http://bonald.wordpress.com/in-defense-of-monarchy/
Remember that my thesis is that Crowdism infests and destroys everything. It has within my sight infested and destroyed: Paganism, national socialism, black metal, drug culture, death metal, local charitable organizations, several businesses, two administrations, etc.
However, we need to make the Christian faith inured to Crowdism so that it does not easily lend itself to being taken over by the Crowd, yet is able to motivate and harness them.
I will always appreciate the standouts like Bonald, Eckhart, Blake, etc. but these are not mainstream Christianity. (It may be that mainstream
anything is headed to Douchebag Street by virtue of mainstream, not what it specifically is.)
The point is that Christianity, if it returns to its Pagan roots, will be stronger and might serve as a religion for Europe. It needs to be fully Europeanized, which means removing the anti-Aryan measures such as egalitarianism ("the meek shall inherit the earth") and a monotheism that supports a personal moral relationship to God in which the pitied are to be supported.
Can we do that?
I'll admit that Chesterton was from a far better time, but let's see what he has to say on Christianity as it relates to other religions, shall we?
'...But we must look elsewhere for his real rivals, and the only real rivals of the Catholic theory. They are the heads of great heathen systems; some of them very ancient, some very modern, like Buddha on the one hand or Nietzsche on the other. It is when we see his gigantic figure against this vast and cosmic background, that we realise, first, that he was the only optimist theologian, and second, that Catholicism is the only optimist theology. Something milder and more amiable may be made out of the deliquescence of theology, and the mixture of the creed with everything that contradicts it; but among consistent cosmic creeds, this is the only one that is entirely on the side of Life.
Comparative religion has indeed allowed us to compare religions-- and to contrast them. Fifty years ago, it set out to prove that all religions were much the same; generally proving, alternately, that they were all equally worthy and that they were all equally worthless. Since then this scientific process has suddenly begun to be scientific, and discovered the depths of the chasms as well as the heights of the hills. It is indeed an excellent improvement that sincerely religious people should respect each other. But respect has discovered difference, where contempt knew only indifference. The more we really appreciate the noble revulsion and renunciation of Buddha, the more we see that intellectually it was the converse and almost the contrary of the salvation of the world by Christ. The Christian would escape from the world into the universe: the Buddhist wishes to escape from the universe even more than from the world. One would uncreate himself; the other would return to his Creation: to his Creator. Indeed it was so genuinely the converse of the idea of the Cross as the Tree of Life, that there is some excuse for setting up the two things side by side, as if they were of equal significance. They are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as a sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who will not climb the mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha.
The same is true, in a less lucid and dignified fashion, of most other alternatives of heathen humanity; nearly all are sucked back into that whirlpool of recurrence which all the ancients knew. Nearly all return to the one idea of returning. That is what Buddha described so darkly as the Sorrowful Wheel. It is true that the sort of recurrence which Buddha described as the Sorrowful Wheel, poor Nietzsche actually managed to describe as the Joyful Wisdom. I can only say that if bare repetition was his idea of Joyful Wisdom, I should be curious to know what was his idea of Sorrowful Wisdom. But as a fact, in the case of Nietzsche, this did not belong to the moment of his breaking out, but to the moment of his breaking down. It came at the end of his life, when he was near to mental collapse; and it is really quite contrary to his earlier and finer inspirations of wild freedom or fresh and creative innovation. Once at least he had tried to break out; but he also was only broken-- on the wheel.
Alone upon the earth, and lifted and liberated from all the wheels and whirlpools of the earth, stands up the faith of St. Thomas weighted and balanced indeed with more than Oriental metaphysics and more than Pagan pomp and pageantry; but vitally and vividly alone in declaring that life is a living story, with a great beginning and a great close; rooted in the primeval joy of God and finding its fruition in the final happiness of humanity; opening with the colossal chorus in which the sons of God shouted for joy, and ending in that mystical comradeship, shown in a shadowy fashion in those ancient words that move like an archaic dance; "For His delight is with the sons of men." '
Excerpted from Chapter IV of 'Saint Thomas Aquinas', by GK Chesterton...
Or perhaps his understanding of modern, degenerated Christianity?
A different perspective that I was not privy to prior to reading this, Chesterton criticizes the modern world on the basis that it is constituted by 'wasted virtue', and isolated morals that have devolved in their separation from the main paradigm... this in contrast to Nietzsche, who supposes that the 'paradigm', viz. Christianity, is instead the villain... Anyway, without further ado.... today's quotation!
'The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race - because he is so human...
'It is only with one aspect of humility that we are here concerned. Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys... Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything - even pride.
'But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason... We should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.'
GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Proper Catholic society would resemble the society of Middle-Earth. We do not see God as judge purely for the sake of denigrating those who fall outside of the social order, but as a means towards the ascetic end of Christianity. The single most important aspect to the Faith is Christ's incarnation, His unification of God and man in one person. Our goal is, through asceticism, to realize the resemblance of all things to God, and thus the proper method of responding to those things. Sometimes the proper method isn't the one that makes itself readily apparent, sometimes it is, it's all a matter of realizing beauty. That's what Christianity is: the doctrine of beauty, the doctrine of reforming the world into a symphony, or a cathedral, in a somewhat metaphorical manner.
If we're going to be pointing the finger at someone, we're going to have to point it at nigh every single thing about society today. I'll repeat myself, the first step is to synthesize conservative opposition to the modern world, and we Catholics, pagans, Jews, and Muslims need to work together in this. I suppose atheists could join in on the effort, but I have my doubts as to whether they'll understand the conservative conception of authority or not, at least fully.
You make some good points in the above, but I can't let it stand. I am, after all, Satan.
I like the idea of Middle Earth, but that requires more than religion alone.
I don't like Jesus. He's a whiny hipster. His occasional good points (the parable of the talents) are drowned out in a sea of drama. In fact, what has kept me away from Christianity for most of my life, and made me hate it virulently, is the entire Christ story. It's a retarded mythos stolen from more intelligent people. It is sappy, fundamentally Middle Eastern in its "show tunes" quality of saccharine and yet manipulative pandering, and utterly useless but for one thing: day laborer Jesus tells his tormentors that he is not afraid of death, and he will do what is right, "regardless." That alone is beautiful. It is made less beautiful by the talk of assured immortality. As a nihilist, I find what is exhilarating is the decision to do what is right
no matter what comes, whether eternal non-existence or eternal light. To me, that is the essential challenge of life.
I do not believe the goal should be God or Christianity. Rather, it should be the divine order of the cosmos, of which Christianity is one interpretation. Any other view is prone to human fallacy. The point should be underscored, however, that a caste system exists and most of us lack validity in any criticism of our religious leaders. We are not all equal. Only the ones at the top really count. And this should be hammered home into their tinny thin little skulls.
I agree we have to point the finger at everything in modern society today. And what is its origin? 1789, and before that, a gradual process of liberalization which Christianity did not stop.
If I were to accept Christianity, it would have to be Pagan, which is to say, adding Satan to the pantheon. Evil and good together are necessary. Evil is horrible and stupid, in one view (see the other thread), but it is also what enables variability. Nothing gold can stay. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.