Formation of Social Liberal and Socialist Doctrines, Decline of Christian Religiosity into its Twin Offspring of Social Liberalism and Literalist Fundamentalism, Abolition of Slavery, American Republicanism morphs into Democracy, Germ Theory and Modern Medicine, Electrification of Cities and Towns, the Automobile, the Airplane, Mass Mechanization, Nietzsche Declares the Death of Pisces Age Religiosity, Implementation of Totalitarian Ideologies like Communism and Fascism, World Wars, Degradation of Art and Architecture into Abstract and Utilitarian Forms, Decline of Religiosity, Atomic Theory and Nuclear Weapons

1965 - 2016 -- Postmodern Period -- DECLINE OF FAUSTIAN CULTURE + The Rise of the Aquarian Age Cataclysms
Space Exploration Programs, Rise of Mass Media and Pop Culture, Population Explosion in the Developing World while Western Fertility Rates Start Declining, Cold War between USA and Soviet Union, Further Decline of Religiosity and Secularization of Civic/Community Life, Decline of Communities and "liberation" of Individuals into Atomized Consumption Units, University Education as a Mass Consumer Activity (and thus the decline of Higher Education), Scientific Materialism as an Academic Orthodoxy, Mass Entrance of Women into the Workforce in Tandem with Feminist Ideologies, Mass-Immigration of People from the Developing, World Automation and Computerization, the Internet, Failure/Collapse of Communist States, Pax Americana and the Attempt to Universalize Liberal Ideology, Rapid Extinction of Species and the Mass-Despoliation of the Environment, Adaptation of Western Technologies by East Asian Countries, Democracy degrades into Vote Farming and the Clash of Self-Interested Power and Self-Interest Blocs.

2016 - ?? -- Contraction Period
Fading out of Pisces Age Religious Forms and the Subsequent Rise of Eccentric and Syncretic Aquarian Religious Movements, Collapse of Liberalism and Neoliberal Institutions, Slowing Down of Technological Advances, Disappearance of Civic Pride and Virtues, Further Destruction of Communities and Atomization of Individuals, Rise of Populism due to the Popular Pushback Against Globalization and Globalized Neoliberal Oligarch Overreach, Collapse of Liberal Academia, Mass Distrust in Institutions and Official Notions of Expertise, Balkanization and Re-Localization of the West, Economic Decline and Contraction, Collapse of Universalistic Ideologies, Growing Distrust of Materialist Ideologies, Environmental Collapse and Population Dieoffs, Civil Wars, Political Revolutions and Collapses, Collapse of Democratic Systems and the Rise of Military Cliques to fill the Vacuum, Police States and Caesarism Becomes the Norm, Reconstitution of Traditional Family and Community Structures, Migration Movements.


Broader Western Civilization Timeline

(Rise of Apollonian Culture, Halfway thru the Age of Aries)
1200 - 800 BCE -- Formation period
800 - 450 BCE -- Archaic period
450 - 100 BCE -- High Hellenistic period
100 BCE - 250 CE -- Roman Period (Age of Pisces Begins)

(Decline of Apollonian Culture)
250 - 500 CE -- Late Antiquity (beginning of (Magian pseudomorphosis)
500 - 1000 -- Early Christian Period (Intensified Magian pseudomorphosis)

(Rise of Faustian Culture)
1100 - 1400 -- High Middle Ages
1400 - 1550 -- Renaissance period (Magian pseudomorphosis fades out)
1550 - 1790 -- Early Modern Period (Maturation of Faustian Culture)
1790 - 1965 -- High Modern Period (Pisces gives way to Aquarius)

(Decline of Faustian Culture)
1965 - 2016 -- Postmodern Period (Start of Aquarian Age, Prelude to Caesarism + Liberalism declining into Decadence)
2016 - ?? -- Contraction Period (De-Faustianization of USA, Rise of Populism, Collapse of Liberalism, Balkanization of the West, Another pseudomorphosis??)

Note: We could probably argue that the Contraction Period is merely the second phase of the Postmodern Period.