Francis Berger's Blog, page 41

Scheler's Lucid Criticism of Nietzsche's Erroneous Understanding of True Christian Values

Most Christians are anti-Nietzsche in a reflexive, knee-jerk sort of way.

I'm not. On the contrary, I think Nietzsche ranks among the nineteenth century's leading geniuses, to the point of being prophetic. Yes, he was a prophet of doom with a zoom lens, and his insights into the "death of God" and its inevitable consequences are prescient and visionary. 

Having said that, Nietzsche's overall assessment and condemnation of Christianity are largely erroneous and misguided. Why? Because he did not criticize what Christianity is but what Christianity had become.

As Max Scheler outlines in Ressentiment , Nietzsche's castigation of Christian values is more of a castigation of nineteenth-century bourgeois values than an accurate assessment of true Christian values. Granted, Scheler's thinking was heavily imbued by the rather strict Catholic perspective he held at the time, but this does not diminish or weaken his overall evaluation of Nietzsche's misguided claims about true Christian values (bold added): 

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". . . the greatest mistake would be to interpret the Christian movement on the basis of dim analogies with certain forms of the modern social and democratic movement.

Jesus is not a kind of “popular hero” and “social politician,” a man who knows what ails the poor and the oppressed, an “enemy of Mammon” in the sense that he opposes capitalism as a form of social existence.

Yet Friedrich Nietzsche's own conception of Christianity is strongly influenced by this widespread Jesus picture, which was propagated by Christian and non-Christian socialists.

Therefore he thinks that the motives and arguments which set him against modern Socialism and Communism also apply to Christian morality and its genius.

But Nietzsche's attack touches Jesus and the core of Christianity as little as the praise of those “socialists,” since both share the same mistaken premise.

Christianity does not contain the germ of modern socialist and democratic tendencies and value judgments. Nor did it ever affirm the “equality of souls before God,” to which Nietzsche always points as the root of democracy—except in the sense that God's judgment on men is preceded by an elimination of the value delusions which are due to human situations, to human narrow-mindedness, blindness, and selfinterest.

​But the notion that all men are equivalent “in God‟s eyes,” that all value distinctions and the whole value aristocracy of human existence are merely based on anthropomorphic prejudice, onesidedness, and weakness, is reminiscent of Spinoza and entirely foreign to Christianity." 

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Sadly, most Christians have utterly lost the plot when it comes true Christian values! 

​Thus, what parades around as Christianity and Christian values today are the exact things Nietzsche so vividly and accurately condemned. 

Loving Your Enemies Entails Recongizing the Reality of Enemies and Acting Accordingly

The experience of relationships between Beings is a fundamental purpose of Creation.

Beings are not limited to people but encompass every Being in Creation. One of the ultimate aims of these relationships is the kindling and expansion of love – not because love is a spiritual activity that serves life but because love suffuses life with its highest meaning and value – which entails that the motivations driving relationships ought to be rooted in the primacy of the spiritual – a primacy in which all Beings participate, whether consciously or not.

A simple and easy way to describe a relationship is to call it a connection or the state of being connected that arises after initial contact. Relationships are essentially exchanges. From these, communication, correlation, and correspondence emerge.

Some of these correlations birth conflict. Yet Christians in antagonistic relationships – relationships based on little more than conflict – can remain aligned with God and Creation if they recognize, honor, and respect the primacy of the spiritual and the spiritual essence of the enemy -- even if, or especially if, the enemy rejects, opposes, or denies this primacy and essence.

Thus, a man can still love his enemy while fighting against him .

Loving one’s enemy is not the same as denying one has enemies. Loving one’s enemy entails accepting the existence of hostility. Some Beings, men, or forces simply must be opposed; some relationships will inevitably be hostile!

Yet a God-aligned man rejects the temptation to hate the man he is fighting even while submerged in the deepest hostilities.

He may declare the man an enemy and fight him tooth and nail with everything he has at his disposal, but he will never lose sight of the spiritual essence of his enemy.

He might even kill the enemy, but he never aims to spiritually destroy.

He knows the enemy may kill him, but also knows that his death is not spiritual destruction. 

He knows only he can spiritually destroy himself. 

In the end, he recognizes the enemy as a fellow Being in Creation and, thus, yearns and prays for the enemy’s salvation.

Note: H/T to Wm Jas who once shared the "loving your enemies does not mean you don't have enemies" insight via a comment somewhere on this blog. 

What Is the Future of Christianity? Two Approaches, Understanding, Paths.

The future of Christianity has been a major theme of this blog. I assume the theme is also a major point of interest and/or concern to this blog's readers. In light of this, I will focus more explicitly on Christianity’s potential ways forward, primarily by examining two distinct approaches, understandings, and paths of Christianity and its future development.  

​The Anti-Gnostic, a valued commenter on this blog, outlines the first approach/understanding/path in a reply to the question of when Christianity would reignite the West (bold added).

It won't. Christianity requires a Christendom with geographic territory and artifacts, which Christians blew up after two World Wars against each other. When Christians aren't protected or don't protect themselves, they go extinct like anybody else.
The religions which actually propagate themselves maintain blood-and-soil homelands or enclaves that support natalism (literal Creation, in which nominal Christians no longer participate), like Islam, Judaism and the Anabaptists.

Religion as metaphysical abstraction is just someone's, anyone's opinion. It has no tangible or tactile representation, no means for inter-generational transmission, no temporal events or life-cycle rituals. It actually eschews tangibility and tactileness as mundane and mortifying. It's just the burden of praxis with no benefit other than a narrative of an unknown, theoretical afterlife. 

Bruce Charlton outlines the second approach in response to the same question. Note, that the commenters were unaware of each other’s comments when they posted their thoughts on the matter (bold added).

This is why I try, more and more, to emphasize that Christianity ought-to-be about the next world; in the sense that our understanding of this world, and what we should be doing, comes After we have decided to follow Jesus to life everlasting in Heaven (and do what is necessary to attain that).

In contrast; there is a common discourse (and I used to be deeply into this) that evaluates Christianity in terms such as its ability to save Western Civilization from itself, or improve the conditions of My life - soon.

It is natural to desire protection from suffering, yet in an entropic world leading towards death; this is ultimately futile, and therefore should Not be allowed to take primacy. ...As it so often does take primacy; in both explicitly-secular and fake-Christian discourse.

In my view, questions concerning the future of Christianity boil down to the cardinal choice between these two approaches, understandings, and paths.
​
The choice individual Christians make in this regard will determine the future of Christianity -- or, put another way, if Christianity has a future at all. 

AI "Creativity" Is Anti-Spiritual Creativity

William Wildblood recently shared some insightful observations regarding AI:

The machine will have made further inroads into our consciousness and we will have separated ourselves even more from the reality of spirit. This is part of the ongoing descent into a world of pure quantity in which nothing exists that cannot be measured.

William touches upon a crucial point here. Human creativity relates to the natural world as it invents machines and technology from material elements. In this sense, all technological developments serve as phases in man's spiritual development. At the same time, technological development can lead to or increase humanity’s enslavement to the purely material – to objects in the world.

This is particularly true when humanity turns its back on spiritual aims and values and looks to technological miracles to supply life with ultimate meaning. Unfortunately, when man is no longer motivated by spiritual aims and values, he finds ultimate meaning in things like utility, hedonism, altruism, and, above all, organization.

Quality is sacrificed for quantity. Everything becomes a numbers game. Organizing and controlling the numbers becomes the biggest game of all.

Human creativity will be put in a box with its lid firmly fastened. We will be told that AI and creativity can run alongside each other but it doesn't work like that. You either acknowledge the reality of spirit in which case AI will be recognised as anti-spirit or you ignore it in which case you enter a world in which everything is counted, controlled, numbered and known. That is a form of death because it denies freedom which is life.

This is vital. We have entered a phase in which we are called upon to become divinized co-creators of reality, but this entails recognizing and working from the primacy of the spiritual. It requires firm alignment and commitment to God and Creation because only properly oriented and aligned agency and freedom can nurture the sort of love needed for true spiritual co-creation.

The inherent danger in AI is that it works in the opposite direction. It increases the already gaping spiritual gap separating man from Creation and decreases human freedom and agency, which then lowers human creativity.

The allure of AI lies in its apparent creativity, but whatever creativity AI produces is a misguided and false replacement for the sort of creativity God requires of us in this time and place.
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The creativity God desires from us inevitably pulls us closer to Creation and the purposes of Creation. This sort of creativity frees as its alignment with God and Creation increases. AI creativity is antithetical to these aims. Instead of freeing toward God via creativity, AI creativity further enslaves man to materialism.

When Will Christianity Reignite the West?

I don't know, but I suspect it will only come after the 

"What are you going to do to protect me in this world?" 

question becomes anathema in Christian discourse. 

Gornahoor is Gone

I have just learned that Cologero Salvo, the man behind the Gornahoor blog and site that was a part of the Synlogos feed, passed away on Ascension Eve -- May 17.

Salvo's metaphysics were not exactly my metaphysics, but he possessed a remarkable depth of knowledge when it came to metaphysical matters. He was an interesting and engaging writer, particularly when he concentrated on themes and topics I tend to ignore or neglect.  

Salvo published his final post on April 11. A month or so later, I began to wonder why he was not showing up on the Synlogos feed, so I checked his site and found it inactive. Assuming he was taking a break, I left the site. I returned a few times over the summer. Still nothing.

When I went back to the site today, I took the time to read the comments on his last blog post, which is where I learned of his death.

Apparently, he died of something birdemic-related. His son will maintain the site. 

The following appears on the Gornahoor "About" page (bold, blue added): 

Live free, acquire knowledge, speak the truth

What is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution. ~ Joseph de Maistre

An exploration of metaphysics, physics, religion, and high culture connecting Ancient Wisdom to the modern world.Remember traditionThe Religion of Medieval EuropeMetaphysicsSpiritual KnighthoodThe three mattersSophiology and the Common Task Romantic Christianity High CultureSpiritual PracticePhysicsMathematics​
Thanks for your work, Cologero. You are missed. 

Permacrisis Requires Permacompetence

The Collins English Dictionary Word of the Year for 2022 was permacrisis. I’m not sure what words the fine folks at Harper Collins have shortlisted for the 2023 Word of the Year, but here is my suggestion for their expert consideration – permaincompetence (that is, permanent incompetence).

Sure, permaincompetence is not word (as if permacrisis is) and has not entered the flow of general usage; however, it should because it aptly describes the ubiquitous ineptitude saturating the System, more specifically, virtually all governments, organizations, institutions, and corporations.

I suspect Harper Collins chose named permacrisis as its 2022 Word of the Year to help broadcast the Establishment’s continuing and overarching goal of using cascading crises as pretexts for locking the world in a nightmarish Ahrimanic totalitarian surveillance state.

Many conspiracy-inclined bloggers have compared these permacrisis modes of operation to the Hegelian Dialectic of thesis – antithesis – synthesis or, more plainly, problem – reaction – solution.

The process is simple enough. Create a problem or crisis, incite the masses to react in a predetermined fashion, and then offer a solution to that quells the instigated reaction and solves the manufactured problem. Every Establishment "permacrisis" solution aims to further consolidate the System’s power by increasing bureaucratic despotism and eroding freedom.

The master plan appeared to come together via the birdemic in 2020-2021. The Ahramanic totalitarians succeeded in locking the world down for nearly two years. During that time, they proclaimed that the world would never again be as open as it had been.

They did their utmost to convince people that measures, such as global digital IDs, peck passports, restricted travel, curfews, intermittent lockdowns, and so forth, would become permanent fixtures of the post-birdemic world. They even successfully implemented such measures in some places, yet they couldn’t make it permanent.

They had the world seemingly at their mercy. The totalitarian prison they had been dreaming about for decades was on the cusp of becoming an indissoluble reality, but in the end, it slipped through their fingers.

The explanations for this failure to “close the totalitarian deal” are numerous. Many factors undoubtedly played a part, but I believe good old incompetence was principal among them. Yes, incompetence. Granted, it required a high level of competence and coordination to pull the birdemic off, but the incompetence bled through the moment the Establishment seized control.

For the sake of brevity, I won’t wade into endless details. Instead, I will simply note that the permacrisis world the Establishment seeks to implement requires permacompetence.

Global totalitarianism entails consistent and committed proficiency, capability, and expertise – the Establishment appears to have a severe shortage of these indispensable qualities.

What they appear to have an abundance of is permaincompetence. On the one hand, I guess you could consider this a blessing of sorts because it is practically guaranteed that none of their totalitarian dreams will ever come to full fruition. On the other hand, permaincompetence is extremely capable of one thing – destruction.

The Ahramanics only win if they are permacompetent.

Permaincompetence is the realm of Sorath and the potential for an authentic, genuine permacrisis.   

There Are No Political, Social, National, Institutional, Religious Saviors or Protectors in the West, Not Even in Hungary

Conservatives, nationalists, Christians, and other individuals holding "rightist" views continue to heap respect and adulation upon the Hungarian government, often elevating Orbán et al. to lofty heights verging on hero-worship.

In reality, Orbán and his government craftily manoeuvre within an illusion they have skilfully constructed to not only dupe the nation they purportedly serve but also delude salivating rightist supporters around the globe, some of whom have gone as far to declare Orbán to be the “savior” and “protector” of Hungary, Western Civilization, and Christianity.

Illusions deserve nothing but shattering, so I’ll cut right to chase here – Orbán et al. aren’t saving or protecting anything in Hungary, Western Civilization, or Christianity.

In many ways, the current Hungarian government has done more to harm Hungary, Western Civilization, and Christianity than the most rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth radical leftist government could ever hope to do.

And it has managed to inflict these harms precisely because it operates from behind a thin, flimsy, and clichéd veneer of conservatism, nationalism, and Christianity.

Regardless, rightists around the world want to believe in the Hungarian Hope, to the point that they conveniently ignore Orbán et al.’s glaring lies, self-contradictions, and malversations, the vast majority of which directly undermine the very conservative, nationalist, and Christian principles the Magyar ruling class professes to uphold and defend.

Case in point, the Hungarian government recently made a deal to purchase and “nationalize” the Liszt International Airport in Budapest using 3.9 billion euros of public money in a 50/50 ownership deal with Blackrock – yes, that Blackrock – in which the US “investment giant” would possess management rights.

I don’t know about you, but that is some odd nationalization.

Here’s another one. Orbán et al. energetically support the implementation of the WHO Pandemic Treaty and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

And let’s not forget that Orbán’s crew was also the first EU country to approve the UN’s 2015 climate deal in Paris. They were also terribly disappointed when Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2017.

Of course, Trump - Mr. Drain the Swamp, Make America Great Again - then went on to launch operation Warp Speed . . .

No, I'm not going to "link to support the above." If you are inclined to verify, do it yourself. 

Listen. Forget this rightist, conservative, Christian social/political bullshit.

There are no political, corporate, media, institutional, religious, or social saviors and protectors in the West, so stop searching for them.

They are all Of the System, By the System, For the System, regardless of their stripe or bent.

The sooner you accept that the freer you will be to focus your energy elsewhere.   ​

The Other Exists for Self-Discovery, Not Self-Annihilation

Discovering oneself – one’s true self, real self, divine self, call it what you will – is one of the underlying purposes of Creation. With that in mind, it is clear that this journey of self-discovery involves other Beings.

If it didn’t, God, as a Being, as the primary Creator, and as a loving parent, would probably have placed us in a creation comprised of isolated, self-contained, hermetically sealed, worlds-of-one deprived of all contact, communication, and relationships with other Beings. The sort of arrangement where we would have no one but ourselves to contend with. No one but ourselves to find and discover.

Creation is the polar opposite of that kind of arrangement, which reveals much about the limits of isolated and secluded forms of self-discovery. One of my deepest metaphysical assumptions involves the belief that we existed in self-containment, isolation, seclusion, and aloneness before our mortal lives; however, this condition of “perfect freedom” represented an extremely low form of consciousness that deadened awareness of ourselves as free beings.

We may have been dimly aware of our existence, but we were probably completely unaware of why we existed or what we could do with this existence. We may have had some murky grasp of self, but I suspect this understanding was at best tenuous and intermittent, blinking off as mysteriously and suddenly as it had blinked on, indicating that self-knowledge is unachievable through the self alone – it required other Beings.

One way to think about Creation is to see it as an arrangement in which the self is in continuous contact with other Beings or selves, who, as selves in their own right, are in constant contact with other Beings or selves. This arrangement inevitably depends upon relationships between Beings. It is through these relationships that individual Beings can work toward discovering their true selves.

Thus, an underlying purpose of Creation is to discover oneself through others, which is not the same as the modern altruistic impulse of denying the self for others.

I may never fully understand another Being in mortal life, but relationships with other Beings may help me to know myself. Likewise, another Being may never fully understand me as a self, but my “self” may help the other Being better understand its “self”.

Other Beings cannot help me to understand myself if they demand I dissolve my “self” into their “selves”, nor can I help other Beings if they subsume their selves under my “self”.

With this in mind, Christianity is a religion of discovering and fortifying the self, not for self-worship or self-annihilation, but for being or becoming the sort of self that aligns with God, participates in Creation through love, and, thereby, adds to and expands both love and creation.
​
We may not be able to achieve this fully in mortal life, but if we believe on Jesus . . .

Day or Night Dweller?

God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day

                                                           -- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

So where do you dwell?

​Night or Day?