Applying Demographic-Structural Theory to Religions

Within sociology, social history, and allied realms of intellectual inquiry, there are two general views of sociohistorical development.  The first of these, whose origins (in the main) lie in the Enlightenment, is that of social evolution, which posits that human social development is progressing in a singular direction upward, a manifestation of the “progressive fallacy.”  The other general view is the social cycle theory, which has existed in numerous patterns and forms the basis of some interesting views in sociology today.  It is the latter of these two that I would like to delve into in this post, as it is the one which is both more interesting and more grounded in reality.

Social cycle theory, as a broad outline, is nothing new.  Forms of it can be found in as widely divergent ancient historical writings as those of Polybius, Sima Qian, and ibn Khaldun.  In the 19th and early 20th centuries, cyclical approaches to history such as those of Danilewski and Spengler carried with them overtones of social cycles in their theories which likened civilisations to organisms, rising and falling through successive courses of birth, growth, fruition, and decay.  More recently, we have seem the attempt to systematically provide a mathematical basis for cyclical historical theory in the works of Peter Turchin and others in the Russian school.  These attempts have developed more advanced theories and provided a more empirical and scientific pathway (over and against the merely verbal and descriptive approaches of their predecessors) toward understanding secular cycles in history, which are essentially the political-demographic cycles that form the basis of the rise and fall of polities (primarily studied in agrarian societies prior to around 1800 AD), laying the foundation for a credible science of cliodynamics.

Secular cycles, in general, posit that polities – which can range in size from small tribal chiefdoms upwards to mega-empires encompassing millions of citizens and square kilometers of land area – pass through a fairly well-defined set of stages.  As a polity is formed (usually through some form of ethnogenesis), its population will grow through a logistical curve until it begins to reach the carrying capacity of the land and other resources available.  As these resources become more relatively scarce, increasing competition for resources will lead to a decreasing standard of living (including famines, etc.), which eventually leads to increasing numbers of rebellions and other forms of civil strife.  As this civil strife intensifies – usually accompanied by decadence and social paralysis – it leads to a demographic collapse causes by social disruption, famine, epidemics, and other ills that accompany the breakdown of civil society.  This demographic collapse (and let’s rectify the names here – we’re generally talking about population die-offs) leads to fewer people and more relative abundance of resources, thus beginning the cycle anew.

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Aristocracy, Real and Imagined

Western civilisation is vulgar.  By that, I don’t just mean that it is boorish, coarse, and offensive (though it certainly is these things), but rather that it is common.  Plebeian, if you will.  The drive to egalitarianism which has plagued the West since 1775 has created in Western man a desire to debase himself.  America – founded as it is upon the spurious principle that all men are created equal – has led the pack in the decline to the bottom.  It is in the United States, especially, that the lowest common denominator is exalted in every area of life – the social, the political, the religious.

Sadly, this absurd view of equality has not encouraged Americans (or other Westerners, for that matter) to better themselves or to pursue equality by raising themselves to the level at which they would become worthy of admiration and esteem.  Quite the opposite has been the case, and this debasement has been coupled with any ever-present drive to expand the number of lowest common denominator people who are allowed to exercise political power through voting, which has further eroded what remained of decent civil society.  Indeed, our political leaders seem to be actively abetting this degeneration of our societies by importing massive numbers of low-IQ third worlders and rushing them into political participation as quickly as possible.  At exactly the time when our nations need better citizens, we are only getting more, and more active, ones.

Non-Toxic Masculinity

I typically do not post in response to other posts or articles I find around the web, but today I’ll make an exception.  I found this post entitled, “Masculine Pastors: The Battle They Face and Will Face Even More” over at What is Truth, a blog operated by an Independent Baptist pastor named Kent Brandenburg.  My purpose isn’t to critically assess the post, mainly because I find myself in nearly complete agreement with it.  Rather, I’d like to point the reader to it (RTWT) and use it as a jumping off point for some discussion of how men in our modern world can be “real men.”  As such, even if the reader is not an Independent Baptist or a pastor, my hope is that both the original post and mine below will be useful.

It’s obvious to any reasonable observer that the Western world is undergoing a crisis of masculinity.  Much of this is due to the constant assaults upon manhood made by feminism, especially once feminism (as part of the larger progressive Left constellation of interest groups) gained institutional acceptability and found itself in possession of managerial power (i.e. it became part of the “establishment”).  Masculinity, as it has traditionally been accepted and expressed, is becoming more and more socially unacceptable, in large part due to the Cathedral’s use of the media to bring it into disrepute.  This has been coupled with a legal regimen surrounding marriage, the domestic abuse industry, and divorce which assumes guilt on the part of men and generally tends to exonerate women, no matter how badly they may act.  Buttressing this is a public education system that uses a largely female body of teachers to discourage “boys from being boys” through a combination of indoctrination and medication.

This is not the only area of society encouraging effeminacy. Pop culture as a whole (e.g. rock music) has encouraged men to look and act like women and to adopt an unhealthy and ungodly definition of “love.” As Western societies have become more urban and metrosexual, popular culture has channeled men in this direction. The Baptist preacher in The Waltons described by Pastor Brandenburg is an early example of this trend, a trend which reflected the increased “taming” of men that soft and effeminate modern urban life began to uphold as the ideal.  Indeed, the so-called Rural Purge that occurred in American television between 1969-1975, in which a number of still-popular rural and western-themed shows were cancelled and replaced by shows dealing with “urban life,” helped to cement this direction in popular culture.  Television moved away from programming that upheld traditional masculine ideals of toughness, responsibility, decisiveness, and honour (such as in many westerns) or which more generally tended to uphold and valourise country living (which, again, is disposed toward emphasising masculine traits of hard work and self-reliance) as “cleaner” and “better” than urbanity.

Using an Ethnokinetic Model to Advance Reaction on Social Media

For the past couple of years, the climate for the free exchange of ideas on social media platforms has been cooling off tremendously.  Having been angered and frightened by the ability of the broad dissident Right to use various outlets to influence the election in 2016, as well as the direction in which the Overton Window has been moving, the Left has sought to shut down the ability of the Right to use these avenues for the dissemination of their ideas.  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other “mainstream” social media have been fully converged and are being used by the progressive Left to suppress the distribution of Rightist ideas.  We find ourselves facing an ironic situation in which platforms originally designed and intended to facilitate the free exchange of information are now being actively used to extinguish it.

Nevertheless, attempting to retain use of these outlets is a worthwhile goal for the dissident Right, especially given the less-than-impressive success of alternative efforts such as Gab and BitChute.  While there are some who mock or vilify social media as “childish” or “unserious,” the fact remains that these outlets (as well as the internet in general) have a proven track record of enabling out-of-the-mainstream knowledge and ideas to find greater circulation than they would through traditional means.  Social media, when used properly, provided serious users with an extraordinary opportunity to bypass the traditional information gatekeepers (print media, television, publishing houses, etc.) and to spread ideas challenging the modernist status quo.  This, of course, is exactly why the Left wants to shut down these outlets.

Thus, the Right should keep using these distribution mechanisms.  This will, however, require us to adapt our strategies and tactics to get around the renewed gatekeeping efforts of the Left. As even more mainstream conservative voices find themselves censored by Silicon Valley, the Right will need to increase the sophistication with which it interacts with social media.  I would suggest that a primary means by which we can do this is, perhaps ironically in the view of some, to look backwards in time to the examples set centuries ago.

The Religions of the Three Castes

I’ve written previously about the fact of (and necessity for) social hierarchies among human populations.  It is very apparent that human society naturally divides into hierarchical levels with progressively ascending castes (I prefer this term to “class,” which carries with it too much modernistic and economic baggage for my taste).  Because of this universality, I believe it is a sound argument to say that these caste divisions are even divinely ordained.  Indeed, the very term “hierarchy” presupposes this, meaning essentially “the rank of sacred things.”

I find the model of the three castes to be a useful conceptual tool for explaining and understand overall social hierarchies and divisions within human societies.  I would in general follow Evola’s approach to caste division, though not in every sense.  The term, of course, hearkens back to the well-known Hindu caste system which gradually developed after the invasion of Indo-Aryans into northern India around 1400 BC, and which is itself likely the crystallization of a less intricate and rigid system that (generally speaking) was commonly found among early Indo-Europeans and their steppe neighbors.

The first caste is made up of the brahmana (priestly caste) and the kshatriya (warrior and administrative caste).  For most purposes, I tend to conjoin these two elements into a single “aristocratic” caste, of which they represent two aspects.  The second caste is the vaisya, typically made up of the merchants, artisans, tradesmen, farmers, and so forth.  Along with the brahmana and kshatriya, these were collectively known as the arya, who were also of the invading Indo-Aryan stock.  However, they were the “little men” among the invaders and were not considered “noble” like the higher caste.  The third and lowest caste is that of the sudra, made up of the very poor and generally unfree, the common laborers and so forth. 

The Bergeroning of Western Civilisation

One of the things that I dislike about fiction is how often it seems to come true.  This is especially the case when the reader is presented with a work depicting a dystopian future.  Unfortunately, there are some people out there who do not realize that dystopian works are intended to be taken as dystopian and who treat them as a challenge to reproduce these futures in real life.

This seems to be the case with the vision of a dystopian society portrayed in Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, Harrison Bergeron.  In this story, we are shown a world in which equality is forcibly maintained in every area and by whatever means necessary.  The strong are loaded down with weights to impede their movement and bodily ability.  The beautiful are purposefully uglified.  The intelligent are fitted with random noise generators to make it difficult or impossible for them to think clearly.  While the stated goal is to bring everyone to a state of equality, the below-average do not nevertheless seem to be raised.  The society shown merely acts to drag down the above average.

The thoughtful observer who has noted the past few decades of Western life may be strangely perturbed by the similarities he sees between the modern West and the society presented in Vonnegut’s tale.  The obvious obsession with “equality” in our democratic and egalitarian systems certainly serves to discourage the appreciation of aristocratic and superior traits and the sort of traditional society which encourages them.

However, it is also becoming increasingly obvious to more and more people that this is not entirely by accident.  Those of us in reaction and neoreaction often point to various macrohistorical forces which have led to the modern world (e.g. the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Puritan hypothesis, etc.).  While these forces may have provided the necessary conditions to allow the appearance of the various specific social pathologies that have infected the West over the past several decades, I would argue that these forces were not sufficient to account for them alone. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that much of what we see going on with the West’s apparent drive toward self-destruction is intentional and at least partially confirms many of the arguments that have been made by “conspiracy theorists.”  

Biblical Hospitality and Immigration

Anyone who follows the national dialogue surrounding immigration issues in the USA, especially as it relates to illegal immigration, is sure to have encountered the so-called “biblical” arguments advanced by theological liberals for unlimited, unhindered immigration.  One of the stock-in-trades of the pro-amnesty, anti-borders, pro-globalism side of the argument is to put some left-wing religious figure before a microphone and have them repeat out-of-context biblical citations, mostly drawn from the Pentateuch (which is generally the only portion of the Bible with which their Jewish handlers are familiar).  These verses typically include,

“Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21)

 

“Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9)

 

“And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him.  But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)

 

“And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.” (Leviticus 25:35)

 

“Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19)

One must admit that it seems a bit odd to see theological leftists, who at no other time would believe what the Bible says or take its words at face value, suddenly morph into textual literalists on this one, specific issue.

Hierarchy and Authority as Necessary Components of Civilisation

A hallmark of modern Western devolution is surely its rejection of traditional modes of hierarchy and authority, and its embracing of egalitarianism.  This has been an endemic element within modernism, one decried by critics as widely drawn as Baron Evola, Thomas Carlyle, and Nicolás Gómez Davila.  The central tenet of each – and many other – appraisals of this element of the West’s direction in the past few centuries lies in the observation that hierarchy and authority are necessary components of a well-functioning, rational, and indeed natural society.  Whether it’s Evola expostulating on the disappearance of polar axial kingship or Carlyle decrying the sham and simulacrum of insincere society, the common theme (and one well worth noting) is that the rush to egalitarianism represents regression, rather than progress, and this is so whether it takes place in the West or in any other society.

The principle of hierarchy has been around for as long as human civilisation has existed.  This much must be understood right from the start if the reader is to have any kind of realistic understanding of human society.  Even in the most “primitive” tribal systems, every group has a chief – a man to whom the tribe looked up to as the leader and authority, the one who led the hunts, the one whose mana energised the rituals and made the rains come.  Even in more distributed authority systems, such as those tribes governed by councils of elders and the like the principle of authority, resting on wisdom that accompanies senectitude, was still present – no one in such circumstances would have thought to suggest that the youngest wet-behind-the-ears brave or the village women should participate in the decision-making for the group.  Generally speaking, there have been very few aberrations from this state of affairs until modern times.

Individualism as Western Pathology

If your average Westerner was asked to state what best defined the modern world, there is a strong likelihood he or she would give an answer relating to individualism.  This is because individualism is one of the defining characteristics of modernism as it has been expressed both in the West and in other eras where similar late stage degeneracies in societies have taken place.  The role of the individual has been exalted to an excessive degree in the modern West such that there is basically no sense of community, united purpose, or public spiritedness in our countries any more.

Many on the “soft Left” of classical liberalism and libertarianism (for these cannot properly be called “conservative” or “Rightist”) would see absolutely no problem with this.  These ideologies perpetuate, and indeed claim to thrive upon, the mythology of the “rugged individual” who pulls himself up by his own bootstraps through his own hard work and abilities.  These are the folks who assume that anything which challenges this proposition in the least way must be “communist” or “collectivist.”  They fail to grasp that civilisation itself is “collectivist” by this definition.  No “rugged individualist” who has ever lived has succeeded outside of the framework of a community and society which allowed him to operate under the protections of various laws and/or customs that maintain order within their social system.  This fact is as true for the West as it is for any other civilisation that has ever existed.  The West is not – and never could be – special in that regard, despite the constant drumbeat about “American exceptionalism” and its European counterparts.  Westerners are as subject to the laws of nature and human nature as anyone else.

Social Permeability, Egalitarianism, and Immigration

Throughout the Western world, immigration (whether legal or illegal, and often approximating invasion more than true migration) is perhaps the single biggest issue facing both the people and the politicians.  The Western world is finding itself facing an unprecedented mass influx of entrants from other, non-western parts of the world.  While the history of the West has certainly involved mass movements of people at various times, these have always been understood to constitute either invasions or colonisations.  The idea of millions of outsiders moving into a culture and it being considered “immigration” is a vastly new (and dangerous) concept in the West.

Nevertheless, there are many in our society who seem to be perfectly fine with the idea of mass immigration radically altering the cultural, religious, and genetic bases of Western societies.  Indeed, the acceptability, or lack thereof, of mass immigration is one of the major points of division between so-called civic nationalists on one side and ethnonationalists (speaking generally) and especially white nationalists on the other.  Civic nationalists, who are often really just straight up open borders supporters, believe that membership in a new society can be established as easily as simply taking an oath and signing some paperwork.  “You can be a polygamist totem worshiper who believes albinos should be harvested for the magical elixirs in their livers and still be a good American,” and all that.

The common assumption, at least among the coastal élites, is that openness to immigration is correlated with democratic sensibilities in particular, drawing from a more generalised standard of egalitarianism.  Because these élites rarely interact in any meaningful way with the immigrants who comprise the “mass” in mass immigration, they tend to assume the fungibility of the “lower classes.”  This is why the political arm of the Cathedral sees immigrants as a source of political capital – one voter is as good as another, and if a new set of voters can be imported who will vote the way the Cathedral wants versus recalcitrant natives who insist upon voting for their own interests, then all the better.  It wouldn’t be the first time in recent history that this has happened.  The corporate arm of the Cathedral sees immigrants in much the same way – as replacement labourers for natives who are too expensive and have a fractious insistence upon earning a fair wage.

However, increasing democratisation and equality have not noticeably served to make either the masses or their “ethno-elites” more favourably disposed to mass immigration.  Indeed, the opposite is widely occurring, as can be seen daily around us.