When I speak of the left here I am referring to something primarily cultural. That's to say, the liberal, progressive, egalitarian ideology that most educated people today assume is how things should be in a sane and decent world. It's also a gross spiritual error.
What is the left? I usually avoid politics on this blog because I'm not interested in them except as something seen in the light of spiritual truth. As far as I am concerned a proper love of God and understanding of metaphysics would render most political matters irrelevant in that the way to live would become obvious. But increasingly nowadays what calls itself politics is used as a weapon against spiritual truth and that is why I must ask, what is the left? Is it merely a political point of view revolving around liberty and equality which believes in taking power from individuals and giving it to the State for the benefit of society, one that is espoused by the more intelligent amongst us as statistics appear to show, or is it, at root, something completely different? Let's get this idea that the more intelligent a person is, the more likely he is to adopt a left or liberal (the two are basically the same now) perspective out of the way first. This may be true up to a point but that's largely because the training of the mind in the modern world is heavily directed towards atheism and scientific materialism. That is the form of education we all receive so the further we go in education as it is today, the more we will be indoctrinated by that mindset. But those who are really able to think for themselves, which is surely a key factor in true intelligence, will see through the absurdity of materialism which, when properly analysed, is incoherent. It explains nothing and makes no sense and can only be entertained seriously if vast elements of what life is are expunged from reality.
Obviously the left is a political attitude outwardly but I believe its true origins lie in something deeper. I think that the real roots of what manifests in the world as liberalism or the left is spiritual. Not spiritual as in coming from God but spiritual as in coming from the so called dark forces (aptly sometimes described as those of the left hand path) which have set themselves up specifically against God and all that speaks of God, particularly the good, the beautiful and the true. I know that most people nowadays would scoff at such a notion but it has been understood in Christendom for as long as Christendom has existed and, if we dismiss it, our only grounds for doing so are that we dismiss the spiritual world entirely. I should stress that I am not proposing this duality of good and evil forces in a dualistic or Manichean sense. God is reality and there is nothing outside him. But there are fallen angels who, with their human accomplices, some consciously so, some just dupes and naive idealists, seek to corrupt and invert reality, and this world is their battleground.
Whether the ideology of the left was originally put through by forces favourable to God or satanic forces is beside the point now. It may well be the case that in the 18th century new ideas did need to come through to bring about a greater measure of social justice, but these were quickly co-opted and detached from any real spiritual framework which, if it ever existed, quickly became secondary to the material side of things. From this we can quite easily deduce that the movement was not a heavenly inspiration. It was directed towards things of this world to the, more or less, full exclusion of the next. Where there was a spiritual focus of some sort it was a spirituality that stood in the shade of social or worldly issues and was only considered in the light of those, the very reverse of what should be.
Sometimes leftism, so called, is regarded as a
Christian heresy. However I think it’s more like a perversion of Christianity since
heresies generally exaggerate certain aspects of truth while minimizing or neglecting others
but leftism completely eviscerates Christianity of the supernatural which is its whole point so it cannot be said
to have any real relationship to Christianity at all. You might say that it takes the horizontal part of Christianity while neglecting the vertical but the horizontal without the vertical is unsupported and so falls to the ground.
But, however we define it, the spiritual intent of the left, or that of the true powers behind the left, is very clear today when we see it trying to remake reality according to its anti-God agenda. It does this through such things as erasing the natural differences between the sexes, cultural relativism, destroying or inverting the hierarchy of truth and goodness, and placing excessive emphasis on reason as the best guide to life thereby tarring faith and intuition with the brush of superstition. And when we observe it trying to dismantle traditional institutions which have evolved with a spiritual purpose (for instance, marriage) both by attacking them externally and by trying to corrupt them from within, we have another pointer to the true agenda of those behind it. Many of those involved in all this are not aware of its true purpose but consider themselves to be acting in the name of progress. In some respects they might be, which makes the picture more complicated for those who only look at the appearance of things. But look beneath the surface and quite a different picture takes shape. Then you see that the establishment of secondary truths is being used as an excuse to destroy primary ones, and even these secondary truths are soon discarded when they've served their purpose.
A lot of the things the main drivers of the cultural and academic left believe and assert comes from their fear and hatred of God. This, of course, goes back at least as far as Rousseau, the French Revolution and Marx. They want to unmake reality and remake it according to their materialistic and atheistic theories so that God has no place in it. This is one reason they attack that fundamental truth of the two sexes so relentlessly. If they can destroy something so basic and so universally acknowledged as that they have gone a long way towards driving the truth of God from the universe. Or so they hope.They can never succeed because eventually the false society they are creating will collapse either from external attack or internal despair, but they can do great image to the state of people's souls before that happens and that is the principal purpose of their unseen masters whether they are aware of this or not.
With the two sexes they have used the excuse that the similarities are more important than the differences to deny the fact of the differences and that these are intrinsic. And this is large part of the problem. The left, or a major element of it, is fundamentally dishonest and uses lies to advance its distortion of truth or else, more subtly, it uses lesser truths to force out greater ones. At one time I thought that people on the left were mistaken but honest and no doubt many are, but it's increasingly obvious that the main drivers of the revolution have always been people of bad faith in that their motivations are not what is claimed. Resentment of others and hatred of the good are often to be seen as the real origin of their position. Of course, the foot soldiers are not always like this but even they are, at best, spiritually blind and they often have something of their leaders' faults in them too. I am not here saying anything as crude as left bad, right good for all of us are sinners in our different ways. Nonetheless the fact is that the denial of God and of the true good is at the roots of left wing ideology.
I have said that mainstream leftism is fundamentally atheistic and so it is. But many people nowadays who have a vague and unformed sort of spirituality also embrace a left wing perspective so why, one must ask, is so much modern, as opposed to traditional, spirituality left leaning? The short answer to this is that it is human and this world centred. It does not look to God the Creator as the summum bonum of human life. Nor does it acknowledge the fact that we are fallen and in need of redemption. It sees humans as they are now as basically good and perfectible if only they are treated nicely. There's no need to repent because you as you are already good and it just needs to come out. You might say I exaggerate to make a point but I see left-leaning spirituality as essentially self-seeking and interested in spirituality for its fruits not from love of God. Generally speaking, the left has no use for God who it typically sees as an oppressor. Which, of course, from the point of view of an egotistical rebel against truth, he is.
It is important to appreciate that none of this means that the right has any kind of exclusive handle on goodness and truth. A traditional attitude is always closer to understanding the reality of things than a modern progressive one but any approach to life that does not have a proper spiritual understanding at its heart can never be right. I've criticised the left because of its anti-Christian agenda which is plain to see. It either seeks to destroy Christianity from outside or corrupt it from within, and it's been very successful in both those tactics. The right has not been used to the same extent but a secular right, given power, would be just as materialistic as the left albeit in a different way. And I can certainly envisage a scenario in which a deformed version of the right could be used to advance an authoritarian form of religion that effectively rejects love and imposes rigid control with no room for dissension. But that is not what we have in the West in the 21st century. Not at the moment and not for the last 70 years certainly. Nonetheless while the left has distorted love by separating it from truth, flattening it out and 'egalitarianising' it then reducing it to the horizontal plane only, so the right could potentially similarly distort the idea of truth. Both, of course, can only corrupt realities because there is nothing else but these realities just as evil can only mar - it cannot make.
Everything requires balance, and you might think it is only the excesses of the left I have been talking about here. The truth is, though, that the excesses were built into it right from the very beginning. They were inevitable. It took very little time to go from seeking a degree of social justice to the rejection of God and the overturning of the natural order of being. Thus, while liberal ideas may have been of some use at one time, to act as a corrective and counterweight to past corruption of ideas about the nature of God and hierarchy, they should never have been taken as a basic philosophy of life in themselves. The best you can say about the left is that it is like a strong medicine which may be useful when the patient is sick but it does not form part of a healthy diet. Then it may turn into the poison that it now has.
Everything requires balance, and you might think it is only the excesses of the left I have been talking about here. The truth is, though, that the excesses were built into it right from the very beginning. They were inevitable. It took very little time to go from seeking a degree of social justice to the rejection of God and the overturning of the natural order of being. Thus, while liberal ideas may have been of some use at one time, to act as a corrective and counterweight to past corruption of ideas about the nature of God and hierarchy, they should never have been taken as a basic philosophy of life in themselves. The best you can say about the left is that it is like a strong medicine which may be useful when the patient is sick but it does not form part of a healthy diet. Then it may turn into the poison that it now has.
Your framework makes it easier to understand the last 70 years. The left used new spiritually to reject Christianity, until it was no longer useful, and now rejects spirituality all-together. The purely materialistic framework, under the guise of utilitarianism and seeking happiness, is used to push so many other evils.
ReplyDeleteMass immigration, under the argument of humanitarian assistance, is being used to destroy or undermine what's left of the root of Christianity in Western Civilization, and all the "freedoms" to sin that rejecting Christianity permitted will now be given up as well in this push.
So both arguments of our present problem are essentially flawed - that semi-right secular argument that we must protect the West to save our "freedoms" (essentially, wind the clock back a little) and the leftist argument that we need to permit this destruction out of a great godless virtue. They are both on the same road of death.
I suppose you are doing the best a man can do now - witnessing to God as best you are able.
I think all your points are very good ones, Nathaniel. Thanks for adding them to this post. No doubt the time will come when adhering to the true good will be perceived as evil or hateful while opening the door to evil will be painted as virtuous. Immediate superficial good will be urged at the expense of deeper truths which will be sacrificed on the altar of so called humanity. Only those who can detect what is beneath the surface of things will be able to remain faithful.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I follow Nathaniel and this blog post. It is clear to me that we need to defend ourselves, just like our ancestors did. The media tries to sell the idea that our atheist Europe today is more Christian than that of Charles Martel or that of Pope Innocent XI. Clearly, this is a lie. I see little danger of the west becoming fascist. Fascism was a youth movement, but European countries have a different---an older---demographic nowadays. You could rather make the case that the youthful migrants would pose such a problem. I would also point to Japan and South Korea, both countries that have defended their culture and themselves quite successfully from mass migration and leftist politics, and I doubt that there is any fascism on the rise in Japan, which is just as old demographically as most western countries. Vox Day of Vox Populi is Christian and does not see it very differently.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I would like to point out that there was certainly no greater Christian in the 20th century than Nicolás Gómez Dávila. He is without a doubt the most inspiring believer, at least of those having been born in the 20th century. His aphorisms are akin to an elixir that fuels ones faith, and I try to read him regularly. Some of his aphorisms have been translated into English, and are available at:
https://don-colacho.blogspot.com/
I think Gómez Dávila had direct spiritual knowledge, he was divinely inspired. We should cherish such rare person, as they can help to intensify our faith.
When I refer to a right that could go wrong at the end of this post I'm talking about a secular right or a falsely spiritual and oppressive or autocratic right not a traditional spiritual right. Anything can be perverted which is why we always have to make sure our politics is subservient to the love of God, but certainly a traditional, spiritually focussed right is - right.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about Don Colacho but what little I do know accords with what you say. He clearly had a real genius for capturing truth in aphorisms.