Two Things I Can't Get My Mind Around
Questions from a reader on degeneracy and inversion
A reader sends this:
There are two other things that keep bothering me that I can’t get my mind around.
1.) it’s not JUST that we are facing social degeneracy. That would be one thing. Mere social degeneracy would look like late stage Rome or Mad Max or Somalia or something. What is confounding me more is how the degeneracy is being repurposed to strengthen the mega state. That to me seems substantively different somehow from mere civilizational collapse. In the former case, the main danger of the degenerating culture is located outside of the gates. In the latter case the main threat of degeneracy is from inside the gates. I'm just trying to put my finger on what exactly explains the main difference. the 'battle' it seems, is deeper than that of a fight over 'the institutions', deeper than 'culture war' but almost a kind of zero-sum battle over this metaphysical substratum that either results in the strengthening of Christendom or the Luciferian mega-state.
2.) I'm also puzzled how it is that all appeals to 'equal rights' somehow end up resulting not in mere equality but in a total inversion of things. It's not obvious to me how or why that happens.
Curious your thoughts on any of these things.
I don't think the danger of the degenerating culture is only located outside of the gates. Boredom, fear and a lack of confidence in itself were dangers to Rome, for example, from within its gates and damaged it long before the barbarians did. The falling Babylonian empire, too, according to The Cambridge Ancient History, was ‘spinning itself out only because there was no neighbour with enough force to cut even so thin a thread’. And the liberal West, too, living off the fumes of the cultural engine of its Christian heritage, is similarly 'spinning itself out'. Eventually, if this continues, Russia, China or -- especially in Europe -- Islam will cut it.
Regarding degeneracy being 'repurposed to strengthen the mega state', I think there's nothing radically different in kind from what's happened before in history, although I do think it's to an unprecedented degree. Why not in kind? Chaos has always been an opportunity for consolidation. It makes people afraid. They seek someone to make them feel safe: Hitler, for example, was democratically elected along these lines. But technology now means it can be taken further than ever before. The 'Luciferian mega-state' has radically new tools and a wider reach.
But 'the metaphysical substratum' is exactly right and should remind us that, although war is being waged with new weapons and on new territory, the forces are unchanged. 'All human conflict is ultimately theological', as Cardinal Manning said. This is what Augustine outlines in The City of God (Book XI): 'the citizens of the earthly city prefer their own gods' and 'being deprived of His unchangeable and freely communicated light' are 'reduced to a kind of poverty-stricken power, eagerly grasp at their own private privileges, and seek divine honors from their deluded subjects'. Disdaining to 'submit themselves to one', they hope to 'subject many to themselves'. They would rather be 'worshipped as God' than 'worship God'. 'Culture war' is superficial because, as Christopher Dawson's work highlighted so well, culture is essentially religious.
So why the 'total inversion of things' you rightly point out? The Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho lectured insightfully on the structure of the revolutionary mentality. He outlined four inversions.
For the revolutionary, ‘that which is certain is the future’. He looks ahead to ‘the advent of the perfect society’. This is ‘the objective and hence the reason for being of all prior history.’ And this inverts his sense of time.
Since the revolution must be accomplished through the usual political and military means, a moral inversion also occurs — bringing about the future good through a deep immersion in evil. And ‘the violence of revolution is always attributed to those who resist revolution and not to those who practice the violence.’
Since 'the criterion of truth is the final revelation of the meaning of the whole process', the truth is 'the just society that the revolutionary movement has created.' And so 'the normal relations between factual premises and hypothetical conclusions are inverted. The hypothetical conclusion becomes the premise for judging the premises.'
Finally, the victim also becomes the executioner. The Nazis, for example, never considered themselves executioners of the Jews, but rather victims. Himmler, who was in charge of the concentration camps, wept at what he believed the Jews had made him do to them.
A revolution is, literally, a turn — a total inversion. Hence the revolutionary’s
psychotic attraction to inverting reality. And the denial of the structure of reality would be an act superior to the creation of reality. It is the famous "No" uttered by Satan. "I do not accept reality as it is. It is not that I do not accept this social organization or that specific situation. No. I do not accept reality. I do not accept existence."
It's 'the metaphysical substratum' again.