21st Century Progressivism

Tag: Pope Francis

  • Strangers and Pilgrims in Anglo-Saxon Country

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    For several decades our government has behaved as if this country doesn’t belong to us. This can be explained in two ways. Either the country is ours and the government is cheating us, or it never belonged to us at all. Foreign political analysts like to call us Anglo-Saxons. Maybe they know something about our government that we don’t know. Christians say they are strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Maybe it’s fitting for Americans to acknowledge they are strangers and pilgrims in Anglo-Saxon country.

    America and the Anglo-Saxon Outlook

    I criticized Professor Wen Yang recently when he said Anglo-Saxons are the worst people ever. There may be some truth in this, but it’s too extreme. I think it would be better to explain Anglo-Saxon behavior as the result of a flawed social organization.

    Wealth Inequality and the Plight of the Male Sex

    Anglo-Saxon wealth inequality stems from a long-standing flaw in social organization. It is fostered and perpetuated by the institution of boarding school. According to Alan Macfarlane, this institution may have even created our economic system. He has argued that boarding school was the beginning of capitalism.

    Before boarding school, economic activity took place in the household. However, sons who were sent off to boarding school ceased being part of that household. This severed the link between economic activity and the household.

    Boarding school breaks the social bond between a boy and his family and makes him vulnerable to generic male influences and organized male cabals. In addition, his former household looses the connection and benefit derived from his economic activity. He loses benefits as well when his household ceases to participate in his efforts. This explains how capitalism became the stomping ground of independent (i.e. lonely) men.

    Great Personal Wealth leads to Radical (i.e. antisocial and inhuman) Independence

    There are additional dangers for men who become radically independent. I would put it like this: A man’s mental and spiritual health depend entirely on his family ties. Unaccountable wealth destroys family ties. I would argue that seizing wealth from these men would be more rescue than punishment.

    There have always been proposals for small improvements in ruling class behavior. Policy-makers, politicians, and religious leaders in the mold of Pope Francis hold out hope that the existing system can be preserved. However, that hope has proven to be futile.

    Conservatives Should Have Appreciated Pope Francis When They Had Him

    Pope Francis was economically pragmatic. He fought for justice within the economic system and preached against ‘unfettered capitalism’, but he defended everyone’s part in the system. If the wealthy had listened to him perhaps they could have prolonged their privilege. However, in the last ten years they have demonstrated that capitalism itself is a run-away train. Furthermore, they enjoy riding on that train. The more unequal things get the better they like it. This position never was acceptable, but now the spell has been broken.

    Wealth Inequality is a Curse

    There is no justification for wealth inequality. It is a curse that can no longer be tolerated. The world’s wealth must be returned to families. That’s where it began and that’s where it should be used. Wealth does no good to anyone in the bank accounts or tax havens of a handful of sociopathic men.

    However, in order for a seizure to work, the system must be overhauled. Otherwise these people will return to their old ways. The system must protect the wealth of families first. this can only be done by something like bridewealth, which I have argued for previously. This system served to safeguard a family’s wealth and protect mothers at the same time. Husbands benefitted from the system as well, but there were limits in place. By contrast, economic limits do not exist today. Instead, additional burdens are imposed on women.

  • Irrationality as a Weapon Against the Enlightenment

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    I have previously criticized the Enlightenment, but now I think it may have been too easy to find fault. I was asking whether our present reality has benefitted from the Enlightenment’s promises. Now it’s time to compare Enlightenment thought to competing systems. In this article we will consider the Enlightenment from the point of view of the fascists. Probably the most disturbing revelation in Kevin Coogan’s book is the fact that fascists have purposely used irrationality as a weapon against the Enlightenment.

    Since 1918, irrationality has been part of an assault on liberal notions of political discourse. This approach began as part of a Weimar intellectual current called the Conservative Revolution. 1 (Coogan p. 76). Today, we are seeing it at work in the United States. I believe this is the meaning of Kellyanne Conway’s ‘alternative facts’. It would also explain the behavior of Supreme Court justices who calmly demonstrate their disregard for legal argument and for the law itself. The fascist attack on the Enlightenment might help to clarify the Enlightenment’s importance to the West. If we want to avoid being overcome by this tactic, it’s necessary to recognize it for what it is.

    Francis Parker Yockey’s Attack on American Rationalism

    Among Francis Parker Yockey’s criticisms of Americanism was his claim that America’s Founding Fathers practiced a religion of Rationalism. He thought there were two key reasons that this ‘religion’ had been able to dominate America. The first reason was, America lacked tradition.

    The second reason that rationality had been able to dominate America was that it had no originating ‘mother soil’ to provide Cultural impulses and Culture-forwarding phenomena. Rationalist religion came to America instead, through England. And it arrived in England by way of France (Coogan pp. 133-134).

    Yockey argued that Europe had been able to resist Rationalism, thanks to tradition. Although he acknowledged that European tradition only lasted until the middle of the 19th century, he thought the European resistance had found support in Carlyle and Nietzsche. They proclaimed the coming of an anti-rationalist spirit in the 20th century.

    Carl Schmitt

    European Revolutionaries like Carl Schmitt shared Yockey’s belief that liberalism, democracy, individualism, and Enlightenment rationalism were the products of a superficial and materialistic capitalist society. The Revolutionaries yearned for the collapse of this order because its collapse would open the way for a new virile man of adventure. This man of adventure would be willing to risk all, due to an almost mystical belief in the state (Coogan p. 76).

    In this Context, the Jewish Question is Never Far Away.

    Yockey also argued that rationalist and materialist ideology made America vulnerable to domination by the Jewish ‘culture-distorter’. The Enlightenment was responsible, in his opinion, for opening up the West to Jewish influence. Jewish entry into Western public life would have been impossible if not for Western materialism, money-thinking, and liberalism–which he saw as Enlightenment concepts. These influences made America especially vulnerable to ‘Jewish capture’.

    Feminism and the Irrational Right

    Spengler called liberalism ‘the form of suicide adopted by our sick society‘; Yockey saw it as a sign of gender breakdown. According to Yockey, feminism was a means of feminizing man. In his opinion, man’s focus on his personal economics and relation to society made him a woman. The result in Yockey’s opinion was that American society is static and formal without the possibility of heroism and violence.

    Polarity was a central concept for Yockey. Several of his polarities are listed on page 140 of Coogan’s book. He considered feminism and sexual polarity to be opposites. ‘Liberalistic tampering’ with sexual polarity would confuse and distort the souls of individuals.

    The Importance of Polarity
    Polarity, Credit: Designer_things

    The Right in general considered feminism to be against the natural order. However, the fascists’ definition of the natural order was different from that of the clerical and monarchist right. The old right still saw man as made in God’s image. By contrast, the Conservative Revolutionaries glorified the irrational, the wild, and the violent. At the same time, they were conflicted on this point.

    They despised the Enlightenment argument that man was essentially a rational being who had been blinded by centuries of priestly superstition. But their confusion had to do with the irrational, wild and violent aspect of their belief system. They celebrated natural impulses, but the ‘natural’ pursuit of pleasure was in direct opposition to their idea of heroic life. They saw the pursuit of pleasure as weakness and degeneracy.

    Rationalism or Polarity? Materialism or the Soul of Culture-Man?

    In Imperium, Yockey wrote that the 20th century would bring about the end of Rationalism. Materialism would be no match against ‘the resurgence of the Soul of Culture-Man’. Unfortunately, the triumph of this new religiosity would not necessarily be a peace movement.

    Conservative Revolutionary Ernst Jünger wrote in 1930 that modern war and technology were logical outgrowths of scientific progress. And war and technology had begun to undermine another Enlightenment idea–popular faith in reason. For Jünger, the real question was how to live in a new age of ‘myth and titanium‘ that was born in the trenches of Europe.

    Jünger was one of the most decorated German soldiers in World War I. He believed that the sheer monumentalism of modern war had buried the idea of ‘individualism’ under a storm of steel. This marked the death of ‘the 19th century’s great popular church’, the cult of progress, individualism, and secular rationalism. In a world where a little man sitting far behind the front lines could push a button and annihilate the fiercest band of warriors, even battlefield heroics were meaningless.

    Futurism built its mythology around speed, airplanes, and cars. Bolshevism gloried in an ecstatic vision of huge hydroelectric power plants stretching across the Urals. America saw the birth of the cult of Technocracy that viewed engineers as a new caste of high priests.

    Coogan p. 141

    In atheist Russia, even Stalin became a human god. Jünger wrote his essay The Worker to herald the coming of the new god-men of technology and total state organization in both the West and the Soviet Union.

    Irrationality as a weapon against the Enlightenment
    Technocracy, Credit: kgtoh

    Time and Space

    However, the far right’s thinking was already in flux before World War I. Coogan says there was a rebirth of mythological politics after the French Revolution (p. 141). This rebirth was brought on by the feeling that bourgeois constitutional democracy and civil society were obsolete. The rebirth of the mythic in the heart of the modern led the historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, to identify a nostalgia for the myth of eternal repetition. He thought he saw the abolition of time in the writings of T. S. Eliot and James Joyce. He called this ‘a revolt against historical time’.

    In 1934, the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse wrote an essay about the German new right. It was entitled The Struggle Against Liberalism in the Totalitarian View of the State. Like Eliade, Marcuse noted the right’s devaluation of time in favor of space, the elevation of the static over the dynamic…the rejection of all dialectic, in short, the deprivation of history (as cited by Coogan, pp. 141-142).

    Pope Francis, on the other hand, Tells us that Time is Greater than Space

    Progressives may not have understood Pope Francis when he told us that time is greater than space. That’s because he wasn’t necessarily talking to us. He was talking to the new right. Aleteia and other Catholic websites have explained it for those of us who didn’t get it the first time. Here I will try to explain the importance of this concept to the right.

    Coogan explains the right’s thought process regarding time and space.

    The turn to myth was intimately related in the quest for a new kind of post-Christian absolutism, since the new right rejected ‘God’. ‘Blood,’ not faith, was at war with reason, honor fought profit, ‘organic totality’ clashed with ‘individualistic dissolution’, Blutgemeinschaft [the community of blood] struggled against Geistgemeinschaft [the community of mind]. The Conservative Revolutionaries set as their task the creation of a new, virile warrior mythology. Right-wing Sorelians, they hoped that such a mythology would slow, if not reverse, Germany and Europe’s perceived decline.

    Coogan p. 142

    This phenomenon also called universal truth into question. One of its basic premises was that ‘Man’ did not exist. And if Man did not exist, neither did his universal rights. Only unique cultures existed–Germans, Frenchmen, Japanese, and Russians. What was ‘true’ was each cultures unique inner spiritual truth, and this could not be shared with other cultures. Nor was it subject to rational analysis.

    The Left Resisted the Conservative Revolutionaries’ Glorification of Irrationalism

    This glorification of irrationalism came under fierce assault from the left. But they had a unique understanding of its threat. The left identified Marxism as the logical heir of Enlightenment ideals. That said, we now know that Steven Pinker, who is not a Marxist, is also a defender of Enlightenment ideals.

    Georg Lukács

    Georg Lukács was a philosopher, literary critic and Stalinist. He argued that irrationalism begins at the same point of antinomy as dialectical thought. However, irrationalism deliberately ‘absolutizes the problem’. It calls into question the power of reason to ever know. In the absence of reason, faith and myth take center stage.

    Herbert Marcuse

    Herbert Marcuse stated the formulation of irrationalist theory: ‘Reality does not admit of knowledge, only of acknowledgment.’ In such an argument, ‘Life’ is the ‘primal given’. It is an existential or ontological state which the mind cannot penetrate. It follows that reason is actually hostile to life.

    There are certain irrational givens (‘nature,’ ‘blood and soil,’ ‘folkhood,’ ‘existential facts,’ ‘totality,’ and so forth). These givens take precedence over reason. Reason is then causally, functionally, or organically dependent on those givens. Under such a paradigm, such existential facts became new absolutes. They are outside of time in the same way that myth is outside of time. Now antinomies are beyond the world of discourse and above historical mediation. In such a world, conflict between opposites could only be mediated by the stronger will. Will became to fascism what Reason was to the Enlightenment.

    1. Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey And the Postwar Fascist International, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, New York, 1999. ↩︎

  • Ecological Conversion: Think in a New Way

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    In Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si’ there is a section on Ecological Conversion. This section was written to encourage Christians to start thinking of their relationship to the world, to ecology and to the environment in a new way. Francis aims to encourage a new spirituality that can sustain us. In that spirit, Fr Peter Knox SJ is offering a Lenten lecture series on ecological conversion. This article is a summary of the first lecture in the series. Fr Knox wants us to leave these lectures feeling empowered to make a significant contribution in caring for our common home. He begins by quoting Pope Francis.

    I would like to offer Christians a few suggestions for an ecological spirituality grounded in the convictions of our faith, since the teachings of the Gospel have direct consequences for our way of thinking, feeling and living. …I am interested in how such a spirituality can motivate us to a more passionate concern for the protection of our world. A commitment this lofty cannot be sustained by doctrine alone, without an ‘interior impulse which encourages, motivates, nourishes and gives meaning to our individual and communal activity’.

    Pope Francis – Laudato Si’ 216

    Introduction and Definition of terms

    This series was produced by The Social Apostolate desk of the Society of Jesus in South Africa. Fr Knox begins by defining some important terms. These terms include Lent, ecology, and conversion.

    What is Lent?

    What is Lent? Lent is a time of Reflection, Repentance, and Reconciliation. It is a process of connecting ourselves with the Son of God suffering with us, and with the broken world. Catholics traditionally focus on prayer, fasting and almsgiving. This was preached in the Gospel of Ash Wednesday: Mt 6: 1-6… 16-18. But this year, Pope Francis encourages us to ‘listen to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’. In that way we participate in an ‘ecological conversion’. The goal is to develop habits that will remain with us through the rest of the year.

    What is Ecology?

    What is ecology? Ecology is everything that surrounds us. We are living organisms–not higher than nature or above nature. Pope Francis uses the term ‘integral ecology’ meaning that everything is inter-connected. This includes urban ecology.

    What is conversion?

    What is conversion? Conversion has an element of repentance. Repentance is being sorry for our actions. There is also the element of making good resolutions to favour a new way of life, with the help of God. Repentance and sorrow is a gift from the Holy Spirit. It is not necessarily a bad thing. We may not feel good, but it is a gift.

    Jesus announced: ‘The reign of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.‘ (Mk 1:15) However, apart from Jesus’ many parables, we don’t know exactly what the reign of God looks like. What we do know is what the reign of God is not. It is not division, pollution, poverty, and struggle.

    What do we have to repent of?

    With this question, what do we have to repent of? Fr Knox addresses Christians in general. He offers a critique of the part Christians and Christian dogma have played in the present crisis. An article by Lynn White: The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis1, accuses Christians of destroying God’s creation. White says this was the result of following the injunction in Genesis 1 to subdue the earth.

    The following is Lynn White’s premise, as related by Fr Knox.

    As we enter the last third of the 20th Century, (he wrote this in 1967) concern for the problem of ecological backlash is mounting feverishly. …Modern science…modern technology is at least partly to be explained as an Occidental, voluntarist realization of the Christian dogma of man’s transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature…Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt. …What we do about ecology depends on our ideas of the man-nature relationship. …More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one. …[We] shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.

    Lynn White

    According to Fr Knox, Pope Francis agrees with with this article. The Pope’s term for this mindset is, ‘excessive anthropocentrism‘, the belief that humans are at the center of creation.

    Pope Benedict, on the other hand was more cautious about White’s article. Benedict argued that this is not the only way of understanding what’s going wrong with the world.

    The World Struggles to Correct Past Mistakes: The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment

    In 1972, the UN had the first conference on the Human Environment, the Stockholm Conference. Since then there have been regular UN conferences and protocols relating to the environment. They include Biological diversity; the Ozone layer; Nuclear waste; POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants); LOSC (Law of the Seas); UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control or change; this is probably the most pressing concern); SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals, where we hope to see all of humanity being able to survive in a sustainable way that doesn’t deplete the environment); Hazardous waste; CITES (Convention on the International Trade of Environmental Species); Watercourses (This is aimed at ending pollution and not blocking watercourses, or allowing water to go through and nourish all the people downstream); High Seas; Biosafety (trying to prevent disease crossing from one species to another–this should have prevented Covid19); Pesticides; Migrant species (birds, whales, fish); etc.

    How Bad is it? The Earliest Scientific Analyses

    In 1972, the Club of Rome published a book called The Limits to Growth. The club of Rome was a group of scientists based in Chicago. They used numerical modeling to discover whether the earth can continue to sustain growth. It indicated that the earth can’t handle continued growth of populations and continued growth of economies. Since 1972 this conclusion has only become more evident. The earth has a limit to what it can provide, and to the amount of pollution it can absorb.

    Planetary Boundary Theory

    The year Pope Francis published Laudato Si’, another group of scientists from around the world promoted a theory called Planetary Boundaries. Pope Francis cited at least 6 of these planetary boundaries in Laudato Si’. Much has been written about Planetary Boundary Theory. The basic argument is that the earth can only give so much and absorb so much, and after that point there will be serious problems.

    Fr Knox mentions one disagreement with Pope Francis on the subject of planetary boundaries. Francis has argued that concerns about population growth are the result of the unfair distribution of resources. If we could correct the distribution problem we wouldn’t have to limit population. Fr Knox thinks this is an optimistic assessment, and it may not be entirely accurate. However, he adds that Francis is a scientist and scientists sometime disagree with each other. Pope Francis does acknowledge that many of these boundaries are being exceeded.

    Which Planetary Boundaries are Threatened and Have Any Actions Been Taken?

    The hole in the Ozone layer (Stratospheric Ozone Depletion) was discovered in the 1980s by the Montreal Protocol. In response, countries around the world stopped using chemicals that deplete the Ozone layer. However, there are several other problems that must be dealt with.

    Additional problems include atmosphere aerosol loading (dust storms that blow across the Sahara and carry very small particles that get into human and animals lungs and cover the surfaces of leaves); ocean acidification (the Ph of the ocean is decreasing and the acid is dissolving the coral reefs. This makes them unable to sustain the baby fish); biochemical flows (two chemicals in particular, nitrogen and phosphorus, have been used for chemical fertilizer. We don’t know how much nitrates the atmosphere can absorb, but the nitrogen cycle and the phosphorus cycle appear to be out of balance at this time. Too many nitrates are coming into the atmosphere and too many phosphates are flowing into the water).

    The most concerning issues at this time are: biochemical flows; fresh water change; land system change; biosphere integrity; and climate change.

    Individuals Might Ask, What Can I Do?

    Individuals might ask, What can I do? I’m just one small person, I don’t know how to convince people. Fr Knox recommends Christians ask themselves, What would our Lord’s response be in a situation like this?

    As an example, he recites the parable of the Wedding feast in Cana. Jesus’ mother comes to him and tells him that the hosts have run out of wine. Jesus seems to say that the wine is not his problem–it is the host’s responsibility. But Mary tells the servants at the feast, Just do what he tells you.

    Fr Knox says that’s what we have to try to work out in our ecological conversion. What is Jesus telling us? What do we have to do?

    Christianity’s other-world focus

    Again, an element of the Christian belief system is implicated in the problem. This time, Fr Knox cites, Christianity’s other-world focus, or a focus on the hereafter. St Paul, for example, said that Christians should set their mind on the things that are above, not on the things of this earth (Colossians 3:2). But that can be problematic.

    It’s a problem because we have to live on this earth, to take care of this earth, and to take care of our fellow citizens on this earth. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be accused of being other-worldly focused. We must take responsibility for what is happening in the environment.

    The Second Vatican Council addressed Christianity’s other-world focus

    This same concern was stated at the Second Vatican Council by over 2,300 bishops from around the world. Christians should not be focused only on eternity. Believers should also be involved in the world order. The bishops urged the Church to promote sustainable development and care for the vulnerable.

    The UN was also a subject of importance at Vatican II. Christians should not see the UN as the enemy of the Church. The Church may be on different track than the UN, but they are working for the same goals. The UN, together with people around the world, is trying to develop a sustainable world where people can live together.

    Today, the Catholic church has membership status in the UN and is allowed to contribute to the discussion.

    Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World

    The document Gaudium et Spes was produced at the end of the Second Vatican Council. The title means Joy and Hope, and its focus is the Church in the world. It states that the Church is not living in a bubble or on Planet Mars. Church members should not see themselves as cut off from the world or better than the world. Whoever supports the human community is contributing to the Church.

    Moreover, she gratefully understands that in her community life, no less than her individual sons, she receives a variety of helps from men of every rank and condition, for whoever supports the human community at the family level, culturally, in its economic, social and political dimensions, both nationally and internationally, such a one, according to God’s design is contributing greatly to the church as well, to the extent that she depends on things outside herself. Indeed, the Church admits that she has greatly profited and still profits from the antagonism of those who oppose or who persecute her. (LG 44)

    …Christians should cooperate willingly and wholeheartedly in establishing an international order that includes a genuine respect for all freedoms and amicable brotherhood between all… Those Christians are to be praised and supported, therefore, who volunteer their services to help other men and nations. Indeed, it is the duty of the whole People of God, following the word and example of the Bishops, to alleviate as far as they are able the sufferings of the modern age. (G+8 88)

    Gaudium et Spes
    Laudato Si’

    Laudato Si’ is an encyclical in six chapters. It follows the pastoral circle, meaning that its basic routine is See, Judge, Act. We see what’s going on in the world. Once we see, we make a faith judgment, or a social judgment from Catholic social teaching. And then we take action. We have to be involved–we can’t leave it to others. To this end, we have to educate ourselves and our children.

    We have to change our spirituality. Pope Francis proposes an ecological spirituality. And ecological spirituality will be Fr Knox’s focus in these Lenten lectures. This new spirituality should make practical demands on who we are and how we live in the world.

    At the end of the encyclical there are two prayers: A Prayer for our Earth; and a Christian Prayer in Union with Creation. If nothing else you can take these prayers from this lecture. But, if you want to go further, you can undertake an ecological conversion.

    Anthropocentrism to Cosmocentrism

    Pope Francis is very clear that human beings are at the root of the environmental crisis. And no serious scientist disputes this. It’s true that there are cycles beyond our control, but the present crisis has anthropological roots. We human beings, particularly since the Industrial Revolution, are at the center of the climate change crisis.

    The term Pope Francis uses is anthropocentrism, the belief that humans are somehow at the peak of the world, and everything serves man. Women are included because they are somehow below men. Also included are money, oil, mineral resources, animals, robotics, and anything agricultural. We human beings have to change this belief and the resulting behavior, as much as we are able.

    Umdenken: Think in New Ways

    Instead of anthropocentrism, we have to move to cosmocentrism. Cosmocentrism puts the world at the center of everything–not humans. Human beings are part of a cycle of life. The earth provides for them and they provide for the earth.

    Fr Knox acknowledges that since the damage took place on a global scale over the last two hundred years, any contribution we make will seem minimal. But every effort is significant.

    Germans use the word ‘umdenken’, meaning to rethink or change our mind completely. Fr Knox considers umdenken an element of conversion. We have to think in new ways.

    1. Lynn White, The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis, Science 155 no 3767, 1967 ↩︎