Waiting for the Thunderbolt

Ever had that feeling that you've said everything there is to say? I get it every six months or so. You could say I'm waiting for the next thunderbolt. I'm also anticipating another thunderbolt -- this one exterior -- that collapses the deranged Empire of Wokeness. For what cannot  continue will not continue.

I've decided to reinstate the Now Reading list to the sidebar, because readers have a right to know what I'm inhaling. As you can see, it's a diverse and contradictory list, from traditionalism to evolutionary psychology to demonic influences to alt-right hate thinkers. My job is to somehow reconcile them all, which isn't that easy. Some would say it's frankly impossible, but I am committed to making diversity work.

For example, the alt-right tends to be indifferent or hostile to Christianity. I sympathize with their view, as I would certainly choose moderate atheism before, say, the radical National Council of Churches, or any other form of leftist Christianity -- which is just mental illness or demon possession masquerading as Christianity.

The other problem I'm seeing with the alt-right is the rejection of universalism. It's a mirror image of the left's absurd relativism, which devolves to tribe vs. tribe, and ultimately to power. Realpolitik types will say that we are naive, since politics always reduces to the will to power anyway. All the fancy rhetoric just covers naked self-interest.  

Well, even if universalism was discovered by white Europeans, it's still universal. In other words, it makes no sense to me to attribute abstract universalism to racial particularism, just as it makes no sense to say that modern physics is a Jewish thing. If there are no universals then we are screwed. I don't care which race discovered them. 

Yes, western civilization is probably doomed in the long run -- human nature being what it is -- but we certainly won't pull out of our suicidal death spiral by rejecting the universalism of the founders, rather, by reaffirming it. If I reject the identity politics of the left, it's because it is barbaric and regressive, not because of my own tribal loyalty. 

Moreover, half my tribe is composed of lunatics, idiots, craven conformists, the power hungry,  and the demon-possessed. Obviously, I have much more in common with Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas than with Joe Biden or Rachel Maddow. 

I'm not naive about racial differences. I just think we should hold all races to the same universal standards and let the chips fall where they may. If the entire NBA is black, or the entire Berkeley math department is Asian, I couldn't care less. 

I guess the deepest analysis goes to the very nature of intelligence, which is, among other things, the capacity for discerning principles. If it's merely a function of biology, then to hell with it. Sure, a German Shepherd is smarter than a Great Dane, but neither can ever transcend dogginess and know the absolute.

Intelligence is obviously bound up with natural selection, but to reduce it to such is both self-defeating and ultimately absurd. We could say that intelligence is accidentally genetic but essentially transcendent, on pain of being able to say nothing about it that isn't reducible to reproductive interest, or "selfish genes." If that's the case, then Europeans are wrong and Muslim immigrants are correct, because the latter have more children.

If we are to prevail it can't be just because we are more intelligent, but because we understand what intelligence essentially is; and

One of the keys to the understanding of our true nature and of our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world never measure up to the real range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or it is nothing. Among all the intelligences of this world the human spirit alone is capable of objectivity, and this implies -- or proves -- that what confers on our intelligence the power to accomplish to the full what it can accomplish, and what makes it wholly what it is, is the Absolute alone (Schuon).

Moreover, to be intelligent is to know reality and to thereby be more real:

Intelligence is the perception of a reality, and a fortiori the perception of the Real as such. It is ipso facto discernment between the Real and the unreal -- or the less real... 

Intelligence gives rise not only to discernment, but also to the awareness of our superiority in relation to those who do not know how to discern.... we cannot help being aware of something that exists and is perceptible to us thanks to our intelligence, precisely....

But the same intelligence that makes us aware of a superiority, also makes us aware of the relativity of this superiority and, more than this, it makes us aware of all our limitations. This means that an essential function of intelligence is self-knowledge: hence the knowledge -- positive or negative according to the aspects in view -- of our own nature (ibid.). 

Now, leftism is predicated on the denial of human nature, so it is intrinsically stupid, irrespective of race.