Caustic Ramblings

No, I don’t buy into the naive belief that religion and politics can be wholly separated into independent spheres that don’t talk to one another, much less rub shoulders. In theory? Maybe. But in practice? No. Anything humans do here in meat-world as a group activity will be tainted with politics. Every large or popular religion that has ever come to be has been tainted with politics, in varying degrees.

To understand how this happens, let’s use a microcosmic example. One day, your cozy little religious or spiritual circle might be perfectly-apolitical and impervious the more noxious of cultural influences ebbing and flowing around you in the surrounding sociopolitical space, but the next day those 501c3 papers come back in the mail with that stamp of approval, and now your cozy little hangout group has grown up and become a corporation! What was once a formal and organic gathering is now a virtual “person” in the eyes of the state.

Your group has effectively become an appendage of the state; which means the sort of people who are adept at playing ball with the state (those pesky scribes and lawyers) might eventually find themselves in key leadership positions in your growing spiritual organization. Thus, politics. In due time, the people who are elite-level skilled at the Letter will probably displace those who are all about the Spirit (here we might begin to understand why the Ancient Druids refused to write anything down, but I digress). The new leaders doing all the boring paperwork and bean-counting needed to keep the organization afloat are effectively compliance officers. They serve as diplomats between your organization and the government. If there’s one thing compliance officers are good at, it’s complying. Their own beliefs are likely going to be in harmony with whatever the prevailing “state religion” (official or unofficial) happens to be. Now we can see clearly why in the US almost the entirety of Mainline Protestant Christianity has been converged into State Progressivism. Thus, politics. How many of these churches now fly rainbow flags? And speak of a Jesus that was little more than a Jewish community organizer who preached peace, love, and “the current thing”?

Maybe those pesky old Druids were onto something? Moving forward, I think the “Lite Org” concept might be an effective way of mitigating the current infestation of politics into every endeavor imaginable. A Lite Org simply means an unofficial organization. From a legal standpoint, it’s no different than a bunch of friends hanging out in a backyard and having a BBQ. Online, a Lite Org might be something as simple as a web forum or Discord server. It might be super-organized and serious on the social level, or it might just be a laid-back information hub for whatever the topic of shared interest happens to be; but either way it simply does not exist in any corporate form. No bylaws, no board of directors, and no official protocols for admitting new members or expelling undesirable ones; all invisible to lawyers, scribes, and bureaucrats. Still though, politics can and will creep in, but probably not in a way that’s at all useful at to the state and its many tentacles.

For quite a long time now I’ve been pondering the question, “what might a future Paganism here in North America look like after Neopaganism has fully run its course?”

After thinking about this and going back-and-forth on some ideas, I came to the “Captain Obvious” realization that I cannot predict the future. Duh. So, I refrained from trying to make any futile attempts to guess what the specific details might look like; particularly, when it comes to whatever cultic practices and spiritual teachings any such hypothetical future Pagan groups might have.

Instead, I thought about the possible social, cultural, political, and economic attributes of “Future Paganism.” First I shall defined Paganism is any type of religious or spiritual approach moving forward that is neither Abrahamic, nor a copypaste of some Eastern tradition.

Anyway, I think the examination of cultural-social criteria here is appropriate approach because Neopaganism seems to have been mostly a reflection of the social-cultural value system of its secular parent culture (the 1960s counterculture and the progressivist politics that followed) rather than a distinct set of spiritual teachings could stand on its own feet. Really, I’m of the belief that whole “separation of church and state” mantra is a farcical delusion; in any practical sense, at least. A belief system is a belief system. And an effective belief system is one that is capable of ordering and shaping the lives of its adherents, regardless of whatever the stated source of those beliefs might be. A non-theistic belief system that successfully tells a critical mass of people what to do is just as much a “church” as one that claims a God or Gods as the ultimate source of its authority. By that, I’ve yet to see any evidence that a “theocracy” of college professors, corporate managers, and government bureaucrats is inherently better than one consisting of people dressed in fancy robes who invoke deities and claim to divine the intent of beings vastly more intelligent and complex than humans (I’d argue the latter arrangement is better, but that’s just my opinion).

I think it’s a safe bet to say that future trends in religion and spirituality will reflect the broader culture just as much as present-day spiritual fads do. The question on whether it will be the religion that shapes the culture, or the other way around is a fascinating one, but not a question that’s a concern of mine right now in this post. What I am laying out below is simply an exercise in comparing and contrasting the values that shaped the alternative spirituality scene (and its Neopagan offspring), versus my thought experiment on what an emerging “post-liberal” value system might look like, whether that system shaped by religious or secular forces. The primary hypothetical I am taking into account is the gradual (or more sudden) decline of industrial civilization and the eventual dissolution of the sort of values and cultural expressions that have resulted from our present reality of cheap energy, material abundance, easy travel, and transient living patterns.

Below I describe each pattern using a list of keywords. The first is the arrangement we’ve been stuck with for the past several decades, though it’s now deep into its death throes. The second is something I see emerging right now out of the populist (anti-neoliberal/globalist) counterculture that has gained quite a bit of ground over the past ten years or so.

Values of the late 20th century alt-spirituality scene (which includes Neopaganism): rejection of time-honored traditions and ancient wisdom; spiritual novelty over established praxis; egalitarianism; secular humanism; (i.e. primary values derived from materialist and utilitarian doctrines rather than spiritual sources); liberal globalism; politeness and sensitivity being seen as more important than truth; hyper-individualism and the promotion of individual license; the rejection of limits and boundaries; logophobia; a thick firewall erected between religious and secular values when it comes to traditions claiming an ancient source; pacifism; nature romanticism; emotional self-expressionism; feelings and subjectivism taking precedence over impersonal observations and reasoned discourse; feminism and gynocentric perspectives taking center stage; apprehension toward making substantive value judgements; stated aversion to hierarchies and the hierarchical values (though not practiced in mundane, everyday lives); radical inclusionism; moral relativism; noble savage romanticism; “blank slate” wishful-thinking about human nature; lack of any serious challenge to big city living and consumeristic cosmopolitanism despite rhetoric suggesting such; being a cog in the system rather than challenging it despite rhetoric suggesting otherwise; romantic notions of love and family; ideological environmentalism that favors a preach over practice approach; emphasis on the foreign and exotic over the familiar; civilizational self-loathing; persistent pandering to narcissistic and solipsistic sentiments; ambivalence (or even hostility) towards family-formation and pro-natal lifestyles; aspirations toward a classless society; blind acceptable of scientific-materialist dogmas, despite rhetoric which sometimes claims otherwise.

Post-liberal religion and spirituality (which would include post-Neopagan Paganism): spirituality of localism and community-focus, with some degree of disregard toward abstract notions of “humanity”; a positive view toward ancestry and time-honored traditions; a recognition of natural limits, boundaries as being a part of the cosmic scheme; the willingness to work within those constraints rather than fight them or pretend they don’t exist; metaphysical belief becomes more a personal matter than a collective imperative; inter-community pragmatic relations rather than sectarian antagonism; religious and secular values seen as inseparable; emotional restraint and modesty/humility becoming important public virtues once again; providing a challenge/alternative to industrial modernity rather than just reflecting its favored lifestyles and value system; local experience over universal abstractions; meritocratic hierarchy (though this can easily degrade into nepotism over time); families and guild/fellowship societies as the fundamental social unit (as opposed to the atomized individual); constructive martial values; recognition of the sexes as being fundamentally different, though having complementary roles and being co-equal in terms of spiritual worth; cultural self-confidence; emphasis on small-town, small-city, and rural living; local food production; attentiveness to local ecological conditions; craftsmanship valued over raw efficiency; providing an alternative to being a cog in the system; pragmatic notions of love and family; acceptance and encouragement of family-formation and pro-natal lifestyles; practical environmentalism; recognition and utilization of natural social classes; skepticism toward scientific-materialist dogmas.

***

I’m probably missing a lot of things from both patterns. Please feel free to suggest anything that should be added or omitted!

I’ve blogged exhaustively in the past about Neopagans, particularly the woke form of it, which I believe accounts for a good portion of Neopagans who use their “religion” is a shallow front for the expression of their political beliefs and overall worldview that’s mostly rooted in modern-day pop culture. Since I’ve more than put that issue to bed, I won’t drone on about it any further.

Starting several months ago, out of curiosity, I took to social media (ugh, I know..), read a few books, and a listened to few podcasts, in order to check out the right-wing side of the Neopagan scene. You see, I have been something of an amateur anthropologist since I can remember. I’ve always had a blazing curiosity about whatever this or that “scene” is up to. Anyway, back on topic; I had already been aware of the so-called “Folkish vs. Universalist” ideological war within Heathenry, (Germanic Neopaganism) and in my investigations I learned that this has spilled over into some of the other Neopagan ethnic ice cream flavors. Below, I’m mostly going to be talking about American right-wing Neopagans. I believe that Europeans (who tend to live in countries with mostly-homogeneous ethnic ancestry) have a lot more of a legitimate claim on the things I will be talking about.

All in all, I found the American iteration to be ruled by an incoherent mob mentality and a very pronounced disdain for philosophy and intellectualism (no, Frederich Nietzsche quote-memes don’t count). Instead, I found plenty of the following:

*Pseudo-masculine sentimentalism
*Shallow collectivist yearnings
*The copious use of reheated 19th century romanticist leftovers
*Repetitive yapping about “ethnic gods”
*The shrill insistence that ideas and beliefs derive their validity from the ethnic pedigree of each respective idea (as opposed to inherent truth value)
*Lots and lots of grievance politics (sound familiar?)

As far as I can tell, the lion’s share of right-wing Neopagans are Heathens and their common themes I’ve seen coloring their paganism are:

*”The Folk” (that is, the yearning for ethnic collectivism as form of social organization)
*The idolization of their claimed ancestry; typically revolving around ethnic groups (ex: the Old Norse culture) that ceased to exist many centuries ago, or have evolved into modern day ethnicities that have very little in common culturally with their pre-Christian forebears, despite maybe a few preserved vestiges of the older folk culture.
*The notion that a person's blood content determines which gods they should worship.
*Appeals to “might makes right” morality
*”Blood and Soil” nationalist tropes claimed as spiritual teachings
*Hard Polytheism taken to absurd extremes
*A literal interpretation of myths and other literary source materials

And these themes are what we see before even getting into the political side of this particular niche subculture.

By “folk” they are referring to their attempt, as European Americans (i.e. Whites), to create a modern-day collectivist, neo-tribal identity based on this-or-that European ancestral stock the group in question claims descent from. The main issue I see with this is that they are appealing specifically to pre-Christian ancestry; which in practice means appealing to ancestry from so far back in time that it’s nearly impossible to know much of anything about such ancestors. So this “ancestry” they talk about all the time is little more than an abstraction, in practical terms. This abstraction fails to correspond with any modern day lived experience. On the contrary, virtually all of their knowable ancestors are Christians, for better or worse. There’s a huge gaping historical void between the Christianized present and the very distant pagan past these people are hearkening back towards. I’ve come across more than a few right-wing Heathens with very mixed European ancestry (i.e. “Amerimutts”) acting like whatever Germanic ancestry they might have as being their only spiritually-significant ancestry. One of the leaders of a sizable East Coast Folkish group has an Italian surname. The founding father of American Folkish Heathenry (Asatru Folk Assembly is his organization) is a man by the name of Stephen McNallen; yeah, I’ve seen no shortage of Irish and Scottish surnames among the followers of these groups. Yet, the Germanic deities are the only ones they seem find relevant based on ancestral appeals.

An Instant Coffee Religion

If I am going to take a wild guess here, I’d say that most participants in these groups aren’t exactly genealogy aficionados, nor are they history buffs. Rather, the guiding ideology is White Nationalism, which is a form of identitarian grievance politics based on White American racial identity. Because of this we see bizarre claims like that the specifically-Germanic deities are somehow the “folk gods” of all white people. It really just means their main criteria for letting people in their groups is that they are passably-white. I doubt anyone is being subjected to a DNA ancestry test. Really though, I think the folkist adoption of the Germanic/Norse pantheon and folklore originally came about as an arbitrary decision based on the fact that the collection of medieval Icelandic sources (Eddas, Sagas, ect.) is the closest thing we have to any detailed documentation of pre-Christian Northern European religion. So those materials are simply “good enough” to appropriate and claim as an instant pan-White, non-Abrahamic religion to latch onto for identity purposes. Don’t let the contradictory appeals to ancestry get in the way of that! Also, on the resurgence of Germanic Neopaganism in general, we should remember this first came about in the wake of the 1960s counterculture. The hippies were big on the whole “noble savage” thing. From the Summer of Love onward, it was high time to get back to nature and simpler times! Neopagans could have just as easily adopted the Greco-Roman pantheon as a basis for a Western pagan identity, but no, that whole thing was all about High Civilization, cosmopolitanism, multi-ethnic empires, cultural and religious syncretism, and other complicating factors. You see, this is all about feelings and aesthetics. Spirituality whaaaaat?

One last word on ancestry. I, myself have done a DNA ancestry test, and later on I built myself a dandy little family tree. Actually, it’s quite elaborate and detailed. I’ve been able to trace many ancestors on the British Isles side of my family back to the 1500s. These ancestors hail from every single British Isles ethnic group. This raises an important question in my view; why are my Highland Scot ancestors (Campbells, represent!) any more special or meaningful than my English ancestors? What about my Welsh and Irish ancestors? Why would any one of these ancestral ethnicities have any special bearing on what form of spirituality I study or practice today?

You are more than your physical body's molecules

I guess what I’m getting at is that I think that for Americans, appealing to ancestry is a rather shallow way of deciding on which spiritual path or pantheon of gods to follow. In a recent Magic Monday response, John Michael Greer explains this quite well from an Occult perspective:

“Yes, I'm familiar with [the belief that ancestry should define one’s sprituality], but I consider it mistaken. The genetics of your present material body simply don't have that much to do with your spiritual and occult practices. Past life connections tend to be considerably more important, and it's fairly rare these days for anyone to have an unbroken series of lives in one and only one ethnic group -- far more often, it's a complete jumble, and appropriately so, since one point of reincarnation is that it gives you the chance to explore many different ways of being human.”

I’ve seen some rather entertaining “Twitter battles” between pagans who utilize elaborate systems of thought like Platonism, Hindu philosophy, or Buddhism to guide their pagan practice, versus the kinds of ethno-cosplayers I’ve describe above. The usual retort from the latter tends to be the assertion that the philosophical belief in question is DEAD WRONG because those ideas happened to have originated from the “wrong” ethnic group. For example, Platonists were Greeks, so to mix in Platonism with Germanic paganism is outright heresy! Yes, the absurdity reveals itself immediately. Not only is this crude materialism masquerading as spirituality, but according to them, ideas have no independent merit; ideas just means to an end for some mundane concern or agenda. Ideas are nothing more than a reflection of some group’s will-to-power dynamics. Sound familiar? Yes, such utterances are a direct product of the postmodernist paradigm. Like their leftist Neopagan counterparts, right-wing Neopagans are very often atheists who use their “playganism” as a perma-Halloween costume to gallop around in.

Anything to bring back a sense of enchantment

Honestly, I can understand what motivates this kind of cosplay act. In today’s postmodern industrial Western world, there is a crushing level of anomie which has been brought about by mass social atomization and the rise of rampant consumerism, “dog-eat-dog” rat race economics replacing most forms of community cohesion, ubiqutous and hegemonic materialism, the loss of a coherent civilizational identity, the steep demographic decline of the core Western ethnic stock (i.e. White Europeans), and the overall uglification and vulgarization of nearly everything in the physical environment. So yeah, I get it. Turning back the clock and retreating into a “noble savage” fantasy world might seem like a rather appealing alternative to those who aren’t especially gifted in the imagination department.

On a more charitable note, the sort of ideas and behaviors I pointed out in the above sections are mostly associated with a handful of social media personalities who are vocal proponents of said ideas (in addition to their followers who frequently post comments). As many of us know quite well, loud people on social media don’t necessarily define the whole or majority of whatever groups they associate with or claim to represent.

I did look into a few Folkish Heathen organizations, and for the most part these seem like very wholesome, family-oriented groups. Their events are centered around weekend camping activities and outdoor worship of the gods. In other words, very cool stuff! The members appear for the most part to be working class people who work in the trades and other honest occupations that are closely connected to the physical economy. This stands in stark contrast to the leftist/woke/universalist camp, which (as far as I can tell) is populated by people associated with the Professional-Managerial Class (PMC), who are generally-affluent, university-educated people and very often employed in salaried office jobs, i.e. work that deals with abstractions and tends to be rather disconnected from the physical economy. Leftist neopagans see the folkish types as being evil incarnate and hurl the usual angry slurs (racist!!, sexist!!, bigot!! nazeeeeeeee, ___phobe!!, ect.) in their general direction. What I think is really going on is the usual class bigotry we see from PMCs toward white working class people; of course very thinly clad with moralistic pretense. From what I’ve observed though, Folkish pagans tend to be rather egalitarian on most issues; for example, the men treat women as equals in terms of worth and intelligence, which seems to be a healthy balance with their very positive attitude toward masculinity. But of course that doesn’t at all stop the hysterical accusations and incendiary invective woke Neopagans keep spitting in their general direction.

Left-wing heathens are extremely paranoid and hyper-reactive when it comes to past associations of Germanic pagan elements with National Socialism. In many ways I don't fault them for this. The reactions are quite predictable though when any form of not-leftist neopaganism is even hinted at in their online spaces. The moment the leftist pagan group begins to suspect even an ounce of sympathy (or even tepid non-denouncement) toward the Folkish side of things from a newcomer, that newcomer is immediately dogpiled and then very quickly ejected from the group. Worse, if the newcomer was unfortunate enough to share photos and personal details about themselves, they just might become an immediate target of doxxing and harassment. But yes, the Woke Neopagans have now become the witch-burners and heresy-hunters that just prior generations of Neopagans would vehemently decry. The hunter becomes the hunted, and the hunted becomes the hunter; this is human nature in a nutshell.

It seems I have digressed much and that I’ve only touched on one particular subculture within the fold of Right-wing Neopaganism. In the next installment, I’ll explore the Hellenic quarter of this post-liberal counterculture that has a thing for dressing up in historical pagan garb.

The following is bit of a long ramble in response to JMG's jab (pun intended) at the corporate establishment's desperate attempt to browbeat the masses into worshiping lab coats.
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/131994.html

It seems like the Cult of Technocratic Managerialism that got its glorious start during the FDR years has become dilapidated to the point where it has become a morbid sci-fi horror self-parody. Now this hilarious "Trust the science!!" mantra comes off like the invocation of a desperate Cargo Cult, one willing to do anything to prolong its increasingly-fragile sense of confidence and self-worth; anything to harken back to the good ol' days where 'science' was perpetually on the up and the masses were oh so enthusiastic about material progress! It's like the remaining true believers subconsciously know their days are numbered.

To draw from a favorite mythos of the true believers: The 'USS Technocracy' starship is about to blow; there's hull breaches all over the ship and the warp core has started to leak plasma; yet the command crew is sitting pretty on Deck 1, being protected by a force field around the bridge and they're blissfully in denial that their ship is about to become a cloud of dust and metallic debris; the enlisted crew members on the lower decks are being sucked out into the vacuum of space, but the people up top are each plugging their ears while singing to themselves, "la la la la, I'm not listening!!"

We could say that "Science" (in the cultural-ideological sense) is an egregore (Group Mind Entity), and one that is becoming weaker and more unstable by the year? If we're to draw from occult philosophy, it would seem that less and less ordinary people "believing science" weaken the egregore and make it more a mental reflection of the remaining cult of true believers. Undoubtedly, it's been pop-cultural artifacts like the aforementioned Star Trek mythos, along with countless flashy gizmo advertisements, and copycat entertainment products that have propped up this group mind over the years. By this, I think there may have been a lot of non-deliberate self-sabotage going on here, as many of these entertainment products have been sacrificed to the Woke Cult in recent years. Star Trek itself got turned into a cynical Affirmative Action passion play, with its most recent franchise offering, "Discovery"...one that diehard Trekkies have generally deemed an abomination. So worlds have collided, in a manner of speaking, and the Woke group-mind(which is not particularly 'scientific' .. to put it lightly) has been butting itself into the mental real estate once monopolized by the Science group-mind and thus producing untold amounts of cognitive dissonance for the many mental inhabitants unfortunate enough to caught in this storm.

The field of 'Occult Memetics' has become a fascination of mine (the youtube personality Styxhexenhammer666 coined this term). Thinking about this topic in detail has me realizing just how much of a collective psychotic break the comfortable classes (PMCs) are experiencing right now.

Last week within the same two day window I had both my dad and uncle (both are TV-addicted boomers who unquestioningly believe everything the corporate media talking heads tell them they need to believe) pester me about getting the jab, and in a rather passive-aggressive manner. I can only surmise that there has been a corporate propaganzda blitzkrieg now that it's become apparent that the vaccine supply has vastly outstripped demand. All of the true believers have had their shot already and those outside the science cult have to be either bribed or browbeaten into taking it. Many of us are simply "nope" and this is enraging the cultists to no end. I absolutely refuse to take the jab and a fear my own family members might become increasingly hostile toward this. So I'm left with the choice of either lying to them or simply telling them this isn't up for debate, now buzz off.

No, I'm not wearing a stupid mask unless a business establishment I'm walking into absolutely requires me to do so. And no, I'm not getting an under-tested science experiment jabbed into my arm.

This is semi-copypasta from somewhere else. I cleaned up the formatting a bit and added in some clarifications.

1. Be aware that when someone accuses you of a thought-crime like racism, sexism, ___phobia, ect., they are trying to silence you with fear. They know deep down that without bullying tactics and other underhanded methods, their insane cult-like ideology has no legs to stand on. Thus they must drum up fear and whip people into a frenzy to distract from the obvious (that their ideas are awful and stupid).

2. Team up. When you're accused of thought crimes, the intention is to ruin you, so "share the risk." When someone you know is falsely accused of thought crimes, and really -- all accusations of thought crimes are false -- get their back. Cowardice only enables and emboldens the mob.

3. Do not give in, do not back down. When you know the allegations against you are unfounded, yet they keep coming, stay strong and refuse to capitulate. Make your attacker work much harder than they are willing to. Once the bar for entry in the 'Cancellation Olympics' is raised, the canceling coward slinks away and moved onto an easier target.

The cancel mobs have become increasingly called out as more and more people become hip to what cancel culture is. And those on the receiving end of these endless, bizarre, and unclear accusations, in service to social justice ideology (neo-Marxism), will not stand for it anymore.

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.

To anyone who has been paying attention and isn't a member of the intersectional zombie cult, I would say it's rather obvious fact that most of the civil rights issues have been re-branded as "social justice" issues, were already solved many decades ago, as least as far as the legal system is concerned. Yes, once upon a time in certain parts of the US, a black man caught performing the high crime* of walking through the wrong part of town at the wrong time, just might have been beaten to a bloody pulp by an angry, bigoted mob. But thanks to many civil rights struggles, this is most-gladly a thing of the past and any such incidents of that kind occurring today are statistical anomalies, despite what the mendacious corporate media narratives being pushed today might say. Any many other civil rights victories have been achieved in decades past. Gays can pretty much go about their business without being violently harassed or bullied. Women can vote, serve in public live, and are free to pursue whatever career opportunity they so desire. I could go on for miles with regard to other issues too.

Of course many of these movements became infiltrated by leftist political activists and agitators, despite the fact that the people who founded many of these efforts were regular people who had very tangible and legitimate reasons for fighting against the government-mandated injustices of their time (i.e. actual systemic injustice). So what are leftist agitators in this current era do when they have run out of genuine causes to give their lives meaning? Fundamentally, I'm of the opinion that all leftism is fueled by angry grievances against the what is perceived to be "the system." When the legitimate grievances are addressed, the leftist runs out of issues to incessantly whine about. Thus they have to invent new causes (or simply re-animate old causes) to carry on the "struggle" (against reality??)

On the psychological level, I would say that the reanimation of case-closed causes compare is comparable to Necromancy. It's the act of conjuring up a ghost army of past injustices so they can pretend that whatever it is they are whining about has some sort of greater purpose than their own psycho-spiritual deficiencies.

*Yes, this is obvious sarcasm. Because of the current climate we're now in, I have to throw in these silly disclaimers. Because some people are unable to suss out sarcasm in written form, or deliberately choose to take an ultra-literal interpretation of the written material in question.

There is one in particular that has been on my mind as of late. And no I'm not thinking of any currently-trendy leftist mass (bowel) movements or anything of that sort. But rather a fringe right-wing assemblage of ideas, mostly from the mouth of a one person whom a small, but fervent cult following has spouted up around. I won't name specific names, as (1) my intention here is not to shame or gossip about any specific individuals, and (2) not to give any free advertising or publicity to the group in question.

First I must say that, in my view, the act of centering one's own worldview around a set of secular political beliefs, is a common product of modernity and its various modes of thought. At the end of the day, if an ideology has no metaphysical grounding, then we could say its staying power is quite limited and the group will fizzle out the moment the next big shift in secular thought trends rolls around. Even Christianity, which was very much a political movement in its early days, (and arguably so long after that) was able to persevere for centuries, owing to its very strong metaphysical core. Ditto with Judaism and Islam.

The particular cult-like group I have in mind is headed by an eccentric leader who loudly and proudly insists that he himself (and his ideas) is above metaphysics and thus philosophers and adherents of religious and spiritual worldviews are to be cast aside as promulgators of false ideas. Now this sort of assertion on its own is nothing peculiar at all in the modern age, as there has been no shortage of secular sophists who have arrogantly declared metaphysics to be dead and irrelevant, and little more than a vestige of the (inferior) past which just needs to go away right now. Or something.

But this particular cult leader has a habit of constantly invoking the term "Natural Law," which according to any sane definition of the concept is a metaphysical principle. Yet this man is a staunch empiricist, in the typical anglo-rationalist sort of way, who denied that there is any reality beyond that which is intelligible by way of the human five senses. He also invokes "Natural Law" as some kind of ongoing process humans engage in, particularly the creation of laws. This is a very bizarre definition indeed. As if Natural Law is something that human beings create by fiat!! When I read through enough of his rhetoric, I must conclude that "Natural Law" in his system is simply whatever his own opinion is on whatever topic he is talking about at the time. Strange definition indeed.

Really, this person's seemingly-megolomaniacal plan "to save civilization" is yet another manifestation of the "Faustian" (see: Oswald Spengler) world-picture, and a rationalist-empiricist-materialist version of it, and of course accompanied by a linear, progressive conception of history. The Faustian worldview is a conception of reality which leads its adherents to perceive natural reality as something that can be shaped by human ego. Reality is what we do to it; it shall bend to the ego's will if it must. Most members of non-Faustian cultures don't at all perceive reality in this manner.

Anyway, I digress. This man's plan "to save civilization" is basically to place a caste of ideologically-correct lawyers in charge of the social order (how is this much different than how the US is run right now??). This lawyer priesthood will have the power to prosecute and convict any parties that run afoul of what the ideological doctrine deems to be acceptable behavior. (Sound familiar?) This is just Plato's "Philosopher Kings" redux, though in this version, it's not even spiritual men and philosophers....just lawyers. No, in the cult leader's rhetoric, philosophers and spiritual teachers are nothing more than parasites who swindle their followers with false promises of a cozy afterlife or whatever. And to add another layer of irony on top of this mess, the cult leader constantly trashes Plato, Platonism and Idealism in general, in his poorly-organized ramblings. He never gives a coherent explanation of why Idealism is inherently problematic; just that he's says it's bad, therefore it's bad.

And like many other cult leaders, he uses specialized jargon to serve as delivery mechanisms for his own opinions and assertions. His followers mindlessly parrot/repeat those buzzwords and scold newcomers who have the gall to kindly ask for simple explanations of what those buzzterms are supposed to mean in any objective sense. The charge is usually something along the lines of (paraphrasing) "you haven't yet done any of the reading, therefore you are not worthy of an explanation!" In other words, the newbie must invest many hours of their own time reading the cult's propaganda before they are permitted to have any questions answered. This really is just the classic go-to defense mechanism that the purveyors of bad ideas use to protect their bad ideas from outside scrutiny. And to be fair, it's not just small cult-like groups who employ this strategy -- plenty of large institutions use it as well! Contemporary Academia is a great example, as we know countless intellectually-bankrupt "Social Science" and "Humanities" departments use circular sophistry and self-referential jargon to keep any criticism from unwashed outsiders at bay.

And finally, one of the most dangerous things about this particular cult is the overtly-seditious rhetoric they use regarding their views on political change and the urgency of inciting such changes. They openly advocate for armed rebellion against the US government (when the time is right, of course) and a total replacement of the existing constitutional order with their own laws, to be drafted and enacted by.....well, the dear cult leader I have been talking about above. And on top of that, their website is chock-full of unapologetically-Eurocentric views on human diversity and the human condition, to put it politely. Much of this rhetoric would earn the quick and easy label of "white supremacy" from anyone remotely left-of-center who happens to stumble across the cult's web page. So for anyone making the imprudent decision to openly affiliate with this group they are getting themselves instantly grouped in with secessionists and White Nationalists. Basically, joining this group is fool-proof way of getting oneself instantly cancelled from polite society.

Yes, the cult leader does have some sound ideas and concepts mixed in with all the bad ones, namely the idea that a sane legal system should be based around the concept of Reciprocity, and the exclusion of parasites and unscrupulous opportunists from the reigns of power. But those ideas stand on their own footing and certainly don't require a half-baked "theory of everything approach" which just ends up lumping in a whole host of weak ideas and filler content into the mix. So yes, there are a few strong ideas in there; after all, groups would never be able to attract followers if all of their ideas were demonstrably weak or harmful.

I suppose the moral of the story here is that Political Cults like this one are more often than not based on the passions of the moment, rather than genuine metaphysical principles that have been expounded upon across many different cultures in many different times and places. The outright rejection of Metaphysical Truth makes this painfully apparent for the cult.

Many are wondering why leftists and progressives are now on board with the most egregious forms of government tyranny, mass-censorship of any political opinions that don't 100% parrot their narrative, stasi-like spying/snitching on one's own neighbor in response to the Chinavirus/WuFlu Panicdemic, ect.

I think the answer is quite simple. The "Church of Progress" has been in a state of memetic collapse for the past several years and its most ardent and faith believers are collectively going mental because of this. They will believe whatever insane nonsense their corporate media and academic priests feed them.

Basically, humans on average are not all that intelligent; most people can't really think for themselves, and thus they need simplistic narratives to explain the universe to them. And when the narrative a person has spent their life believing in is suddenly exposed as being full of plot holes, contradictions, and inconsistencies, the believer will realize this on a subconscious level, yet on the conscious level they will do everything they can to rationalize away all the chinks in the memetic armor of the belief system in question. This battle between the conscious and subconscious minds will elicit a state of cognitive dissonance and cause the conflict person to behave in all sorts of irrational ways.

Psychologically speaking, the Church of Progress is simply a non-theistic form of Christianity; it's Protestant fundamentalism stripped of its theistic and supernatural pretenses. And this has been the de-facto religion of the contemporary liberal culture of the affluent Western world, since at leas the end of the second World War. It's doctrinal pillars are:

(1) Belief in linear history as a progression from an ultra-barbaric and superstitious past,

(2) Belief in scientific and technological progress as the primary method by which it's possible to eliminate all of humanity's ills and blemishes and thus usher in a technological utopia.

(3) The elimination of any and all other modes of thought or belief which might get in the way of the above objective.

(4) A totally materialist and empiricist worldview, despite the fact that the CoP's core doctrines did not emerge by means empirical inquiry or epistemology, but rather the mere conjecture-based opinions of various intellectuals making declarations on what is and isn't reality based on their own subjective opinions.

(5) Universalist pretensions and aspirations. According to this doctrine, there is "one humanity" which includes all members of the homo sapiens sapiens species on this planet; this can be further subdivided into two main groupings: (a) Good human beings, and (b) Problematic human beings. The former are humans who believe in [or at least publically signal their compliance] all the above doctrines, and the latter are non-believers in the above doctrines; landing oneself in the non-believer camp can happen by merely challenging or being skeptical toward just one or two tenets of the above doctrines.

(6) A belief [often unstated or unacknowledged] that there is no higher human aspiration than the experience of hedonic-type pleasure. And thus the deference to utilitarian logic on what exactly constitutes good and bad according to this worldview.

And since the exposure of the reality than more and more technology and technological gizmos indeed does not make the human condition more tolerable, and the mass-proliferation of Social Just Warrior cultists (c. about 2014-2015), the subsequent election of Donald Trump, and the exposure of liberal and left-leaning politicians and being ultra-corrupt and inimical to the founding principles of the USA, it's become painfully apparent to anyone who isn't totally brainwashed that so-called "Progress" is an empty ideology, and one that has become increasingly divorced from objective reality. Really, any system of ideas that excessive conflicts with nature, is one that is not long for this world.

One of the greatest cliches out there in the land of political discourse is the idea that something called "the people" is a meaningful representation of anything that actually operates in the real world.

Let's try a little thought experiment and entertain the idea that there is in fact no such thing as "the people"....that perhaps such an utterance is silly, near-meaningless abstraction; and more often that not, this utterance that is little more than a emotional slogan; one that has for a long time been a favorite of agitation propagandists and rabble-rousers.

On the contrary, We could say that in actuality (empirically), people and peoples are sorted into factions, tribes, ethnic groups, religious sects, priesthoods, socio-economic classes, cultures, subcultures, ideological cults, professional societies, oligarch cliques, ect. Each of these groupings has their own collective interests and that "real politics" when shorn of all its bloviating, moralistic pretensions, is the process of negotiating and mediating the often-conflicting interests of these groups.

And by this, "the state" is nothing the enforcement arm of whatever coalition of the above type of groups happen to exert the most control over it at any given time. "The state" itself is just an administrative abstraction.