An observation:
The relatively recent Conservative (American) world view is a variation on an ancient theme, especially in its most poorly named form, neo-conservatism (which is known as neo-liberalism in Europe and South America). This new Conservatism is actually a modern revival of an ancient, and hardy belief: dualism.
This dualism, stripped to its essentials, positions the Forces of Good against the Forces of Evil. For many ancient dualists, especially the ones found consistenly at the heart of Christianity and post-Exile Judaism, this dualism was a temporary state of affairs. In its original, Persian form, it was a permanent condition of the cosmos. The difference in the two dualisms - the Persian and the Judaeo-Christian - plays itself out in vast divergences of practice. Some European dualists, like the Cathars, held a very Persian world-view, with Good and Evil, or Matter and Spirit in eternal and balanced opposition. For the Cathars, like their Zarathrusthran and Bogomil forbears, the Good was to found in a behavioral withdrawal from the "world." And like the Persians, the Cathars believed that each man must choose the Light, or the Lie, in his own heart. Force was to no avail, it was an evil of the Lie, of Matter.
Catharism (like earlier Gnostic dualisms) - unlike the Persian dualism ascendant for a millienium in the East - lost out to its dualist cousin, Christianity, or more specifically, Catholicism. For the Catholic dualists, like their distant messianic Judaic forebears, the dual condition of the world was a temporary state of affairs. And unlike the Cathars, or the Persians, or the Bogomils, or the Chinese dualist descendants of Mani's Religion of Light - the Christian dualists believed that the outcome of the cosmos was not balance, but triumph of Good. For those who believed in two separate principles forever balanced in war, life was a test for eternity, often differently conceived than it is today. But for those who believed in the final triumph of Good - or in some cases, Evil - life was a battleground in an often unseen war between two forces. And that battle - as the Christian Church has long contested - is where one proves one election to life everlasting.
In the Roman empire and in Persian, dualism came down to earth in the figure of Mitra (Persia) and Mithras (Rome). Mithra is an ancient Sanskrit-Aryan word meaning loyal, faithful, friend, comforter, redeemer. Indeed the descriptions of the Hindu Mitra (friend), the Persian Mitra/Mithra and the Roman Mithras all parallel those of the Christian Christ.
Mithra, the story goes, was the arbiter, friend and tester of the faithful of the Light. He came to redeem the world. With Mithra, the Persian dualism foreshadowed its close cousin, Persian influenced Judaism, and its own offshoot, Christianity.
In the dying days of Rome, Christianity became ascendant, seeding its own dualism into the fertile ground of Europe. Roman Mithraism died out. Persian Mithraism and Zoroastrian survived until a radical monism (no reality but one reality) overtook it in the form of Islam.
Christian dualism - the war between God and Good and Satan and Evil - penetrated every aspect of Christian life. It became, in part, one of the foundations of Western Civilization. From its inception in the ashes of Charlemagne's Empire, Western Civilization has fluxuated between a powerful dualism and an older, pagan monism.
Dualism - being the more virulent, passionate and focused world-view - has largely one the day in the minds of Western women and men.
And dualism became the ascendant philosophy of Europe with the Reformation, especially with the coming of Calvinism. Calvin, in brief, adhered to an aggressively original form of dualism. The elect were chosen from the beginning of time. Everyone else was doomed from the same. For the Protestant dualists, Catholic dualism was too tame. It allowed for too many escapes, and for too many loopholes.
Fortunately for Calvin, the heart of Calvinism was Geneva, city of the clock, the bank and the ledger. And from Geneva, outward into Europe, the Calvinist assurance spread. The elect, according to Calvin, would be known by their spiritual and material success. God favors, said Calvin, the elect. And he favors them here and now, as a sign of their eternal favor.
This, of course, sold well to bankers and burghers.
And where the highly spiritualized credit economy of the bankers spread, so too did Calvin's purified, aggressive dualism. Lest we forget, as an aside, the first American Great Awakening was inspired by Jonathan Edwards, a Calvinist.
America was the Calvinist paradise. It was the corrupt and carnal world replete, peopled with carnal savages. Puritans (Calvinists) saw an opportunity to improve the New Paradise, to build a New Jerusalem. English bankers saw the fruits of land division, enclosure and tobacco. Dutch Calvinists and Scotch Presbyterians (Calvinists) saw much the same.
Here was the world, naked, raw, carnal - awaiting the power of the unseen, the spirit, the work of God and credit.
We know the results. The flesh (Indians) lost out to spirit (English and European law).
Dualism did very well in America, until it ran into the truth of the frontier. The frontier, and Indians (and Blacks, and Mexicans, and all the convenient enemy Others of American history) provided the continual context of the original dualist war of Two Opposing Principles. For Americans, especially the leadership, this has always been the war between the Civilization (Banks, Credit, Commerce, Profit and other highly spiritualized activities) and Chaos (sex, foreigners, fornication, outlaws, Indians, the land). For the dualists, American progress has always been measured in its improvements on the wilderness. The early Puritans despised the Wilderness. It was the abode of the devil. The imprint has never left us. Everything American has the stamp of improvement. Land divided, rivers damned, highways paved, road laid - all with the stamp of Good, Progress, Civilization.
(The Romans were different. A road was a good thing not because it was an improvement, Progress, a route de progress, but because it was useful, practical, convenient. Romans didn't celebrate their ports and roads as portents and symbols of Divine Progress in an battle between the Elect and Chaos. They celebrated them because they, Romans, had made them. For the Classical world, unlike our own, being human was often enough.)
But because of the tides of history, dualism only works when it occasionally loses ground. How can evil be fought if it's always in retreat? The natural cycles of accumulation and decline serve dualists well. They see evidence of their war.
Such, especially, has been the case with America, especially these United States.
Which brings us to modern Neo-Conservatives, the dualist par excellence. They've incorporated the most virulent parts of dualism, from across the ages. They believe in the Great Battle. They believe in the corruption of the world, the flesh, the iniquity of man. They believe that everything is always going to hell around them, unless there is Good doing improvement. Look, even, at Iraq. They believe in Iraq, and that war, because they believe it is an Improvement, a portent of victory, a sign of The Good. Without that Improvement, without Civilization triumphing over this season's Great Evidence of Evil, what good would be their war? Remember what they (you) say. Bringing freedom and justice to Iraq, for the first time in its history. Hear the hubris in that. See the essential dualism. They - the Right Side - by their very will and presence, are battling the forces of Darkness, Chaos, Evil. They are civilizing a land, they believe, that has never known civilization. Peruse, especially here, their posts trumpeting that claim, endlessly. See how they (you) frame this as a war between Good (Capitalist Christian America) against Chaos (corrupt, decadent, liar-infested Islam). See how they need the Great Enemy. See how they believe, how they declare, that everything is always being corrupted. This is classic dualism. They (the Good) keep everything together. Without them (the Right, the Good, the Conservatives) everything would fall apart into Chaos and darkness.
See how they characterize their enemies.
And realize, in the end, how truly dangerous they are. Because, unlike the Cathars and the ancient Persians, they believe that the cosmos resonates to their actions. They believe they're the Vanguard in the Great War.
And then look at history. Everytime these Dualists get control of a Civilization, they drag it to the brink. Obsession with the Other, with the Enemy, with Chaos has a curious way of begetting enemies, anarchy and destruction.
For what it's worth, and in great anticipation of the usual dismissals...
Neocons summed up...
Neocons summed up...
Not from any particular blogger, journalist, "historian" (in the professional sense) etc...but from some guy who talks this way IRL:
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Jice Virago
- Way too much time!
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- Joined: July 4, 2002, 5:47 pm
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Well, there is really nothing to discuss. Its like making a post saying "The sky is blue" or "Fesuni is gay", its not really worthy of debate.
War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them. . . .
Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
--RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Dwight Eisenhower
Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
--RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Dwight Eisenhower
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Midnyte_Ragebringer
- Super Poster!
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You are right. This one opinion and perspective, which supports yours (of course) ndermines some of the people on this boards whole mentality. *clap* Neato for you. I am probably one of those people. Or so you would believe. But, I know how to take one persons "opinion" and "perspective" and view it as just that. Have a nice day.Nick wrote:Well I would disagree, if you look at the past (a great place to learn from) it sort of undermines some of the people on this boards whole mentality.
Which is why I gave it a bump.
There is a discussion but it's entirely dependant on whether anyone wants to face it or not.
<insert one of a thousand quotes about being close-minded and/or negative here>Midnyte_Ragebringer wrote:You are right. This one opinion and perspective, which supports yours (of course) ndermines some of the people on this boards whole mentality. *clap* Neato for you. I am probably one of those people. Or so you would believe. But, I know how to take one persons "opinion" and "perspective" and view it as just that. Have a nice day.Nick wrote:Well I would disagree, if you look at the past (a great place to learn from) it sort of undermines some of the people on this boards whole mentality.
Which is why I gave it a bump.
There is a discussion but it's entirely dependant on whether anyone wants to face it or not.
May 2003 - "Mission Accomplished"
June 2005 - "The mission isn't easy, and it will not be accomplished overnight"
-- G W Bush, freelance writer for The Daily Show.
June 2005 - "The mission isn't easy, and it will not be accomplished overnight"
-- G W Bush, freelance writer for The Daily Show.
Fash, yea I believe that because at least 53 million Americans either can't read, don't know history, don't understand it or don't give a shit. Man really hasn't change much in the last 10,000 years. Sure we have more technology but we are killing each other and repeating the same mistakes time and time again. When enlightened people try to stop it they are labled and pushed aside... that old killer instinct, selfish gene takes over and we get no where... sad... but true.
Marb
Marb
Cotton candy for the mind. The author makes it sound good by using historical terms and such, but in the final analysis he's real short on examples and proof.
In the meantime did our ancestors have cause to think of relationships in a binary mode...
Man - Woman
Day - Night
Left - Right
Rich - Poor
Alive - Dead
Summer - Winter
Good - Evil?
Maybe Dualism is a natural mechanism of discernment and decision-making?
In the meantime, the author is avoiding the real question. What are you going to do about the evil you perceive?
In the meantime did our ancestors have cause to think of relationships in a binary mode...
Man - Woman
Day - Night
Left - Right
Rich - Poor
Alive - Dead
Summer - Winter
Good - Evil?
Maybe Dualism is a natural mechanism of discernment and decision-making?
In the meantime, the author is avoiding the real question. What are you going to do about the evil you perceive?
I think I could make a case for any of your examples but Man/Woman not being a binary option. (and some people push the boundaries on that one)Metanis wrote:Cotton candy for the mind. The author makes it sound good by using historical terms and such, but in the final analysis he's real short on examples and proof.
In the meantime did our ancestors have cause to think of relationships in a binary mode...
Man - Woman
Day - Night
Left - Right
Rich - Poor
Alive - Dead
Summer - Winter
Good - Evil?
Maybe Dualism is a natural mechanism of discernment and decision-making?
In the meantime, the author is avoiding the real question. What are you going to do about the evil you perceive?
It's an alpha-male trait to deal in absolutes, and they've historically done a *fantastic* job of running things. It's not because the natural world around us forces duality on us, it's that people don't generally have the capacity to understand things on a long term basis and need a framework to make decisions quickly. Much easier to, say, make drugs illegal and put everyone in jail, than weigh the consequences of drug related crime caused by black market prices and the other social costs against the health and social costs of legalising them.
You'll never get away with this, Black Helmet Man! You are bad! You are bad and we are good! Your badness will be the end of you, and our goodness will be our triumph! Bad is bad - good is good! Bad-bad-good-bad! Good-good-bad-good, bad! Good.
May 2003 - "Mission Accomplished"
June 2005 - "The mission isn't easy, and it will not be accomplished overnight"
-- G W Bush, freelance writer for The Daily Show.
June 2005 - "The mission isn't easy, and it will not be accomplished overnight"
-- G W Bush, freelance writer for The Daily Show.
It's better to have kicked ass for 250 years than to have never kicked ass at all!Nick wrote:Yes. You are already well on your way. This is what is scary.do you truly believe we are destined to repeat the mistakes of those before us and suffer the same fate?
There's trouble on the horizon. We've got twenty years max and maybe as few as five before our standard of living is going to take a turn for the worse in developed countries. You can blame the U.S. if it makes you feel better but it's really every country's fault minus the undeveloped poor ones. When the U.S. goes down, it's not going down alone. Humanity as a whole is presently walking on eggshells when it comes to stability.