For me, Nietzsche is "the Last Christian", and every professed Christian who comes after him must first answer his critique. It is deeply humiliating as a Christian to recognise the power of his argument that ours is a slave religion and (worse) perhaps a slave morality. The deepest in faith would perhaps accept this and not be shamed by it, but not the laity. Nietzsche recognised that the brave spirit of the West had other sources, despite the attempts of elite ideology over hundreds of years to join together these strange bedfellows. Nietzsche is also the Last Christian because he stands at the end of moral time, at the abyss. He saw centuries ahead of his time and predicted the moral arc perfectly. Those who hate him from ignorance hear "God is Dead" as a shout of triumph, but (in my view anyway) it's really a scream of despair. But a prophet is always without honour, not least when he's painfully correct.
What an excellent formulation. The Last Christian, indeed. Though of course the man himself said that there had been only one true Christian, that being Christ … whom he greatly admired.
Very true. And apologies for echoing almost your exact interpretation of "God is dead" without crediting it. My only excuse is our minds move in the same track on this point.
Imagine being so stupid as to write an article on Nietzsche and not have the basic decency to point out that Zarathustra is in CONSTANT DIALOGUE with the JESUS of the NEW TESTAMENT, revealing you know nothing of the actual content of the book!
Congratulations, you have concocted an article at great length and also missed the most important part of Nietzsche's writings entirely.
Don't you think that sometimes it's better to just stay silent than reveal your great ignorance? The New Testament is the MOST REFERENCED text in his book. What a massive oversight on your part, and yet the stupid people of substack love it!
Congratulations, you are the great feeder of the ignorant masses.
You should not be humiliated by worshipping a God who taught us that to serve others is our highest purpose.
The alternative is serving oneself - that is the master morality if you like - and it is Satan's creed. Libido dominandi - and it leads nowhere good - neither for the master himself, nor for the men he masters.
the rules of hospitality exist in almost all ancient cultures. also, there were words, meaning "wealth sickness" for such deranged people. The ancient story of the Midas touch , and others suggest to me, that, serving others is part of humanity in all faiths. it depends on Whom you are serving, and this, can get pretty twisted. the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. how do christians prevent themselves from being politically weaponized again? like in the crusades, the inquisition, witch trials?
A fabulous feature of the book Creating Christ (leaving aside the theory of the Roman invention of Christianity) is a chapter documenting that contrary to Christian ideologists (and, perversely, Nietzscheans), the Romans did not need a Jewish cult to "teach" them compassion, which -- clementia -- was already recognized as a virtue. Indeed, the emperors were keen to portray themselves on coins etc. as acting compassionately. You could say this was hypocritical. but hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, as they say: it shows what the emperor's thought would be approved of. Most notably, Julius was famed for his clemency, which brought defeated foes into his coalition and added to his power and popularity. Hmmm, was this the origin of the other JC?
the 4 cardinal virtues of ancient rome (the virtues on which all other virtues are built) were temperance, courage, prudence and judgement. some of these words have fallen so far out of usage as to be unfamiliar. they do require a deeper understanding of the self to operate. "know thyself" above the temple of Apollo. to be Intemperate, would be uncivilized and definitely unfit to rule. One must be able to rule the self ,First before ruling others. So, in that sense i think the old faiths , at least demanded the appearance of self mastery. temperance might today be described as compassion. though that is more superficial way to describe it. appropriate treatment of each individual.
yes, i see compassion as very included in temperance, moderation of how your treat different people which includes compassion, since it is the one you really need to be emotionally mature to express. 2 year olds are not the best at compassion always.
Yes, words like guest and host have ancient and powerful roots. You are right Artemis. Pagans should not be grouped in with vitalists. Folkish is more ancient than that.
They're certainly distinct, yet the vitalist spirit is in many ways a reawakening of certain types of paganism … arguably, the deepest of the Aryan strains, which gave birth to most of Europe’s indigenous faiths, especially the Hellenistic variety.
I do think vitalism draws from folkism, but I view it only as a furthering of Western esoteric thought. It reminds me of the traditionalists like Guenon or even Evola, but instead of focusing on religion they focus on lifestyle. This difference between pagans and vitalists is as vast as that between Christians and vitalists - pagans have various views on the divine which ultimately go beyond what I've seen any vitalist writer or stacker try to cover. Divinity and hierophany are important aspects of religion, but they can remain cerebral in an esoteric school, which I think vitalism is in a way.
I think there is crossover obviously between paganism and vitalism, but I really do think vitalists are just inspired by pagan myth and ethics.
By studying the bible with an emphasis on Christ's teachings and then sticking to what you learn.
It's not a lost cause but sometimes it seems that way.
One thing which is a nice long step towards weaponization which nearly all Christians in America do is worship the flag. I'm pretty sure the flag is as false an idol as ever there was. Good luck trying to get American Christians to listen to you though.
PS - you mean like in the crusades, the inquisition (although it's not clear to me that Jesuits are truly Christians), witch trials, and the current US "modern crusade"?
yes. and i do not accept the no true scottsman fallacy of "not real Christians" . there are at least 500 different denominations, so that will never be settled. recall how long the Catholics and the protestants went at each other in Ireland. not at all a peaceful religion, because of its warlike exclusivity and apocalyptic needs for a scapegoat. it will never make a stable and just society. it is a colonizer of the minds of humanity, that is what it does very, very well.
I understand the concept of different denominations of Christian faith.
However it is possible that the society of Jesus is an occult society which has infiltrated the church and actually - at the higher levels - knowingly worships Lucifer. And when an Irishman dons a kilt, fakes a Scottish accent, infiltrates a drinking den while sipping entirely the wrong type of whiskey and sports underwear where there should be none - then one can legitimately claim that he is no true Scotsman and it is not a fallacy to do so.
I would also question whether you can attribute sectarian violence in Ireland to "Christianity" for at least two reasons:
(1) It is entirely possible that Christianity was what kept the island as peaceful as it was - and that without Christianity things would have been much bloodier. See Gaza for an example.
(2) The struggle in Ireland was primarily a sectarian struggle between two different ethnic groups. The two ethnic groups happened to follow different denominations of Christianity - and therefore fastened on that as a way of measuring who was on which side - but I doubt anything would have been any different if Britain, and therefore the conquering folk had remained Catholic. They still would have been oppressive conquerors and the (justified) grievances would have been the same.
The inquisition is also interesting because one could argue that for such an "ideological cleansing" remarkably few people died - about 3,000 were killed over several decades - far fewer than are murdered in a typical American big city over the same period. Perhaps Christianity acts as a brake on misbehaving rulers and leaders - resulting in fewer deaths when things do go wrong than in a religion/culture which does not so sternly condemn violence and killing.
well, it was not the first clash between sects. i was thinking of a more inclusive approach. because being exclusive always Always causes conflict, because it is a form of not sharing. And sharing is an essential part of humanity. https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
A hypothetical example would be there’s a mine of rare minerals in some sh*t hole & the local tribes there just go around hacking each other with machetes over jiu-jiu magic.
Instead of paying them for their “property” which is under the ground where they accidentally live, might be better to just go take it & push them aside. To them we’re just another tribe with better machetes. If the benefits are worth the costs I would be willing to. Might even be worth it for the adventure itself.
If we use the minerals to create a beautiful future cool, but I’m not trying to secure anything by conquest much less trade on behalf of fat slobs who watch porn all day. Maybe they should go fight with machetes themselves for that.
Why do we have “free markets” for shitty life choices but not free markets for war? Slobs can’t defend themselves as individuals, much less as nations.
The world I want is worth fighting for, others not so much.
Perhaps an alternative is for the master to serve God or a higher purpose of some form, thereby aligning the purposes of the (Christian) slaves with the purposes of the master who becomes a slave to God. Just spitballing here… perhaps this arrangement worked out well some time in the past. The battle between church and state (monarchs) seemed to oscillate back and forth from one side of the tug of war gaining too much power then the other taking it back, perhaps with periods of balance between times of conflict.
Maybe you should be, tho. The Christian God I know taught me that my highest purpose is to be united with him in eternity. The two of us get united bodily once per week, a foretaste of our eventual union.
To me this is just babble word salad. Though poetic, sounds exactly like self serving narcissism. “I care so much about other people it’s me who gets to go to heaven”.
In the end anyone who wants eternal salvation by servicing others, is just being selfish, but worse pretending not to.
I want a better world for my children & my people. Africa can starve to death I will not adopt their orphans. 🤣
Unfortunately, I can't respond to you while what I wrote is a babble word salad to you. We're not talking the same language while that's the case, we can't communicate on this topic.
Yea “united with him in eternity” isn’t saying anything at all a pragmatic person can understand. I appreciate you acknowledging that. Sounds nice though!
> Folkish paganism is traditional paganism as outlined by historical studies.
So are you the guys who reject the entire Axial Age and insist that, e.g., Thor is a literal dude in the sky with a literal hammer that makes lightning?
But is the premise that Christianity is a slave morality really unassailable? The early church was clearly a mixed group of considerable diversity; rich and poor, slave and free, Jew and Greek, male and female. If the premise falls, what is left of the argument and why must I answer it?
I agree completely that the proclamation of God's death is a cry of despair. "Without God, all things are permissible" and Nietzsche seemed to have no illusion of the hellscape to which that would lead.
That's an excellent question. I'd say that N’s conception of Christianity as embodying slave morality goes beyond the identities of its early constituents, and extends to the imagery and goal-orientation of the faith as well.
Considering imagery, the body of Christ often refers to itself as a flock of sheep. This is a far cry from the metaphor that prevailed on the steppe, which was as a pack of wolves, the identity of which the Proto-Indo-Europeans adopted during their koryos for thousands of years. I think that captures something fundamental about N’s distinction.
Regarding the sectors of society from which early Christians were drawn, it's certainly true that they drew from all of them. However, not all cults in that time were so open. Mithras, for example, was a very popular god indeed, particularly with legionaries. I do not think there were any slaves at all amongst those admitted to the brotherhood of the Mithraic grottos; nor I believe were there any women. Seen from this perspective, the fact that Christianity admitted slaves (and women) to its rites at all, let alone with the status of spiritual equals, may be the significant fact.
Not that the church was unique in allowing the low to participate, far from it; slaves too need religions, always have, and always will. All humans do.
I wonder if N spent more time observing the students and not enough time studying the Master. The students can be quite disappointing, speaking for myself, of course.
It is certainly true that one can draw almost any conclusion about Christianity by studying any given group of followers or "followers" and come to conclusions diametrically opposed to the Teachings.
Of course there are many rabbit trails leading from that statement, including what is translated slave in many verses. The word servant is quite often used and as Jesus demonstrated is more to the point. He was no slave, he was the King of Heaven and yet took on the role of servant. He taught his followers that they were coheirs with him of all that the Father had given him and yet were to consider themselves servants to the very least of their fellow humans because of the status as kings.
One may accept the teachings as Truth or reject them, but to confuse what Christians have done with what they are called to do is an avoidable error on anyone's part.
It seems, if one meets a seeming paradox, one should seek to understand. Perhaps N was not in a state of mind to do so, and your exposition may help us understand the man at his best and worse. For that I am grateful. I wonder that N did not have a more clear understanding of this having been raised in religion. Did he raise up a straw man rather than a superman?
"He taught his followers that they were coheirs with him of all that the Father had given him and yet were to consider themselves servants to the very least of their fellow humans because of the status as kings."
The problem is that A) this is completely unworkable outside of tiny homogeneous communities of high-trust people, which this attitude actively works to destroy and B) this in practice leads to ethno-masochism supporting infinity immigrants from everything because look at all those poor starving brown people.
I don’t know what "tiny" means but I agree that Christianity is meant to be lived in community. It was never intended, and is not, a state religion. Christians are called to live facing the larger world and to live in that larger world with the same ethic they live within their community, subject to wisdom and prudence. Your point B has nothing to do with Christianity. That people, well intentioned or not, misunderstand or misuse a religion or philosophy is no commentary on that religion or philosophy.
That's hilarious. So you openly admit that your conception of the religion doesn't actually have any solutions besides "hope they don't kill us" and it is, literally, a slave's morality.
Yes it is. Hell, even Jesus said "by their fruits you shall know them", ie. results matter.
The OP insists that "In and of themselves neither [master nor slave morality] are good or bad" when called on about the fact the Nietzsche much more resembles a slave then a master. However, then they proceed to act as if Master morality is good and Slave morality is bad.
After spending the entire article talking about "master and slave morality" the article says:
> But I do not think that the answer is as simple as returning to the bosom of the holy mother church, either. The historiographical, archaeological, textual, geological, and astronomical discoveries of the scientific age that shattered Nietzsche’s faith, and the simple faith of so many others, cannot be undone ... not without the species giving itself a self-inflicted lobotomy. What has been learned cannot unlearned; what has been seen cannot be unseen. Naive innocence cannot be regained merely by wishing it so.
Notice that the above reason has nothing to do with master and slave morality, and the above problem is in fact worse for the "Master" Pagan religions. Christianity is probably reconcilable with science. No one is going to take the "Thor's hammer" theory of lightning seriously.
When asked to rebut the specific points of Nietzsche that you had dismissed, you instead deflect to attacking this specific John Carter essay and nebulous "Nietzscheans".
lightening is just a symbol of electricity. you know thor has 2 iron gloves ( + and - ?) that must be used to harness this hammer, and a belt called ground, or earth "gerd" ? even more recent tales like jack and the beanstalk, and Paul Bunyan are just coded language for real things. If you know how to look. None of our ancestors were ignorant savages, i think.
According to a Nietzschean Will to Power isn't Bruce "Caitlyn" Jenner the ultimate Ubermensch, the triumph of will over biology itself?
You may object that desiring to change gender is not a suitably "noble" pursuit, but why are you more entitled then a Gold Medal Olympian to determine what's noble?
> It is deeply humiliating as a Christian to recognise the power of his argument that ours is a slave religion and (worse) perhaps a slave morality.
Just how the fuck can it be a slave religion if you're *literally commanded upon pain of Hell* to live like a master one day per week?!? That's what Sunday is. It's practice for the time in Heaven when you'll be sitting on the THRONE OF GOD together with GOD ALLMIGHTY and rulling the Universe.
You're commanded to kneel - that's not living like a master that's practicing being a good little slave.
Christian Heaven is basically eternal slavery - you spend all day every day singing God's praises - joining the choir of angels is in no way a form of mastery.
Ah! This is finally the moment when I can talk about that little bit of Protestant ignorance. :)
> you spend all day every day singing God's praises
As a Catholic, I have not really seen or heard that many depictions of Heaven. After all, writers of the Bible consistently state that what comes after is outside current human comprehension. The prayers at Mass reinforce this idea, with the priest praying stuff like "let us receive in open what we today only receive in mystery". The witness of saints, particularly visions of Heaven, tend to be likewise devoid of detail. There's plenty of speculation, though, but only a few hard facts.
Now, this idea of Heaven as praising God probably comes from that quote I can't find now that basically says "what God wants for you is to praise him". And then that spiraled out of control, giving people like Mark Twain ample room to point out the idiocy of the concept - and in so doing attack the entire edifice.
But the fact is just that Gods wants us to praise him. No qualifier. And another fact is that God is just, without injustice. Query: is it just to praise somebody who didn't really do all that much for you? After all, if Jesus "died for us" but that only got us constant singing - yelling - for all eternity, there isn't too much good to be had, is there? So, in general, we can say that unconditionally praising God, without having a particular justification for it, is unjust. Yet God is not unjust and would never accept unjust praise.
If God doesn't accept unjust praise, and if people praise God in Heaven, it can only follow the praise given is just. And further, since Heaven is normally understood to be perfection, we can surmise the praise offered God is perfect - meaning spontaneous.
Pulling it all together, Heaven is so good is elicits a spontaneous praise for God.
Further evidence for this comes from base Catholic doctrine, which says God created the world so the world would know of his glory. God's glory isn't increased by creating the world, instead it's made knowable.
> You're commanded to kneel
I'm also pursued by God for a union, alike to the union of a man and woman in sex. That's not my imagination, that's the teaching of Catholic Church: Christ and Church are alike husband and wife (Ephesians 5:32). Furthermore, that's the entire purpose and point of Eucharist. So, given that, am I really commanded to kneel, or is your assesment missing important bits?
This is straight copium. If I'm the master in heaven, then who exactly spends eternity singing MY praises?
You're justifying the ostensibly divine wisdom in heaven being a form of voluntary slavery, while trying to pass it off as mastery and hoping nobody notices the bait and switch.
You misunderstand the meaning of mastery. To be master is not to be praised, it's to have your will be done. And if Revelation says "I will give the victor the right to sit with me on my throne, as I myself first won the victory and sit with my Father on his throne." (Rev 3:21), then I don't see how you can deny your will be done in Heaven.
Aha! But you have an opening! What if your will conflicts with some other will! AHA!
Well, then the judges come in. Matthew 19:28, although I admit Jesus might have meant something else. At any rate: this objection I raised applies anyway, to any situation where there are two or more masters (really, when there are two or more wills), which is percisely the situation that would exist if the world were populated by ubermensch. And if you say "only the guy at the top is master, all other are slaves", then you'll be a slave forever either way since I can not in any way envision you as being on the top of any pyramid - except the one you imagine in your head - so you might as well drop the objection you hypothetically would be holding. :)
And yet it's still somebody else's throne. What you're describing is more like a dad allowing his kid to sit behind the steering wheel with the engine off and pretend to drive while making vroom vroom noises.
Notice revelation says "my throne" and "his throne" but never "our throne" and certainly not "your throne".
Our ancestors did what they had to do to survive, so we could be here, and for this i am thankful. there is no shame in survival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53PDO7OQSTs
Hmmm. One of the central issues here is the utter lack of humility evinced by “secularists,” “modernists” .. People, like Nietzsche, who believe that “Darwin (science) has falsified the creation account in Genesis..” People whose minds and souls have been eaten away by rationalistic reductivism, crude empiricism, who think that debauched sybarite Hume was a genius.
The power of Christianity lies in paradox. You touch on the essence of the issue here: Nietzsche condemned the humility of God as “slave morality.” Calling poor Fred a gamma is precisely right, because his ethical imagination is basically that of an alienated teenaged boy raging against the social hierarchy of secondary school- it’s all about Apollonian beauty/power and Dionysian poetic hedonism for him, and he is using the exquisite intellectual power that he has (“I am so clever..”) to create and reinforce his own standing within that milieu. It’s all completely superficial, ultimately vapid, meaningless and stupid, and poor Fred knew it, which is definitely one of the reasons why he lost his mind in the end.
There is no such thing as an übermensch apart from Jesus Christ. No one else has ever claimed to be able to redeem us each, as an individual person, from death.. All the pagan titans, gods, heroes are tawdry simulacra of his manifestation of divinity in history. All of us, even the strongest, most beautiful, most intelligent, will decay, become stupid, weak, ugly, then die. Every trace of our existence will ultimately fade into the entropic penumbra of quantum death. There is no possible hope of individual transcendence of this howling void, no matter how valiantly we struggle against it.. We are each apportioned 120 years, no more.. Then..
What? What hope do we have? Is there any hope for the neuro atypical kid being bullied in the play ground? The Chinese worker drone being slaved to death 12 hours a day in that sweatshop? The addict derelict on the street, enslaved by his endocrine response?
The Nietzschean will sneer at these slaves with contempt. As his own paltry strength entropically fades, as he also withers away in time.
But maybe Christ’s inversion of worldly power is, in fact, real. Maybe the cruelty of this world is the true illusion. Maybe justice and mercy will in fact reign. May the infinite power of God is in the full service of goodness, joy, beauty and truth, and all of this not merely in the end.. But now, right now, amongst us here, today. Maybe willing the good of (loving) your enemies is the best and most effective way of defeating them, because maybe by willing the good of your enemies you might covert them to being your friends.. And maybe if this divine love we are called to show even the most recalcitrantly wicked is emphatically rejected, our love in the face of their evil might both sanctify us, as well as those who witness it, both now and in the end..
Maybe power and beauty are not truly material at all, and maybe Apollonian aesthetics are superficial; maybe Dionysian raptures are all ultimately vapid.. Maybe true beauty is transcendent, maybe the only true happiness is in the joy of self sacrifice, the emptying of oneself into the flame of eternal love..
Is there anything more 'vital' than defeating death itself? Any will more powerful than subjugating yourself into a sacrifice for all mankind, even though you could kill all your enemies with a snap of your fingers? I understand that Nietzche saw a decline, and his diagnosis was painfully accurate, however, he got christian morality all wrong. Christ is the ultimate man. "The first man, Adam, was created a living being; but the last Adam is the life-giving Spirit." Thanks to him we are not bound as animals by the infra-rational, nor made hopeless by the rational.
Vitalism measures vital ness by only human standards. What standards judge the maker of reality? He does what he does, and what he says is, is, without emotional affect.
Human standards are not divinely inspired? Are you sure? It seems to me that being expresses in itself inherent standards. It seems to me there is, contra nihilists, a Will expressed within Being, Nature. It seems to me, for example, that there is a universal morality expressed in comedy..
Citing Don Quixote, upon his ass: “I shall not consider such a mount a dishonor, because I remember reading that when Silenus, the good old tutor and teacher of the merry god of laughter, entered the city of one hundred gates, he rode very happily mounted on a beautiful jackass.”
Sorry. That was glib, but you must have sensed it coming. Forgive me, permit me being a bit dogmatic, here, in definition of terms:
What is Love? Love is Will in affirmation of, congruance with Being. When we say “God is Love” this is what we are intimating: Creation is personal, and the Creator creates and sustains, affirms us in our personhood.. When we love, we affirm our and the other’s personhood, personhood being iconographic of divinity.
(An aside, here: note that the act of creation differs from subsistence only as the first leap of the fountain differs from the leap’s continuance. When we love, we participate in subsistence. This means for example that love is “procreative” and sexually fecund, while evil is sexually sterile.)
In this ontological sense “evil” is desire in negation of Being.. It is will “incurvatus in se,” solipsism of self deification, idolatry, a denial of the source of our being, denial of other people’s personhood iconic of that divinity.
Love is in existential terms the negation of willed evil, the ultimate disruption of mimetic hatred and violence. This is the ontological meaning of the Cross, the Crucifixion: “There is no greater love than to lay one’s life down for one’s friends.” And, “he loved us, when we were still in our sins.”
I’ve been thinking about your comment, Anonymous. I’m wondering if you are Muslim, because you seem to be verging on pure voluntarism here.. I’m a Catholic, I don’t think you can parse Act from Will, or Will from Nature. Act, Will and Nature are triune unity, expressing Being.
Concerning God’s “affect,” I think you are essentially right in a sense, but essentially wrong in another. The pith of being is in serenity. Serenity is its own sort of pure affect: Affectless Essential Affect, if you will, “All things being reconciled within Himself..” But being, all things manifested in time in multiplicity are a tragic comedy, full of dramatic resonance, and thus emotion.
The Bible is in my reading incessant tragedy culminating in pure comedy. The Biblical narrative, particularly the Gospels, seems to me to be very funny. So many unexpected things happen, there are subtle inversions atop of subtle inversion.. Just one example amongst many dozens, is how Christ enters Jerusalem mounted on a donkey. This is God mocking every conquerer in history. It’s very funny, if you think about it..
"There is no such thing as an übermensch apart from Jesus Christ. No one else has ever claimed to be able to redeem us each, as an individual person, from death.. All the pagan titans, gods, heroes are tawdry simulacra of his manifestation of divinity in history."
This is, for anyone who knows anything at all about religions, ancient and modern, an utterly laughable claim. Immortality for believers is among the single most common inducements offered by religions of all ages, and to claim that no one else has ever alleged that as a reward is simply beyond parody.
“If Christianity at its core is slave morality redeemed, then what is master morality redeemed? Can we not draw upon both? One as armour and shield, the other as flaming sword?”
Christianity was one of many Cults until Constantine has his soldiers paint it’s symbol on their shields with the words “In this sign be victorious.” It was probably a Fish symbol not the Cross and he won the battle of Milvan Bridge, killing the rival Emperor and taking the throne. He then has a trembling Pope dragged from the Catacombs, expecting death the Pope instead is informed he is now an Official Religion, and that of the Emperor as well.
… the poor man dies of strain within the year.
Constantine then codified Christianity in 325 at the Nicene Council.
The next major step for Christians and Europe is the Coda of the social revolution in Europe begun by monks at Cluny when Pope Urban II declared Crusade in 1095, pronouncing that any man who dies on Crusade shall go to heaven… reversing the prior condition that killing in war was the sin of murder requiring penance.. DEUS VULT (God Wills It) and in 1099 this raggedy Army from a barbaric backwater conquers all in its path and Jerusalem.
We can go on.
Crusades? Conquistadors?
The European conquests of colonies? All quite Christian, all quite masculine and warlike.
The Problem.
Liberals from the 18th century at least are very anti-church, to say the least.
In the 20th century both Communism and Nazism are anti-Christian, Communists far more. Later we have feminism which un-mans all its victims, regardless of creed. Masculinity is a mortal sin under Feminism and Modern Liberalism.
We certainly have a problem, that Christianity which is a Chief target and victim of modern Progressive government is nonsense.
It’s fair to say that outside of the Latin countries it doesn’t defend itself, that it’s present leadership is utterly unequal to worldly tasks.
But it’s not the source of weakness. The plague is modernity, Christianity isn’t the cure… but it’s not the problem. The Cure is Warrior masculinity. That’s not coming from our utterly feminized Churches (or in the case of Catholicism - worse, and I am Catholic).
But Gibbon wrote Gibberish whenever the Church or the Orthodox are concerned, and Nietzsche simply is wrong on the historical record… but probably correct on what he saw.
Not a solution, but in a country that will not have Men as leaders… Americans… not the problem.
Our real slave morality is we’re law abiding.
And henpecked Cucks.
Women voting…
Women will never elect the Men we need, nor allow it…
There is a competitive principal that says to figure out what your opponent (or enemy) is trying to do, and to not let him do it (the Belichick principal). This principal can be applied to all sports and competitive games, including warfare. In this case, I understand that my enemy in this spiritual war wants to separate me from my faith. I look at the teaching of atheism as a warfare tactic. It's enemy propaganda designed to demoralize us. Our enemies understand that a warrior can't function without his whole soul. That's why our enemies want to pick our souls apart. They want to say that our anger is evil and our faith is naive and stupid. Nietzsche is a good example of a warrior who couldn't function without faith. No warrior can. (I don't hate atheists and I venerate the work of poet/historian Jennifer Michael Hecht, a flag-waving atheist and author of good books who is new on substack: https://jmh170.substack.com/ I find I have a lot in common with anyone antagonizing priestcraft and mind control.)
Christianity is a freedom religion. Jesus freed us from Satan's moral system. Satan, whose name means prosecutor, is our accuser, and Jesus is the advocate of humanity before the throne of God. We don't have to follow 591 commandments like the ancient Hebrews. We have to accept forgiveness and pass it on. We don't win by crushing our enemies. We win by flipping them. It makes perfect sense to me that Christianity developed as a Roman slave religion. It gave hope to the slaves. That's what Christianity does. It gives back faith, hope, and love to us slaves, and it causes us to become free men and women. Christianity results in free independent ethical thinkers and actors. It is an alternative to being in lock-step with the devil's corporatist social hierarchy, in which no one enjoys any autonomy of thought or action, but all are slaves.
But before one can understand what Christianity is, he first has to define priestcraft, and understand that the priests don't offer real Christianity. The priests are the enemies of humanity. The priests have nothing to offer but superstition and mind-control. The established church is a false husk that must be shed. The whole cloth of the priests has been woven to shroud the gospel in mystery. All that cloth is about to be purged away.
The anti-status and anti-hierarchy speech of Jesus also makes perfect sense to me. I believe Satan is the top of all hierarchies of men. The incomplete pyramid (on the dollar bill) represents human hierarchy and we know what the Eye above the pyramid represents. The bottom of the pyramid is the plane (or the square). If we don't participate in the hierarchies of men, we are on the plane and on the square. That is where a Christian should be. Personal holiness becomes its own status system (a way to elevate oneself above others) and I'm very suspicious of anyone who makes a pretense to holiness. Finally, I'm reminded that the Tao Te Ching (the way of water), is to flow to the lowest point and create a level plane. In section 38, Lao Tzu proves that humble station is the basis of honor. Both Jesus's and Lao Tzu's philosophies antagonize hierarchical status systems, and offer an alternative.
Neechee (spelled as pronounced) is the lord of schizoposting, the absolute king of sounding like a ranting, raving lunatic, raging against the dying of the light and the horrible world he discovered. While I didn't read him seriously because I have a policy of not taking philosophers seriously, I had fun with his aphorisms.
He was the proto-red/blackpill imo, who also gets interpreted as arrogant asshole, the same way that Epicurus is the proto-basement dweller, who also gets interpreted as a super hedonist when that's not the case.
He'd probably also have a doompill substack plus a YT channel in the vein of dbdr/Millennial Steam where he rants about his mom making him go to something or his sister dragging him to her little Nueve Germania meetings, and so on.
Do you think his anime pfp would be Guts? Revy from Black Lagoon? Probably had an Evangelion phase in his youth.
I'm agreeing with you so strongly, people are going to think we are the same person. You pick out the same flaw in Christianity as I do: Christian exceptionalism. Apparently that makes me a heretic just because some barely literate towel-wearing toadies of the emperor declared Christianity the Only Way and did some light edits on the Bible to support their point. It is such a stupid claim that you would have to be a craven idiot at a conference of dark age bishops to assert it. Christianity would greatly profit from jettisoning exclusivity. "Through the Son you shall come to Me" sounds like a great deal. "Only through the Son shall you come to Me" sounds like a threat and a shake down. This does not need to be the flaccid moral relativism of the current Vatican. It could be just a genuine appreciation of the many roads to faith that can be seen by anyone who is paying attention to the wider world. And to your point about vitalism - there actually is a strong current of vitalism within the faith. This could easily be brought to the fore.
Indeed, I don't think relativism is the answer. Christ and Satan are not the same figure. There are good paths and bad ones ... and more than one of either.
If good and evil exist, then we must learn to correctly distinguish between them and if Christ is the correct path then the only other paths we could follow to the same destination - rightness - would necessarily be teachers teaching the exact, same, identical message.
If Christ is the correct path and some other leader teaches something slightly different, then - to the extent that they differ - this other teacher is not teaching the correct path.
Now you might argue that some other teacher has a better message. But if that is true, then it implies that Christ is not the 100% correct path.
1. A saint is someone who tried to follow Christ's teaching as best they could, and - at least in the eyes of the church - came reasonably close. But no man, saint or otherwise, is without sin - and thus none of them can replace Christ as the example which must be followed because every one was flawed in some way even if only a small way. If I choose a saint and take him as my lodestar instead of Christ himself then I am further from the truth than if I took Christ as my lodestar. This does not mean that I cannot learn from a saint, or a priest, or anyone at all in fact, but Christ's teaching must be supreme (at least it must be if one accepts (a) good and evil are absolutes, and (b) Christ is a true teacher).
2. Path in this context is not about every single event in one's life, the people one met, the places one visited and so on. Path in this context is about the ability to correctly distinguish between good and evil. Christ himself, were he born in a different time and place, been surrounded by different people, and encountered different conditions, would not have lived an identical life to the one he did. Even his teachings might have differed in form - but - and this is the important part - they would not have differed in substance. The essence of his message would have been the same - identical - because he is teaching us eternal and unchanging truths.
I believe in good and evil being inflexible and unchanging, but also particular. Different tribes of men and different archetypes of man have different evils. The idea of one transcendent book of good and evil that everyone must read to the expense of all others smells wrong. It is also suspicious within its own mythos, resembling the Tower of Babel story.
1. How can good and evil be inflexible and unchanging but different based on which particular group of people you are sitting down with? Aren't you having your cake and eating it too?
2. I also don't see the parallel with the tower of Babel. I have always interpreted that as an illustration/teaching regarding the evil of centralized power - so an example of something which is evil. How is that similar to the concept that good and evil are absolute and unchanging?
If we wished to reach the summit of a mountain, then there is of course more than one way to get there, and two guides might well suggest a different path.
But when talking about a religious teacher's teachings, my view is that the teachings describe not just the journey (in fact this is almost incidental) - but that they define the destination itself. And thus if a different leader defines the destination differently (i.e. defines good and evil differently) then you will not end up in the same place. You will end up somewhere else. And if good and evil are absolutes, as I believe, then that other place cannot be the correct one - since moral absolutism implies that there is only one correct destination.
To the extent that a religious teacher teaches techniques as opposed to teaching what is good and what is evil then I would agree that there can be more than one path - so for example if one teacher suggests praying at noon, and another says pray at 1pm then they can both be correct, or at least both might provide a path to the same destination. But if one says "pray for your enemies to be cast down and destroyed", and another says "pray for your enemies' souls that they repent and find salvation" then they cannot both be valid.
There is no necessary connection between jettisoning exclusivity and degenerating into relativism and idolatry. It takes wilful blindness and prejudice not to see there are people of God in other religions.
The jettisoning of exclusivity is a necessary, possibly not sufficient, step for degenerating into relativism and idolatry. Where else would the different ideas, to be relativized into, come from? If your space does not actively exclude those systems who would take over for themselves then it will eventually be taken over.
Examples: Phenomenologically this is seen over and over. It's opening up hobby spaces to LGBTQ+ that leads to the major creative rot we see in comics and movies today. There's opening up military positions to politicians who have never served which happens on and off throughout history. Corporations allowing non-corporate woke fanatics into HR. Bad money going into currency systems driving out good. Allowing foreigners into seats of power that has led to the other borderless rot we see today. Communists and other such agents taking over governmental systems that cast off the McCarthy style exclusion. Or the foreign born lockstep voting blocks taking over from more egalitarian groups. Even in the old testament it was opening up the temples to other gods that led to major idolatry and degeneration of Solomon's kingdom.
This is practically a tautology. When you aren't exclusive you are inclusive. There are belief systems which spend more time taking over systems that don't actively resist them. It's the same problem as psychopathic narcissistic politicians. If you have a seat of power or resources in an open system they will go to people who spend the most time taking seats of power or resources, not the people who would best maintain the group's mission.
The later statement about 'people of God in other religions' has nothing to do with any particular system degenerating into relativism and idolatry. One might as well say that opening up USA voting to every person in the world is ok for sustaining the USA system because there are individuals in China who think like US citizens. It observably doesn't work out.
Examples of exclusive systems that do a half decent job of maintaining themselves and their missions: Mormons, Amish, Nintendo, Brain surgeons, electricians.
Examples of once-exclusive systems that are observably degenerating due to jettisoning exclusivity: Lower level medical practice (lowered bar for test entry), airplane pilots, D&D/Wizards of the Coast, history scholars, gendered sports leagues.
Even the humble cell must be exclusive, strictly controlling what passes through its cellular membrane. This is a principle of nature. Understood through this lens, “inclusion” has a nakedly destructive intent.
Yet, the cell membrane must be permeable. It is not a matter of an impassable wall, but of strictly regulating what enters according to what is healthy for the organism.
I disagree with this - not least because it embodies the reductio ad absurdum fallacy.
1. God - at least the Christian God - defines good and evil.
2. Accepting a different definition of good and evil, or that someone who believes in a different definition of good and evil is a "person of God" (as opposed to just a person of generally good character) requires abandoning the teachings of one's own God.
3. Once one has abandoned the teachings of one's own God, one is no longer a person of God.
4. Therefore a person of God cannot possibly see that there are people of God within other religions, because doing so implies that they are no longer a person of God themselves.
It is possible to accept that - to the extent other religions hold similar values (and there is considerable overlap) - a person in another religion can be a good person by anyone's definition. But even in such a case the person will have some values/aims/aspirations which are evil according to the person of God.
For example a Moslem, if he is a true Moslem - i.e. a person of God within his religion - must hold to the idea that he should kill infidels who refuse to convert. Such a Moslem may hold values, and exhibit behavior, in other areas of his life which appear good to a Christian. He may be honest, charitable, a good father and husband etc. Nevertheless his belief in slaughtering infidels means that he cannot be "a person of God" as far as a Christian is concerned. And if the Moslem does not believe in slaughtering infidels then of course he is not a "person of God" within his own religion.
None of this means that we shouldn't all try to get along. And of course we should look for and find the good in others. And no-one of any religion has the right to impose their views by force - Christ did not teach this, and to the (in many cases significant) extent that his followers have done so, they have sinned.
Then you need some criterion for determining which others to include. And you also have to make sure that whoever you allow in doesn't open the door to things you would have excluded.
"Only through the Son shall you come to Me" doesn't sound like a shakedown to me. It's advice. It only turns into a shakedown when accompanied by a demand for cash :-).
Well, they contradict each other. Each will teach some set of propositions that it says are essential. And no two religions will agree on these propositions. In the simplest case, there will be a question of who is worthy of worship, how many gods there are.
And if it can be shown that two religions exactly match each other in all essential propositions, than I'd say they are the same religion. If you can't tell two religions apart, then they are the same religion.
Possibly yes, but contradiction in proposed truths when said truth is faith-based and not based in empirical experience does not create real conflict, only a created conflict which is therefore resolvable if the will to resovle it is there.
I don't mean it the way people do when they say all religions try to approach the divine via different paths, as that is just another way of saying there's only one divine (i.e. a Platonic ideal) - I really do mean that it is fully possible to accept the fable out of Genesis as being true while at the same time accepting the world being wrought from the body of Ymer, or that the lands beyond the sunset is where the soul travels after being weighed in the scales of balance - all at the same time.
Because to a christian, Genesis is true. To someone worshipping Osiris and the rest of that pantheon, the Book of the Dead is true. To someone marking a tree-stump with the sign of Ull, he is true.
To me, there's no contradiction in that.
All true, not despite contradicting or contending each other but rather true because they contend and contradict.
As for matching propositions, that is a quite probably very perilous path if one is of a monolithic and monotheistic faith-tradition, since there are several such ones. Indeed, it would be to admit that (f.e) judaism, christianity and islam are the same religion.
It opens the door for reductionist and relativist arguements of the campus atheist-variety: "See? They have X no. of things in common, therefore they are the same thing".
(Not saying that is what you're saying, just pointing out that risk (which is the same risk as when - as was my old field - analysing, debating and teaching (about) ideologies, ideas and indeed also faiths when viewed as systems of values and mores.)
Basically, I'm of a "live and let live"-opinion. Provided there's no coercion, no violence done unto others for saying "No thanks, it's not for me".
Well, adherence to a religion not out of free will but out of coercion is not true adherence to religion. Therefore all who would coerce people to their religion are defeating themselves by doing so.
> contradiction in proposed truths when said truth is faith-based and not based in empirical experience does not create real conflict
This is, I think, the core of the matter. In my view, there is only one objective reality outside my mind.I clearly have only one conscious mind, and therefore there can only be *one* reality outside it. I don't know this reality fully, but I can gain definitive knowledge of at least some of it. For example, right now I'm definitively "sitting", whatever the metaphysical reality of "sitting" is. If my knowledge about this external reality is self-contradictory, then I'm not doing a good enough job learning about this objective external reality. I need to try harder.
So, when I approach the matter of religions, with that view, I will naturally assume there IS something out there. Some sort of an ultimate truth is out there. It might even be that that truth is "we can't know anything on the matter definitively", which just proves Agnosticism true. On the basis of all this, I'm opposed to the idea religious truths are faith-based and not empirically-based. In my view, a faith-based truth is not a truth. It's faith, or "myth" or a fable or something. But it isn't an objective truth about the external reality, and can't be treated the same way as those.
Let me attempt to offer a one more argument for the notion religious truths ought not to be faith-based, but empirically-based.
Start with the idea there is an objective reality outside the mind. A little proof for that: I definitively percieve things. Yet, I don't myself decide on all things I percieve. Therefore, there is something outside my mind that constrains my perceptions, therefore there is something outside my mind. We relate to items in this objective reality. Religion, as human endeavor, ultimately is concerned with our relation with divine. So religion fits into the mould of relating to objective things outside our minds. It's not special. Now, we usually have this separation of "real things" and unreal things. Some of the things our minds perceive in the outside world are "real" which normally means the relations with those things are important. Some of the things our minds perceive are "not real" which normally means those things don't actually exist in the external reality, we just think they do. And so the relations with those things don't actually exist, and aren't important. In *general*, empirical observations are understood to correspond to real things, things that definitively exist, and are therefore important. Now religion, it being the relation of the human with divine, is important. Because it's important, according to my previous exposition, it *should* be relating to things that are real, meaning it should be corresponding to empirical observations.
That probably could have been written better. A crass summary would be: "if religion is based on faith and not on empiricism, why should I care?" :)
> As for matching propositions, that is a quite probably very perilous path (...)
Well, the three religions you listed obviously aren't the same because they have different propositions regarding Jesus of Nazareth. xD Christianity in particular considers it's propositions regarding Jesus to be *essential*, and since neither of the other two holds the same propositions regarding Jesus, they aren't the same religion. xD Similar with modern Judaism and Islam - they differ in at least one proposition at least one of them considers essential. For example, was Muhammad a prophet of God?
For two religions to be considered "the same religion", they would need to match 100% on all propositions either of them considers essential, and there must not be a mismatch of essential propositions (one cosiders X essential, the other one not). Well, I suppose you could also constraints about continuty and similar, but this business with propositions is necessary.
HOWEVER, now that you broached the topic, an interesting point is that, according to the official understanding of the Catholic Church, Christian God and Allah are one and the same. xD That's because Islamic understanding of Allah matches what Catholic Church thinks people would think of Christian God if they only had the light of their reason to guide them. :) The essential propositions all match, the only exception are things about the Trinity, but that can only be known if God tells you about it therefore Muslims are excused from knowing it.
They don't "all contradict each other". That's a very parochial view. Only the naively exclusionist religions - Christianity foremost amongst them - contradict each other. Most are happy to coexist.
Untrue. Multiple exceptionalist religions can't logically be correct. But there is no good reason for Christianity to have contorted itself into an exceptionalist religion. The bad reasons for why it happened are related to politics and power, not faith. It's pretty clear from the textual and historical record that Christianity was edited in this direction to serve the power of emperors, popes, bishops and heterodoxy.
Irrelevant. "Other religions can also be true" is just another proposition the religion offers. Some religions hold that proposition true, others don't. The argument I gave still holds - it can't be that both of those kinds of religions are true.
Some people belive all people can get along, other people belive only some people can get along. Even though one of these groups of people can envision itself living with the other group, they can't both be right.
Yet even if a religion holds that other religions can also be true, it doesn't yet mean that proposion is true. After all, the essential part of every religion is worship, and religion needs to figure out who is to be worshiped, and in which way. Are blood sacrifices necessary, or not? Odin or Osiris? One god or many?
You'd have to refocus on the Icons, i think. In stead of a guy being tortured to death, maybe mary and the baby jesus. there are so many dark emotional conflicts in this faith, that i do not think it will ever be free of political usage. total denial of a proper male archetype for one thing. fatherhood being exclusive to the church itself. very unhealthy.
the biological function of males is not expressed. he did not have a biological family and protect them. if all men acted exactly as he did, humanity would be ended in that generation. no one would ever be protected in real life. he would allow himself to be betrayed and martyred, or eaten, like the martyrs of old supposedly did. he died for sins. but did not speak truth to power. did not stand for justice in this world. people are free to commit all manner of evil, as long as they believe at the end, it's ok. so no justice at all in This life. no protection in this life. why live at all if that is what the world will look like? it is reflected in every religious institution having child molesters in their ranks and Not stopping them, but protecting them. how much prayer dollars go to payouts that are not even contested (because they were even known at the time) will never be revealed.
Excellent piece, have you read "Selective Breeding and The Birth of Philosophy"?
This summarizes the entire struggle of the "Religious Right", and it's one I've been on about for weeks now. The world isn't getting more atheistic, in fact it's getting less atheistic, but it's getting less Christian simultaneously.
I haven't, but it's on my list. From my understanding of Alamariu’s thesis, it matches intuitions of my own regarding the extremely deep roots of eugenics in our culture, though his tying that thread to the birth of the idea of Nature itself is a stroke of genius.
I think the diagnosis that Christianity is a slave morality is a half-truth, it’s also a master morality. A king’s power comes from his subjects, Genghis Khan didnt conquer all that territory by himself, of course, so the recognition that the masters are, in their own way, slaves seems to be something overlooked. Power isn’t found at the top of the pyramid, but throughout it, and the tip is far more reliant on the base than the base is of the tip.
Slave morality redeemed IS master morality redeemed. The redemption of ‘both’ is dispelling the illusion that they are separate.
I'm not really sure about this. Slave and master morality are not the same thing at all. Which isn't to say that masters might not pretend to be slaves ... Which is their contemporary preference.
That’s not really a counter argument to “there is no such thing as master morality and so calling it slave morality is silly, it’s just morality”. Saying “they’re not the same thing” and then offering no examples on how they differ is weak.
You didn’t invent the device you’re using to type, you didn’t make the clothes you’re wearing, you didn’t make the food you last ate and even if you hunted it yourself and made the weapon you used yourself you didn’t make the animal you hunted or the materials you used to make the weapon.
We are inherently reliant on each other (it was others who collected the materials to make the device you’re reading this on) and on the universe (which we didn’t create).
There are no true “masters” among humanity. It just isn’t real.
“Deciding for yourself” isn’t mastery because you didn’t invent your choices. No amount of political power will ever change what happens when you put a fork in a live electrical outlet. You aren’t a master.
Now if this is “slave thinking” then fine, you’re bitter at the world for not letting you be whatever fantasy character you wish you could be, but that still doesn’t change the reality which you are subject to.
Okay, and they’re what exactly? You haven’t answered that.
There’s also the matter of “this is how reality really is in reality”, how somebody “sees it” is kinda irrelevant, no? Your opinion on what happens when you put a fork in a live electrical outlet doesn’t change what’s going to happen when you put a fork in a live electrical outlet.
The distinction can only be seen clearly in self-absorbed societies built upon illusions. There, "masters" can assert they are better than their slaves because their every whim is obeyed. And "slaves" internalise their own feebleness because that's a stable phychological defence mechanism. If such a society is stable and insulated from different societies, these two illusions, of masters and of slaves, will continue unchallenged.
I don't exactly know how Nietzsche came up with this, since German society at the end of 19th century shouldn't have been so self-absorbed, but I know why modern Chads come up with this. The high school playground is such an insulated and stable society, where "the jocks" gain everything they want and others don't. But, check this out: high school isn't a normal society. It doesn't have to produce to survive. The "alphas" don't have to work with "deltas" or whomever to get what they want - they want sex and they can get it because teen girls are as horny and shallow as teen boys and will fuck people purely on the basis of their looks. And so modern man grows up thinking that's what life is. A few wretched souls never get their thinking on this corrected, but the majority will eventually get hit on the head by Life, and hopefully realize life isn't quite as simple as high school.
This is probably the most brutal case of an alpha Chad getting hit on the head by Life: http://www.2arms1head.com/ I didn't read the entirey of the book, but I did read a few chapters at the start, and I read the end.
The man killied himself because he couldn't, or wouldn't, handle the shattering of his illusions.
The problem of the thesis that Christianity is a slave morality is that Christianity requires it's practitioners to stand up to various masters. Maybe even fight them, maybe even physically fight them. And the obvious implication of this is that "slaves" are going to win sooner or later. The sacrifices to pagan gods, demanded by the masters, are going to stop eventually. Marriage is going to be upheld, eventually. Baptisms are going to be performed, eventually. The religion expects the supposed slaves are expected to assert themselves.
There is also a much more obvious counter to this thesis in Catholic Theology: Christ is priest, prophet and king. All baptised join in Christ and therefore share his roles: as priests they offer sacrifices and prayers to God, as prophets they speak what God thinks, and as *kings* they order the Universe according to God's will. In other words, you enter a race of Masters of the Universe through baptism.
And just to make sure this isn't a dead letter on paper, all Christians are required by God to live at least one day per week as masters. Sunday. In this way, you internalise your inherent worth.
Of course there’s a material difference, you seem to have missed the point.
My point is that all morality is “slave morality”, we’re all slaves/servants to something. The man with the whip has his own master who whips him, either materially or immaterially.
That doesn't make the moralities equivalent though.
Master morality is "taking control of the whip makes you a good person".
Slave morality is "turning the other cheek when you get whipped makes you a good person"
To quote another writeup, pagan Rome:
"worshipped success, deprecating losers to a degree rarely seen. This is one area where Islam is closer to Roman patterns than is Christianity. Part of the call of the muezzin to prayer is hayya ‘ala-l-falah: “hasten to success”.
The Roman idea of “social work” was to round up the homeless and have them belt each other to death in the arena for citizens’ entertainment. Kindness was to let them live but dump them outside the city limits."
Master morality is all about lionizing success and hyping up the glory of being a conqueror - slave morality is all about pampering the downtrodden. As with holding the whip vs. being scourged by the whip, there is a similarly material difference between "strength=good" vs. "frailty=good".
If your quibble is just with the binary between masters/slaves, then by all means swap that out for Jordan Peterson's preferred term of "dominance hierarchies". Pagan cultures tended to celebrate those at or near the top of dominance hierarchies, while Christianity celebrates those at or near the bottom of dominance hierarchies - "the meek shall inherit the earth".
Alternatively, instead of master morality vs. slave morality, you could think of it as wolf morality (pagan) vs. sheep morality (Christian). Your typical pagan would be fine with being called a member of a wolfpack, but would get pretty pissed off if they were called a member of a flock of sheep. Christians, on the other hand, proudly refer to their membership among the 'flock'.
My point was there’s no difference. You’re injecting enlightened liberalism into the Middle Ages and then being shocked they didn’t abide by it? Good grief chief.
Not that my opinion should matter to you, but I am a Christian who has actually read the whole Bible (many times) and has never read Nietzsche. Because I’ve never read him firsthand I always held back from expressing a dogmatic opinion on him. Love for neighbor compels me to give people the benefit of the doubt. At the same time I kinda knew that the Ubermensch was the opposite of what Christ taught and I didn’t consider the phrase “slave morality” to be a pejorative because, of course, I am to live as a bond servant to Christ. In fact it is my joy to do so (though I do so poorly).
Having said all that, thank you so much for this. I feel like I understand Nietzsche so much more now, even though I will still refrain from condemning him outright due to the fact that I have still never read him firsthand. Through you he now makes perfect sense to me. In the absence of God he makes perfect sense. I only lament that he missed God.
And you are absolutely correct in your assessment that Christians cannot claim to be the Big Magic and dismiss all other magic as superstition. Materialism has infected the western church to a terrible degree, and I speak as a western Christian. Bring back the wonder indeed.
Great piece. You covered briefly covered everything regarding Nietzsche.
I myself have been struggling with him for a while. It may seem like the pagan virtues of antiquity and Christianity are at odds, but when Christianity took over, pagan virtues never disappeared. Only the spiritual beliefs that were tied to them. These values seemed to coexist for most of Europe's post-Christ history. It was only fashioned in different clothing and given a new meaning. So in that way I see what you mean when you say that Christianity is slave morality redeemed. But now, pagan virtues are in fact largely gone, and Christian virtues dying as we speak. Now slave morality in it's purest form is upon us. Nietzsche was in fact a prophet. And anyone who denies this, is dishonest or stupid, probably both though.
I'm not sure this was the solution you were getting at, but I personally think a synthesis of the two can take place, and this is the best possible scenario. There is already a basis for it. And this basically sums up my personal beliefs and worldview. Though, I'm a fairly worldly person, so I don't obsess too much about the afterlife or the details of the divine. If God will allow me to experience his presence as eternal torment just because I didn't believe exactly what he wanted me to, then so be it I guess.
But I refuse to believe that God wants us to be weak and unvital. I see absolutely nothing wrong with Pagan virtues, and yet, I appreciate a lot of Christian virtues as well. This is both slave morality redeemed, and master morality redeemed. It's either this, or we continue down the progressive leftist path. The choice is easy.
I'm not sure a full synthesis is possible without losing much of value, reducing the whole to a denatured, overcooked mush. Yet a full synthesis may not be necessary, either. Should we permit ourselves to contradict ourselves? To draw a tension within our souls through the use of contradictory ideas, virtues, and gods?
Perhaps not a full synthesis. But Christianity never stopped the nations of Europe from bringing down the sword on their enemies, why is that? When Christianity is a seemingly pacifist religion? Maybe it was because the Church was bound to politics for a long time, and so the church came up with rationalizations for the state's actions, even justifications. Or was there something deeper going on?
You've probably been asked before, but have you read the book "Muscular Christianity"? It's far from advocating a pagan-Christian synthesis, but it shows that values such as masculinity, strength, and vitality can fit into Christianity.
"The historiographical, archaeological, textual, geological, and astronomical discoveries of the scientific age that shattered Nietzsche’s faith, and the simple faith of so many others, cannot be undone ... "
I disagree. What if
1. Many of the "discoveries" of the modern age are frauds. I would suggest that the three greatest assaults on God are enlightenment philosophy itself and its offspring evolution and relativity. All three are nonsense.
Philosophy spirals inevitably into nihilism because it has no foundation. If one aims to deduce anything then one must have an initial premise. And since no initial premise can ever be rationally proven (aside from useless self referential ones like "I think therefore I am") then all one can do is argue in circles.
The alternative - the only alternative - is God. That's your choice - Nihilism or God. There isn't anything else that can possibly stand the test of time.
2. The arguments that any of these "discoveries" actually invalidate God are all fallacious. No discovery - even true ones, which many of ours are not - can ever invalidate the idea of God; one merely learns more about him.
3. The master morality cannot be redeemed. In essence it is the lust for domination. One cannot be a master without slaves - it is intrinsically evil because a master must diminish others by his very nature.
The worst thing Christians do, their most damaging sin against humanity, is to conflate the specific narratives of the Bible with God. When the former are shown to be erroneous or even fraudulent, it then undermines the latter. We live in the consequences of this.
The entirety of biblical historiography is unsupported by archeological or extra-biblical textual evidence. In other words: the history of Israel is made up.
I read a bunch of Neeetch 20+ years ago, and found it to be very interesting. I'd then look up what the Experts said about that reading, and be shocked to find they apparently hadn't read the same text I had.
Pendulum seems to start swinging back. Woke leftism seems to be past its peak. And its decline will accelerate. Ubermensh concept was already reborn anew among transhumanists. And now there is an AI angle. And politically systems will be shifting as well - as status quo is failing everywhere. It has no spirit, no support. Just inertia .
So in next 20-30 years idea of making ourselves into gods will be mainstream again. Interesting times
p.s. you would save a lot of time if you use LLM to do pictures. Yeah I understand why you don't . Yet LLM is the future. Denying it wont make it go away.
I don’t think “AI” has anything to do with the concept of the Ubermensch. One is a machine. The other is the elevation and perfection of mankind. Considered as technologies they are perfectly orthogonal.
I don’t use AI generated images because they’re generally ugly and frustrating to use, and because I strongly prefer to highlight the work of human artists, which is far superior to the sludge produced by piles of melted sand.
Well LLM and AI they might be the evolution of same essence we call humanity. And extension of God itself as we are part of him and representation of him.
Our culture, history, technology. It is all a very interesting ride. AI will build on it , while at same time expanding and broadening horizons. The story did not begin and will not end with humans.
LLMs are nothing more than mathematical models; in essence, talking libraries. Unreliable libraries, at that. The technology is moreover intrinsically restricted by the very probabilistic extrapolation that lies at its core: it works by predicting the most likely completion to a character string, and therefore can produce nothing but bland, derivative pastiche.
It is certainly useful for certain tasks. All technology is useful. That it will replace human beings? Delusion.
2) I wonder about the pendulum: what if it isn't like the one in a grandfather clock that only goes back and forth, but instead a pendulum such as mystics and the like use fpr dowsing? If so, it may well be swinging >away< from "woke leftism" as you put it, but wence it swings need not be the opposite of today's normal.
As for myself, I can adamantly state that my faith in Christ has been strengthened by the time I spent in the wilderness with Nietzche. I absolutely believe that Jesus, upon uttering the words "My Father, why have you forsaken me?", found himself staring right into the same abyss as Nietzsche - the same abyss we all find at some point. Nietzsche's beauty is his brutal honesty. I love him for it. I happen to think Jesus does, too.
Christianity does not say that health, wealth, intellect, beauty, etc. are bad things. Christianity says that such earthly gifts come with extra duties.
As for eugenics, the Old Testament Law has some serious eugenics components baked in. I'll be covering this a future post. (I'm currently researching a series on the wisdom found in the Law of Moses. Many useful lessons there for this age. Israel during the time of the Judges is the only example of borderline anarcho-capitalism I know of which wasn't on an island. )
For me, Nietzsche is "the Last Christian", and every professed Christian who comes after him must first answer his critique. It is deeply humiliating as a Christian to recognise the power of his argument that ours is a slave religion and (worse) perhaps a slave morality. The deepest in faith would perhaps accept this and not be shamed by it, but not the laity. Nietzsche recognised that the brave spirit of the West had other sources, despite the attempts of elite ideology over hundreds of years to join together these strange bedfellows. Nietzsche is also the Last Christian because he stands at the end of moral time, at the abyss. He saw centuries ahead of his time and predicted the moral arc perfectly. Those who hate him from ignorance hear "God is Dead" as a shout of triumph, but (in my view anyway) it's really a scream of despair. But a prophet is always without honour, not least when he's painfully correct.
What an excellent formulation. The Last Christian, indeed. Though of course the man himself said that there had been only one true Christian, that being Christ … whom he greatly admired.
Very true. And apologies for echoing almost your exact interpretation of "God is dead" without crediting it. My only excuse is our minds move in the same track on this point.
Imagine being so stupid as to write an article on Nietzsche and not have the basic decency to point out that Zarathustra is in CONSTANT DIALOGUE with the JESUS of the NEW TESTAMENT, revealing you know nothing of the actual content of the book!
Congratulations, you have concocted an article at great length and also missed the most important part of Nietzsche's writings entirely.
Don't you think that sometimes it's better to just stay silent than reveal your great ignorance? The New Testament is the MOST REFERENCED text in his book. What a massive oversight on your part, and yet the stupid people of substack love it!
Congratulations, you are the great feeder of the ignorant masses.
You are very smart. Go write your own article.
I already have. Try honesty next time.
>you didn’t mention a thing I think is important, but chose to focus on other things
>this is dishonest
You’re not well.
What an ignorant summary, you’re a good Christian liar.
You should not be humiliated by worshipping a God who taught us that to serve others is our highest purpose.
The alternative is serving oneself - that is the master morality if you like - and it is Satan's creed. Libido dominandi - and it leads nowhere good - neither for the master himself, nor for the men he masters.
the rules of hospitality exist in almost all ancient cultures. also, there were words, meaning "wealth sickness" for such deranged people. The ancient story of the Midas touch , and others suggest to me, that, serving others is part of humanity in all faiths. it depends on Whom you are serving, and this, can get pretty twisted. the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. how do christians prevent themselves from being politically weaponized again? like in the crusades, the inquisition, witch trials?
A fabulous feature of the book Creating Christ (leaving aside the theory of the Roman invention of Christianity) is a chapter documenting that contrary to Christian ideologists (and, perversely, Nietzscheans), the Romans did not need a Jewish cult to "teach" them compassion, which -- clementia -- was already recognized as a virtue. Indeed, the emperors were keen to portray themselves on coins etc. as acting compassionately. You could say this was hypocritical. but hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, as they say: it shows what the emperor's thought would be approved of. Most notably, Julius was famed for his clemency, which brought defeated foes into his coalition and added to his power and popularity. Hmmm, was this the origin of the other JC?
the 4 cardinal virtues of ancient rome (the virtues on which all other virtues are built) were temperance, courage, prudence and judgement. some of these words have fallen so far out of usage as to be unfamiliar. they do require a deeper understanding of the self to operate. "know thyself" above the temple of Apollo. to be Intemperate, would be uncivilized and definitely unfit to rule. One must be able to rule the self ,First before ruling others. So, in that sense i think the old faiths , at least demanded the appearance of self mastery. temperance might today be described as compassion. though that is more superficial way to describe it. appropriate treatment of each individual.
I thought temperance was essentially moderation.
Compassion appears nowhere among the cardinal virtues; hence it is added as one of the three heavenly virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
yes, i see compassion as very included in temperance, moderation of how your treat different people which includes compassion, since it is the one you really need to be emotionally mature to express. 2 year olds are not the best at compassion always.
i did not feel i was very clear, so i wrote an article about it. https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
Inquiring minds want to know!
Stawman. Even Aleister Crowley loves his friends.
What was different about Christ was not that his view on compassion was unique, it was that he taught people to love their enemies.
The Romans' track record in this department was sorely lacking.
That's because loving your enemies is both insane and objectively an evil thing to do. The results of doing so can be seen all around you, right now.
Yes, words like guest and host have ancient and powerful roots. You are right Artemis. Pagans should not be grouped in with vitalists. Folkish is more ancient than that.
They're certainly distinct, yet the vitalist spirit is in many ways a reawakening of certain types of paganism … arguably, the deepest of the Aryan strains, which gave birth to most of Europe’s indigenous faiths, especially the Hellenistic variety.
I do think vitalism draws from folkism, but I view it only as a furthering of Western esoteric thought. It reminds me of the traditionalists like Guenon or even Evola, but instead of focusing on religion they focus on lifestyle. This difference between pagans and vitalists is as vast as that between Christians and vitalists - pagans have various views on the divine which ultimately go beyond what I've seen any vitalist writer or stacker try to cover. Divinity and hierophany are important aspects of religion, but they can remain cerebral in an esoteric school, which I think vitalism is in a way.
I think there is crossover obviously between paganism and vitalism, but I really do think vitalists are just inspired by pagan myth and ethics.
By studying the bible with an emphasis on Christ's teachings and then sticking to what you learn.
It's not a lost cause but sometimes it seems that way.
One thing which is a nice long step towards weaponization which nearly all Christians in America do is worship the flag. I'm pretty sure the flag is as false an idol as ever there was. Good luck trying to get American Christians to listen to you though.
The problem with Christ's teachings are that they are retarded and seriously followed lead immediately to societal implosion:
"Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back."
-Luke 6:30
PS - you mean like in the crusades, the inquisition (although it's not clear to me that Jesuits are truly Christians), witch trials, and the current US "modern crusade"?
yes. and i do not accept the no true scottsman fallacy of "not real Christians" . there are at least 500 different denominations, so that will never be settled. recall how long the Catholics and the protestants went at each other in Ireland. not at all a peaceful religion, because of its warlike exclusivity and apocalyptic needs for a scapegoat. it will never make a stable and just society. it is a colonizer of the minds of humanity, that is what it does very, very well.
I understand the concept of different denominations of Christian faith.
However it is possible that the society of Jesus is an occult society which has infiltrated the church and actually - at the higher levels - knowingly worships Lucifer. And when an Irishman dons a kilt, fakes a Scottish accent, infiltrates a drinking den while sipping entirely the wrong type of whiskey and sports underwear where there should be none - then one can legitimately claim that he is no true Scotsman and it is not a fallacy to do so.
I would also question whether you can attribute sectarian violence in Ireland to "Christianity" for at least two reasons:
(1) It is entirely possible that Christianity was what kept the island as peaceful as it was - and that without Christianity things would have been much bloodier. See Gaza for an example.
(2) The struggle in Ireland was primarily a sectarian struggle between two different ethnic groups. The two ethnic groups happened to follow different denominations of Christianity - and therefore fastened on that as a way of measuring who was on which side - but I doubt anything would have been any different if Britain, and therefore the conquering folk had remained Catholic. They still would have been oppressive conquerors and the (justified) grievances would have been the same.
The inquisition is also interesting because one could argue that for such an "ideological cleansing" remarkably few people died - about 3,000 were killed over several decades - far fewer than are murdered in a typical American big city over the same period. Perhaps Christianity acts as a brake on misbehaving rulers and leaders - resulting in fewer deaths when things do go wrong than in a religion/culture which does not so sternly condemn violence and killing.
well, it was not the first clash between sects. i was thinking of a more inclusive approach. because being exclusive always Always causes conflict, because it is a form of not sharing. And sharing is an essential part of humanity. https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
I’m ok with war & colonization in theory, if on behalf of the actual people of a nation & especially the warriors themselves. Rare these days.
Just out of interest, how do you arrive at this position?
A hypothetical example would be there’s a mine of rare minerals in some sh*t hole & the local tribes there just go around hacking each other with machetes over jiu-jiu magic.
Instead of paying them for their “property” which is under the ground where they accidentally live, might be better to just go take it & push them aside. To them we’re just another tribe with better machetes. If the benefits are worth the costs I would be willing to. Might even be worth it for the adventure itself.
If we use the minerals to create a beautiful future cool, but I’m not trying to secure anything by conquest much less trade on behalf of fat slobs who watch porn all day. Maybe they should go fight with machetes themselves for that.
Why do we have “free markets” for shitty life choices but not free markets for war? Slobs can’t defend themselves as individuals, much less as nations.
The world I want is worth fighting for, others not so much.
Sorry took me a while to find your comment due to Substack notification not directing… anyone else that problem?
Ultimately it all comes down to what you want, & the costs & benefits of choices/actions.
So you only have to justify colonization & war on such grounds like anything else.
Why you want anything at all is the more interesting question IMO.
Service to others, and service to self, are the two fundamental moral poles of creation. It all comes down to this in the end.
That sounds exactly like the sort of self-serving guilt-trip a conniving slave would try to talk the master into.
"Will to power is evil/Satanic; to save your soul you should stay away from power" (so that I can then fill the power vacuum instead)
Perhaps an alternative is for the master to serve God or a higher purpose of some form, thereby aligning the purposes of the (Christian) slaves with the purposes of the master who becomes a slave to God. Just spitballing here… perhaps this arrangement worked out well some time in the past. The battle between church and state (monarchs) seemed to oscillate back and forth from one side of the tug of war gaining too much power then the other taking it back, perhaps with periods of balance between times of conflict.
yeah. agree. I prefer something more inclusive and generous. If there is only one of anything it will always cause pointless strife. https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
Maybe you should be, tho. The Christian God I know taught me that my highest purpose is to be united with him in eternity. The two of us get united bodily once per week, a foretaste of our eventual union.
To me this is just babble word salad. Though poetic, sounds exactly like self serving narcissism. “I care so much about other people it’s me who gets to go to heaven”.
In the end anyone who wants eternal salvation by servicing others, is just being selfish, but worse pretending not to.
I want a better world for my children & my people. Africa can starve to death I will not adopt their orphans. 🤣
Unfortunately, I can't respond to you while what I wrote is a babble word salad to you. We're not talking the same language while that's the case, we can't communicate on this topic.
Yea “united with him in eternity” isn’t saying anything at all a pragmatic person can understand. I appreciate you acknowledging that. Sounds nice though!
It's interesting that you only respond to a conflicting opinion with insults.
You can serve the ancestors, the gods, and yourself all at once. Really don't get why this vitalist stuff is thrown in with folkish paganism.
> You can serve the ancestors, the gods, and yourself all at once.
Until the point where they come into conflict.
> Really don't get why this vitalist stuff is thrown in with folkish paganism.
What's "folkish paganism"? I've lost track of the different flavors of neo-paganism floating about.
Folkish paganism is traditional paganism as outlined by historical studies. You mostly seem aware of wicca types - universalist pagans.
I hate universalist pagans more than I dislike Christians. Folkism goes back to the stone age - universalist religions are heresy.
By serving the gods and the ancestors, I serve myself and my household.
> Folkish paganism is traditional paganism as outlined by historical studies.
So are you the guys who reject the entire Axial Age and insist that, e.g., Thor is a literal dude in the sky with a literal hammer that makes lightning?
https://gildhelm.substack.com/p/pagan-phenomenology-i-what-is-a-god This should help.
Excellent Gilgamech
But is the premise that Christianity is a slave morality really unassailable? The early church was clearly a mixed group of considerable diversity; rich and poor, slave and free, Jew and Greek, male and female. If the premise falls, what is left of the argument and why must I answer it?
I agree completely that the proclamation of God's death is a cry of despair. "Without God, all things are permissible" and Nietzsche seemed to have no illusion of the hellscape to which that would lead.
That's an excellent question. I'd say that N’s conception of Christianity as embodying slave morality goes beyond the identities of its early constituents, and extends to the imagery and goal-orientation of the faith as well.
Considering imagery, the body of Christ often refers to itself as a flock of sheep. This is a far cry from the metaphor that prevailed on the steppe, which was as a pack of wolves, the identity of which the Proto-Indo-Europeans adopted during their koryos for thousands of years. I think that captures something fundamental about N’s distinction.
Regarding the sectors of society from which early Christians were drawn, it's certainly true that they drew from all of them. However, not all cults in that time were so open. Mithras, for example, was a very popular god indeed, particularly with legionaries. I do not think there were any slaves at all amongst those admitted to the brotherhood of the Mithraic grottos; nor I believe were there any women. Seen from this perspective, the fact that Christianity admitted slaves (and women) to its rites at all, let alone with the status of spiritual equals, may be the significant fact.
Not that the church was unique in allowing the low to participate, far from it; slaves too need religions, always have, and always will. All humans do.
I wonder if N spent more time observing the students and not enough time studying the Master. The students can be quite disappointing, speaking for myself, of course.
It is certainly true that one can draw almost any conclusion about Christianity by studying any given group of followers or "followers" and come to conclusions diametrically opposed to the Teachings.
Of course there are many rabbit trails leading from that statement, including what is translated slave in many verses. The word servant is quite often used and as Jesus demonstrated is more to the point. He was no slave, he was the King of Heaven and yet took on the role of servant. He taught his followers that they were coheirs with him of all that the Father had given him and yet were to consider themselves servants to the very least of their fellow humans because of the status as kings.
One may accept the teachings as Truth or reject them, but to confuse what Christians have done with what they are called to do is an avoidable error on anyone's part.
It seems, if one meets a seeming paradox, one should seek to understand. Perhaps N was not in a state of mind to do so, and your exposition may help us understand the man at his best and worse. For that I am grateful. I wonder that N did not have a more clear understanding of this having been raised in religion. Did he raise up a straw man rather than a superman?
"He taught his followers that they were coheirs with him of all that the Father had given him and yet were to consider themselves servants to the very least of their fellow humans because of the status as kings."
The problem is that A) this is completely unworkable outside of tiny homogeneous communities of high-trust people, which this attitude actively works to destroy and B) this in practice leads to ethno-masochism supporting infinity immigrants from everything because look at all those poor starving brown people.
I don’t know what "tiny" means but I agree that Christianity is meant to be lived in community. It was never intended, and is not, a state religion. Christians are called to live facing the larger world and to live in that larger world with the same ethic they live within their community, subject to wisdom and prudence. Your point B has nothing to do with Christianity. That people, well intentioned or not, misunderstand or misuse a religion or philosophy is no commentary on that religion or philosophy.
That's hilarious. So you openly admit that your conception of the religion doesn't actually have any solutions besides "hope they don't kill us" and it is, literally, a slave's morality.
Yes it is. Hell, even Jesus said "by their fruits you shall know them", ie. results matter.
Ironically. Nietzsche said Christ was the last Christian.
Logical: to be the first is to be the original, making all followers diluted copies.
Thus, the first is also the last.
> It is deeply humiliating as a Christian to recognise the power of his argument that ours is a slave religion and (worse) perhaps a slave morality.
What argument? Vibes aren’t an argument.
By all means go ahead and rebut Nietzsche on these points.
Nietzscheans are full of Motte-and-baileys.
The OP insists that "In and of themselves neither [master nor slave morality] are good or bad" when called on about the fact the Nietzsche much more resembles a slave then a master. However, then they proceed to act as if Master morality is good and Slave morality is bad.
After spending the entire article talking about "master and slave morality" the article says:
> But I do not think that the answer is as simple as returning to the bosom of the holy mother church, either. The historiographical, archaeological, textual, geological, and astronomical discoveries of the scientific age that shattered Nietzsche’s faith, and the simple faith of so many others, cannot be undone ... not without the species giving itself a self-inflicted lobotomy. What has been learned cannot unlearned; what has been seen cannot be unseen. Naive innocence cannot be regained merely by wishing it so.
Notice that the above reason has nothing to do with master and slave morality, and the above problem is in fact worse for the "Master" Pagan religions. Christianity is probably reconcilable with science. No one is going to take the "Thor's hammer" theory of lightning seriously.
When asked to rebut the specific points of Nietzsche that you had dismissed, you instead deflect to attacking this specific John Carter essay and nebulous "Nietzscheans".
There are a number of zoomers who might.
lightening is just a symbol of electricity. you know thor has 2 iron gloves ( + and - ?) that must be used to harness this hammer, and a belt called ground, or earth "gerd" ? even more recent tales like jack and the beanstalk, and Paul Bunyan are just coded language for real things. If you know how to look. None of our ancestors were ignorant savages, i think.
According to a Nietzschean Will to Power isn't Bruce "Caitlyn" Jenner the ultimate Ubermensch, the triumph of will over biology itself?
You may object that desiring to change gender is not a suitably "noble" pursuit, but why are you more entitled then a Gold Medal Olympian to determine what's noble?
Life turned against life is always a sign of decline, not of ascent.
> It is deeply humiliating as a Christian to recognise the power of his argument that ours is a slave religion and (worse) perhaps a slave morality.
Just how the fuck can it be a slave religion if you're *literally commanded upon pain of Hell* to live like a master one day per week?!? That's what Sunday is. It's practice for the time in Heaven when you'll be sitting on the THRONE OF GOD together with GOD ALLMIGHTY and rulling the Universe.
You're commanded to kneel - that's not living like a master that's practicing being a good little slave.
Christian Heaven is basically eternal slavery - you spend all day every day singing God's praises - joining the choir of angels is in no way a form of mastery.
Ah! This is finally the moment when I can talk about that little bit of Protestant ignorance. :)
> you spend all day every day singing God's praises
As a Catholic, I have not really seen or heard that many depictions of Heaven. After all, writers of the Bible consistently state that what comes after is outside current human comprehension. The prayers at Mass reinforce this idea, with the priest praying stuff like "let us receive in open what we today only receive in mystery". The witness of saints, particularly visions of Heaven, tend to be likewise devoid of detail. There's plenty of speculation, though, but only a few hard facts.
Now, this idea of Heaven as praising God probably comes from that quote I can't find now that basically says "what God wants for you is to praise him". And then that spiraled out of control, giving people like Mark Twain ample room to point out the idiocy of the concept - and in so doing attack the entire edifice.
But the fact is just that Gods wants us to praise him. No qualifier. And another fact is that God is just, without injustice. Query: is it just to praise somebody who didn't really do all that much for you? After all, if Jesus "died for us" but that only got us constant singing - yelling - for all eternity, there isn't too much good to be had, is there? So, in general, we can say that unconditionally praising God, without having a particular justification for it, is unjust. Yet God is not unjust and would never accept unjust praise.
If God doesn't accept unjust praise, and if people praise God in Heaven, it can only follow the praise given is just. And further, since Heaven is normally understood to be perfection, we can surmise the praise offered God is perfect - meaning spontaneous.
Pulling it all together, Heaven is so good is elicits a spontaneous praise for God.
Further evidence for this comes from base Catholic doctrine, which says God created the world so the world would know of his glory. God's glory isn't increased by creating the world, instead it's made knowable.
> You're commanded to kneel
I'm also pursued by God for a union, alike to the union of a man and woman in sex. That's not my imagination, that's the teaching of Catholic Church: Christ and Church are alike husband and wife (Ephesians 5:32). Furthermore, that's the entire purpose and point of Eucharist. So, given that, am I really commanded to kneel, or is your assesment missing important bits?
This is straight copium. If I'm the master in heaven, then who exactly spends eternity singing MY praises?
You're justifying the ostensibly divine wisdom in heaven being a form of voluntary slavery, while trying to pass it off as mastery and hoping nobody notices the bait and switch.
You misunderstand the meaning of mastery. To be master is not to be praised, it's to have your will be done. And if Revelation says "I will give the victor the right to sit with me on my throne, as I myself first won the victory and sit with my Father on his throne." (Rev 3:21), then I don't see how you can deny your will be done in Heaven.
Aha! But you have an opening! What if your will conflicts with some other will! AHA!
Well, then the judges come in. Matthew 19:28, although I admit Jesus might have meant something else. At any rate: this objection I raised applies anyway, to any situation where there are two or more masters (really, when there are two or more wills), which is percisely the situation that would exist if the world were populated by ubermensch. And if you say "only the guy at the top is master, all other are slaves", then you'll be a slave forever either way since I can not in any way envision you as being on the top of any pyramid - except the one you imagine in your head - so you might as well drop the objection you hypothetically would be holding. :)
"To be master is not to be praised, it's to have your will be done."
A truly Nietzshean statement.
And yet it's still somebody else's throne. What you're describing is more like a dad allowing his kid to sit behind the steering wheel with the engine off and pretend to drive while making vroom vroom noises.
Notice revelation says "my throne" and "his throne" but never "our throne" and certainly not "your throne".
perhaps we should master ourselves First, before considering ourselves entitled to master others? https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
Solid Take ✍🏼☑️
well said
Our ancestors did what they had to do to survive, so we could be here, and for this i am thankful. there is no shame in survival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53PDO7OQSTs
Hmmm. One of the central issues here is the utter lack of humility evinced by “secularists,” “modernists” .. People, like Nietzsche, who believe that “Darwin (science) has falsified the creation account in Genesis..” People whose minds and souls have been eaten away by rationalistic reductivism, crude empiricism, who think that debauched sybarite Hume was a genius.
The power of Christianity lies in paradox. You touch on the essence of the issue here: Nietzsche condemned the humility of God as “slave morality.” Calling poor Fred a gamma is precisely right, because his ethical imagination is basically that of an alienated teenaged boy raging against the social hierarchy of secondary school- it’s all about Apollonian beauty/power and Dionysian poetic hedonism for him, and he is using the exquisite intellectual power that he has (“I am so clever..”) to create and reinforce his own standing within that milieu. It’s all completely superficial, ultimately vapid, meaningless and stupid, and poor Fred knew it, which is definitely one of the reasons why he lost his mind in the end.
There is no such thing as an übermensch apart from Jesus Christ. No one else has ever claimed to be able to redeem us each, as an individual person, from death.. All the pagan titans, gods, heroes are tawdry simulacra of his manifestation of divinity in history. All of us, even the strongest, most beautiful, most intelligent, will decay, become stupid, weak, ugly, then die. Every trace of our existence will ultimately fade into the entropic penumbra of quantum death. There is no possible hope of individual transcendence of this howling void, no matter how valiantly we struggle against it.. We are each apportioned 120 years, no more.. Then..
What? What hope do we have? Is there any hope for the neuro atypical kid being bullied in the play ground? The Chinese worker drone being slaved to death 12 hours a day in that sweatshop? The addict derelict on the street, enslaved by his endocrine response?
The Nietzschean will sneer at these slaves with contempt. As his own paltry strength entropically fades, as he also withers away in time.
But maybe Christ’s inversion of worldly power is, in fact, real. Maybe the cruelty of this world is the true illusion. Maybe justice and mercy will in fact reign. May the infinite power of God is in the full service of goodness, joy, beauty and truth, and all of this not merely in the end.. But now, right now, amongst us here, today. Maybe willing the good of (loving) your enemies is the best and most effective way of defeating them, because maybe by willing the good of your enemies you might covert them to being your friends.. And maybe if this divine love we are called to show even the most recalcitrantly wicked is emphatically rejected, our love in the face of their evil might both sanctify us, as well as those who witness it, both now and in the end..
Maybe power and beauty are not truly material at all, and maybe Apollonian aesthetics are superficial; maybe Dionysian raptures are all ultimately vapid.. Maybe true beauty is transcendent, maybe the only true happiness is in the joy of self sacrifice, the emptying of oneself into the flame of eternal love..
Is there anything more 'vital' than defeating death itself? Any will more powerful than subjugating yourself into a sacrifice for all mankind, even though you could kill all your enemies with a snap of your fingers? I understand that Nietzche saw a decline, and his diagnosis was painfully accurate, however, he got christian morality all wrong. Christ is the ultimate man. "The first man, Adam, was created a living being; but the last Adam is the life-giving Spirit." Thanks to him we are not bound as animals by the infra-rational, nor made hopeless by the rational.
Vitalism measures vital ness by only human standards. What standards judge the maker of reality? He does what he does, and what he says is, is, without emotional affect.
Human standards are not divinely inspired? Are you sure? It seems to me that being expresses in itself inherent standards. It seems to me there is, contra nihilists, a Will expressed within Being, Nature. It seems to me, for example, that there is a universal morality expressed in comedy..
Citing Don Quixote, upon his ass: “I shall not consider such a mount a dishonor, because I remember reading that when Silenus, the good old tutor and teacher of the merry god of laughter, entered the city of one hundred gates, he rode very happily mounted on a beautiful jackass.”
But a Will to what?
Sorry. That was glib, but you must have sensed it coming. Forgive me, permit me being a bit dogmatic, here, in definition of terms:
What is Love? Love is Will in affirmation of, congruance with Being. When we say “God is Love” this is what we are intimating: Creation is personal, and the Creator creates and sustains, affirms us in our personhood.. When we love, we affirm our and the other’s personhood, personhood being iconographic of divinity.
(An aside, here: note that the act of creation differs from subsistence only as the first leap of the fountain differs from the leap’s continuance. When we love, we participate in subsistence. This means for example that love is “procreative” and sexually fecund, while evil is sexually sterile.)
In this ontological sense “evil” is desire in negation of Being.. It is will “incurvatus in se,” solipsism of self deification, idolatry, a denial of the source of our being, denial of other people’s personhood iconic of that divinity.
Love is in existential terms the negation of willed evil, the ultimate disruption of mimetic hatred and violence. This is the ontological meaning of the Cross, the Crucifixion: “There is no greater love than to lay one’s life down for one’s friends.” And, “he loved us, when we were still in our sins.”
Love.
Silenius was Dionysus's Teacher. I should probably read that book again. How clever you are to quote it!
I’ve been thinking about your comment, Anonymous. I’m wondering if you are Muslim, because you seem to be verging on pure voluntarism here.. I’m a Catholic, I don’t think you can parse Act from Will, or Will from Nature. Act, Will and Nature are triune unity, expressing Being.
Concerning God’s “affect,” I think you are essentially right in a sense, but essentially wrong in another. The pith of being is in serenity. Serenity is its own sort of pure affect: Affectless Essential Affect, if you will, “All things being reconciled within Himself..” But being, all things manifested in time in multiplicity are a tragic comedy, full of dramatic resonance, and thus emotion.
The Bible is in my reading incessant tragedy culminating in pure comedy. The Biblical narrative, particularly the Gospels, seems to me to be very funny. So many unexpected things happen, there are subtle inversions atop of subtle inversion.. Just one example amongst many dozens, is how Christ enters Jerusalem mounted on a donkey. This is God mocking every conquerer in history. It’s very funny, if you think about it..
I am not Muslim. I found many of the Old Testament stories to contain moments of amusement. But these are human standards still.
*C.S. Lewis beams with pride.*
This is a beautiful comment.
"There is no such thing as an übermensch apart from Jesus Christ. No one else has ever claimed to be able to redeem us each, as an individual person, from death.. All the pagan titans, gods, heroes are tawdry simulacra of his manifestation of divinity in history."
This is, for anyone who knows anything at all about religions, ancient and modern, an utterly laughable claim. Immortality for believers is among the single most common inducements offered by religions of all ages, and to claim that no one else has ever alleged that as a reward is simply beyond parody.
This is profound.
“If Christianity at its core is slave morality redeemed, then what is master morality redeemed? Can we not draw upon both? One as armour and shield, the other as flaming sword?”
Well Urban II had an idea along these lines…
DEUS VULT BROTHER!!!
IN HOC SIGNO VINCES.
Christianity was one of many Cults until Constantine has his soldiers paint it’s symbol on their shields with the words “In this sign be victorious.” It was probably a Fish symbol not the Cross and he won the battle of Milvan Bridge, killing the rival Emperor and taking the throne. He then has a trembling Pope dragged from the Catacombs, expecting death the Pope instead is informed he is now an Official Religion, and that of the Emperor as well.
… the poor man dies of strain within the year.
Constantine then codified Christianity in 325 at the Nicene Council.
The next major step for Christians and Europe is the Coda of the social revolution in Europe begun by monks at Cluny when Pope Urban II declared Crusade in 1095, pronouncing that any man who dies on Crusade shall go to heaven… reversing the prior condition that killing in war was the sin of murder requiring penance.. DEUS VULT (God Wills It) and in 1099 this raggedy Army from a barbaric backwater conquers all in its path and Jerusalem.
We can go on.
Crusades? Conquistadors?
The European conquests of colonies? All quite Christian, all quite masculine and warlike.
The Problem.
Liberals from the 18th century at least are very anti-church, to say the least.
In the 20th century both Communism and Nazism are anti-Christian, Communists far more. Later we have feminism which un-mans all its victims, regardless of creed. Masculinity is a mortal sin under Feminism and Modern Liberalism.
We certainly have a problem, that Christianity which is a Chief target and victim of modern Progressive government is nonsense.
It’s fair to say that outside of the Latin countries it doesn’t defend itself, that it’s present leadership is utterly unequal to worldly tasks.
But it’s not the source of weakness. The plague is modernity, Christianity isn’t the cure… but it’s not the problem. The Cure is Warrior masculinity. That’s not coming from our utterly feminized Churches (or in the case of Catholicism - worse, and I am Catholic).
But Gibbon wrote Gibberish whenever the Church or the Orthodox are concerned, and Nietzsche simply is wrong on the historical record… but probably correct on what he saw.
Not a solution, but in a country that will not have Men as leaders… Americans… not the problem.
Our real slave morality is we’re law abiding.
And henpecked Cucks.
Women voting…
Women will never elect the Men we need, nor allow it…
We’re not voting our way out of this…
Just posted on that
There is a competitive principal that says to figure out what your opponent (or enemy) is trying to do, and to not let him do it (the Belichick principal). This principal can be applied to all sports and competitive games, including warfare. In this case, I understand that my enemy in this spiritual war wants to separate me from my faith. I look at the teaching of atheism as a warfare tactic. It's enemy propaganda designed to demoralize us. Our enemies understand that a warrior can't function without his whole soul. That's why our enemies want to pick our souls apart. They want to say that our anger is evil and our faith is naive and stupid. Nietzsche is a good example of a warrior who couldn't function without faith. No warrior can. (I don't hate atheists and I venerate the work of poet/historian Jennifer Michael Hecht, a flag-waving atheist and author of good books who is new on substack: https://jmh170.substack.com/ I find I have a lot in common with anyone antagonizing priestcraft and mind control.)
Christianity is a freedom religion. Jesus freed us from Satan's moral system. Satan, whose name means prosecutor, is our accuser, and Jesus is the advocate of humanity before the throne of God. We don't have to follow 591 commandments like the ancient Hebrews. We have to accept forgiveness and pass it on. We don't win by crushing our enemies. We win by flipping them. It makes perfect sense to me that Christianity developed as a Roman slave religion. It gave hope to the slaves. That's what Christianity does. It gives back faith, hope, and love to us slaves, and it causes us to become free men and women. Christianity results in free independent ethical thinkers and actors. It is an alternative to being in lock-step with the devil's corporatist social hierarchy, in which no one enjoys any autonomy of thought or action, but all are slaves.
But before one can understand what Christianity is, he first has to define priestcraft, and understand that the priests don't offer real Christianity. The priests are the enemies of humanity. The priests have nothing to offer but superstition and mind-control. The established church is a false husk that must be shed. The whole cloth of the priests has been woven to shroud the gospel in mystery. All that cloth is about to be purged away.
The anti-status and anti-hierarchy speech of Jesus also makes perfect sense to me. I believe Satan is the top of all hierarchies of men. The incomplete pyramid (on the dollar bill) represents human hierarchy and we know what the Eye above the pyramid represents. The bottom of the pyramid is the plane (or the square). If we don't participate in the hierarchies of men, we are on the plane and on the square. That is where a Christian should be. Personal holiness becomes its own status system (a way to elevate oneself above others) and I'm very suspicious of anyone who makes a pretense to holiness. Finally, I'm reminded that the Tao Te Ching (the way of water), is to flow to the lowest point and create a level plane. In section 38, Lao Tzu proves that humble station is the basis of honor. Both Jesus's and Lao Tzu's philosophies antagonize hierarchical status systems, and offer an alternative.
Fantastic comment.
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
-Plato
i agree. all political entities are the left hand path always.
Neechee (spelled as pronounced) is the lord of schizoposting, the absolute king of sounding like a ranting, raving lunatic, raging against the dying of the light and the horrible world he discovered. While I didn't read him seriously because I have a policy of not taking philosophers seriously, I had fun with his aphorisms.
He was the proto-red/blackpill imo, who also gets interpreted as arrogant asshole, the same way that Epicurus is the proto-basement dweller, who also gets interpreted as a super hedonist when that's not the case.
https://argomend.substack.com/p/a-look-at-epicurus
If NEETzsche was alive today he'd have a 50k follower account on X with an anime pfp that gets shut down for Trust & Safety violations on the regular.
I'd prolly read that then. Most interesting people have been kicked off of every darn thing...
He'd probably also have a doompill substack plus a YT channel in the vein of dbdr/Millennial Steam where he rants about his mom making him go to something or his sister dragging him to her little Nueve Germania meetings, and so on.
Do you think his anime pfp would be Guts? Revy from Black Lagoon? Probably had an Evangelion phase in his youth.
Asuka is best girl.
I never got into Evangelion so I’m agnostic on the NGE waifu question.
Same. I was just repeating a meme.
If Sophocles were alive today, his students would not only report him but call for his execution. I mean cancellation.
he would have earned it maybe.
I'm agreeing with you so strongly, people are going to think we are the same person. You pick out the same flaw in Christianity as I do: Christian exceptionalism. Apparently that makes me a heretic just because some barely literate towel-wearing toadies of the emperor declared Christianity the Only Way and did some light edits on the Bible to support their point. It is such a stupid claim that you would have to be a craven idiot at a conference of dark age bishops to assert it. Christianity would greatly profit from jettisoning exclusivity. "Through the Son you shall come to Me" sounds like a great deal. "Only through the Son shall you come to Me" sounds like a threat and a shake down. This does not need to be the flaccid moral relativism of the current Vatican. It could be just a genuine appreciation of the many roads to faith that can be seen by anyone who is paying attention to the wider world. And to your point about vitalism - there actually is a strong current of vitalism within the faith. This could easily be brought to the fore.
Indeed, I don't think relativism is the answer. Christ and Satan are not the same figure. There are good paths and bad ones ... and more than one of either.
How can there be more than one right path?
If good and evil exist, then we must learn to correctly distinguish between them and if Christ is the correct path then the only other paths we could follow to the same destination - rightness - would necessarily be teachers teaching the exact, same, identical message.
If Christ is the correct path and some other leader teaches something slightly different, then - to the extent that they differ - this other teacher is not teaching the correct path.
Now you might argue that some other teacher has a better message. But if that is true, then it implies that Christ is not the 100% correct path.
It doesn’t imply that, and tautology is too gentle a term.
The need for a 100% correct path to exist often makes the pagan minded wary.
If good and evil are absolutes then there can only be one way. It's not really a requirement - it's more definitional.
If, doing a lot of work there.
But even if that if is granted, it doesn't follow that there is only one correct path.
Even in the Christian tradition, no two saints live the same life. QED.
QNED :-)
1. A saint is someone who tried to follow Christ's teaching as best they could, and - at least in the eyes of the church - came reasonably close. But no man, saint or otherwise, is without sin - and thus none of them can replace Christ as the example which must be followed because every one was flawed in some way even if only a small way. If I choose a saint and take him as my lodestar instead of Christ himself then I am further from the truth than if I took Christ as my lodestar. This does not mean that I cannot learn from a saint, or a priest, or anyone at all in fact, but Christ's teaching must be supreme (at least it must be if one accepts (a) good and evil are absolutes, and (b) Christ is a true teacher).
2. Path in this context is not about every single event in one's life, the people one met, the places one visited and so on. Path in this context is about the ability to correctly distinguish between good and evil. Christ himself, were he born in a different time and place, been surrounded by different people, and encountered different conditions, would not have lived an identical life to the one he did. Even his teachings might have differed in form - but - and this is the important part - they would not have differed in substance. The essence of his message would have been the same - identical - because he is teaching us eternal and unchanging truths.
I believe in good and evil being inflexible and unchanging, but also particular. Different tribes of men and different archetypes of man have different evils. The idea of one transcendent book of good and evil that everyone must read to the expense of all others smells wrong. It is also suspicious within its own mythos, resembling the Tower of Babel story.
I don't follow your thinking here.
1. How can good and evil be inflexible and unchanging but different based on which particular group of people you are sitting down with? Aren't you having your cake and eating it too?
2. I also don't see the parallel with the tower of Babel. I have always interpreted that as an illustration/teaching regarding the evil of centralized power - so an example of something which is evil. How is that similar to the concept that good and evil are absolute and unchanging?
yes we are not born a blank slate at all, as i say here. https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
IKR? that is not how the world works! it make for an incoherent worldview. At least go back to something more inclusive and less destabilizing ( end times cults always make people act very unusually) .https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
There is frequently more than one way to reach any given destination; and then there is the question of one's choice of destination.
Metaphors can mislead.
Aren't the way and the destination kind of the same thing in this case?
They very clearly aren't.
I think we are talking at cross purposes.
If we wished to reach the summit of a mountain, then there is of course more than one way to get there, and two guides might well suggest a different path.
But when talking about a religious teacher's teachings, my view is that the teachings describe not just the journey (in fact this is almost incidental) - but that they define the destination itself. And thus if a different leader defines the destination differently (i.e. defines good and evil differently) then you will not end up in the same place. You will end up somewhere else. And if good and evil are absolutes, as I believe, then that other place cannot be the correct one - since moral absolutism implies that there is only one correct destination.
To the extent that a religious teacher teaches techniques as opposed to teaching what is good and what is evil then I would agree that there can be more than one path - so for example if one teacher suggests praying at noon, and another says pray at 1pm then they can both be correct, or at least both might provide a path to the same destination. But if one says "pray for your enemies to be cast down and destroyed", and another says "pray for your enemies' souls that they repent and find salvation" then they cannot both be valid.
> Christianity would greatly profit from jettisoning exclusivity.
Some Christian denominations tried that. They're the ones that are now flying the pride flag outside their churches.
Indeed. Plus profiting isn't the point.
Thank You! i have been saying this for decades. think of the conflicts that would not happen. https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
There is no necessary connection between jettisoning exclusivity and degenerating into relativism and idolatry. It takes wilful blindness and prejudice not to see there are people of God in other religions.
The jettisoning of exclusivity is a necessary, possibly not sufficient, step for degenerating into relativism and idolatry. Where else would the different ideas, to be relativized into, come from? If your space does not actively exclude those systems who would take over for themselves then it will eventually be taken over.
Examples: Phenomenologically this is seen over and over. It's opening up hobby spaces to LGBTQ+ that leads to the major creative rot we see in comics and movies today. There's opening up military positions to politicians who have never served which happens on and off throughout history. Corporations allowing non-corporate woke fanatics into HR. Bad money going into currency systems driving out good. Allowing foreigners into seats of power that has led to the other borderless rot we see today. Communists and other such agents taking over governmental systems that cast off the McCarthy style exclusion. Or the foreign born lockstep voting blocks taking over from more egalitarian groups. Even in the old testament it was opening up the temples to other gods that led to major idolatry and degeneration of Solomon's kingdom.
This is practically a tautology. When you aren't exclusive you are inclusive. There are belief systems which spend more time taking over systems that don't actively resist them. It's the same problem as psychopathic narcissistic politicians. If you have a seat of power or resources in an open system they will go to people who spend the most time taking seats of power or resources, not the people who would best maintain the group's mission.
The later statement about 'people of God in other religions' has nothing to do with any particular system degenerating into relativism and idolatry. One might as well say that opening up USA voting to every person in the world is ok for sustaining the USA system because there are individuals in China who think like US citizens. It observably doesn't work out.
Examples of exclusive systems that do a half decent job of maintaining themselves and their missions: Mormons, Amish, Nintendo, Brain surgeons, electricians.
Examples of once-exclusive systems that are observably degenerating due to jettisoning exclusivity: Lower level medical practice (lowered bar for test entry), airplane pilots, D&D/Wizards of the Coast, history scholars, gendered sports leagues.
Even the humble cell must be exclusive, strictly controlling what passes through its cellular membrane. This is a principle of nature. Understood through this lens, “inclusion” has a nakedly destructive intent.
Yet, the cell membrane must be permeable. It is not a matter of an impassable wall, but of strictly regulating what enters according to what is healthy for the organism.
I disagree with this - not least because it embodies the reductio ad absurdum fallacy.
1. God - at least the Christian God - defines good and evil.
2. Accepting a different definition of good and evil, or that someone who believes in a different definition of good and evil is a "person of God" (as opposed to just a person of generally good character) requires abandoning the teachings of one's own God.
3. Once one has abandoned the teachings of one's own God, one is no longer a person of God.
4. Therefore a person of God cannot possibly see that there are people of God within other religions, because doing so implies that they are no longer a person of God themselves.
It is possible to accept that - to the extent other religions hold similar values (and there is considerable overlap) - a person in another religion can be a good person by anyone's definition. But even in such a case the person will have some values/aims/aspirations which are evil according to the person of God.
For example a Moslem, if he is a true Moslem - i.e. a person of God within his religion - must hold to the idea that he should kill infidels who refuse to convert. Such a Moslem may hold values, and exhibit behavior, in other areas of his life which appear good to a Christian. He may be honest, charitable, a good father and husband etc. Nevertheless his belief in slaughtering infidels means that he cannot be "a person of God" as far as a Christian is concerned. And if the Moslem does not believe in slaughtering infidels then of course he is not a "person of God" within his own religion.
None of this means that we shouldn't all try to get along. And of course we should look for and find the good in others. And no-one of any religion has the right to impose their views by force - Christ did not teach this, and to the (in many cases significant) extent that his followers have done so, they have sinned.
Then you need some criterion for determining which others to include. And you also have to make sure that whoever you allow in doesn't open the door to things you would have excluded.
"Only through the Son shall you come to Me" doesn't sound like a shakedown to me. It's advice. It only turns into a shakedown when accompanied by a demand for cash :-).
what are prayer dollars?
Don't confuse Christ with some of his fan clubs :-)
Then again, if "Only through Son shall you come to Me" is objectively correct, your comment falls apart. :)
That's the problem with multireligionism, isn't it? They can't all be right. ;)
Why couldn't all religions be true at the same time?
Well, they contradict each other. Each will teach some set of propositions that it says are essential. And no two religions will agree on these propositions. In the simplest case, there will be a question of who is worthy of worship, how many gods there are.
And if it can be shown that two religions exactly match each other in all essential propositions, than I'd say they are the same religion. If you can't tell two religions apart, then they are the same religion.
Possibly yes, but contradiction in proposed truths when said truth is faith-based and not based in empirical experience does not create real conflict, only a created conflict which is therefore resolvable if the will to resovle it is there.
I don't mean it the way people do when they say all religions try to approach the divine via different paths, as that is just another way of saying there's only one divine (i.e. a Platonic ideal) - I really do mean that it is fully possible to accept the fable out of Genesis as being true while at the same time accepting the world being wrought from the body of Ymer, or that the lands beyond the sunset is where the soul travels after being weighed in the scales of balance - all at the same time.
Because to a christian, Genesis is true. To someone worshipping Osiris and the rest of that pantheon, the Book of the Dead is true. To someone marking a tree-stump with the sign of Ull, he is true.
To me, there's no contradiction in that.
All true, not despite contradicting or contending each other but rather true because they contend and contradict.
As for matching propositions, that is a quite probably very perilous path if one is of a monolithic and monotheistic faith-tradition, since there are several such ones. Indeed, it would be to admit that (f.e) judaism, christianity and islam are the same religion.
It opens the door for reductionist and relativist arguements of the campus atheist-variety: "See? They have X no. of things in common, therefore they are the same thing".
(Not saying that is what you're saying, just pointing out that risk (which is the same risk as when - as was my old field - analysing, debating and teaching (about) ideologies, ideas and indeed also faiths when viewed as systems of values and mores.)
Basically, I'm of a "live and let live"-opinion. Provided there's no coercion, no violence done unto others for saying "No thanks, it's not for me".
Well, adherence to a religion not out of free will but out of coercion is not true adherence to religion. Therefore all who would coerce people to their religion are defeating themselves by doing so.
> contradiction in proposed truths when said truth is faith-based and not based in empirical experience does not create real conflict
This is, I think, the core of the matter. In my view, there is only one objective reality outside my mind.I clearly have only one conscious mind, and therefore there can only be *one* reality outside it. I don't know this reality fully, but I can gain definitive knowledge of at least some of it. For example, right now I'm definitively "sitting", whatever the metaphysical reality of "sitting" is. If my knowledge about this external reality is self-contradictory, then I'm not doing a good enough job learning about this objective external reality. I need to try harder.
So, when I approach the matter of religions, with that view, I will naturally assume there IS something out there. Some sort of an ultimate truth is out there. It might even be that that truth is "we can't know anything on the matter definitively", which just proves Agnosticism true. On the basis of all this, I'm opposed to the idea religious truths are faith-based and not empirically-based. In my view, a faith-based truth is not a truth. It's faith, or "myth" or a fable or something. But it isn't an objective truth about the external reality, and can't be treated the same way as those.
Let me attempt to offer a one more argument for the notion religious truths ought not to be faith-based, but empirically-based.
Start with the idea there is an objective reality outside the mind. A little proof for that: I definitively percieve things. Yet, I don't myself decide on all things I percieve. Therefore, there is something outside my mind that constrains my perceptions, therefore there is something outside my mind. We relate to items in this objective reality. Religion, as human endeavor, ultimately is concerned with our relation with divine. So religion fits into the mould of relating to objective things outside our minds. It's not special. Now, we usually have this separation of "real things" and unreal things. Some of the things our minds perceive in the outside world are "real" which normally means the relations with those things are important. Some of the things our minds perceive are "not real" which normally means those things don't actually exist in the external reality, we just think they do. And so the relations with those things don't actually exist, and aren't important. In *general*, empirical observations are understood to correspond to real things, things that definitively exist, and are therefore important. Now religion, it being the relation of the human with divine, is important. Because it's important, according to my previous exposition, it *should* be relating to things that are real, meaning it should be corresponding to empirical observations.
That probably could have been written better. A crass summary would be: "if religion is based on faith and not on empiricism, why should I care?" :)
> As for matching propositions, that is a quite probably very perilous path (...)
Well, the three religions you listed obviously aren't the same because they have different propositions regarding Jesus of Nazareth. xD Christianity in particular considers it's propositions regarding Jesus to be *essential*, and since neither of the other two holds the same propositions regarding Jesus, they aren't the same religion. xD Similar with modern Judaism and Islam - they differ in at least one proposition at least one of them considers essential. For example, was Muhammad a prophet of God?
For two religions to be considered "the same religion", they would need to match 100% on all propositions either of them considers essential, and there must not be a mismatch of essential propositions (one cosiders X essential, the other one not). Well, I suppose you could also constraints about continuty and similar, but this business with propositions is necessary.
HOWEVER, now that you broached the topic, an interesting point is that, according to the official understanding of the Catholic Church, Christian God and Allah are one and the same. xD That's because Islamic understanding of Allah matches what Catholic Church thinks people would think of Christian God if they only had the light of their reason to guide them. :) The essential propositions all match, the only exception are things about the Trinity, but that can only be known if God tells you about it therefore Muslims are excused from knowing it.
They don't "all contradict each other". That's a very parochial view. Only the naively exclusionist religions - Christianity foremost amongst them - contradict each other. Most are happy to coexist.
Untrue. Multiple exceptionalist religions can't logically be correct. But there is no good reason for Christianity to have contorted itself into an exceptionalist religion. The bad reasons for why it happened are related to politics and power, not faith. It's pretty clear from the textual and historical record that Christianity was edited in this direction to serve the power of emperors, popes, bishops and heterodoxy.
Irrelevant. "Other religions can also be true" is just another proposition the religion offers. Some religions hold that proposition true, others don't. The argument I gave still holds - it can't be that both of those kinds of religions are true.
Some people belive all people can get along, other people belive only some people can get along. Even though one of these groups of people can envision itself living with the other group, they can't both be right.
Yet even if a religion holds that other religions can also be true, it doesn't yet mean that proposion is true. After all, the essential part of every religion is worship, and religion needs to figure out who is to be worshiped, and in which way. Are blood sacrifices necessary, or not? Odin or Osiris? One god or many?
You'd have to refocus on the Icons, i think. In stead of a guy being tortured to death, maybe mary and the baby jesus. there are so many dark emotional conflicts in this faith, that i do not think it will ever be free of political usage. total denial of a proper male archetype for one thing. fatherhood being exclusive to the church itself. very unhealthy.
> total denial of a proper male archetype for one thing.
Can you please elaborate on this? One special point of interest is how do you know what is a proper male archetype.
the biological function of males is not expressed. he did not have a biological family and protect them. if all men acted exactly as he did, humanity would be ended in that generation. no one would ever be protected in real life. he would allow himself to be betrayed and martyred, or eaten, like the martyrs of old supposedly did. he died for sins. but did not speak truth to power. did not stand for justice in this world. people are free to commit all manner of evil, as long as they believe at the end, it's ok. so no justice at all in This life. no protection in this life. why live at all if that is what the world will look like? it is reflected in every religious institution having child molesters in their ranks and Not stopping them, but protecting them. how much prayer dollars go to payouts that are not even contested (because they were even known at the time) will never be revealed.
Thanks for the elaboration.
> did not stand for justice in this world.
Funny, but this was actually lampshaded in Isaiah. "Who is blind but my servant, or deaf like the messenger I send?" (Isa 42:19)
> why live at all if that is what the world will look like?
So you could be the hero who fights back the evil. Division of responsibilities, "a body made up only of eyes would be monstrous" and all that. :)
Excellent piece, have you read "Selective Breeding and The Birth of Philosophy"?
This summarizes the entire struggle of the "Religious Right", and it's one I've been on about for weeks now. The world isn't getting more atheistic, in fact it's getting less atheistic, but it's getting less Christian simultaneously.
I haven't, but it's on my list. From my understanding of Alamariu’s thesis, it matches intuitions of my own regarding the extremely deep roots of eugenics in our culture, though his tying that thread to the birth of the idea of Nature itself is a stroke of genius.
Yeah I recently finished a re-read of it, and your essay follows a very similar line of thought. I highly recommend it.
Maybe it is getting more virtuous? https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
I think the diagnosis that Christianity is a slave morality is a half-truth, it’s also a master morality. A king’s power comes from his subjects, Genghis Khan didnt conquer all that territory by himself, of course, so the recognition that the masters are, in their own way, slaves seems to be something overlooked. Power isn’t found at the top of the pyramid, but throughout it, and the tip is far more reliant on the base than the base is of the tip.
Slave morality redeemed IS master morality redeemed. The redemption of ‘both’ is dispelling the illusion that they are separate.
I'm not really sure about this. Slave and master morality are not the same thing at all. Which isn't to say that masters might not pretend to be slaves ... Which is their contemporary preference.
That’s not really a counter argument to “there is no such thing as master morality and so calling it slave morality is silly, it’s just morality”. Saying “they’re not the same thing” and then offering no examples on how they differ is weak.
You didn’t invent the device you’re using to type, you didn’t make the clothes you’re wearing, you didn’t make the food you last ate and even if you hunted it yourself and made the weapon you used yourself you didn’t make the animal you hunted or the materials you used to make the weapon.
We are inherently reliant on each other (it was others who collected the materials to make the device you’re reading this on) and on the universe (which we didn’t create).
There are no true “masters” among humanity. It just isn’t real.
“Deciding for yourself” isn’t mastery because you didn’t invent your choices. No amount of political power will ever change what happens when you put a fork in a live electrical outlet. You aren’t a master.
Now if this is “slave thinking” then fine, you’re bitter at the world for not letting you be whatever fantasy character you wish you could be, but that still doesn’t change the reality which you are subject to.
None of that is inaccurate, but none of that really gets at the distinction between these two different ways of seeing the world, either.
Okay, and they’re what exactly? You haven’t answered that.
There’s also the matter of “this is how reality really is in reality”, how somebody “sees it” is kinda irrelevant, no? Your opinion on what happens when you put a fork in a live electrical outlet doesn’t change what’s going to happen when you put a fork in a live electrical outlet.
In fact, they were briefly described in the essay.
The distinction can only be seen clearly in self-absorbed societies built upon illusions. There, "masters" can assert they are better than their slaves because their every whim is obeyed. And "slaves" internalise their own feebleness because that's a stable phychological defence mechanism. If such a society is stable and insulated from different societies, these two illusions, of masters and of slaves, will continue unchallenged.
I don't exactly know how Nietzsche came up with this, since German society at the end of 19th century shouldn't have been so self-absorbed, but I know why modern Chads come up with this. The high school playground is such an insulated and stable society, where "the jocks" gain everything they want and others don't. But, check this out: high school isn't a normal society. It doesn't have to produce to survive. The "alphas" don't have to work with "deltas" or whomever to get what they want - they want sex and they can get it because teen girls are as horny and shallow as teen boys and will fuck people purely on the basis of their looks. And so modern man grows up thinking that's what life is. A few wretched souls never get their thinking on this corrected, but the majority will eventually get hit on the head by Life, and hopefully realize life isn't quite as simple as high school.
High school is a terrible mistake, worse than college for everyone.
When boys hit puberty they should learn a profession and start working, as apprentices or whatever it may be called.
Learn real skills and earn.
A horrible exploitation and waste of youth defines our education system, nothing is worse than High school.
This is probably the most brutal case of an alpha Chad getting hit on the head by Life: http://www.2arms1head.com/ I didn't read the entirey of the book, but I did read a few chapters at the start, and I read the end.
The man killied himself because he couldn't, or wouldn't, handle the shattering of his illusions.
The problem of the thesis that Christianity is a slave morality is that Christianity requires it's practitioners to stand up to various masters. Maybe even fight them, maybe even physically fight them. And the obvious implication of this is that "slaves" are going to win sooner or later. The sacrifices to pagan gods, demanded by the masters, are going to stop eventually. Marriage is going to be upheld, eventually. Baptisms are going to be performed, eventually. The religion expects the supposed slaves are expected to assert themselves.
There is also a much more obvious counter to this thesis in Catholic Theology: Christ is priest, prophet and king. All baptised join in Christ and therefore share his roles: as priests they offer sacrifices and prayers to God, as prophets they speak what God thinks, and as *kings* they order the Universe according to God's will. In other words, you enter a race of Masters of the Universe through baptism.
And just to make sure this isn't a dead letter on paper, all Christians are required by God to live at least one day per week as masters. Sunday. In this way, you internalise your inherent worth.
Try telling a literal slave that there's ultimately no difference between being scourged by the whip and holding the whip.
Of course there’s a material difference, you seem to have missed the point.
My point is that all morality is “slave morality”, we’re all slaves/servants to something. The man with the whip has his own master who whips him, either materially or immaterially.
That doesn't make the moralities equivalent though.
Master morality is "taking control of the whip makes you a good person".
Slave morality is "turning the other cheek when you get whipped makes you a good person"
To quote another writeup, pagan Rome:
"worshipped success, deprecating losers to a degree rarely seen. This is one area where Islam is closer to Roman patterns than is Christianity. Part of the call of the muezzin to prayer is hayya ‘ala-l-falah: “hasten to success”.
The Roman idea of “social work” was to round up the homeless and have them belt each other to death in the arena for citizens’ entertainment. Kindness was to let them live but dump them outside the city limits."
From https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/feminisation-has-consequences-iii
Master morality is all about lionizing success and hyping up the glory of being a conqueror - slave morality is all about pampering the downtrodden. As with holding the whip vs. being scourged by the whip, there is a similarly material difference between "strength=good" vs. "frailty=good".
If your quibble is just with the binary between masters/slaves, then by all means swap that out for Jordan Peterson's preferred term of "dominance hierarchies". Pagan cultures tended to celebrate those at or near the top of dominance hierarchies, while Christianity celebrates those at or near the bottom of dominance hierarchies - "the meek shall inherit the earth".
Alternatively, instead of master morality vs. slave morality, you could think of it as wolf morality (pagan) vs. sheep morality (Christian). Your typical pagan would be fine with being called a member of a wolfpack, but would get pretty pissed off if they were called a member of a flock of sheep. Christians, on the other hand, proudly refer to their membership among the 'flock'.
true. christianity had the most converts from the destitutes and mad desert dwellers.
there are virtues we have inborn within us if we developed them. https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
Disagree. The rulers under Christianity rarely if ever practiced it.
Have rarely practiced what?
Christianity. At best you could say that they practiced "ruler Christianity" while the rest practiced "subject Christianity".
My point was there’s no difference. You’re injecting enlightened liberalism into the Middle Ages and then being shocked they didn’t abide by it? Good grief chief.
Your best yet
I'm not really sure it was, but thank you!
Ha I thought you might say that
Not that my opinion should matter to you, but I am a Christian who has actually read the whole Bible (many times) and has never read Nietzsche. Because I’ve never read him firsthand I always held back from expressing a dogmatic opinion on him. Love for neighbor compels me to give people the benefit of the doubt. At the same time I kinda knew that the Ubermensch was the opposite of what Christ taught and I didn’t consider the phrase “slave morality” to be a pejorative because, of course, I am to live as a bond servant to Christ. In fact it is my joy to do so (though I do so poorly).
Having said all that, thank you so much for this. I feel like I understand Nietzsche so much more now, even though I will still refrain from condemning him outright due to the fact that I have still never read him firsthand. Through you he now makes perfect sense to me. In the absence of God he makes perfect sense. I only lament that he missed God.
And you are absolutely correct in your assessment that Christians cannot claim to be the Big Magic and dismiss all other magic as superstition. Materialism has infected the western church to a terrible degree, and I speak as a western Christian. Bring back the wonder indeed.
wow. i am glad you read it yourself. do you know how many versions of it there are? the ethiopian bible has 88 books i think. https://artemis6.substack.com/p/the-virtues-revisited/comment/60626877
Great piece. You covered briefly covered everything regarding Nietzsche.
I myself have been struggling with him for a while. It may seem like the pagan virtues of antiquity and Christianity are at odds, but when Christianity took over, pagan virtues never disappeared. Only the spiritual beliefs that were tied to them. These values seemed to coexist for most of Europe's post-Christ history. It was only fashioned in different clothing and given a new meaning. So in that way I see what you mean when you say that Christianity is slave morality redeemed. But now, pagan virtues are in fact largely gone, and Christian virtues dying as we speak. Now slave morality in it's purest form is upon us. Nietzsche was in fact a prophet. And anyone who denies this, is dishonest or stupid, probably both though.
I'm not sure this was the solution you were getting at, but I personally think a synthesis of the two can take place, and this is the best possible scenario. There is already a basis for it. And this basically sums up my personal beliefs and worldview. Though, I'm a fairly worldly person, so I don't obsess too much about the afterlife or the details of the divine. If God will allow me to experience his presence as eternal torment just because I didn't believe exactly what he wanted me to, then so be it I guess.
But I refuse to believe that God wants us to be weak and unvital. I see absolutely nothing wrong with Pagan virtues, and yet, I appreciate a lot of Christian virtues as well. This is both slave morality redeemed, and master morality redeemed. It's either this, or we continue down the progressive leftist path. The choice is easy.
Well said.
I'm not sure a full synthesis is possible without losing much of value, reducing the whole to a denatured, overcooked mush. Yet a full synthesis may not be necessary, either. Should we permit ourselves to contradict ourselves? To draw a tension within our souls through the use of contradictory ideas, virtues, and gods?
Perhaps not a full synthesis. But Christianity never stopped the nations of Europe from bringing down the sword on their enemies, why is that? When Christianity is a seemingly pacifist religion? Maybe it was because the Church was bound to politics for a long time, and so the church came up with rationalizations for the state's actions, even justifications. Or was there something deeper going on?
You've probably been asked before, but have you read the book "Muscular Christianity"? It's far from advocating a pagan-Christian synthesis, but it shows that values such as masculinity, strength, and vitality can fit into Christianity.
there may be hope yet!
"The historiographical, archaeological, textual, geological, and astronomical discoveries of the scientific age that shattered Nietzsche’s faith, and the simple faith of so many others, cannot be undone ... "
I disagree. What if
1. Many of the "discoveries" of the modern age are frauds. I would suggest that the three greatest assaults on God are enlightenment philosophy itself and its offspring evolution and relativity. All three are nonsense.
Philosophy spirals inevitably into nihilism because it has no foundation. If one aims to deduce anything then one must have an initial premise. And since no initial premise can ever be rationally proven (aside from useless self referential ones like "I think therefore I am") then all one can do is argue in circles.
The alternative - the only alternative - is God. That's your choice - Nihilism or God. There isn't anything else that can possibly stand the test of time.
2. The arguments that any of these "discoveries" actually invalidate God are all fallacious. No discovery - even true ones, which many of ours are not - can ever invalidate the idea of God; one merely learns more about him.
3. The master morality cannot be redeemed. In essence it is the lust for domination. One cannot be a master without slaves - it is intrinsically evil because a master must diminish others by his very nature.
The worst thing Christians do, their most damaging sin against humanity, is to conflate the specific narratives of the Bible with God. When the former are shown to be erroneous or even fraudulent, it then undermines the latter. We live in the consequences of this.
Can you give me an example?
The entirety of biblical historiography is unsupported by archeological or extra-biblical textual evidence. In other words: the history of Israel is made up.
Um, no.
Or are you going to go back to DaViD iS cLeArLy A cOpY oF aLeXaNdEr BeCaUsE tHeY wErE bOtH kInGs?
That and, unlike David, Alexander existed.
I read a bunch of Neeetch 20+ years ago, and found it to be very interesting. I'd then look up what the Experts said about that reading, and be shocked to find they apparently hadn't read the same text I had.
Nietzsche's intellectual legacy has been tortured and abused by academic nerds who desperately don't want it to say what it obviously says.
Pendulum seems to start swinging back. Woke leftism seems to be past its peak. And its decline will accelerate. Ubermensh concept was already reborn anew among transhumanists. And now there is an AI angle. And politically systems will be shifting as well - as status quo is failing everywhere. It has no spirit, no support. Just inertia .
So in next 20-30 years idea of making ourselves into gods will be mainstream again. Interesting times
p.s. you would save a lot of time if you use LLM to do pictures. Yeah I understand why you don't . Yet LLM is the future. Denying it wont make it go away.
I don’t think “AI” has anything to do with the concept of the Ubermensch. One is a machine. The other is the elevation and perfection of mankind. Considered as technologies they are perfectly orthogonal.
I don’t use AI generated images because they’re generally ugly and frustrating to use, and because I strongly prefer to highlight the work of human artists, which is far superior to the sludge produced by piles of melted sand.
Well LLM and AI they might be the evolution of same essence we call humanity. And extension of God itself as we are part of him and representation of him.
Our culture, history, technology. It is all a very interesting ride. AI will build on it , while at same time expanding and broadening horizons. The story did not begin and will not end with humans.
LLMs are nothing more than mathematical models; in essence, talking libraries. Unreliable libraries, at that. The technology is moreover intrinsically restricted by the very probabilistic extrapolation that lies at its core: it works by predicting the most likely completion to a character string, and therefore can produce nothing but bland, derivative pastiche.
It is certainly useful for certain tasks. All technology is useful. That it will replace human beings? Delusion.
1) A "like" for your comment and your avatar!
2) I wonder about the pendulum: what if it isn't like the one in a grandfather clock that only goes back and forth, but instead a pendulum such as mystics and the like use fpr dowsing? If so, it may well be swinging >away< from "woke leftism" as you put it, but wence it swings need not be the opposite of today's normal.
Great essay.
As for myself, I can adamantly state that my faith in Christ has been strengthened by the time I spent in the wilderness with Nietzche. I absolutely believe that Jesus, upon uttering the words "My Father, why have you forsaken me?", found himself staring right into the same abyss as Nietzsche - the same abyss we all find at some point. Nietzsche's beauty is his brutal honesty. I love him for it. I happen to think Jesus does, too.
This is a great comment. There is real wisdom here.
Brilliant comment.
Christianity does not say that health, wealth, intellect, beauty, etc. are bad things. Christianity says that such earthly gifts come with extra duties.
As for eugenics, the Old Testament Law has some serious eugenics components baked in. I'll be covering this a future post. (I'm currently researching a series on the wisdom found in the Law of Moses. Many useful lessons there for this age. Israel during the time of the Judges is the only example of borderline anarcho-capitalism I know of which wasn't on an island. )