Saturday 25 January 2020

Feminism and Mystery

I write about feminism on this blog quite often because I see it as one of the great spiritual disasters of the modern era, designed to attack humanity at its roots and reframe both men and women according to a materialistic agenda. Men and women are, and are meant to be, different and that difference is fundamental to the proper functioning of human society. It reflects the primal division of God and Nature which is echoed in the Christian idea of Christ as bridegroom and the Church as bride, and is the basis of expressed reality or creation. To attack that difference is to attack humanity and God who is the author of humanity.

The true nature of male and female and their complementary roles is something that goes down to a much deeper level of being than unaided reason can discern, though unprejudiced reason can easily find support for what is known at an instinctive or intuitive level. This is the level of first principles, things that just are and about which there can be no debate because what is, is. The reason that feminism has been able to make such inroads is because humanity is currently in a betwixt and between stage. It has grown out of instinct but not yet grown into intuition. Consequently, it is stuck in a stage in which it relies on the intellectual/rational mind which is the stage when people are most separate from life and depend on their own mental resources to find their way. Those who are still living largely in instinct will automatically know the truth in this and other matters while those who have grown into the spiritual intuition will consciously know the truth.

But there are other factors too among which are egotism and resentment. For when the mind is under the sway of these, usually unacknowledged, ills, it will seek reasons to justify them. The unbalanced egotists behind feminism were actually pursuing simple self-advancement dressed up as equality. And modern women who identify as feminists are often doing what women (much more than men) do which is follow the status quo. The men who go along with the programme either do so for traditional reasons of deference or else out of an abdication of male leadership responsibility or else a misplaced sense of fairness. Or a combination of all of these.

Feminism is a spiritual evil. This is not because it offers women a degree of personal autonomy but because it separates her from the mystery of her deeper being. It thereby also cuts men off from that same mystery which they are often only able to perceive through her. But feminism makes a woman into an imitation man, in the process depriving her of her femininity. Of course, it can't really turn women into men but it does enough to deny them access to their true selves which was the intention. This was all part of the plan to isolate human beings in the material world and sever them from the spiritual.

Feminine nature when true to itself is oriented to a mystery beyond reason and pragmatism. This is not a romanticised male view of women. It is a simple fact. Something of this capacity should exist within all women but often it is undeveloped or tarnished by emotional reaction. Nevertheless, this is the basic truth at the core of the feminine mind. The masculine mind tends to go outwards and express itself actively. The feminine mind goes inwards and expresses itself through being rather than doing. We all have elements of both within ourselves but a woman's masculinity should always express itself within the fuller and dominating context of femininity, and vice versa.

How can we define this mystery? We can't. That's why it's a mystery. But we can say it is a spiritual quality that opens those who know it up to deeper truths than are available to the everyday mind. That is why things such as night, the moon and the sea are universally regarded as feminine. They contain mysteries. They don't show themselves openly and reveal everything clearly. Their truths are elusive but profound, and they feed the soul.

Mystery hides behind a veil. It has secrets. It is not for all to plumb its depths. Indeed, its depths can never be plumbed. This is a truth that lies at the core of mystery and makes it what it is. But something of it can be known, and its power is what lies behind creation. Mystery is, in this sense, the chaos, meaning formless potential rather than disorder, that is the fundamental material of creation, the stuff from which all things are made (cf. Jesus, through whom all things were made).

The book of Genesis is an important spiritual document in which profound wisdom is revealed in a simple, almost fairytale manner. It presents man and woman as both made in the image of God but with different roles. Adam was created first but given a companion or helper to whom he was bound in love but who also he was intended to lead. That was his responsibility. Eve's role was to be a support to Adam, to do which effectively she was to be his spiritual equal. But the creation order was man then woman and that order was intended to be reflected in the natural order of being. There was to be a hierarchy. A hierarchy grounded in love but a hierarchy all the same. It is man and woman, husband and wife not the other way round. In love there is not superiority or inferiority but there is difference with each completing the other. If one half seeks to appropriate the ways of the other there is no completion and that means there can be no love in the fuller sense. Feminism has attacked the natural order of being and destroyed love. You might say that the natural order had not been functioning as it should but you don't correct that by seeking to dismantle, or even reverse, the order.

Women who propagate feminism are the enemies of truth. They are on the side of the forces ranged against the good, against God in fact. This might be a hard saying for modern women to accept but that is because they have allowed their minds to be corrupted by forces who do not wish their spiritual good. Feminists might claim they are working for equality but what they are really working for is female power and what motivates them is ego. And here's the thing. Power is the province of the male. The female equivalent would perhaps be influence. But power is a male thing. So for the female to seek it is an aberration and history confirms that when women do gain political power a culture starts to self-destruct. That's because women have no real interest in building or maintaining a civilisation and will seek to bring down the boundaries and safeguards that preserve that civilisation from outside attacks. In their eyes this is because of an unselfish humanitarianism or a wish to be 'fair' (for which read undiscriminating) but really it is because they are not programmed to defend the tribe so will respond to problems on an emotional rather than an intellectual level. Civilisations are formed by masculine energy and vision. Metaphorically speaking, they must be hewed out of rock. They are built through hard struggle and can only be preserved through hard struggle and the separation of higher and lower elements  When qualitative standards are reduced to be 'fair', meaning equal rather than just, decline rapidly sets in. All things break down and return to chaos unless one works to sustain them.

The feminine softens, balances and humanises the masculine. It keeps it from the destructiveness that is the other side of creativeness. But the creative impulse is masculine while the feminine is that which inspires creativity and when a culture no longer recognises this it will die. Feminine mystery is one of the chief causes of male creativity. When women turn away from this deeper aspect of their being, men lose a major part of their inspiration and their works turn more readily to evil.

I don't blame women for feminism. Given the male rejection of God it was inevitable. It is largely men who have created the conditions for this sickness of the modern mind.


15 comments:

Bruce Charlton said...

@William - As so often the give-away for me is the dishonesty of feminism.

It will never explain its assumptions (for example, are men and women supposed to be psychologically identical or different - feminism flips back and forth on this basis matter), nor respond to evidence (all actual and possible evidence is always interpreted to prove the validity of feminism); and will never state what it is aiming at socially: what is its utopia, and is that utopia desirable and/ or coherent?

This reveals to me that feminism is - in essence, at root and by motivation - evil; being aimed at the distruction/ inversion of Good. When an evil ideology like feminism is treated as self-evidently Good - as in The Western mainstream and official discourse; then this is itself a prime example of the value inversion of modernity.

This is in contrast with non-Christian religions or religious societies of the past; which are/were not primarily evil but aiming at partial/ distorted Good. This is the difference between the modern West and all previous societies; but it is a difference that not many people can see.

William Wildblood said...

It never ceases to amaze me at how so few people do see this. Is it because we have been duped by the idea of life as always moving forward in a progressive manner so latest means best? Or is it because when our foundations have been torn down we have no sense of fundamentals so are prey to any conditioning? We have allowed ourselves to be deceived because the world is too much with us.

Bruce Charlton said...

@William - Yes, people *can't* see it, ultimately because they have no root in God, so life is 'random', so nothing is really real.

Also, I think especially with women, there is the tendency to regard every argument/ disagreement as personal; so a challenge to 'feminism' from a man becomes a challenge to 'me' - being mean to 'me'. This can be an absolute barrier.

For example, I once challenged the validity of a research paper that (on the basis of flimsy evidence and biased interpretation) that women were being discriminated against in science. Some female colleages were so personally offended that they literally never spoke to me again.

In effect, these women felt that they personally had been held back by sexism, so any evidence that supported this feeling must be true; anybody who challenged their belief that women suffered net negative prejudice in science was attacking them personally (as well as women overall).

Therefore, the subject simply could not be discussed.

Of course, all the solid evidence - as well as very very obvious personal experience - is that women are strongly favoured in science, and have been for fifty years or so.

The net result is that women are favoured in multiple ways (flattered, pandered-to, appointed, promoted; differentially favoured with grants, publications, awards; given special institutional provision and stractural advantages etc etc) -- *plus* they are treated as if they were oppressed victims.

And when, *because* of this lower standard, women perform worse than comparable men at teh same level - this is taken as yet further evidence of oppression!

So it goes...

Francis Berger said...

The last paragraph is an exceptionally powerful one. Of course, most women would equate that with the patriarchal oppression of religion . . .

On a side note, you address this topic with great insight in your Remember the Creator, which I happen to be making my through at the moment. Good book!

Bruce Charlton said...

@William and Francis - re: "I don't blame women for feminism. Given the male rejection of God it was inevitable. It is largely men who have created the conditions for this sickness of the modern mind."

It was men who abandoned Christianity first, and some men encourage/d feminism because it increases the availability of extramarital sex (this is the usual pattern in fact - Harvey Weinstein is just one of many examples of what motivates feminist men).

But I do, nonetheless, accord women a significant share of the blame for feminism - but mostly upper middle class and aristocratic women who have consistently put their own minority personal preferences above those of the majority of women.

William Wildblood said...

Thanks Francis.

Bruce, I think that too. I was trying to be fair (as I criticised men for being earlier in the piece, habits die hard!) but I did slip in the world 'largely'. It is women's egotism that has made a bad initial situation immeasurably worse. There are just no two ways about this.

William Wildblood said...

wrt blaming women for feminism, I came across the following remark which sums it up.

"Feminism was created from the hearts of women who sometimes were damaged and twisted. And sometimes they were literally sick. Others may have been genuinely well intentioned and imaginative but their product was poisonous because they were working with assumptions and lies."

So, I would say that men prepared the field but women sowed the seeds in the fertile soil. and this from the beginning. It's not just a post '60s thing.

Francis Berger said...

@ William,Bruce - I feel most feminists would be offended by the notion that men played any role in feminism and would proudly lay claim to all the blame, which they would wear as a badge of honor.

jana gatien said...

Feminism, however the field for it was sown, was, at the the end of the day, the woman's choice and stand. It enabled her to cite a false culprit for the malaise that really stemmed from an increasingly godless world, and give her a sense of control in a world of weakening men. I'd say these two parts (godless man & godless woman) played off of each other to generate feminism (another dream within a dream). This false culprit (in the false materialistic vacuum world) was: man, who, in reality, is her counterpart and counterbalance. As we plunge deeper and deeper into the abysmally incoherent, convoluted godless fiction (without the benefit of having any other reality to compare it to), the inverted rogue feminine uses passive aggression (I'm a victim!) to whine/demand her way to "the top" of the wonky power structure, and many would-be men have adopted this hyper-feminized way of leveraging themselves through the rather pathetic power struggle in this shared delusion.

If the rare person is able to, in this limbo state between instinct and intuition, where the inversion is pretty complete (and the minds of men/women are consequently turning to mulch), bring to maturity their intellectual faculty, would these be like sprouts springing out of the worm-ridden fallen earth realm? Would that be enough that some choose to take in the nutrients to that give real life as this world eats itself?

I came to Christ quite recently (honing in on it over the past 5 years ... though I'd gone to a rather nonsense Catholic school as a child), simply because I wanted reality more than anything for my whole life. After investigating everything for decades, I revisited the Bible and recognized it to be the only thing that made cohesive sense. The only thing that had a pathway to divinity. From the proper orientation gleened from Jesus' words, I find intuition more and more. From my experience, the Bible helped bring a balm-like order to my thinking, while everything around me just got more and more absurd. I think that if one fails to dovetail intelligence with reality (or a sincere seeking of it), the intellect, like the body, withers & rots.

Sorry for being wordy. I don't have people to talk to.

jana gatien said...

Great, engaging post. I forgot to say thank you!

jana gatien said...

And a clarification of my question: if the intellect is brought into order and bathed in truth, would it not naturally sprout and extend into intuition?

William Wildblood said...

Thanks for your comment, jana. Yes I think that if the mind is, as you put it, brought into order and bathed in truth,that will give it the right setting for intuitive awakening. But it needs an active engagement from the mind as well. It must consciously aspire to truth without trying to force it into line with preference or wishful thinking.

Kirstie said...

Wow. This post is fast-becoming my favourite. I have read it 5 times or so and still uncovering the many depths to it. Thanks, William. For me personally, this is the kind of Truth I respond to... never superficial, many layers you must consider and the type that sends modern feminists into an unchallenged response of hate against men. And the most obvious being that the assumption of feminism is that it can survive without God. Ok, they are doing well destroying Man but the deeper implications..

And you are right, that yes, men have rejected God and yet they still want to imagine the perfect replacement....a woman to help him forgive him for his weaknesses. It is fascinating.

That can never happen and vice versa.

This may sound cheesy and I know I am in no way an authoritative source on your Masters but they have a way of putting profound truths out there for those that want to consider things from their point of view.


William Wildblood said...

I'm glad you liked the post, Kirstie. Feminism is the enemy of women in some ways even more than it is of men. It's the enemy of humanity.

Kirstie said...

Agreed and very difficult to digest and accept (from a female point of view) because modern feminist discourse does not allow any room for even the most basic, honest questions about reality. It's all about how to deconstruct patriarchy and to only look for male-orientated causes to explain the problems and negativity of the world and the 'nuclear' family. Completely one-sided and unbalanced and yet this is just the norm for academia!

So thank you again for your invaluable post and I should have acknowledged that you are the key in being able to relay the Master's profound truths! Thank you, William! So refreshing.