There's a new philosophical current that's quickly gaining steam, even though it currently remains underground for the most part.
It's not Marxism, Fascism, or anything that resembles the leading movements of the 20th century. It's the natural response to postmodernism, and it's most likely the next frontier of human thought. It takes a while for new ideas to gradually saturate the world people live in. Normally we can expect it to take several decades for the average person to come to inhabit the world of the philosophers. Our modern "republic of letters" is beginning to consolidate a particular worldview that stands radically opposed to the current order. I'll do my best to describe it here.
Existence, strictly speaking, is one. Things become things because of our minds are geared towards relevance realization. Through this, human beings are able to "name" and differentiate the matter we interact with. This differentiation is what creates the world we live in. It shapes our thoughts, actions, and how we view and experience ourselves and our surroundings.
Society begins to wither away when people lack a common interpretation of reality to orient around. The liberal individualism we're used to slowly turns the human experience into subjective mush that completely lacks the power of giving life any meaning or purpose. Gradually, people turn to drugs, hedonism, and short-term distractions to fill the void left by the lack of a common orientation. Time begins to speed up year after year and the exception begins to occupy more and more space in people's minds. The "center" disintegrates and everything becomes an orgy of the margins. We become obsessed with the bizarre and particular, and forget that which once united us.
For a long time, capitalist consumerism and the notion of "progress" was supposed to serve as the rallying point that held society together. We lived to buy things, experience pleasure, and leave a more enjoyable world for our posterity. The economy gradually became our new religion, but it left a lot to be desired. This line of thinking made people selfish and skeptical of one another. The commercialization of everything transformed love into obligation and thus made the world a very cold, transactional place.
We believed a competitive ethos would bring out the best in everyone and offer society the greatest level of meritocracy possible. Instead, we became slaves to our own desires and ambitions, becoming servants to the economy who are always on the clock, competing with everyone and constantly comparing ourselves to others. Suicides skyrocketed. Birth rates collapsed and more people than ever started exhibiting traits associated with mental illness. That's the world we inhabit now. It's a very broken one and people are ready to turn the page.
The emerging idea seems to have a few components that are all radically opposed to the way we think about life today. They are as follows:
1 - We need to take account of the "big picture" first and subordinate every part to the whole. Forcing different parts of society to compete with each other breeds disharmony and chaos, so we should instead return to a system of caste, where people are initiated into a particular Tradition that gives their life a clearly defined purpose. No more clueless young people groping through life not knowing what to do with themselves. Every person within the society is an appetence or a master, not an employee.
2 - We remember God, who serves as the center of every civilization worthy of the name. Our lives are oriented around the creator of the situation we inhabit, the one who gave us our nature and set our destiny into motion. God is a placeholder first and foremost. Without God, anything becomes our God. We become tyrannized by our own attention which naturally gravitates towards the strange and disordered. By focusing on God, we focus on the totality of being and see how parts are all interconnected and aligned towards a common purpose.
3 - We need an Order, not a democracy. We need a regime that stands above time and historical contingency and embodies the sacred principles that orient our pattern of life. Without such an Order, we can only have tyranny. Under democratic rule, true authority gives way to naked, corrupt power and domination by special interest groups that seek to claim the whole for themselves. The Pharaoh, the Philosopher King, the Emperor etc. are all placeholders just as God is in society. Their personality is irrelevant. What matters is the cosmic function embodied by their role. The individual who lends their body to the Sacred King shrinks into the role just as the artisan and the farmer shrink into theirs. The sovereign is ironically no more free or powerful than anyone else in society, because they live to wear the mask just as everyone else does.
4 - The State, The Individual, and the Sacred are all intertwined, just as all is interconnected in general. It's impossible to truly isolate any aspect of reality. We can and should attempt to live in a world of things, but only with the understanding that things are only parts of something much larger.
5 - Competition is to be avoided because it turns every individual into a mini tyrant. Instead, we should seek cooperation, community, and interconnectedness within a Tradition that gives our life a common orientation. The things that separate us can ironically bring us together if we can understand that we all exist within a hierarchical order. When we believe that everyone is equal and fundamentally the same, the differences that naturally exist between us become barriers instead of connectors.
These are the ideas that shape our next generation of thinkers. We can thank figures like Jordan Peterson, John Vervaeke, Jonathan Pageau, and Pastor Paul Vander Klay for forming and articulating them. This is our equivalent to what liberalism was before the 18th century revolutions.
Agreed. Which is why studying history and maintaining traditions are important, and why immigrants have a duty to adopt their new country's way of life. Which is why tryants of all sorts first have to destroy what exists in order to replace it with the "new thing". They did that in Cambodia under Pol Pot, and in China with Mao. Soviet Russia had the "new Soviet man", and the Taliban did it in Afghanistan when they blew up the thousand-year-old Buddhist statues.
I wouldn't say for a long time. Only since the post-war 1950s, really, did capitalist consumerism really get off the ground. Eisenhower identified the "military-industrial complex" in 1961, and they were pushing for it to keep busy all the industries which had developed during the WW2. Before that, self-sufficiency was more the norm in society. The post-war era made "store-boughten clothes" and "store-boughten food" more mainstream. But, nonetheless, your point about the end result is well taken.
I wouldn't make it hard and fixed, like a caste system. But the idea that every role in life is important to the whole is well taken. Not everyone NEEDS a university degree or is suited to climbing the corporate ladder! A guy who sweeps the streets is still performing a valuable function in the world. Maybe more of a recognition that all parts of society are valuable, and we should cultivate personal excellence and good character, and so bloom wherever we are planted.
Absolutely! Well said.
Agreed. A good King does not impose their own personality on the role, but sees that he is fulfilling a role for the whole of society. Maybe by preference he would want to be an academic or a businessman or something. But he subjects himself to endless stream of ribbon-cutting ceremonies and fundraising dinners because it is important to the people to have the King coming to their local event.
A good politician will do this too. It is not entirely antithetical to democratic forms of government, just rare.
Yes, harmony in society and not a striving to "crush opponents". Order is indeed needed. Hierarchy, much maligned by the 1960s hippies, is not evil in itself if the head of the country (or head of the household) truly cares about the welbeing of those in his care.
You are thinking along lines that others have also thought. Look into "distributism" as an economic system (Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton).
Great response. Thanks.
I definitely need to become more familiar with Chesterton and Belloc. I've read a bit of Chesterton in the past and he seems based. I think Distributism could play an important role in what's to come.
A few links to get you started:
Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, which was a critque of what the industrial revolution wrought in society: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html Bit of a heavy read because of the ye olde style language, but not incomprehensible.
Cardinal Manning and the origins of Rerum Novarum: https://cardijnresearch.org/cardinal-manning-and-the-origins-of-rerum-novarum/ Bit of an explanation of the times and the currents of thought that went into it.
G.K. Chesterton's Distributism: https://distributistreview.com/archive/g-k-chestertons-distributism Article that gives basic background. Good to browse around the Distributist Review website for other articles.
Hilaire Belloc's Economics for Helen: https://archive.org/details/economicsforhele0000bell Written for his adolescent neice, this is an excellent, clear, and very basic introduction to economics: defines in understandable terms "wealth", "money", "capital", "labour", "economic rent", "subsistence", etc.
Hilaire Belloc's 1912 The Servile State: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64882 An economic history book, but also predicting the rise of socialism and totalitarianism. Written before the Communist Revolution of 1917, but shows things were brewing in that direction for some decades at that point. Also predicted drive for lower and lower wages, which is what gives us the situation today where all our manufacturing is in China: "industrial society as we know it will tend towards the re-establishment of slavery".
John Medaille talk from a decade ago plumping his then-new book on distributism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PtStipIsc Medaille is an entrepreneur, but also a prof at University of Dallas, and one of the "big names" in contemporary distributist analysis.
Good to always read arguments against something, and Thomas E. Woods of the Mises Institute has written many critiques of distributism. Here is one: https://fee.org/articles/the-fallacies-of-distributism/
Getting away from economics specifically, looking more at social structures, worthwhile reading Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, a Brazilian from the mid-20th century, who is much lauded by some sectors of the Catholic Traditionalist movement. Still worth a read, and here are two articles:
What is Organic Society? https://www.traditioninaction.org/OrganicSociety/A_002_OrganicSociety_PCO.htm
How Do We Build an Organic Society? https://www.tfp.org/how-do-we-build-an-organic-society/
It's interesting to find someone here who's familiar with those books! They've been on my huge reading list for some time now but I never quite got around to reading them yet.
I'd also recommend:
The Concept of the Political & The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy by Carl Schmitt
Reflections of a Russian statesman by Konstantin Pobedonostsev
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind By Gustave Le Bon
Anything by Julius Evola (he's a bit more difficult to understand at times)
The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
Anything by Byung-Chul Han (one of the more interesting living philosophers)
Thanks! I've read The Abolition of Man, but the others are new to me.
Much appreciated!