Without the Esoteric, the West Reaches a Dead End

Western countries and religion feel dead and trite, at worse, and contentious and personal, at best. People on both the left and right try to recast their societies in new ways, seeking to find meaning in a story that nobody can really follow anymore. We are seeing people even expand the scope of their political and social theories, blowing them up to the point where they now take the place of religion itself. 

But still, it's in religion -- religion which convincingly makes contact with the mystical -- that we will find what can actually be the driving force for something that is not just adequate for the lives of individuals, the society, and a generation, but which can be the basis of multiple civilizations and countless humans over millennia. 

Cue Dugin & Dzhemal.

In the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR, Iran was one of Russia’s few remaining partners in the Middle East, and both Dzhemal and Dugin provide spiritual legitimacy for this strategic partnership. For Dugin, Orthodox Christianity is close to Shia Islam since both managed to preserve their esoteric nature, while Western Churches and Sunni Islam degenerated and became “purely social” religions (Dugin 1995, sections 3 and 4).

 Between Salafism & Eurasianism: Geidar Dzhemal and the Global islamic Revolution in Russia

Aleksandr Dugin

They are talking about religion as a fundamental organ for the anatomy of civilization. Other religions have become purely social, but these two are in touch with the spiritual world above. 

When I first read this, I tried to understand this as Orthodox (and Shi'a, but I can't actually comment on Shi'a well) having just a fundamentally different philosophical & sociopolitical approach because they are still esoteric, and not "social." But it was falling short in my head. I think the conclusion is more radical... Bear with me.

The Orthodox have an impenetrable and inscrutable monastic tradition that lends itself to mysticism & is very esoteric. It cannot be digested by anything secular, and stands above conventional politics, and even the scandals of the Church. 

It's vital that this is inaccessible (unlike the Vatican). If you ain't on Athos, you ain't nothin. Nobody cares what any joinalist says about this. What matters is what Br. Nektarios said after his trip to the Holy Mountain. It could be a strange prophecy of a war between Turkey & Russia, or just a talk about how everyone should hang a cross on their door. It is also thought that there are endless mysteries happening on the Mountain that we will never have access to, and these are completely real. 

St. Poprhyrios wrote that, during evening prayers, there are spiritual earthquakes happening all over Mt. Athos; you can feel it. The whole mountain opens up. You can find beliefs about the mysterious nature and spiritual power that extend to other monastic communities in Orthodoxy, and pay attention to other great events, like the Holy Fire in the Holy Sepulchre. 

Because of this, there is a link between the laypeople struggling in the modern world and the Divine, and this comes purely from the ascetics, and is unfiltered by media or modernity. Mysticism is strong, and legends grow around it.  The ultimate reality about God is accessible, and the mundane is being constantly overshadowed by this. 

I would insist that this is also happening in Catholicism and in Protestantism, but that these are the exceptions to the religious body, and not the rule. More importantly, it's spotty. Unlike Orthodoxy, the whole (or close to the whole) of the Church is not animated by this relationship, and it only exists on the fringes and actually can be embarrassing to the more mainstream. What Protestants do you know that are proud of speaking in tongues and handling snakes? What Catholics do you know that talk extensively about spiritual warfare with the demonic and the meaning of Marian apparitions? 

The meaning seems to likely be that Orthodoxy (and presumbaly Shi'a Islam) maintain the spiritual élan vital, which ultimately can give us a political & civilization force that is above any contemporary Western (or Sunni) model. 

Because the Orthodox community has access to the mystical and truly believes in a spiritual world that is strong, it's capable of a different kind of civilization. Its structure is not limited to secular power and culture, its not defined solely by history, literature, and a political state. It is able to be united through the chalice across time & space; it is bound together by God. Its ultimate authority are found in the mystical and the esoteric, a force that is greater than the Bishops of the church and their stuffy letters, and is surely far greater than the concept of the political state or some cultural icon of a writer or painter. 

Orthodoxy has within it access to the divine. Even if you do not accept that, like presumably Dzhemal himself does not, you can acknowledge that what is happening within Orthodox communities is greater than what can happen in the countries whose religions have been downgraded to mere social statuses: it is esoteric, mystical, uncontrollable, lived in addition to learned. 

Because it occupies a higher and greater space, it is capable of taking up a greater place in the life of the people and the nation. Orthodoxy is not just able to be some common social reference point, it is capable of being the truth and foundation of a civilization. 

While moderns try to find meaning, and try to blow up these narratives about discrimination, policing, and ethnic diversity into a common faith to unite the people, there exists that which can actually do it, but due to the pride of people, who wish to only look to themselves as the criterion for everything, it is out of their reach. Because they view humans as the ultimate measure and ultimate end, they are damned to their humanism, and trapped by their narrative. 

But above and beyond them exists a universe to which they are blind, and this is ultimately why their ways of thinking and their systems will not last into the future. They can only build that which is limited to this time. 

Without the esoteric, an organ in the anatomy of civilization is missing. 

Arcs, Not Systems, for Chronologically Grand Thinkers

Many people into alternative political philosophies will find themselves struggling to get specific in reference to what their long-term vision. It may sound counterintuitive, but this is because their vision of politics is chronologically grand, as opposed to chronologically shallow. It is actually people with shallow vision that may feel comfortable latching onto a particular -ism that fits the time exactly, but it has been my experience that with maturity and bigger picture thought, one becomes more inclined to a broader range of possibilities (especially during times of uncertainty), and one also finds themselves falling out of the side of every political dialog, completely incapable of being limited to the small ring of thought that has become the fleeting focal point for the short-term.

The chronologically grand thinkers imagine politics in the context of history, and see the future as having deep roots. They do their best to think beyond the epoch and the <current year>. The chronologically shallow throw themselves into the political flavors of the day, and bring everything back to a series of simple questions and answers about the real and the immediate. Their frame of reference is small, and it is hard to even seriously consider them in a grand context because their views are not serious enough to be thought of as immutable. They are the definition of ephemeral. We can imagine them getting on another bandwagon before the end of the decade.

The chronologically grand thinkers cannot name a specific system or ideology with precision if they still have doubts. This is a weakness, but also a strength, because it allows them to be open to potentialities. While being specific and calling your short is admirable, one of the more impressive political books I read, Dugin's Fourth Political Theory, is joyfully open to the future, and many of the other thinkers of the New Right have also been greatly open to the future. 

Moreover, it's also a humble gesture, viewing the future as something that they do not get to forge themselves, but as something that is still in the process of being born. 

Thus the chronologically grand dissident thinkers (1a) are just plain open to the future, and we tend to look at the rising head of a powerful movement which is reflective of our views as (1b) providential. Whether it is the restoration of a monarch, a military coup, a democratic victory, or an outright revolution, we can see ourselves adjusting our tastes to the zeitgeist, instead of making the times and reality be adjusted to our views. The spirit of the times, of course, should not necessarily be understood as the end of history or even a temporary end goal for a generation... It might not even be correct at all. But because it might be correct, at least for this time, we have to throw our muscles into it in order to try to create any kind of alternative. For the fact of the matter is that any movement which opens the door to change is more dynamic than the status quo which is by its very nature closed to change. 

Eye of Providence, by Anastasia Voynovska (available here)

Our individual preferences must be ready to change when anything that is remotely reflective of our alternative view comes along, and, moreover, those of us who believe in God may believe that the first major opportunity for change that we see is something that has been ordained by God. Of course, all things are ordained by God, the question is whether we are to benefit from it in terms of achieving a better reality through its success, or being punished by the bad idea, and achieving a better spiritual reality as a result of its failure. 

The chronologically grand thinker has to have the humility to accept that a great myriad of systems have been practiced, many of them with good results (at least for a time), and that the future can hold for a return of one of these systems, or a fusion of two or more of them. 

(2) Another major reason that we dislike labels is because everything that is dissident that becomes systemized seems unnecessary, potentially contentious, pretentious, and cringe. People without any political power or influence coming up with detailed visions are ultimately contributing only to their own sadness, and they come off as people who are not in touch with reality. Nobody wants to be led by someone who sounds far away from his goal, and nobody wants to follow someone that comes off only as a dreamer. 

Thus, it is actually be better to conceive of dissident political philosophies as having an 'Arc,' not necessarily a particular system. They have goals, and visions, and some may be surprisingly particular, butt even when they are, they should be open to change. 

This practice could even be a useful explanation for people trying to negatively characterize their opposition. E.g., 

• the Social Democrat has Marxist arc
• the Republican has a Fascist arc
• the Libertarian has an Anarchist arc 

Explaining your opponent's arc in negative terms and accusing them of secretly aiming for the marginalization or destruction of something that most people generally value is already one of the most common forms of political critique.It is also one of the most dangerous forms, because it dislodges people from their own frame of reference and imposes upon them a set of accusations that they now have to defend against. 

In the case of the dissident right, the accusations are predominant and so toxic that there's really no way to escape it other than denial, which has you chasing your tail like a dog, or through fully accepting the narrative with as little spin as possible, which basically just has you looking insane for you have accepted a conclusion that the rest o the country views as absurd. 

In conclusion, it is best to think of any set of political philosophies or values as potentially just a large arc toward a distant goal. Maybe not even an arc, but rather it functions just as an explanatory arc, in which there is no goal, but simply an observation about reality that you believe repeats or holds steady.

The arcs allow us to relate back to contemporary realities while maintaining contact with the bigger vision. For instance, if we say that we have an 'authoritarian right' arc, it could easily indicate that the local political party or candidate X will tend to get our vote, but the overall vision can be far more long-term and aimed at greater ends. We can participate and talk about chronologically soon politics in a way that makes sense to others without abandoning the grander vision that we may have. 

It also helps us understand how politicians actually compare standing next to each other, and how they may even have very exceedingly different arcs in spite of their short-term similarities. And it is also through this system that we can also have the benefit of being detached from overly rigid systems which would honestly only harm us -- being hyperfocused on a future that might not happen, and missing all of the potential benefits of the real future that is truly providential. 

Hate Speech for Me? Then Blasphemy for Thee.

Let's entertain, for a moment, that it is viable to ban hate speech because it can be considered a form of valueless speech. 

This isn't just a liberal position, though the clamoring of busy gutmensch in Universities would have you believe otherwise. Indeed, here's an interesting excerpt from an article by William Haun over at Law & Liberty:

After Nazis marched on the largely Jewish neighborhood of Skokie, Illinois in 1977, William F. Buckley, Jr. possessed the moral confidence in self-government to repudiate the suggestion that “we indulge the little tyrants.” A Nazi march through a largely Jewish neighborhood, or a KKK march through the streets of Harlem, has the worth to self-government of “an obscene phone call.” Rather than hide such speech “under the umbrella of the First Amendment,” Buckley said “the moral is that little boys should not be given dangerous toys.”

What if it was the case that conservatives generally accepted the narrative that it is acceptable to limit free speech? What would American history have looked like if early twentieth century jurists like Holmes, Jr. did not set us on the path of a sort of free speech absolutism, that has led us to this weird position where hardcore pornography & grindcore are perfectly protected expressions available widely throughout the internet, but "hate speech" looks to be slated to be axed?

The great conservative & traditionalist legal mind of our time, Adrian Vermeule, when he was proposing that conservatives abandon some of their originalism and brought forward a fascinating example in an article in the Atlantic, that gives us a glimpse of where that ultimately may have gone: 

Alternatives to originalism have always existed on the right, loosely defined. One is libertarian (or “classical liberal”) constitutionalism, which emphasizes principles of individual freedom that are often in uneasy tension with the Constitution’s original meaning and the founding generation’s norms. The founding era was hardly libertarian on a number of fronts that loom large today, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion; consider that in 1811, the New York courts, in an opinion written by the influential early jurist Chancellor James Kent, upheld a conviction for blasphemy against Jesus Christ as an offense against the public peace and morals. 

The precedent would have been quite clear: the forbidding of blasphemous speech that offended the masses and served no purpose other than to enrage, something that far right speech that agitates on the topic of race is accused of doing. 

The comparison is quite apt: if words hurt, then the N-word is not the only word which inflicts damage. Blasphemous treatment of God (or gods) can inflict emotional distress. I think many of us can even attest to having felt uncomfortable when our religion was insulted, or even when losing our religions. These words are so powerful that I have heard atheist parents tell stories about their children weeping when they hear them say that they do not think that heaven is real. 

Moreover, we can look at incidents in Europe like the Charlie Hebdo shooting or the Denmark riots triggered by the content in Jyllands-Posten that were critical of Islam, or the international riots that were started when the Innocence of Muslims was released in 2012. 

Denmark Riots

Speech bigoted against religion can trigger violence and rioting just as how racist speech can trigger violence and rioting, yet nobody is pushing to reinstate anti-blasphemy laws or get outspoken atheists fired for their rhetoric.

Ultimately, the lack of outrage shows an imbalance of power in the West, and how the new god of the American people is liberalism and not Christ. Once upon a time, and perhaps as recently as the 1980s when there was the famous "Satanic panic," the Christian right could really mount a devastating charge against their opponents in the name of free speech, but it seemed that they were sincerely convinced of the freedom of conscience for their enemies. Perhaps this is because of St. Gamaliel the Elder, who urged the Sanhedrin to listen to the Christians because it would be of no harm if they were wrong and of great benefit to all if they were right, or perhaps it is because of the story of the Prodigal Son,that speaks of the power of men to reconsider things in the end, and does not propose at all the limiting of a man's liberty to force upon them something that they do not wish.

Christians in the West ultimately felt it was OK to let go of authoritarian solutions to curbing sharp criticism, and they decided to turn the other cheek. Yet, the more secular and humanist Western society has become, the more the call for outright illegalizing and having zero public tolerance for dissent on issues of equality has shot up. 

Personally, I speculate that it has a lot to do with the way that secular humanism, believing in no God of the Universe, no cosmic justice, feels that it is their duty to actually fight in the here & now. There simply is no second act in which they will be able to count on justice. Moreover, leftism is an ersatz-religion, and while the key to salvation for a Christian is the individual moral improvement and relationship with God, the path to redemption for secular humanists are all directed towards the state of society. 

There is no utopia after death, nor is justice meted out to the great sinners. Because racist white segregationists and slave owners that died decades ago have no hell to burn in, we have to create a furnace to throw them into on Earth just as much as we have to strive for Utopia. 

However, these efforts to ban and expel people for a certain kind of speech, and to use Antifa and other means to mete out "street justice" to them as if they were pedophiles are generally ill thought out. They retroactively vindicate all historical blasphemy laws and violent movements against Communists. 

After all, if it is evil to deny someone's full humanity through racism, is it not also completely evil to deny the Gospel of Christ, which brings grace to all the world, and to actively encourage people to indulge in their sins, sins that are fundamentally demonic? For the removal of freedom of another is a political tool, ultimately. It is a statement about what society should tolerate, and when we give permission to one side to be intolerant of the other, we ultimately signal that we believe man is not capable of deciding for himself and some things are too far gone to be tolerated. 

To the far leftists, it is racism and sexism. To the Christians and Muslims, it may be blasphemy. The push to curb hate speech and to be increasingly intolerant of anyone remotely associated with it invites a great backlash from Christians, Muslims, and other conservative forces to propose bringing back blasphemy laws. 

Indeed, if debate & discussion in the marketplace of ideas is no longer the means of settling the score, the conservative forces need to demand to have a say in crafting legislation that will illegalize bigotry against them and also protect them from similar accusations. Failure to do so would ultimately be irresponsible. While hate speech for me, blasphemy for thee is not a serious legal vision that any Westerner truly wants, it's the final recourse for disempowered conservative minorities to gain some semblance of equality in their states.

A closing observation: it would be considered absurd in the 1990s to have argued that the First Amendment would eventually be under assault if we allowed for the mainstreaming of Marxist and Marx-symp thought. It would sound like some exaggerated McCarthyist claim. 

But here we are... in 2020... with renewed battles over what should be permitted to post on social media, and increased calls for European-style limitations to free speech.

Reference Points & Culture

Culture is just as much about reference points as it is about differences in values. I would even argue that it is sometimes because the reference points are different and present the dilemma or the mythos behind the value differently that we sometimes see nuances in values. Even when we agree very much with another person and identical values with near identical prioritization, we will ultimately express these things differently and engage with the world with a different attitude because of the influences we have received from different reference points...

The reference points can be so different that almost no common ground exists. I very much learned this when sitting in a class in Korea and the professor wanted to come up with a neutral reference point to stage an example... Obviously, no major politicians were used, and so he started naming some local celebrities which myself and other foreigners hadn't heard of... He then even named a few famous American singers and movie stars which, surprising to me, some of the other foreigners and locals had not heard of. 

Konan

He finally came down to referencing a character I later found out was the star of a Japanese animated series who played a detective - Konan from a show called Case Closed. He asked if everyone knew who he was, and many of the non-Korean Asians knew, and I remember after describing the scenario, I raised my hand and said,

"Wait, are we talking about Conan... the... Barbarian?" 

I remember someone acted shocked for a moment, like I had just implied that this random Japanese detective character was a barbarian... They had zero reference point for Conan the Barbarian. The professor then acted exasperated... naming even an internationally famous animation character that was beloved in the minds of both Japanese and Koreans was not enough because there was a Westerner and an Uzbek who had no idea what he was talking about, and this confusion even brought about a clumsy exchange of words that came off wrong and made someone even wonder if I was saying something racist because they had no idea about the larger-than-life Robert E. Howard character in the Western world. 

I remember thinking about how my negative and skeptical attitude towards certain things could be confusing. For instance, I found that when I talked about the industrial revolution and WWII being catalysts for feminism because it changed the labor market, people were shocked, some even offended, that I would suggest that the changing workplace was a major factor and not idealistic women revolutionaries. Even conservatives talked about how the newly found roles of women were something that were fought for. However, "women filling in for men who were at war" is a very common trope for explaining the rise of second wave feminism in America. 

I also remember that every reference to multiculturalism in Korea would quickly come back to international marriages, the bulk of which were disproportionately mail order brides, and the discussion was also influenced by the number of women who married soldiers and ran off to America in the decades previously. Slavery wasn't a topic, and there were no ethnic minorities to be found at all 50 years ago in South Korea barring a limited amount of well-off Chinese & Japanese merchants, few of whom were integrated or even necessarily interested in integrating. 

But while these differences exist, I've also learned to realize that Koreans and other non-Westerners have very similar values to us. The prioritization can be different, but I have found that it would be no more radical a difference than you would find between a conservative Dakotan and a liberal New Yorker. What is often incredibly different is the references that they have that affirm these values. 

And it is these cultural differences boil down greatly to the way that we refer back to a thing, whether it is through pop TV, literature, or the local history. It is because of these very reference points that we end up with some very different ideas of how problems should be solved and values should be asserted. A Korean who is against alcoholism would immediately see the problem not just in terms of drunks at bars and drunk driving, but also of people being forced to consume alcohol at social functions through work and family, and also in the overall price of the product. Norwegians would likely not see either of these issues in their society, and the way that they would conceptualize the problem would be more about the individual's relationship with alcohol.

It's hard to come up even with specific examples of 'what an American refers to when they think of X versus what a Korean thinks of,' because so much of what we believe, as Westerners or as Koreans, is actually quite personal. What amount of Americans are strong Christians anymore, and what amount of them are going to come at it from a Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Mormon angle, that emphasize different aspects of the Biblical teachings of Christ, or maybe not even the Bible at all..? What amount of Americans are patriots, and how many of them are into the 1776 style of patriotism and folk libertarianism that comes with it, or what amount of them are more into the romanticization of 20th century events more than those of the deep history? Such a difference may appear to be subtle, but an Alabaman with roots to the Confederacy and the American revolution may look at these questions of American patriotism very differently than a black American from New York whose grandfather was a Tuskegee airman. 

But what is actually important about American culture in this context is that the black New Yorker and the white Alabaman both are aware of each other's references, while the average Korean could be excused for not knowing much at all about the Tuskegee Airman and 20th century American war (because so much of patriotism in America is located in the framework of military service), the Confederacy, or the American revolution. 

There are, no doubt, easy to find examples of two sets of Koreans & Americans where it is actually the Koreans & Americans having more in common in belief and values than they do with their fellow country men, yet simply not having the same reference points. 

A Brazilian Catholic, a French Catholic, a Korean Catholic, and an American Catholic, all conservatives sympathetic to traditional values and rigid morals, will have infinitely more in common with each other than their countrymen who are opposites, and a lot more in common with each other than even tepid cultural Catholics with one foot in the door of the secular world who are compatriots. They will also have plenty of reference points to draw on from the Bible and Catholic history and characters... 

But the second that a political or social issue comes up, even when they believe the same things, the way they express it and the images and ideas kicking around in their mind will be ultimately different. Even if the Brazilian and the American both support gun ownership, they draw upon different legal principles and histories. Even if the Korean and the Mexican are both against alcoholism and drug use, the contexts in each country are going to be radically different. 

Being of the same culture does not mean being of the same values, but it means being of the same network of ideas and references. Globalism can chip away at this, but the differences are ultimately immutable simply because nobody is surrendering their language nor are they going to spend 15 years watching Brazilian TV and reading pulp fiction novels just because. 

Some shows will be vectors for spreading a nebulous global culture, but we also know that a comedy skit about how terrible your boss is or how funny science geeks are is not actually going to inculcate people with culture. Moreover, Korean Netflix is filled with local content that is generally much more popular than foreign content -- the foreign content is something consumed more individually and in a more niche fashion. Cultural differences will not go away, and thus our reference points will not go away.