Freedom & God's Plan (A response in Reddit)

 Recently, I saw a Reddit thread that somewhat caught my eye and decided to have a go at a response. 

In the initial post which concerned the problem of evil and how it is not resolved by justice in the afterlife, I saw the following quotation: 

This falls into Epicurus' malevolent description. God is able to stop evil but doesn't because justice will be served. If you could prevent a crime from happening, the moral decision would be to try and stop it not WAIT for it to be committed then exert justice. If you see a baby strapped to a chainsaw by a maniac, do you un-do the baby from the chain-saw or wait for the baby to be chopped up, then strap the maniac to the chain-saw? Evil on earth either matters or it doesn't. If it matters, then God is malevolent for allowing it but if it doesn't matter I could just go about on a murder spree since God will "make all things new" or "send my victims to heaven and torture me forever".

My response came largely inspired by the Church fathers: 

 The actual purpose of life is not to be enjoyed by being constantly shielded from injustice, but rather, the purpose is to morally grow and to actually deal with and digest all of our experiences.

To believe that we should always simply enjoy life and not grow from it reminds me of this quotation from Ilias the Presbyter:

"In addition to voluntary suffering, you must also accept that which comes against your will - I mean slander, material losses and sickness. For if you do not accept these but rebel against them, you are like someone who wants to eat his bread only with honey, never with salt. Such a man does not always have pleasure as his companion, but always has nausea as his neighbor." (in the Philokalia)

As St. Peter of Damascus says:

"Every trial and temptation is permitted by God as a cure for some sick person's soul. Indeed, such trials not only confer on us forgiveness of our past and present sins, but also act as a check on sins not yet committed." (in the Philokalia)

Life is to be viewed as a journey, ultimately, and thus even the evil things which befall not just us, but which befall others that we hear about, are to be considered as tools for us in our own spiritual journeys.

The man who loses a leg in a drunken motorcycle accident experiences excruciating pain, and then all sorts of subsequent emotional and mental pain from the loss of his leg. Yet, he has the power to make this a tool for change in his life to save himself from alcoholism and mortal sin.

Of course, that is not to say that we should view people who fail to transform themselves immediately after a great trial as somehow a moral failure... that is not our place to judge, or even to think about. Nor is this some callous way of justifying any evil thing that we ourselves do or indulge in...

But it is appropriate to understand the purpose of life not as some mere exercise in counting merits and demerits, but as one in which we are supposed to advance ourselves and our neighbors, taking advantage of both the good and bad times to learn our lessons and move forward.

Bernie's Campaign Killed by Diversity?

The 2020s will likely be defined by the push for diversity among the Democrats and left wing parties throughout the Western world. Nothing will be considered good enough unless there is adequate representation of each group. The recent DNC convention shows as much: 

Top Latino activists and politicians are criticizing the lack of representation during this week's Democratic National Convention. 

Only three Latino speakers have their own speaking slot in the Democratic National Convention’s primetime lineup: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada.

 ,,,

 "I’d be lying to you if I said that I’m not disappointed that there aren't more Latinos and Latinas generally speaking on that program," Castro told MSNBC Saturday, adding that he's also disappointed that there isn't someone who is Native or Muslim American speaking during this primetime hour.

"You think about the beautiful coalition that has become the Democratic Party over the last few years, I'm not sure right now that it's fully represented on that stage," he added.

 USA Today

Ultimately, we can imagine that every single political campaign will see its diversity credentials brought into question. 

Indeed, it is potentially the case that some campaigns may even sabotage themselves by putting too much faith in diversity, as may be the case with the Sanders campaign. Some have put forth the theory that the bid of Bernie Sanders to win the nomination was ultimately destroyed by clamoring about making the staff more representative, which led to incompetent people being placed in key positions. 

Part of the explanation for this lies in the 2020 iteration of the Sanders campaign being predicated on multiple concessions to bad-faith critics. Immediately upon his official entry into the race last February, Sanders apologized for the 2016 campaign having been “too white and too male-oriented.” ... To make amends and preempt any future identity-related attacks, the 2020 campaign staff was heavily diversified. And at least in the case of South Carolina—in retrospect the most important primary state of the 2020 cycle—many of these personnel were hobbled by remarkable incompetence, while internal campaign criticism became impossible.

 Much of the day-to-day logistics of the Sanders South Carolina campaign were run de facto by Nina Turner, a talented orator and popular media surrogate, but someone whose skill set was clearly not suited to bolstering the image of a socialist from Vermont among southern black voters. For one thing, Turner’s political background was in metro Cleveland, which provides no necessary insight into best practices for winning over elderly, churchgoing black Democrats in the Deep South.

 In November 2019, Turner installed Jessica Bright as state director. Former staff members said Bright, who served as a Hillary Clinton delegate at the 2016 national convention, was hired in large part because her mother had filled the seat of Clementa Pinckney—the state senator killed in the 2015 Charleston church shooting. The idea was that such a transactional arrangement might compel the mother to endorse Sanders. “She couldn’t spell, she couldn’t speak coherently, and her mother ended up endorsing Biden,” one anguished former staffer recalled.2 Not only did basic tasks go unfulfilled, phone-banking and canvassing data were outright fabricated, multiple former staffers alleged, and sent to the national campaign headquarters to give the false impression of good progress being made in the state. “But you can’t say anything,” one staffer recounted thinking, “be­cause you’d be called a racist.” Communicating rationally with the twenty- and thirtysomething campaign staffers who dominated the South Carolina operation, this person said, was virtually impossible—almost like some kind of impenetrable generational and ideological divide had been erected. “I felt like I was in a daycare facility. These kids were just so clueless, and so full of themselves,” the person lamented. “It was a really dystopian feeling to work there, it was not like anything I’d ever been involved with.”3

American Affairs Journal 

Had Sanders received reliable data, he may have campaigned entirely different. Had there been a competent staff, the campaign may have made headway instead of rotting on the vine. 

While these sorts of what-ifs are impossible to resolve, it is certainly worth considering, especially as this problem looks like it will not be going away anytime soon. 

Colonialism & La Raza Cósmica

Res nullius, or terra nullius, was a doctrine that basically justified the colonization of massive parts of the world. Honestly, this is something that modern scholars have read back into the colonization efforts. Essentially, it deals with the justification for the taking of land from native populations. 

Basically, if a land is not effectively occupied, it is nobody's land. Some of the definitions try to make this more concrete by talking about societies that have not yet advanced to a position where they had not yet mixed their labor with the earth in any permanent way (Frost), but I think it may be more appropriate to emphasize the sparsity of population that usually described most of these places. The land was simply never occupied in truly significant ways, for one, and the obvious fact that when the English colonists took up position in Massachusetts Bay they could easily negotiate for settlement rights. 

The land could fit a lot more people than the 5,000 or so that were there, and, especially through technology and trade that the natives did not have, they would be able to radically change the region. We could say that the Europeans were able to apply a mix of res nullius and negotiated settlement: it was obvious that there was enough room for both parties, and it was also obvious that there would be advantages to mixing with the Europeans, so why not negotiate it? Why not be cooperative? 

From the perspective of the natives, the sacrifice of some amount of their hunting grounds for new potential allies that could give them trade and technological advances that would put them above their enemies. Moreover, the Wampanoag had just suffered a massive crisis of disease -- oddly enough, disease that may have had no connection to European colonization, and the disease even resulted in a spiritual crisis as their medicine men could not handle or explain it, and it led to many converting to Christianity early on (Wikipedia).

Obviously, conflict eventually occurred, and one can imagine that very similar stories unfolded in many other regions, where the initial settling was met with some amount of peace and acceptance, but it all boiled over, as it eventually boils over. 

I believe that when we think about the history of colonization in these terms, it is more understandable. Just as such, most sticking points in history can be tackled when we understand that the problem was less black & white. 

But because the interpretation of history can be weaponized for advancing a left or right position, we have to actually resolve it in a more final way. 

Cue la raza cósmica.

Perhaps the one thing that makes this a sticking point in North America is the lack of intermixing. The narrative among Latinos, as I understand it, is that they have become la raza cósmica -- the problem of colonization is resolved by bringing all Latino identity into a single racial construct. 

Are latinos white? Yes. 

Are they Indian? Yes.

Are they black? Yes. 

Can more recent immigrants from Asia and the Middle East have children & grandchildren grafted onto the Latino community? Well, that's the plan, isn't it? The Latin Americans are the cosmic race being unfurled by God: all peoples coming together into a post-racial existence. 

In a sense, the cosmic race is the post-race. 

While I am not sure if this is what was meant by Vasconcelos when he wrote about it in the 1920s, this is how I have understood it from interactions with a limited amount of Latinos that I know. The undestanding is far from scholarly, but just like in most cases, the folk understanding of an idea is often more important than the scholarly version. 

Jose Vasconcelos who coined the term 'cosmic race'

The Latin American world solved the problem of the legacy of colonialism through dissolution of racial identity and intermarriage. While there may still be some that think in terms of castizos & mestizos, and it may even be a theme that would one day reemerge, it is effective in making the sins of history be forgotten via the union of victim & offender into a single national identity. 

In a sense, it is the most elegant of all resolutions, for it renders conflict irrelevant by making the grief and guilty a little bit of everybody's, and its measuring becomes something irrelevant. It could even be said that the only reason that "native lands" is still relevant among Norte Americanos is because they have not dissolved their differences through intermarriage.

The racial heterogeneity of North Americans, and their obsession with diversity, may actually be what is holding them back from fixing the problem. Nobody can move forward because we are still in the game of counting grievances and using history to jockey for position. We are stuck in a narrative of diversity that is not helpful, instead of a narrative that resolves our identities into a single one. 

Understanding Objectivity, Neutral Ground, Hyperreality, & the Third Position [rough]

The objective is really just an attempt to impose order on chaos. That is not to say that there is nothing useful about the idea of being objective, but only to emphasize that objectivity never actually fulfills its purpose completely. It can succeed in rooting out obvious errors and biases, just like the laws of logic can be useful in demonstrating consistency. But every step which is taken to create something like the objectivity does not ever successfully get us closer to the essence of truth. It only succeeds in helping us get further from error, since no human is capable of actually understanding truth in its entirety, minus that which is true which can be given to us directly by divine revelation. 

Objectivity is just a tool that we have to try to get at what we inappropriately refer to as the truth in a neutral way. There are some occasions where we nearly can all agree that someone was acting biased,  but often times the concept of the objective turns into an argument itself over what constitutes the objective. These arguments really are just two groups attempting to advance their own subjective positions by underhandedly arguing that they have the corner on what is objectively true. Sadly, this is a position that we all end up finding ourselves -- both because there are people who very transparently abuse the objective, and because being objective itself is such a fool's errand. 

When we are arguing over what is objective and trying to deny others grounds of objectivity, being objective is actually most dangerous: it is a false front for truth. It is advancing a specific ideology against others, and it often is able to have a great impact precisely because it reinforces the biases of people by encouraging them to the fallacious conclusion that reality is a perfect reflection of how they think it is. 

Brenna Murphy's Lattice Design Visual

Reality, though, is chaotic, and far too large for there to be a theory for everything that is truly universal. 

Objectivity is then usually just part of this strange hyperreality in which we live. Because so many of our public ethics are founded on false claims about what is objectively true and because we treat those who disagree with these truths as hostile players in a game, all political & social discourse that is part of this (and always able to be tied back to some poisonous concept of the objective) is part of a hyperreality. 

The greatest example of this is the Western Christian who has been convinced that he has to actually bury the things that he believes and participate in the politics & ethics of hyperreality in order to fairly be part of the public discussion. They are convinced that there is a realm of objective truth that is independent of their Christian theology and accessible to everyone. And they have to actively deny their own, deeper Christian motives and submit to the false god of objectivity. 

I believe it is actually the case that, once upon a time, we were able to have dialogue between people of radically different metaphysics come around the concept of an objective, neutral ground and reach very limited decisions based on it because they understood that these tentative agreements were meant to do something small. But when the scope of government became larger, the epistemically neutral ground of discussion became a new standard for what people believe to be objective, and now people started crafting whole ideologies and stances from this barren soil. 

These new ideologies based on the neutral ground of discussion, which was never intended to be anything but a place of transaction for discussion to come up with agreeable solutions, constitute the hyperreality that we now live in. 

When we understand that objectivity can be a part of the neutral ground is a place merely for the discussion of ideas that we now that we will never agree on, we recognize that the truth has a private or unknowable element to it. We are ready to walk away and to disagree. This necessitates believing in a smaller domain of government. 

When we falsely believe that objectivity can provide us with moral imperatives, the neutral ground becomes toxic soil that spawns soft totalitarian ideologies. This is because the poor conclusions brought about by "objectivity" and "neutrality" now determine right/wrong for everybody, and the government now has the scope to act in a much broader way which interferes with how people think and live their lives. 

When we understand that objectivity is really only a tool, and we deny the importance of the neutral ground for determining policy at all, we can come to the conclusion that government should be a reflection of Truth. Naturally, different peoples do have different truths, and I will continue insisting that my own truth is proper and the only one, but I also recognize that other peoples governing by what they understand to be as true is not problematic. 

This sort of system can have larger, more totalizing government, and be animated by a greater sense of truth. This is the sort of model that creates civilization because it is founded on something that is unifying and that people are willing to die for. 

These societies can be thought of as the third position to the 

Liberty-oriented modern state (which objectivity was created to serve)

Egalitarian modern state (which is based on the perversion of objectivity)

This mini-essay on objectivity got out of hand and went into political philosophy but I liked where it went and do not think I have the energy or power to expand upon it or resolve it, so I have just posted it in its current form. 

Yang Sanghoon: The Men & Women Who Live Off Of Women's Issues

The following is a translation of this article in the Chosun Ilbo.

The Men & Women Who Live Off Of Women's Issues 

 

 

Self-described feminist Pres. Moon, who was supported by the women who lit the fire of the #MeToo movement, is silent on the sexual harassment allegations against the late May. Park Wonsun, using the votes and [motives for] personal gain as a weapon 

 

 Women in their 20s & 30s began their wave of anti-conservatism during the Mad Cow disease affair. Pres. Lee Myeongbag had received much more support from women in their 20s & 30s than his opponent in the Presidential election. However, after the Mad Cow scare began, a massive shift was seen. There are many examples of women being reacting to health-related issues too sensitively. For instance, after the Fukushima meltdown [2011] many people were reluctant to visit other regions of Japan in spite of the fact that the radioactivity numbers were completely fine -- a trend that was more pronounced among young women. Now, most people look at the Mad Cow affair as a disturbance fueled by baseless myths, but it was a serious issue at the time. The gossip of girls in Jr. High & High School have been pivotal in spreading protests over fear that sanitary pads and makeup are actually dangerous. These protests have even included young housewives. After these affairs the polls among women in their 20s & 30s showed that support of Pres. Lee had dropped by 6%. 

 This phenomenon could not change even for the woman President Park Geun-hye. If anything, the trend grew stronger. In the 2012 Presidential election, the support for Pres. Park was less than half of that of Pres. Moon among women in their 20s. In the final polls [leading up to the election], Pres. Park had only 26% of the support [of women in their 20s], versus Moon's 63%. Although former Pres. park is a woman, many diagnosed the problem as younger women viewing Park as simply being 'an old man in the form of a woman' or an 'upper crust princess.' 

 It is difficult to find any record of Pres. moon being interested in women's issues. All that we can see are some instances of him giving the expected speeches at women's events as a party member. However, in spite of losing, the overwhelming support of young women in the 2012 Presidential election seemed to have given Moon the opportunity to see them as a great asset, and since then his attitude has changed. 

 The symbolic 2016 Gangnam station "Don't Ask Questions" murder (a reference to police dismissing the assault as the act of a schizophrenic) was a flashpoint in this. Women were shocked when a mental health patient murdered a young woman without any reason. There was a widespread perception that this event was caused by the man's hatred of women and the poor and vulnerable position that women have. The only people who understood the political potential of this situation were the people in Presiden't Moon's camp. Moon, who was a former representative at that time, went to gangnam Station by himself to commemorate the events with young women. He also shared the quote on Facebook, "In the next life, I pray that we can both be born as men." 

 At this point, a young women formed a fandom around Moon Jae-in. They created the phrase '[He'll] do everything we want done' and took out a congratulatory ad in a subway station for his birthday [a common practice of fandoms in Asia]. Their support was set in concerete and has not been shaken at all. In short, they are his loyal guard. Pres. Moon has declared himself a feminist (women's rights movement advocate) and has, without exception, stuck his head out every time any issue related to gender has come up. Even during the Burning Sun scandal, the Predient told the prosecutors and investigating police that "your fate hangs in the balance -- investigate well!"

 

Fake feminist Park Wonsun's [the mayor who recently committed suicide] demise has brought up the fundamental question of whether or not Pres. Moon's 'feminism' is truly his guiding philosophy reached after reflection and determination, or whether it was a pretense to gain the favor of young women and win votes. All of the folks in Pres. Moon's camp have insisted that the #MeToo movement and all of those affairs connected with it are legitimate women's rights issues and have indicated their desire to eliminate the evil roots of sexual violence.However, the bulk of the perpetrators in these cases have been fellow Democratic Party members who ran in elections for the aprty, public prosecutors, or artists. Nonetheless, Pres. Moon has still appeared to stay on the right side of women. 

 However, this was not really being on the side of women, just like like Tak Hyeonmin [man who wrote a book that was sexually explicit and critical of women]. He did not hesitate to criticize [Tak Hyeonmin's] vulgar commentary on women. He was even called up to be a Blue House advisor. And it was after the death of Mayor Park that Pres. Moon showed his true colors. He expressed his condolences for Mayor Park, but did not even give a single word of comfort to his victims. Rather than promising to root out all of the vicious causes of evil, he was silent. He remained silent in spite of the fact that numerous requests were made to reveal his position as President about an event that rocked the whole country. Even when the Democratic party paraded out the ridiculous placard of "I will remember Park Won'sun's spirit," he was silent. Pres. Moon's silence virtually acts to support people who sexually harass and abuse others. 

 Pres. Moon must have been cognizant of his enthusiastic supporters that basically embrace the perpetrators while criticizing the victims. This is the same as the women who championed the #MeToo movement but who are silent on Mayor Park. It was not just the Mayor of Busan, but also the Mayor of Seoul, that has even resulted in elections to fill their vacancies, and still it is become difficult for them to acknowledge the moral collapse of their own political camp. Pres. Moon's inaugural address was a cool affair but ultimately merely a pretense. National integration, the relocation of offices [reference to relocating important government offices out of Seoul], the authority of institutions, independence, fair selection of personnel, transparency, direct and open press briefings, equality - fairness - justice, etc., have all been reversed. And now we see the reversal of a Feminist President. 

 

 Someone referred to these women's organizations and the women parliamentarians who haven't made a single statement that they are "women who betray women." The same goes for all of the men who are using women in politics. They are those who use the political goals and votes of women as weapons. 

 

Very powerfully written - I will keep an eye on this columnist and try to bring you more of his stuff.   

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.