Skip to main content

Personal development path toward traditionalist thinking?

How do we return people to a more traditional, natural way of being?

I honestly don't think a return to the Church will help. It led us astray by basing our idea of how the world should be morally ordered in metaphysics and myth, rather than the all too human and biological. The Church has become corrupted by Liberalism and cannot be salvaged.

I think a new breed of 'Personal Development' (PD) gurus may be the vehicle we need, e.g. Jordan Peterson but more 'hardcore' and philosophical. I don't like Peterson generally, but he does bring intellectual depth to some rather trite PD themes that were popular in the 90s and early noughties.

Of course PD is individualistic, but Peterson does preach social obligation also. I think he balances the self/social aspects fairly well given our current age and ruling Liberalism. The self-referential, reflective aspect is absolutely crucial if you want to really appeal to people and change their moral behaviour, rather than just give them something to virtue-signal about like the Left and left-wing Churches (e.g. refugees, climate change, trans, etc).

The ancients through their schools of philosophy also maintained a strong self/reflective focus, balanced with social obligation. They maintained a naturalistic, communal, moral ordering/prescription of the world. They believed in God/gods, but these are not essential to their philosophy, though their Pantheism as a phenomoenonlogical worldview is much more supportable than Christian metaphysics imo.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Multiculturalism is responsible for every war in history (almost)

people informally segregate all the time. You will find various ethnic enclaves in Melbourne and Sydney. Ethnocentric in-group preference is also seen in choice of friends and communication levels among work colleagues of different ethnic backgrounds. While there may be enough tolerance to allow semi-deracinated individuals to participate in capitalism and consumerism, the reality is that in-group preference is innate and Multiculturalism/diversity should be avoided a much as possible, because it breaks down social cohesion and trust. Diversity is our greatest weakness - an observable, scientific reality (footnote: Robert Putnam). Remember that forced integration has lead to many conflicts in the 20th and 21st century. WWI and Hitler would not have happened if various ethnic groups had sovereignty rather than being under the thumb of oppressive empires. Iraq and Israel/Palestine are two current examples of Multicultural conflicts. There is widespread revolt against forced integrati...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Liberalism enslaves

Aristotle, the Stoics and other ancient Greco-Roman moralists posit a very different idea of 'freedom' that involves combating the tendencies that divert us from human flourishing and contributing to our community as social animals. It is naturalistic, albeit pre-Darwinist, but it is not dogmatic like Liberalism, Leftism, etc. This ancient teach us what freedom really is, and Stoic practices in particular can inculcate an honest sense of autonomy. Liberalism claims to grant people autonomy but it only gives them a false sense of it. It effectively enslaves people to denial of their biology, hedonistic consumerism, keeping up with the Jones', seeking celebrity, lower quality social and family relations, workplace and other forms of alienation, pursuit of happiness in all the wrong places: career, travel, shiny things, sleeping around, taking drugs, etc. Liberalism won't necessarily lead to all these things, but it makes people vulnerable to their marketing, and being h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Equality, Liberalism and the Big State

Shelley makes Liberalism sounds as idealistic and Utopian as any religion. I even see some parallels with the Sermon on the Mount. What is the relation between 'equality' and the 'individual'. (I don't think we are equal and my reification of the 'individual' has become weaker lately). Must one have a strong view of equality to have a strong view of the individual and their 'rights'? I think so, although those regimes pushing equality the strongest - the Communists - have ended up being the most hierarchical and totalitarian of all, with the State on top and the plebs below. Equality ends ups sacrificing individual 'rights' for the sake of whatever new set of individual 'rights' are trendy at the time. e.g. we need to pretend that homosexual relationships are equal to heterosexual ones therefore our 'free speech' right is sacrificed so as to protect the new 'freedom from hurt feelings' right of another. New indiv...
Post a Comment
Read more