Once upon a time, there was a Caliphate, and the Caliphate was hereditary. The Caliph had a thousand sons. When his grip weakened, the sons would kill or imprison each other till only one remained, who became the new Caliph. The Caliph was the supreme leader of both Church and State, and any preacher boy who claimed to be substantially holier than the Caliph was apt to wind up a head shorter. This prevented spirals of holiness competition.
The Caliphate was overthrown, because the Turks became sick of the burdens of empire, an empire in which outsiders were continually favored over Turks, not to mention that the Caliph tended to be noticeably whiter than the Turks.
In the ensuing chaos, the House of Saud grabbed quite a lot of land, on the basis that they were holier than anyone else. Since then, we have seen one movement after another claiming to be holier than the house of Saud. A day or so ago, US troops fled Yemen, abandoning their heavy weapons to the extremely holy Islamic State or the extremely holy Al Qaeda, or, very likely, both. Yemen has not fallen yet, probably will not fall for a quite a while, but the writing is on the wall.
To the extent that these movements adhere to the plain wording of the Koran and the Hadiths, they are delightfully reactionary. I particularly like Boko Haram’s position on marriage and western education. But, if you simply stick to the plain wording, that kind of limits how holy you can be. So, as each strives to be holier than the other, we are seeing increasing egalitarianism and socialism. All holiness spirals tend to wind up in much the same place regardless of religion of origin, just as all aneuploid malignant metastatic cancers look very much alike, regardless of tissue of origin. Pretty soon they will be holier than Mohammed, as Christians have long been holier than Jesus. If it were not for that, I would convert to Boko Haram’s brand of Islam right away.
So just because Boko Haram is the polar opposite of progressivism killing and otherwise hurting shitloads of innocent people is OK?!?
what are innocent people?
Generally civilized ethical people do not deprive other people of life, liberty and property unless they harm other people first.
You really are a bot aren’t you?
He asks what innocent people – making an implicit argument that’s been spelled out here many times – and you reply with boilerplate that simply assumes that you at some point refuted his argument when it looks more like you not even noticing it – never mind understanding it refuting it.
What are civilized, ethical people?
Innocent people are people who are not doing harm.
Please explain why you think killing people who have not done any harm is OK.
Do you even know how to read or do you just pattern match something tangentially related?
Hidden Author’s reaction to Hidden Author:
“So you just want to genocide all the brown people because Boko Haram doesn’t want to submit to the oil companies?”
Boko Haram atrocities are no secret. The burden of proof is on you too argue that the atrocities are not atrocities because Boko Haram opposes oil concessions, not vice versa.
Genocidal whites always have an excuse for warring on innocent brown people.
Boko Haram threatens the racist hegemony so the racist press invents atrocities. The burden of proof is on you to prove that you’re not racist.
Looks like we have a live one here…
Genocidal whites always have an excuse for warring on innocent brown people.
Boko Haram threatens the racist hegemony so the racist press invents atrocities. The burden of proof is on you to prove that you’re not racist.
– Hidden Author Bot
Except I agreed the opposite. It’s nice to win arguments in your own mind by putting words in the mouth of your opponent.
When I said “agreed”, I meant “argued”.
Listen to Hidden Author, Steve. They know all about putting words in other people’s mouths.
I have never encountered a progressive who acknowledges the slightest guilt about the enormous atrocities against whites in the Congo, the even more horrifying atrocities against Tutsis in the Congo, the atrocities against women and children of the Boers, or the war crimes against the American South.
You think there should be rules and limits in some wars, but not in other wars.
Compared to what happens when progressives go to war against non progressives, Boko Haram is Ghandi and Mother Teresa.
How about South Africa?
Or decolonialism – even full on big government statists admit Somalia’s government was worse than no government at all. Somalia, like all the boundaries in Africa, was created by the West. (England specifically? I know Israel is England’s child.)
“House of Saud grabbed quite a lot of land, on the basis that they were holier than anyone else.”
Grabbed=> seized.
The root problem is the philosophy that holiness is a suitable justification for seizure. You can try to paper over this problem with family owned temples or Caliphs or whatever, but it’s like papering over the failures of communism with quotas and so on. Only difference is communism is new whereas the holiness thing is old.
Even if Saud were holy. They’re unholy – you can tell, because they want to seize things. So there’s a compound failure of philosophy – Arabians not only think holiness entails entitlement, but think several varieties of unholiness are holiness.
Religions are bad. States are bad. Religious states are very bad. But what is the alternative?
Dreams of Patchwork and Religio, which may or may not be workable in the West…?
Shinto hasn’t shown any such intrinsic problem, and Patchwork hasn’t really been tried, so I wouldn’t be too pessimistic anyway.
Religion isn’t bad. False religion is bad.
There may indeed be no alternative to states. This is not the same as saying they’re good.
Problem: hobbits do not admit of necessary evils. One case where demotist folk activism is true (if very, very hard) is here. If it became common knowledge that states are bad, it would cause them to become unnecessary. It would simply be too expensive to maintain.
On the contrary Jim, religious states throughout history (forming of course the vast vast majority) seem to have a better track record than irreligious states, almost all of which are Modern, decadent, corrupt, and liberal (see Sweden, England)… either that or North Korea of course.
Nothing is perfect, but Theonomy is the preferable and Traditional state of any nation, examples obviously include Ancient India and the pre-Enlightenment Occident.
The Roman Catholic Church did not go off the rails because the Holy Roman Emperor kept it in line. Similarly, Orthodoxy.
Religions go off the rails when holiness brings power.
So your criticism would not necessarily be leveled at religious states per se, but rather ecclesiocracies, which are notoriously dysfunctional. The Traditional understanding would say the Sovereign and the Church have their roles in the workings of the state, and if either tries to usurp the other’s responsibilities, this is where problems arise.
I entirely support religious states, provided that holier than thou competition can be kept in line.
See my post “leftism as cancer”, where I recommend that the state apparatus, high status universities, etc, be subject to the traditional thought control apparatus of Archbishop, bishop, and Grand Inquisitor.
Jim, your disapproval of Puritan impulses and holiness pissing-contests is well-founded and noted.
Peppermint’s outburst however is… unusual to say the least, sort of like a less well-thought out Savitri Devi piece. I applaud the effort though.
Get used to it. The promotion of the word ‘cuck’ is one of the best things the chans have done so far. Its metaphorical use is the strongest argument for national socialism in the very weak sense of socialism as merely rejecting being owned by foreign bankers and with the provisio that civic nationalism is also rejected.
It sounds genetic essentialist, but that isn’t really such a bad thing is it?
christfags = cuckfags, just watch E Michael Jones of culture-wars.com use he words racism and judaeochristianity and even christocentrism in his 1993 book Degenerate Moderns.
He not only has no intention of defending his family, race, and even religion, but literally gets off on the degradation of it all. This isn’t slave morality, this is cuck morality. Christfags should do us all a favor and go meet their maker sooner rather than later. No quarter to christfags unless they repudiate their ridiculous belief that souls exist or a white woman having consensual sex with her husband tyrone is better than her having vaguely consensual sex either a drunken fratboy named brad or until they repudiate their pope’s love of immigrants and faggots.
For too long have conservatives put up with christfaggotry, and christfags promise conservatives the preservation of White civilization because after all it was all invented due to judaeochristianity, and they accomplish nothing but to build the city of God in which all souls are equal.
christfags = cuckfags
As I’ve said, NRx in its Eternal September has gotten crazier and crazier, without a shred of power. Presumably, with power in its hands, it will get even more crazy. Predictable from what is, in actuality, just another mutation of progressivism. Note, kids: reversing a lie’s polarity doesn’t generally yield a truth.
So, what propositions do you think are crazy? That Islamists and Islamist movements are competing each to be holier than the other? That this competition has led to them becoming faithful to the Koran, and is now leading them to become unfaithful to the Koran, as each becomes more socialist and egalitarian than the other? That they seem to be winning, at least at the moment, in that a couple of days ago the US fled Yemen abandoning a pile of weapons to ever holier Islamists?
You speak of Boko Haram and ISIS in the exact same way as Columbia professors used to speak about Stalin and Mao. “My only worry, comrades, is that the USSR may not be implementing Communism Communistically enough! That is the only reason I stay on the Upper West Side!” Meanwhile, the skulls pile higher.
Can I +1 that?
Boko Haram is not piling skulls, nor mistreating women, to anything like the extent that the Cathedral recently did in the Congo.
The core of Boko Haram’s dispute is female emancipation. The Cathedral wants to emancipate their women. They want to subjugate everyone’s women. War ensues. While Al Qaeda is still upset over the reconquista and the massacre of Jerusalem, and Islamic State is still pissed by Turkish opposition to the Caliphate (Yes, they reject the Turkish Caliphate as illegitimate, and are simultaneously outraged by its overthrow) Boko Haram’s central point of issue is compulsory government miseducation which compulsorily teaches women emancipation.
On the core issues of Al Quaeda and Islamic State, I think they are being ridiculous. But on the core issue of Boko Haram, they are simply right, and the Cathedral is simply wrong. The problem in Nigeria would go away if the Cathedral stopped those aspects of western education that Boko Haram rightly objects to.
“Boko Haram” means “Bullshit is forbidden”, or “western education is forbidden”. The whole war is over what female children will be taught. It is a war that the Cathedral is fighting to take women away from families. Boko Haram is absolutely right on this issue, and the Cathedral is absolutely wrong and evil on this issue.
While Al Qaeda is ticked off because Christians reconquered Spain centuries ago, Boko Haram is ticked off because they are being conquered by progressives right now. The Cathedral should stop brainwashing girls in the Congo with its unholy doctrines.
The war in Nigeria is over the school curriculum. And we should ask why the Cathedral is willing to kill so many so that its curriculum will prevail? The reason, of course, is that progressivism is a religion, and commands that enemy children be raised in its religion.
When Peppermint tells you that this is a war of aggression by the whites against blacks to control the black population, she is not kidding. But neither you nor Hidden worry when progressive whites make war on reactionary blacks.
The Cathedral is right to want to reduce the number of niggers in the world and I hope they do smash the pathetic Boko Haram movement as a final penance. That said, it would be better, but more difficult, to stop giving the monkeys human equipment and let nature take its course. Ebola or whatever other plagues nature comes up with to deal with the festering Lagos is only a concern to us if for some reason we have lost the social technology of quarantine.
Ironically, the Cathedalist program for Nigeria is one of the few things they are doing sort of right. It will indeed make aid more effective in boosting quality of life, and in the long term, by forcing niggers to reproduce like humans, they will eventually turn niggers into humans.
Much as Columbia profs in 1935 defended the Soviets much more eloquently than they could defend themselves…
The trouble with being an atheist is you see things as false but useful. But nothing false can be useful, and nothing useful can be false. “Reactionaries” sometimes see Islam as a strong, moralistic belief system which might be nice to follow if the Moslems weren’t trying to kill us. But Islam is false and always bad and cannot be useful.
the trouble with being a Christian is you think there are souls. This doctrine is false and harmful.
“Note, kids: reversing a lie’s polarity doesn’t generally yield a truth.”
Could you perhaps provide an example or three of a progressivist lie whose polarity neoreaction has reversed, the result being another lie?
For a lie to get any traction in an environment where there is free choice, it has to have some percentage of truth.
Since the progressives are fairly intelligent, their lies are half-truths. So, for instance, that women and men are absolutely equal in every respect that matters, and thus should be absolutely equal in every outcome. This is obviously a lie. Reversing the polarity, we get that women are inferior in every respect and should be property like sheep or furniture. Which is fairly obviously an untruth if you’ve ever watched a competent woman run a household or had a functional family.
Another progressive lie: sexual behavior is absolutely ingrained, i.e., people are born homosexual, and there is nothing wrong with this propensity or its expression. Reversing the polarity, we get that homosexuality is completely a behavioral choice, like wearing slippers vs. workboots. Again, it’s pretty obvious that the truth lies somewhere else. I personally think that a propensity for homosexuality is biological and runs on a spectrum, but its expression is a choice which should be severely discouraged by society.
Another progressive lie: the races are completely equal in all regards that matter, and thus should have equal outcomes and blend into one. Reversing the polarities, we get encoded separation and legally codified inequality (for instance, Jim’s suggestion that possession of cough syrup by blacks should be illegal and severely punished).
Another progressive lie: ISIS is absolutely bad because it is intolerant of religious dissent and cuts people’s heads off, and does not represent “true Islam”, whatever that is. Reversing the polarity, we get Jim’s assertion that ISIS and Boko Haram are simply delectable, and do represent “true Islam” and the only thing wrong with them is that they will grow out of it. The truth is pretty obviously that “true Islam” is whatever large amounts of people calling themselves Muslims earnestly do in the name of “true Islam,” that the Koran is no more of a magic parchment than the Constitution, and that ISIS and Boko Haram are evil because they are mass murdering, destructive chimps.
: For a lie to get any traction in an environment where there is free choice, it has to have some percentage of truth.
implying that there is free choice. Biggest counterexample is the Holy Hoax
But that’s a half truth. The whole truth is that there is this welting shaung predicated on the hypothesis that all humans are animated by some kind of soul and these souls are basically equivalent. If you think it sounds stupid, remember in the ’90s, the cartoon Two-Face developed a third personality which then attempted to assassinate his second.
: “true Islam†is whatever large amounts of people calling themselves Muslims earnestly do in the name of “true Islam,†that the Koran is no more of a magic parchment than the Constitution, and that ISIS and Boko Haram are evil because they are mass murdering, destructive chimps.
http://www.theonion.com/video/overcome-stress-by-visualizing-it-as-a-greedy-hook,17828/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6iax0g1zbbA
That’s…nice, sweetie. “Welting schaung”-that’s a big, big word. But you really should go play with your friends while the grownups talk, ok? Be back in time for supper!
“Reversing the polarity, we get that women are inferior in every respect and should be property like sheep or furniture.”
This is not what neoreactionaries think, IMO. What they (some of them, really) think is that women should (artificially) be treated as low status or second class (which is not quite the same thing as inferior) by the society. The truly inferior do not need to be treated as low status or second class – they just are, no societal interference is needed, everyone sees it and knows it.
“Another progressive lie: sexual behavior is absolutely ingrained, i.e., people are born homosexual, and there is nothing wrong with this propensity or its expression.”
Not exactly. The progressive position on this is rather murky. Gender, for example, is a matter of pure choice.
“Reversing the polarity, we get that homosexuality is completely a behavioral choice, like wearing slippers vs. workboots.”
Again, this is not what neoreactionaries think, IMO.
“I personally think that a propensity for homosexuality is biological and runs on a spectrum, but its expression is a choice which should be severely discouraged by society.”
Sums up the neoreactionary position pretty well.
“Another progressive lie: the races are completely equal in all regards that matter, and thus should have equal outcomes and blend into one. Reversing the polarities, we get encoded separation and legally codified inequality (for instance, Jim’s suggestion that possession of cough syrup by blacks should be illegal and severely punished).”
What would you suggest as an alternative?
Seems that a major symptom of cough syrup use by blacks is brain damage resulting in stupid aggression, resulting in attacks on men who are almost certainly carrying guns and trained to use them.
>This is not what neoreactionaries think, IMO.
Just like with progressivism, there is no one constant party line. This is more or less what Jim explained to me true Judaism, the reactionary kind, was all about.
>What they (some of them, really) think is that women should (artificially) be treated as low status or second class (which is not quite the same thing as inferior) by the society. The truly inferior do not need to be treated as low status or second class – they just are, no societal interference is needed, everyone sees it and knows it.
Not sure about that. The truly inferior are inferior in some parameters (like intelligence and law-abidingness,) and superior in others (like running and improvised entertainment, for lack of a better word.) When the larger society discounts the first two or mocks them, and venerates the second two, the inferior become superior.
>Not exactly. The progressive position on this is rather murky. Gender, for example, is a matter of pure choice.
It constantly shifts (again a reason that shifting the polarity of a progressive position is not a good way to establish the truth.) For instance, during the 1970s, being a homosexual was a completely valid lifestyle choice. Gender, according to the party line, is innate, just some girls are born with boy bodies, but they knew all along they were a girl, etc.
>>“Reversing the polarity, we get that homosexuality is completely a behavioral choice, like wearing slippers vs. workboots.â€
Again, this is not what neoreactionaries think, IMO.
>>“I personally think that a propensity for homosexuality is biological and runs on a spectrum, but its expression is a choice which should be severely discouraged by society.â€
>Sums up the neoreactionary position pretty well.
The NRx position as espoused by whom? You? Moldbug? Jim? Justin Tunney? Peter Thiel? Again, it’s like with progressivism-there is enough of a spectrum that there is always room for tactical maneuver, motte-and-bailey, etc.
>What would you suggest as an alternative?
I am a Jew and see religious Ashkenazi, Sepharadi, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews living fine together, even though none of the Ethiopian ones are teaching physics. I suggest having a set of rules that is the same for everyone, with predictable consequences for refusing to follow those rules. And I suggest letting people associate freely, and if they want to set sub-rules, the consequence for the violation of which is exclusion from the subset.
Well there is one constant party line. No one, not a one, proposes that women are inferior in all things all the time. Everyone, every single one, proposes that women are less likely to excel in most high status fields. However everyone proposes that all women should be in certain ways automatically lower in status than equivalent men, because otherwise reproduction and enforcement of the marital contract is hard – that the law should give women very little power, because nature has given them far too much, that to prevent negative sum conflicts over sex and reproduction, women have to be controlled.
Bullshit.
You, like Hidden Author, make up an imaginary reactionary position that absolutely no one, not a one, holds. Nor do any of us hold a position that any honest person could mistake for that position.
Blacks do stupid aggression fine without cough syrup.
Our two recent poster boys who got themselves shot by attacking a white man who was clearly likely to be armed while they themselves were unarmed, were both fans of cough syrup.
“I suggest having a set of rules that is the same for everyone, with predictable consequences for refusing to follow those rules.”
The problem (if one can call it that) with this theory is that in practice it produces what Jim advocates, except he is willing to state it outright.
And, of course, free association in practice produces segregation.
At some point you need to decide whether to pretend that you’re practicing “same rules for everyone, free association”, or be a good formalist, codify what actually occurs, and live with being called an evil racist who supports apartheid. But you’re already being called that.
“I am a Jew and see religious Ashkenazi, Sepharadi, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews living fine together, even though none of the Ethiopian ones are teaching physics.”
Well I’m an European and I see various Europeans living fine together, but that’s not quite the same thing, really. Time preference, propensity to follow rules, capability of restraint…
It’s not like “same rules for everyone” can’t work, it’s just horribly inefficient if you don’t profile. You end up with the TSA.
The TSA is brown skinned people enforcing rules appropriate for brown skinned people on whites. That is equality.
>everyone proposes that all women should be in certain ways automatically lower in status than equivalent men, because otherwise reproduction and enforcement of the marital contract is hard – that the law should give women very little power
Everyone?
Did Moldbug propose something like this? Or are you renormalizing NRx around yourself?
>Nor do any of us hold a position that any honest person could mistake for that position.
For what position?
>were both fans of cough syrup.
So what? Cough syrup abuse, lean or whatever, is a recent phenomenon with blacks. Violence is not.
>The problem (if one can call it that) with this theory is that in practice it produces what Jim advocates, except he is willing to state it outright.
Not quite. If a black is capable of behaving in a civilized fashion without adult supervision, under Jim’s system, the burden of proof is on him.
>And, of course, free association in practice produces segregation.
That’s fine by me. Although I don’t see this as a hard and fast rule. For instance, pretty much all Israeli settlements are mixed in terms of kinds of Jews (though none have Arabs, who may be genetically closer to some of the residents than the residents are to each other). There is always segregation by some parameter, but I think people individually are much better at figuring it out rather than having a government do it for them. Similar to the logic of a free market vs. a centrally controlled one.
>At some point you need to decide whether to pretend that you’re practicing “same rules for everyone, free associationâ€, or be a good formalist, codify what actually occurs, and live with being called an evil racist who supports apartheid. But you’re already being called that.
I’m not worried about being called anything or pretending to be anything. I see no reason to codify what actually occurs, especially when there is a large number of cases where it does not occur. I strongly support apartheid for instance between Jews and Muslims. Not based on genetics, based on communal norms and behavior.
>Well I’m an European and I see various Europeans living fine together, but that’s not quite the same thing, really. Time preference, propensity to follow rules, capability of restraint…
These vary quite widely between European populations. Check out the Russians living in Germany, for instance.
A short while ago you were claiming that some NRx proclaimed a position far more extreme. Now you are arguing less extreme, a shift of goalposts.
Your new goalposts are false – yes, something close to my position is held by all NRx, including Moldbug, but even if your new goalposts were true, would not save the argument you were making.
You seem to have abandoned the argument that you made a moment ago, that NRx positions are absurdly extreme: For the position that all women are absolutely inferior in all ways to all men.
Israel routinely profiles. It is part of the left wing indictment that Jews are nazis. Your response is not that Israel does not profile, but that it does not always profile – which is hard to disprove – and even harder for you to know. If Israel frequently profiles, not really treating all Jews equally before the law.
“I see no reason to codify what actually occurs, especially when there is a large number of cases where it does not occur.”
If you promise equal treatment, you are under an obligation to deliver. But given a sufficient differential in crime rates, you will not be able to deliver, because effective law enforcement will treat blacks differently from whites for the simple reason that in this manner more crimes will be prevented and solved. Which is why Jim says that you shouldn’t promise something that you can’t deliver.
“These vary quite widely between European populations. Check out the Russians living in Germany, for instance.”
Yes, I know that. Blacks are still in their own league. The difference between African Jews and European Jews may be sufficiently small for equal treatment to work and not produce visible cognitive dissonance, but that’s because they’re Jews.
The best practical option is to ostensibly use equal treatment for all but not actually have any blacks. Or other outliers.
@B
@Jim
When you guys say
>a set of rules that is the same for everyone
Do you mean the same rules for all neighborhoods? In practice, many laws are enforced against the poor and high-crime area of town, and not against the rich and low-crime area.
This result that the bottom 20%~ of Whites, and bottom 80%~ of blacks tend to get very harsh laws. While most Whites, and the educated/wealthy blacks get a lot of leniency.
Not a racial standard, although it certainly is disproportionate enforced against blacks.
I don’t look anything like a Mexican. But in Texas I looked like a foreigner, probably the way I dressed and such. And I got special police attention. Police tended to assume I was a Mexican wetback even though I looked whiter than they were. Which is reasonable, since no doubt foreign looking people are frequently illegals, and illegals are frequently criminals.
why do women have boobies?
so people will talk to them
what do you call an intelligent woman?
transgendered
The polar opposite of a stupid idea is usually another stupid idea, e.g.:
Fascism: We must make our nation strong, so as to conquer and enslave
inferior peoples.
Anti-Fascism: We must make our nation weak, so that inferior peoples
may conquer and enslave us.
In actual fact socailism is not conducive to a nations strength in the long run.
Yes, both are in fact socialist. Europeans are to socialism as tuna are to water — they simply cannot imagine a place without it.
Haha, I admire your candor in this piece, Jim, even as we have disagreements on some issues.
However, I think it may be a category error to describe many of these Islamic terrorist organizations as ‘Reactionary’ in the traditional sense of the word.
The Oriental NeoReactionary addresses this point somewhat in this post
https://theorientalneoreactionary.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/burning-of-a-pilot/
and at other times on his blog.
In popular religions we can view three definitive strains.
Orthodox
Liberal
Fundamentalist
While these organizations may oppose similar things as the Reactionary opposes, they are in fact not a representative of orthodox Islam, but rather fundamentalist Islam which has come about in response to the rise of liberalism, similar to Evangelical and Puritan Christianity’s response to liberalism, which is rather different from faith practiced by Traditional Christians, in the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Certainly there are Reactionary Islamic forces, but I don’t think Boko Haram is any more Reactionary than Mussolini’s Fascists. They do exhibit some Reactionary and Traditionalist doctrine, but mold it to suit their needs and in the end are heading in a different direction.
Oh, good luck dealing with the wildfire you’ve ignited with this post by the way.
L.O.L. @ the mention of the Vatican-Roman Church being traditional.
I am of course speaking of the Traditionalist wing of Catholicism, rather than any specific Pope, Cardinal, or other that has followed Liberalism in its stead.
This Traditionalist school is the wing that was defended by De Maistre and Sarda in times gone by, and by Laliberte, Steves, and Bonald today.
But, Roman Catholicism is supposed to be hierarchical, and possess the apostolic succession. Do you have any traditionalist Bishops with apostolic succession? Do you attend mass with a traditionalist priest who has been ordained by a traditionalist bishop who has apostolic succession?
Luckily Jim, I’m Orthodox 😉 You’d have to take that complaint up with those mentioned above with regards to Catholicism.
On the Eastern Orthodox view of apostolic succession:
“While Eastern Orthodox sources often refer to the bishops as “successors of the apostles” under the influence of Scholastic theology, strict Orthodox ecclesiology and theology hold that all legitimate bishops are properly successors of Peter. This also means that presbyters (or “priests”) are successors of the apostles. As a result, Orthodox theology makes a distinction between a geographical or historical succession and proper ontological or ecclesiological succession. Hence, the bishops of Rome and Antioch can be considered successors of Peter in a historical sense on account of Peter’s presence in the early community. This does not imply that these bishops are more successors of Peter than all others in an ontological sense.”
The implication that more scriptually based religion is less far down (or up, if you prefer) a “holiness spiral” seems to be a good one. However, too much emphasis on it can possibly hinder the markets or technologies of Techno-Commercialism, with whatever risks might accompany those hindrences; it will also, likely, get people like Mr. Land calling you a “fascist” accordingly…
A.J.P.
No, not all holiness spirals end up in the same place.
Christianity spirals leftward, while Islam spirals rightward, until it either conquers all, or more likely declares war on too many people at once and gets it’s ass kicked.
We’ve seen this kind of thing before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdist_War#Mahdi_Uprising
We have seen Islam head left before, the Qarmatians, and Islamic State seems to be heading left: All Muslims are equal and entitled to live on welfare.
i’m the result of a holiness spiral from neoreaction. as the other neoreactionaries drift rightward, I am forced to keep up with constant innovations in outrageous behavior; when no rightward deviation is possible, I resort to increasingly crude language to signal my rightness
in the end, I will have to cut myself off from accessing air resources for my inability to commit infinite microaggressions against finite mud people.
[…] Ever purer Islam. […]
[…] the Dire Statistic: Power laws in polygyny. And Racism Schmacism. Also this: explaining an Ever Purer Islam, which lies in stark contrast with the dingier, only so holy versions of it with which the West […]