history – Page 17

The Minor Renaissance And The Major Renaissance

Renaissance means ‘rebirth’, and is the name given to the rebirth of the intellectual, philosophical and scientific culture of the West some 600 years ago. The Renaissance is understood to refer to a complete rebirth of higher awareness, as if we had awakened from a stupor, but a closer examination shows that only half of the job was done. As this essay will discuss, there are two great cultural rebirths – and one hasn’t happened yet.

There was much that was great about the Greco-Roman culture of the classical age. Philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle laid the intellectual and moral foundations for the entire Western world. The degree of moral insight they achieved has never been replicated, and works such as The Republic continue to inspire scholars and intellectuals around the world.

The Roman Empire that followed was one of the greatest feats of all of human civilisation. Its peak population was around 60-70 million, and the city of Rome had a million inhabitants at this time, about 1,900 years ago. Its great figures, like Julius Caesar, Augustus and Nero, are known to most today.

As this great culture was gradually destroyed by Christian and barbarian invaders, the West fell into the Dark Ages, where most knowledge and culture was lost. Europe regressed back into primitive superstition, and stayed there for almost a thousand years.

Beginning mostly in Italy, the Renaissance saw great minds such as da Vinci, Machiavelli, Galileo and Giordano Bruno restore much of the glory of those ancient days. Their contributions to mathematics, science and to the study of human nature lifted humanity out of the dark times and back to an age where reason triumphed. To the scholars and intellectuals of this new age, it felt very much like a rebirth of a higher order of consciousness.

This essay calls this the Minor Renaissance.

The Minor Renaissance, then, is the revival of the scientific and inquisitional culture that was championed by Greeks such as Archimedes, Eratosthenes and Aristotle. The Minor Renaissance gave us industrialisation, global empires, penicillin, spaceships, atomic bombs and computers. Its apogee may have come in 1969, with the first Moon landing.

But as glorious as the Minor Renaissance was, it’s still only a minor one.

Many of us have come to wonder what else there is in life. Somehow we don’t feel fulfilled buying big screen TVs, newer smartphones, bigger cars or bigger houses, and neither do we feel fulfilled flying or driving around the place. Career successes don’t bring any meaningful gratification and bringing children into a world like this is not easy to justify.

This sense of longing is compounded by the fact that our popular culture is overwhelmingly atheist. It’s very rare that the mainstream media expresses any spiritual wisdom, obsessed as it is with tawdry celebrity and crass consumerism. Our communities have decayed, our lives have become atomised, and our spiritual senses have become atrophied to the point where they barely still exist.

It’s little wonder, then, that suicide rates are rising across the West, along with anti-depressant and anti-psychotic prescriptions. The great process of learning and discovery that led to all the engineering and scientific achievements mentioned above, glorious as it was, did not leave us with the spiritual tools to confront the lack of inherent meaning in life on this planet. Bereft of such tools, we drift as if lost in space.

Because the Minor Renaissance was not a complete return to the glory of the Greco-Roman past, we await a Major Renaissance that will be. The Major Renaissance will see the rebirth of the Greco-Roman spiritual culture, some 600 years after the rebirth of the Greco-Roman intellectual and scientific culture.

This Major Renaissance will herald the spiritual rebirth of the soul of the Western people, which has remained dormant for some 1,600 years now.

Ever since the Eleusinian Mysteries were destroyed by Alaric and the Visigoths in 396, Westerners have lost their connection to the divine. The Eleusinian Mysteries had served to enlighten countless people during the thousand years they ran for. Today, however, spiritual truths that were once known by all are only known by society’s outcasts.

The Major Renaissance, therefore, would involve a rebirth of the Greco-Roman spiritual science that reached its highest expression in the rituals at Eleusis. This probably used some kind of psilocybin-based psychedelic sacrament, in conjunction with a ritualised and theatrical moral lecture, to shatter the false conceptions and false conditioning that befall all beings who manifest in the material plane.

A reinstatement of the Mysteries of Eleusis would involve the founding of a 21st century psilocybin mushroom cult. Eventually this would grow to become popular enough that most of the influential people in the world would want to be initiated. This collective enlightenment would provide the energy that sparked a spiritual renaissance that lifted the entire Western World – the Major Renaissance.

A spiritual renaissance would involve a widespread anamnesia, or unforgetting, of spiritual truths once widely understood. As this newspaper has argued before, a spiritual renaissance is happening right now. This is all but inevitable on account of that the truth, as Buddha observed, cannot be hidden for long. If this new spiritual age would come to define the age we lived in, we could be said to have gone through the Major Renaissance.

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White Man Bad, Brown Man Good – A Guide to the New New Zealand History

With news that the New Zealand Government will make the teaching of New Zealand history compulsory in schools from 2022, many are wondering what form this history will take. Napoleon said “History is a set of lies agreed upon,” and many Kiwis are skeptical that this new history will be accurate and fair. These concerns are warranted. This essay summarises the New New Zealand History in six words: White Man Bad, Brown Man Good.

The move by the Sixth Labour Government has been heavily criticised by commentators such as Anarkiwi, and for good reason. Government initiatives to “tell the real truth about history” always end up being indoctrination campaigns, launched to brainwash the population into supporting a particular agenda. The history that will be taught in New Zealand schools will be a set of lies agreed upon (although your input will not be sought).

Central to the New New Zealand history is the idea that there was no benefit to the Maori from colonisation, only losses. Maoris did not benefit from medicine, or a justice system, or from sanitation, or from infrastructure, or from technology. All of these things are either presumed to have no value, or it is assumed that Maoris would have developed them anyway without British help.

This New History will follow a Rousseauean conception of human nature, in which uncivilised man is a “noble savage”, morally superior to civilised man. The civilised man is, according to this conception, much like the stereotypical Jewish merchant. He schemes, he swindles, he extorts and steals, and he does so without shame or scruple. Uncivilised man, by contrast, lives in a state of perfect harmony with his environment.

In the New New Zealand History, civilisation descended on these isles like a black wave of corruption and evil. Technology, law and order are considered to be negative things that lured the Maori out of his state of innocence. This allowed for land to be swindled out of the Maori tribes much like candy from an innocent baby in the crib.

Part of this New New Zealand History will be the enshrinement of the special status of Maoris as those people who live here by right, whereas every other race has a conditional residency status contingent on “upholding the Treaty”. The idea is that the continued presence of non-Maoris in New Zealand is dependent on the permission of Maoris. This will see an increase in the use of vocabulary like ‘tangata whenua’ and ‘tauiwi’ (the latter being the Maori equivalent of ‘goyim’ or ‘kaffir’).

Anything that doesn’t fit the White Man Bad, Brown Man Good narrative will simply not be taught.

The Musket Wars, during which 40,000 Maoris were killed by intertribal wars launched by Ngapuhi chief Hongi Hika, will be glossed over, summarised or simply ignored. One can confidently predict that the New New Zealand History will begin in 1840, as if New Zealand had come to Earth already perfectly formed, a last-minute addition direct from the mind of God.

Another thing that won’t be taught is that some 150,000 Maoris have emigrated away from New Zealand to Australia, which offers the same wealth and prosperity that colonisation brought to New Zealand, only more so. Neither will it be taught that Maoris are, on average, five times wealthier than the average Tongan.

Tonga was never colonised, and the fact that Tongans willingly move to New Zealand in far, far greater numbers than Maoris willingly move to Tonga is solid evidence that Polynesian natives prefer the benefits of Western life to the sort of life that existed previously. Actions speak louder than words, after all, and Polynesians have clearly shown with their migration decisions that the Western life is better.

Neither will the ecological consequences of Polynesian settlement get a mention. We won’t hear a word about the extermination of pre-existing megafauna such as the moa and the Haast Eagle. Neither will we hear anything about the fact that Maori settlers in the South Island destroyed 40% of its forest cover within the first 200 years.

The Parihaka story (or at least the Green Party version of it), on the other hand, will play a central role. This story paints Maoris as Gandhi-like figures of peace, and the British as Genghis Khan-like murderers and rapists, and is therefore emblematic of the New New Zealand History. Doubtlessly we will see renewed calls for a Parihaka Day, which is to be another grievance day.

Genuine grievances will not be mentioned if that doesn’t fit the agenda. The destruction of Maori religious and spiritual traditions by Abrahamists suits the Government fine, as does the imposition of recreational alcohol culture on a people who had no genetic resistance to it (and the criminalisation of the recreational cannabis culture that they preferred). Both of those things serve the agenda of tightening control on the thoughts and behaviours of the people.

The actual purpose of the New New Zealand History is manyfold, but it achieves two major objectives from the point of view of those bringing it in.

First, it divides Maoris between those who are New Zealand nationalists and those who are Maori nationalists. The New Zealand nationalists tend to be assimilationists who would rather get on with things and declare old history to be water under the bridge. The Maori nationalists tend to be separatists who understand that their power comes from stoking grievance and dissatisfaction.

The New New Zealand History splits these two groups apart by teaching a grievance narrative that has white people and Maoris at each other’s throats. Those Maoris who are New Zealand nationalists are made to feel as if they are betraying “their own people” by remaining loyal to New Zealand. On the other side, white people with sympathies to Maoris will have them tested by a narrative that places Maoris in the role of accuser and prosecutor and white people in the role of defendant.

Second, it divides the rest of the population between those who tell the truth and those who are on board with the new fashion. Inevitably, those who maintain that Maoris benefitted from colonisation will be decried as old-fashioned and out of touch with the “new learning”. They will be pilloried as racists and bigots and we will hear that society would be better without them.

The New New Zealand History is, like most United Nations-driven novelties, a set of lies intended to further a globalist agenda. It’s closely related to the movement known as Brown Communism, which is a form of slave morality intended to divest white and Far East Asian people of their wealth. Like most sets of lies, the way to counter it is to remain steadfast to the truth, no matter how unfashionable that becomes.

Slave Morality and Modern Conceptions of Human Nature

The main reason why there is so much political disagreement in the world is because there are many different conceptions of human nature. As this column has discussed previously, a person’s politics follow directly from their conception of human nature. This essay will look specifically at how slave morality conceives of human nature, and the effect this has on public discourse.

To understand how slave morality conceives of human nature, it’s first necessary to understand the difference between the Hobbesian and the Rousseauean conceptions of it.

Hobbes’s conception, as discussed in Leviathan, is that human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” The state of nature, for humans, is the same as the state of nature for other animals – a zero-sum game characterised by violence and cruelty. Because life is naturally miserable, enlightened elites are justified in defying nature in various ways, such as building a giant state apparatus to watch over people.

Rousseau’s conception is best described as that of the “noble savage”. The essential idea here is that humanity was better before it was corrupted by civilisation. In a state of nature, Rousseau contends, humans are gregarious, wealthy, kind etc. – the opposite of Hobbes’s conception. Rousseau’s idea belongs to a school of thought broadly described as Romanticism.

The idea that humans are intrinsically good is far from a new one. Confucian philosopher Mencius made the argument, some 2,400 years ago, that humans were inherently good because all humans would instinctively act if they saw a baby crawling towards a well. Confucius himself, however, argued that men had to be bound by laws imposed upon them from above by their betters.

The reality is better understood today, thanks to advances in biological science and ethology. Observational fieldwork of other primate species has shown us that Hobbes and Rousseau were both right and wrong. Humans are more than capable of being either good or evil, both at an individual and at a collective level, and are really more opportunistic than they are moral.

Slave morality blends these two conceptions together and combines them in a single idea girded by unalloyed resentment. Slave morality expresses itself as a belief that the weaker party is automatically the morally superior party. Therefore, whenever there is a conflict, picking a side is as simple as determining who is the weaker party.

What this has led to is a conception of human nature that claims strong people are nasty and Hobbesian, and weak people kind and Rousseauean.

Anyone with high social status is assumed to have achieved it by viciousness, aggression, skulduggery and violence. Nastiness is, to the slave mindset, the only way that one can distinguish oneself from the masses – there is no such thing as excellence. Even the desire to distinguish oneself is evil.

Anyone with low social status, by contrast, is assumed to have received it because they were too kind and loving. Either they got exploited by a nasty Hobbesian, or they gave so much of their wealth away that they were left with nothing themselves. Kindness is, to the slave mindset, the highest moral value, because it avoids confrontation.

Another way that slave morality expresses itself is a refusal to concede that any one person or group of people are superior to any other, in any way. This mentality will deny that the great variety of different environments on this planet resulted in a commensurate variety of different adaptations. To admit this would be to concede that some were better adapted to others. Slave mentality is too resentful to admit this.

At its most dogmatic, slave morality denies any inherent difference between population groups full stop. All differences in outcome are therefore considered to be cultural in nature. This mentality was satirised by StoneToss when he pointed out the contrast between how willing people are to concede that genes explain physical differences on the one hand, with how willing people are to concede that genes explain mental or behavioural differences on the other.

This reaches its greatest absurdity when slave moralists insist that the difference in physical strength between men and women is due to environmental causes. This comically naive logic would be laughable if it was held by a child. When held by a fully serious adult it’s monstrous, and the shadows of the gulags become apparent.

Anyone who has travelled and observed the world (and many people who haven’t) will, of course, have noticed that there are many people who have laboured their entire lives without building up much strength (such as Indians), whereas others don’t need to exercise at all to become strong (such as Polynesians). The other population groups are all somewhere in between.

Moreover, anyone who has travelled will have observed that there are a vast range of different environments on Planet Earth, and therefore a vast range of different survival pressures. This range of survival pressures has necessarily led to a multiplicity of genetic variation.

The genetic basis for the differences in physical strength between populations is obvious. Therefore, it stands to reason that there will be a large variation in mental, intellectual and behavioural tendencies because of genetics.

To disagree is to deny reality, but this is the real horror of slave morality – it rejects life and even reality itself.

Unfortunately, slave morality has started to become normalised on account of the fact that populations are so large now that the vast majority of people have no chance of ever achieving a leadership position. This means that resentment-based narratives will become ever more popular, and accurate scientific information will become ever harder to find.

Why Alt-Centrism is Necessarily A Spiritual Movement

Central to alt-centrist philosophy is that, although it’s possible to understand why people support the other political positions, all those positions are fundamentally misguided by ignorance of the true nature of reality. Because the Establishment positions, the alt-left and the alt-right are all materialist, alt-centrism must distinguish itself from materialism. As this essay will explain, alt-centrism is necessarily a spiritual movement.

Keeping in accordance with the Five Rejections, the alt-centrist believes both that: 1) the current political system has failed and is causing misery, and 2) that the most popular of the proposed solutions to the current system will also fail and will cause more misery.

The ultimate underlying reason for all of this is the process of spiritual degeneration that has taken place over many centuries. Since the destruction of the Eleusinian Mysteries by Christian zealots in the 4th century A.D., the Western World lost touch with the methodologies they once used to connect to God.

Over the past 1,600 years, we’ve gradually come to believe, more and more, that materialist solutions are the only possible ways to alleviate suffering. This morphine-over-meditation reasoning has made us creatures of sensory pleasure. We have abandoned the old ways that led to acceptance of the world and the truth that life is transitory suffering on the way to reunion with God, and replaced them with a child’s narrative that we will never suffer again if we have enough stuff.

This has led to great innovations for making war on our enemies, but has done little to alleviate the suffering of sentient beings. The hyperfocus on knowledge that would allow up to build better weapons or to manufacture greater volumes of widgets has allowed for great physical wealth and power, but it came at the price of a commensurate lack of focus on spiritual knowledge.

We no longer know the spiritual truths of existence. We no longer know that the material world is an illusion borne of God’s will to play, and we no longer know that consciousness survives the death of the physical body and comes thereafter to associate with other consciousnesses on a similar frequency. Because we now believe that this world is all there is, no concern is given to one’s situation after death. It’s simply assumed that, upon the death of one’s physical body, one simply stops existing.

Therefore, much like an 80-minute game of rugby, one must score as much as possible as quickly as possible before one’s time is up.

This leads to a scramble for material wealth and power. Because spiritual knowledge and wealth is considered to have no value, the order of the day is to accumulate as many resources as possible. In New Zealand, and many other places, this has taken its most obscene form in the obsession with rent-seeking. The praised man is not one who has found peace and set his heart to order; the praised man is the billionaire.

The ultimate materialist dream is to own a large amount of property, because then rent can be charged. With enough property, it’s possible to charge enough rent to maintain a lifestyle without doing any work. It might sound incredible, but the popular model of success in our society is someone who has become the largest parasite they could manage to be.

In our severely degraded culture, the man who absorbs wealth from the wider system without working for it is lauded and envied.

The problem exacerbates when crude displays of success at resource accumulation is the only way to attract women. In a degraded age, women are not able to perceive or value higher qualities in men, so they become attracted to superficial ones. This leads to immense resentment, both from men and women, as they come to feel that their chances for a happy marriage were robbed from them.

The alt-centrist rejects this materialist obsession with resource acquisition. It’s obvious that the crude obsession with wealth has locked the vast majority of us into a zero-sum contest for the best-looking women, the trendiest places of residence and the highest positions in the social dominance hierarchy. This is zero-sum at best when the population is small; with a population as large as that of the current world, it’s a recipe for widespread misery.

As mentioned above, however, it isn’t just the Establishment and our inherited culture that is materialist.

The alt-left are atheist and Marxist, and therefore utterly materialist as well. The alt-left, like the original left, considers spirituality a means by which the poor are tricked out of their real wealth. In accordance with the Five Acceptances, alt-centrism accepts that there is some merit in this concern, and that many people claiming to possess spiritual truths were really crooks. The alt-left, however, has gone too far.

In any case, we insist that no number of religious criminals can invalidate the value of genuine spirituality.

The alt-right recognises that the left is materialist, and that this leads to death camps and gulags, but their error is to demand a return to Abrahamism. Alt-centrism rejects this nostalgic attempt to return to the past. Abrahamism has always been a millstone around the neck of the world, and currently it serves only to further entrench pre-existing hatreds. The world needs a new spiritual methodology that unites people across divisions.

The alt-centre, therefore, must be spiritual by way of contrast to the materialist ideologies that have caused so much suffering.

This is another way in which alt-centrism is entirely different to centrism. A regular centrist is likely to also be a materialist, on account of that they are trying to find a balanced compromise between other materialist positions. They note that the left and the right are both materialist, so agreeing on that point seems like a good start. The regular centrist merely follows along with social convention.

The alt-centrist says “Fuck that!” and declares that the fact the paradigm is materialist is evidence to support the case the paradigm needs to be overthrown. If all of the corrupt actors responsible for a failing system tell us that materialism is correct, then it is more likely to be false.

Alt-centrism then, is about a return to spirituality – but not a return to religion.

A return to spirituality would allow for the genuine moral and spiritual self-improvement that materialism denies is possible. If people would focus on this, instead of on acquiring more physical possessions, achieving liberation from suffering would be more realistic. A spiritually improved population would succeed regardless of the political system they laboured under.