Link to Chronology
Europe wakes up and then goes to hell
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation
Introduction
p501 ...Before the Renaissance, the intellectual history of Europe was merely a chapter of the history of the Church... even those who contended against the Church were entirely dominated by it, and thought only of transforming it. They were not freethinkers but heretics. With the Renaissance... The Cleric no longer had the monopoly of learning. Spiritual life... became secularized; philosophy ceased to be the servant of theology, and art, like literature, emancipated itself from the tutelage which had been imposed upon it ever since the 8th century. The ascetic ideal was replaced by a purely human ideal, and of this ideal the highest expression was to be found in antiquity. The humanist replaced the cleric, as virtue (virtus) replaced piety... Not only for the Italian humanists, but also for Christians as convinced as Erasmus or Thomas More, the claim of the theologian to domineer over learning and letters, and even morality, was as ridiculous as it was harmful. They dreamed of reconciling religion with the world. They were tolerant, not unduly dogmatic, and extremely hostile to the secular studies which Scholasticism had superimposed upon the Bible. They were interested above all in moral questions. Their program, which we find in Miles Christianus [not sure what this is supposed to be. It seems to be a literary work and not THIS.] and the Utopia, is that of a broad, rational Christianity, entirely devoid of mysticism, which would make the Church, not the Bride of Christ and the source of salvation, but an institution for moralization and education in the highest sense of the word... they were optimists, and they hoped that it would be possible to induce... [the Church], by gentle pressure, to enter upon the new path [of reform].
p502 ...The Reformation, on the other hand, attacked the problem with passion, violence and intolerance, but also with profound faith, and the passionate longing to attain to God and to salvation which was destined to conquer and subjugate men's souls. There was nothing in common with it and the Renaissance. It was... the antithesis of the Renaissance. It replaced the human being by the Christian; it derided and humiliated the power of reason... Luther was much more akin to the Middle Ages than to the humanists... Erasmus and More very soon turned aside from this revolutionary... They divined the tragedy which was about to commence, and they shuddered at it, understanding that it meant the end of their hopes of reconciliation.
Yet it was not Lutheranism that provoked the catastrophe of the wars of religion. After a first popular effervescence, marked by the rising of the German peasants and the insurrection of the Anabaptists, it submitted with docility to the control of the princes. It abandoned the Church to the secular power so completely that when Charles V decided to take action against it he had to fight the princes, and the conflict that followed was far more political than religious...
p503 But then Calvin made his appearance, and with him the... comparitively peaceful course... was suddenly modified. An austere, exclusive, intolerant religion claimed the right to impose itself upon the government, and to force it, even by rebellion, to obey the Word of God. Calvinism was no longer satisfied with the national existence which had hitherto contented Protestantism. The Calvinist propaganda aspired to conquer the world. The faith which it inspired in its "elect" urged them to political action, and this action was the beginning of the tragic epoch of the wars of religion...
...the industrialists, capitalists and politicians were protesting and rebelling in their turn against the restrictive system of trade corporations, against the economic limitations, the traditions and prejudices that impeded the free expansion of their activities. Everything was undergoing transformation, the economic world no less than the intellectual; the birth of modern capitalism was almost contemporaneous with the appearance of the first scientific works, and it collaborated with science in the discovery of the East Indies and America... we should do wrong to restrict the application of the word "Renaissance" to the new orientation of thought and art; it should be extended to the whole field of human activity, as revealed in its manifold aspects from the middle of the 15th century...
90's Music
And by that I mean the Pop music I heard on the radio during the 1990s. I think people think I'm joking when I praise 90's music, which seems to lack even the ignore-the-hair popularity of 80's music. But I'm serious.
Like the Beatles -- and how often do you hear that comparison -- 90's Pop music has been so easy to hear on the radio that I've never bothered to buy it for my iPod. (Some artists, like the Indigo Girls, did not get much radio play so I do own them). Last night the YouTube algorithm offered me a Goo Goo Dolls hit, which lead to a little binge of their music and the music of some of their contemporaries. Lisa Loeb seemed as shocked as I was that she was performing her hit, "Stay," again twenty years later.
I know I've written about this before, but there's something disconcerting about being reminded that the artists of a much younger generation -- that you discovered and liked as you were on the verge of middle age -- are now middle aged themselves.
My fondness for the music of the '90s -- like my fondness for the music of the mid to late '60s -- may be at least in part because that was a good decade for me, over all. (Even Sid & Susie stopped their series of covers with the 1980s. Did they run out of gas as an act, or did they really think there was nothing worth covering in the next decade?)
Social Contract
I keep coming back in my mind to America's Social Contract. Regardless of where John Locke and the guys may have wanted to start, the American Social Contract started with protecting the right of Europeans to view Native Americans and Africans as being less than human. As not having legal standing except as chattel.
The next American "revolution" was when abolitionists attacked this notion with regard to Africans which lead to the Civil War and the end of "slavery" as an institution. But when it comes down to it, it seems like Americans are not that interested in other "people's" interests when their own economic interest is involved. Many of the "Sagebrush Rebellion" issues have to do with continued exploitation of Native lands.
The problem, in a world of robot manufacturing and the land being stressed by human population growth, is how are non-tech savvy Americans to be made whole? And this is far more than just an American problem. Because someone will find something for these people to do, just as Mussolini and Hitler did.
Perhaps, just as we need a multitude of gods and religions to suit our individual or group needs, there is no one political system that suits all people. It sounds like you're joking when you point out that the weakness of Italian Fascism was the need to pit Italian nationalism against some external force, but this does seem to be an essential requirement for all forms of extreme nationalism, and I'm sure America First-ism will tend in the same direction. I'm not even in a position to say that this isn't a necessary feature. This comes down to cultural anthropology and sociology. It may well be that the EU has pushed peace in Europe, for example, about as far as it can go. Perhaps radical pruning isn't an accident, but a necessity for European success. It certainly looks like something periodically pushes Europeans toward war.
Continued...
I've been holding onto this for days because I'm still dwelling in The House of Phlegm... (now with minimal hearing in my left ear due to congestion. Dr. Time seems to finally be getting the better of this vile plague. Maybe.)
But now I need to make this already too long post even longer as I just ran into not one, but two intriguing pieces from Medium. I will include the links below.
I guess I'm going to start with this piece on "The Alt-right Is a Doomsday Cult." It's almost like the author has been reading my blogs. There are references to Nietzsche and to Mussolini -- and I now I have to do some research on Julius Evola. There's even a new (to me) use of "kali" to describe the period of time when Kali dances. (How have I missed Evola? His connection with Hermetic philosophy links straight back to the original Faust writings.)
Here's a striking quote from Wiki:
"The Jews were stigmatized, not as representatives of a biological race, but as the carriers of a world view, a way of being and thinking—simply put, a spirit—that corresponded to the ‘worst’ and ‘most decadent’ features of modernity: democracy, egalitarianism and materialism."[20]
And:
Paul Furlong wrote that "The complete Evola held views that it is fair, if somewhat summary, to categorise as elitist, racist, anti-semitic, misogynist, anti-democratic, authoritarian, and deeply anti-liberal."[7]
And finally, the real shocker:
Evola died unmarried, without children, on 11 June 1974 in Rome.
I did a quick search and found this link where the internet, in it's occult wisdom, reveals that 63% of respondents think Evola was gay. That's what I was thinking as well. And not just because he was a Barone.
Now to our second piece on the suppression of science in Franco's Spain. Now here we see exactly what I thought we should see in fascism in general, if its enemy was truly the bourgeoisie (Evola is quite clear on this in his theory of "castes.") Some quotes,
The new council ["the central agency responsible for advancing Spanish science research and exchanges with foreign scientists"] was meant to bring back a view of science that would make it compatible with conservative Catholic values, mandating it to “restore the classical and Christian unity of the sciences that was destroyed in the 18th Century.” In other words, he wanted to turn back the clock to pre-Enlightenment times...
“The Franco regime defended the literalism of the Bible, which was considered an infallible account, inspired by the word of God,” said Manuel Castillo Martos, a professor at the University of Seville and co-author of Education, Science and Ideology in Spain (1890–1950). “Scientific ideas that contradicted it, such as Darwinist evolution, were considered unacceptable.”
Now we have Naphta's doctrine made law. Given that The Magic Mountain was published in 1926 and Franco came to power 1936-1939, and that we know (from Primo Levi) that "everyone" was reading the book after it was published, one has to wonder just how influential it really was.
The Nazis were not in a position, during the late 1930s and 1940s, to be purists when it came to bourgeois science, since they had a war to lose. But was there a long term plan to adapt something similar to (though less Catholic than) the Spanish approach to science? How would I.G. Farben have felt about that? Again, I'm not quite interested enough in this to actually read National Socialist texts. There should be a way to leave idea seeds on Medium in hopes that someone else will do your work for you.
No power to the slaves
I included a Franco quote above and then removed it because it didn't relate to what I was addressing just then, but I want to come back to it now.
“We do not believe in government through the voting booth,” he said. “The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box. Spain has no foolish dreams.”
And this goes nicely with Evola's thoughts on caste,
In Revolt Against the Modern World, Evola developed a "general objective law: the law of the regression of the castes", claiming that "[t]he meaning of history from the most ancient times is this: the gradual decline of power and type of civilization from one to another of the four castes - sacred leaders, warrior nobility, bourgeoisie (economy, "merchants") and slaves - which in the traditional civilizations corresponded to the qualitative differentiation in the principal human possibilities."[13]
I don't think Fyodor Dostoevsky would have much of a problem with this. And neither would Naphta, of course. Though I imagine there would be some debate about who decides what between the "sacred leaders" and the "warrior nobility." And isn't it interesting that he chose the word "slaves" for the lowest caste (I'm assuming this is a decent translation.) I imagine Ford Madox Ford was familiar with Evola, I do wonder what he thought of these, Tory-er than thou views.
I do notice a couple problems for the Alt-right in installing these ideas in the New World. As Dostoevsky was aware, the U.S.A. is a pure bourgeois state. Getting rich regardless of the cost has always been the true American Dream and when Trump speaks of Making America Great Again, I'm sure that's what his followers are hearing. How do you introduce finer thoughts regarding the sacred and the noble in a land of the bourgeoisie?
And then there's religion. For Spain and Italy going to their sacred place was simply adhering to the Catholic Church -- just as it was Orthodox Christianity for Dostoevsky. But what is the sacred standard for the U.S.A? Evangelical Christianity? Who's brand? And whichever one you pick the Catholics and Mormons and Goat knows how many other sects will scream. America hasn't yet seen a good religious war, wouldn't it be amusing if the fight against Radical Islam resulted in a new 30 Years War among Christian sects?
