Leaving the Enlightenment behind.
Until recently I was unaware of any group of thinkers who rejected the Enlightenment for anything other than left-wing reasons. Post Modernism, for example, has been entirely bound up with the Liberal project of dismantling Western civilization in order to enhance the status, power and resource of The Sacred Victims of its racism, sexism and classism, etc.
Here's a voice, and not the only one, who rejects the universalism of the Enlightenment for traditionalist, aka, reactionary reasons. Alex Kurtagic blasphemes, re-assessing our society's greatest and most undeniable moral value --equality-- as a rank moral evil. And then he gets into cases about our society's greatest and most undiscussable taboo: race.
Other evil-doers chime in.
__
Until recently I was unaware of any group of thinkers who rejected the Enlightenment for anything other than left-wing reasons. Post Modernism, for example, has been entirely bound up with the Liberal project of dismantling Western civilization in order to enhance the status, power and resource of The Sacred Victims of its racism, sexism and classism, etc.
Here's a voice, and not the only one, who rejects the universalism of the Enlightenment for traditionalist, aka, reactionary reasons. Alex Kurtagic blasphemes, re-assessing our society's greatest and most undeniable moral value --equality-- as a rank moral evil. And then he gets into cases about our society's greatest and most undiscussable taboo: race.
Any facts or arguments that are brought into a discussion about race and race relations are nearly always subordinated to social considerations. Some of these are the need to be liked by family and friends; the desire to be liked by those one likes and admires and by whom one wants to be liked and admired; the need for social status; and ethnic identification.
... A liberal/Leftist is committed to a moral system that deems equality an absolute moral good, and in a Western society, his status, particularly among whites, depends on his being considered morally righteous.
As communism and the multicultural experiment have demonstrated, liberty and equality are incompatible, so the ever-greater pursuit of equality results in the ever-greater erosion of liberty. A commitment to radical equality results in the proliferation of laws, state surveillance, police enforcement, prosecutions, incarcerations—and bureaucracies to administrate all of the above, and higher taxes to pay for all of it.
Other evil-doers chime in.
__
3 comments:
I have thought negatively of the Enlightenment for years now.
I actually rejected the Enlightenment when I was 20 years old because I was an anti-Vatican II catholic; and the Enlightenment (or at least its results) are seen to be inherently incompatible with the Catholic church in much of the 19th century view.
Then when I accepted V2 begrudgingly I rejected the the Enlightenment because I thought it was inherently protestant, and lead to atheism by placing way too much emphasis on human "reason".
Then when I rejected God for a while because he "refused to cure my homosexuality", I somewhat embraced the enlightenment and have been kind of "liberal". But I have had an extreme freakout being up here with the post-modern liberals at theology school in boston - when people say post-modernism is schizophrenic and post 1968-Liberalism is crazy, I know exactly what they are talking about. but now I cant make a decision on the enlightenment. i alternate between a progressive view and a reactionary "WE NEED TO GO BACK TO THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD AND START OVER AGAIN FROM THERE (but this time make sure Luther dies before he nails that shit to the church) " kind of attitude.
One thing of note though: The Church spend over a century rejecting modernism, from its watershed of the French Revolution, up until the modernists took the Papacy in 1958. But also, post-modernism rejects modernism.... so, was the Church right? Was modernism really the "sum of all heresies", and the resulting post-modernism is just a botched attempt to correct the error?
---------------
1) In my opinion, the Enlightenment is just a step in the stair way to post-modernism.
-Post-modernism is the schizophrenic child of modernism.
-Modernism is the bastard child of the incestuous copulation between the Industrial Revolution and its Enlightenment father.
-The Enlightenment developed out of the Protestant emphasis on the individual being supreme in his capacity "reason" and "discern" the truth by himself, and its rejection of hierarchical authority, tradition, mystery, and the embracement of absolute realism (like Wycliff rejecting transubstantiation because "it is still clearly wine and not blood, therefore it is false").
In other words, when I reject the enlightenment I do so because I reject protestantism. I reject the enlightenment because I reject post-modernism. I reject the enlightenment because I still tend toward anti-modernism most of the time.
Speaking of the anti-modern Church, there are some great (i mean entertaining) restorationist catholic sites out there like Tradition in Action, and The Pope in Red, mostholyfamilymonestary, and several others that sometimes promote the old Triumphalism - I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw "The divine right of Christian Europeans to rule over pagan heathen nations" on one of them the other day. I did used to support their desire to restore European monarchy though. They are obsessed with restoring the French monarchy, mainly because they feel the "great monarch" prophecies predict the future of Europe.
Are you familiar with the "Great Monarch" ? There are all these "prophecies" form different places and times in Catholic european history about some future "great monarch". the general story, from what I have gathered, seems to be this:
Europe is in some sort of weakened social, economic, political state. The Church has diminished and shrunk, lead by a succession of inept, corrupt, heretics - and what is left of the Church is in horrible, horrible shape. And then a great invasion from the east occurs (generally proposed as non-christians, sometimes said to be muslims). Europe falls to this invading force and becomes subject to its rule, and the Church is persecuted to near extinction (or otherwise falls in to complete heresy). After several years, a man rises up and forces out the invaders from large chunks of France (with some big battle in some part of germany), and is given the Crown of Lilies (Charlemagne/French monarchy's crown), and drives the hoards back (sometimes said to be back past jerusalem). This new monarch and a newly appointed (and holy) Pope together restore a better version of pre-reformation Christendom.
As crazy as this sounds, I cant help but think that this seems totally possible. The Islamists have won in Egypt, they are now likely going to win against Assad in syria, and with all the other dictators of non-saudi islamic world gone, it would not at all be difficult to establish a new Caliphate. And with all the radical muslims invading, im sorry, immigrating all over Europe right now, and with Europe's refusal to defend itself least it be seen as "racist", I have no doubt that Europe would easily fall to an invading Islamic force.
My willingness to critique equality as a value, not just as the supreme value but as any kind of value at all, is very recent, so while I have feelings, I don't have a lot of coherent thoughts. Some of you have obviously been at this longer than I.
I do know that much of what I value is under threat and that the idolization of equality has a lot to do with it, and that this idea, which has different permutations over time, needs some serious re-consideration.
Post a Comment