I’m traveling for work and haven’t had a chance to read your former few posts yet but so glad you are exploring (or returning to) Shafarevich. I can’t remember what I said to you about his piece on socialism, but I think it was in the hope you might do a deep dive into this excellent yet under appreciated work.
It certainly, and thoroughly, shows that socialism is the ultimate death cult in the most profoundly insidious way.
Julian Strube demonstrates in his recent doctoral dissertation, due to be published by De Gruyter (May 2016). Not only occult socialists, but modern occultism appears to have first emerged in early, pre-Marxist socialist circles. The pre-Marxist part is important here, for not only does occultism have socialist roots: Early socialism was itself aligned with thoroughly religious, even outright theocratic projects, often drawing on a form of heterodox, yet traditionalist, Catholicism. We have to face the socialist – and Catholic – roots of occultism.
"That’s Marcuse in a nutshell—a lot of fancy words and highfalutin verbosity, but underneath it he’s just a boring socialist." This is the cancer that has infected the social sciences from my perspective. This kind of behavior is endlessly rewarded, and the effort that it takes to unpack and demonstrate this type of sleight of hand is considerable, but I'm glad there are folks that have dedicated the time to get it done because I don't have the patience for it.
On another note, I don't see how materialism ensures this outcome. I think it is pretty straightforward that even under rigid materialism things like purpose and meaning are emergent phenomena that exist in their own right. After all, socialists take action don't they? Why? Why not just stay in bed and never get up? If they were consistent, that is what they would do. Perhaps psychopathology blunts the self-awareness of these individuals such that they cannot appreciate or identify their subjective sense of purpose or meaning. Whether the manifestation of divine influence or emergent phenomenon from materialist forces spirituality is an integral part of the human condition. The amount of LHB dominance that it must take to get lost in a model that is capable of denying such an a priori truth must be considerable.
Having been born in gross physical bodily form, everyone in reaction to the perceived and conceived imposition of limited and threatening conditions and death itself become bound to the gross point of view of identification with the physical body in and of itself, as a separate entity. As a result of that reactive gesture of identification gesture of identification, we are thereby unconsciously bound to the natural program of the physical body, which is death itself. Consequently, in our dreadful sanity we are each and all reactively enacting a separate and separative life that is entirely about the disposition of death and the self-reinforcing reaction to the natural inevitability of death.
The naive presumption of subjective identification with the gross physical body, is, inherently, a dying thing, a "philosophy" of the dead.
In dark epoch, the common human world is characteristically (and altogether and even aggressively) invested in this gross disposition of identification with the seemingly separate gross physical body, and, therefore, the common human world is becoming overwhelmed with the "culture" of death.
This "culture" of death, which is, in actuality, an anti-culture, is not merely the result of some philosophical disposition re the idea of death. Most fundamentally , the "culture" of death arises from the now universal ego-act of identification with apparently separate existence, and, in particular, with gross physical existence as the separate physical human body. The inevitable result of this dark act (of identification) is that human consciousness becomes identified with the patterned program of death and fails to generate, or even allow for the possibility of any greater philosophy, let alone the possibility of a culture of Esoteric Spiritual practice, and (ultimately) the culture of Divine Life.
Unfortunately for all, it is that very culture of human Spiritual, and Divine Life which has been propagandized out of the realm of possibility by both the dogmas of scientism, and conventional institutional religiosity. Indeed, it is principally , the combination of grossly bound scientific materialist anti-culture with widespread institutional "religious" fanaticism that has produced the dark realities of these dark times.
But what is conventional institutional religion has nothing to do with God or the Living Divine Reality, but is about Man or human beings in of themselves, and the search to preserve ones (apparent) separate identity as a response to the fact that death rules to here.
Both conventional institutional god-religion and secular materialism share two fundamental ideas:
1. The naive experiential presumption of an utterly independent, utterly personal, utterly separate and utterly subjective point of view.
2. The idea of an objective reality "out there", or the naive experiential presumption of an egoically observed, and thereby presumed utterly independent, utterly impersonal, utterly separate, and utterly non-subjective, or utterly objective world of conditionally perceived and conceived conditions..
These two fundamental ideas or naive experiential presumptions are, also, the principal constructs, or generally uninspected conventions of the human mind.
Iain McGilchrist has questioned both of these presumptions in his books The Master & His Emissary, and The Matter With Things. The left brained spirit-killing Emissary or the false pseudo-self now rules the world.
That having been said have you ever considered the possibility that the most popular (and influential) pseudo-philosopher in the US is Ayn Rand - tens of millions of her books have been sold. There was a peak in the sale of her books some years ago. Her "god" was of course the hard-edged heartless machine.
Fascinating. Important. When you write, "There seem to be two basic reactions to sex: “One reaction is basically life-accepting. The other is a revulsion so primordial that it might accurately be thought of as antibiologic” (CL, p. 256). This latter response is exemplified in Huysmans’s character Des Esseintes, in whom “we feel pure revulsion against life itself”....
I would at least like to eliminate from my inquiries the surmise that the life-reviling reaction to sex is the natural response of the abused or traumatised child which overrides and governs/distorts his or her own sexual development. When you say 'primordial', I think early childhood or infant trauma. So...those most attracted to satanism and on a milder plane, basic socialism, are those whose early development has been injured by actual abuse or perhaps just the close proximity to an abused-abuser caretaker.
I’m traveling for work and haven’t had a chance to read your former few posts yet but so glad you are exploring (or returning to) Shafarevich. I can’t remember what I said to you about his piece on socialism, but I think it was in the hope you might do a deep dive into this excellent yet under appreciated work.
It certainly, and thoroughly, shows that socialism is the ultimate death cult in the most profoundly insidious way.
Great post. This link below is 2016. https://heterodoxology.com/2016/05/11/the-socialist-roots-of-occultism/
Julian Strube demonstrates in his recent doctoral dissertation, due to be published by De Gruyter (May 2016). Not only occult socialists, but modern occultism appears to have first emerged in early, pre-Marxist socialist circles. The pre-Marxist part is important here, for not only does occultism have socialist roots: Early socialism was itself aligned with thoroughly religious, even outright theocratic projects, often drawing on a form of heterodox, yet traditionalist, Catholicism. We have to face the socialist – and Catholic – roots of occultism.
"That’s Marcuse in a nutshell—a lot of fancy words and highfalutin verbosity, but underneath it he’s just a boring socialist." This is the cancer that has infected the social sciences from my perspective. This kind of behavior is endlessly rewarded, and the effort that it takes to unpack and demonstrate this type of sleight of hand is considerable, but I'm glad there are folks that have dedicated the time to get it done because I don't have the patience for it.
On another note, I don't see how materialism ensures this outcome. I think it is pretty straightforward that even under rigid materialism things like purpose and meaning are emergent phenomena that exist in their own right. After all, socialists take action don't they? Why? Why not just stay in bed and never get up? If they were consistent, that is what they would do. Perhaps psychopathology blunts the self-awareness of these individuals such that they cannot appreciate or identify their subjective sense of purpose or meaning. Whether the manifestation of divine influence or emergent phenomenon from materialist forces spirituality is an integral part of the human condition. The amount of LHB dominance that it must take to get lost in a model that is capable of denying such an a priori truth must be considerable.
Follow up comment:
Having been born in gross physical bodily form, everyone in reaction to the perceived and conceived imposition of limited and threatening conditions and death itself become bound to the gross point of view of identification with the physical body in and of itself, as a separate entity. As a result of that reactive gesture of identification gesture of identification, we are thereby unconsciously bound to the natural program of the physical body, which is death itself. Consequently, in our dreadful sanity we are each and all reactively enacting a separate and separative life that is entirely about the disposition of death and the self-reinforcing reaction to the natural inevitability of death.
The naive presumption of subjective identification with the gross physical body, is, inherently, a dying thing, a "philosophy" of the dead.
In dark epoch, the common human world is characteristically (and altogether and even aggressively) invested in this gross disposition of identification with the seemingly separate gross physical body, and, therefore, the common human world is becoming overwhelmed with the "culture" of death.
This "culture" of death, which is, in actuality, an anti-culture, is not merely the result of some philosophical disposition re the idea of death. Most fundamentally , the "culture" of death arises from the now universal ego-act of identification with apparently separate existence, and, in particular, with gross physical existence as the separate physical human body. The inevitable result of this dark act (of identification) is that human consciousness becomes identified with the patterned program of death and fails to generate, or even allow for the possibility of any greater philosophy, let alone the possibility of a culture of Esoteric Spiritual practice, and (ultimately) the culture of Divine Life.
Unfortunately for all, it is that very culture of human Spiritual, and Divine Life which has been propagandized out of the realm of possibility by both the dogmas of scientism, and conventional institutional religiosity. Indeed, it is principally , the combination of grossly bound scientific materialist anti-culture with widespread institutional "religious" fanaticism that has produced the dark realities of these dark times.
But what is conventional institutional religion has nothing to do with God or the Living Divine Reality, but is about Man or human beings in of themselves, and the search to preserve ones (apparent) separate identity as a response to the fact that death rules to here.
Both conventional institutional god-religion and secular materialism share two fundamental ideas:
1. The naive experiential presumption of an utterly independent, utterly personal, utterly separate and utterly subjective point of view.
2. The idea of an objective reality "out there", or the naive experiential presumption of an egoically observed, and thereby presumed utterly independent, utterly impersonal, utterly separate, and utterly non-subjective, or utterly objective world of conditionally perceived and conceived conditions..
These two fundamental ideas or naive experiential presumptions are, also, the principal constructs, or generally uninspected conventions of the human mind.
Iain McGilchrist has questioned both of these presumptions in his books The Master & His Emissary, and The Matter With Things. The left brained spirit-killing Emissary or the false pseudo-self now rules the world.
That having been said have you ever considered the possibility that the most popular (and influential) pseudo-philosopher in the US is Ayn Rand - tens of millions of her books have been sold. There was a peak in the sale of her books some years ago. Her "god" was of course the hard-edged heartless machine.
Fascinating. Important. When you write, "There seem to be two basic reactions to sex: “One reaction is basically life-accepting. The other is a revulsion so primordial that it might accurately be thought of as antibiologic” (CL, p. 256). This latter response is exemplified in Huysmans’s character Des Esseintes, in whom “we feel pure revulsion against life itself”....
I would at least like to eliminate from my inquiries the surmise that the life-reviling reaction to sex is the natural response of the abused or traumatised child which overrides and governs/distorts his or her own sexual development. When you say 'primordial', I think early childhood or infant trauma. So...those most attracted to satanism and on a milder plane, basic socialism, are those whose early development has been injured by actual abuse or perhaps just the close proximity to an abused-abuser caretaker.
But will we ever answer, Why?
Again, thank you for the summaries (of books waiting to be read on my shelf).