Offsite Post: ‘Pride and Humility in Geopolitics’

 

Underlying the two main geopolitical systems in the world – the Western unipolar model and the BRICS+ multipolar model – are the opposing spiritual realities of pride and humility.  The Western model, having its foundation in satanic pride – that Western civilization, especially the United States, is superior to any other, whether past, present, or future – shows that the Western elite and many of the plainfolk are spiritually sick and blind and have doomed themselves to destruction.  The BRICS+ countries, on the other hand, are content to let each country in their bloc and elsewhere in the world develop according to her own logos and telos, to not impose, to show restraint.  This is a mark of humility, which will bring the blessings of God upon them.

The remarkable spiritual writer of the Orthodox Church, St Ignatius Brianchaninov (+1867), lays bare the character and motivations of the proud and the humble, and these in turn give us the keys to understanding the actions of the major geopolitical actors today.  He begins Chapter 36 of his book on monasticism, The Arena,

‘A monk must be extremely cautious of carnal and animal zeal, which outwardly appears pious but in reality is foolish and harmful to the soul. Worldly people and many living the monastic life, through ignorance and inexperience, often praise such zeal without understanding that it springs from conceit and pride. They extol this zeal as zeal for the faith, for piety, for the Church, for God. It consists in a more or less harsh condemnation and criticism of one's neighbors in their moral faults, and in faults against good order in church and in the performance of the church services. Deceived by a wrong conception of zeal, these imprudent zealots think that by yielding themselves to it they are imitating the holy fathers and holy martyrs, forgetting that they—the zealots—are not saints, but sinners.’

Who are the ones constantly, harshly criticizing country after country around the world for shortcomings of one kind or another?  The Western countries, who, as we have said, are blind to their own sins, making them hypocrites:

‘If the saints accused or convicted those who were living in sin or irreligion, they did so at the command of God, as their duty, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, not at the instigation of their passions and demons. Whoever decides of his own self-will to convict his brother or make some reprimand, clearly betrays and proves that he considers himself more prudent and virtuous than the person he blames, and that he is acting at the instigation of passion and deception and diabolic thoughts. We need to remember the Savior's injunction: "Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye,' and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

‘What is a plank in this connection? It is the earthly wisdom or carnal outlook, hard as a plank, which deprives the heart and mind of all capacity for true vision, so that one is quite unable to judge either one's own inner state or the state of one's neighbor. Such a person judges himself and others as he imagines himself to be, and as his neighbors appear to him outwardly, by his carnal mind, mistakenly. And so the Word of God is extremely just in calling him a hypocrite.’

Having rejected any thought of submitting themselves to the commands of God the All-Holy Trinity, the Westerners have made themselves servants of their fallen passions and of the fallen angels.  The actions of people dominated by such forces will never bring forth anything helpful in the world:

‘A Christian, after being healed by the Word of God and the Spirit of God, gains a true view of his spiritual state and that of his neighbors. The carnal mind, by striking his sinning neighbor with a plank, always upsets and confuses him, often ruins him, never does any good and cannot bring any benefit, and has not the least effect on sin. On the other hand, the spiritual mind acts exclusively on the soul-sickness of one's neighbor, compassionates, heals, and saves him.’

On the contrary, the Western peoples constantly exaggerate little faults and offenses into world-threatening catastrophes, which leads to overreaction, sanctions, wars, death:

 . . .

The rest may be read here:

https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/pride-and-humility-geopolitics

Or here:

https://katehon.com/en/article/pride-and-humility-geopolitics

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘Views of Theology: Southern, Greek, and Irish’

 

Two important strands in the tapestry of Southern culture are the Greek and the Irish.  Most of what Dixie took from each, unfortunately, was of a non-Christian nature.  Her Greek teachers were mostly of the ancient, pre-Christian era – Homer, Aristotle, and so forth.  From the Irish she has taken a certain ornery stubbornness, exemplified in characters like Sam Houston and Davy Crockett.  Regrettably, she has never taken much notice of the great Orthodox saints of both peoples, whether a St. Basil the Great, or a St. Symeon the New Theologian; a St. Ciaran of Clonmacnoise, or a St. Ita of Killeedy.  And this negatively affected how the mainly Protestant South developed her views of theology.

Central to that Southern view is the idea of rational knowledge.  E. Brooks Holifield looks back at the antebellum town preachers and discerns a type that is still with her today (there is another type that we will touch on later).  For the professional Southern clergyman, there “was one ideal:  the personal embodiment of knowledge.  A clerical professional was a man of ‘sound scholarship.’  He was ‘learned and accomplished,’ capable of scaling ‘heights of knowledge’ and possessed of ‘intellectual power.’  . . .  Professionalism was not so much the refinement of technical skills as the mastery of a body of knowledge, whether scientific, legal, or theological, and of the foundational principles implicit in the application of the knowledge” (The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860, Duke UP, Durham, N. C., 1978, p. 34).

A Christianity that is utterly reasonable and rational is what they proclaimed:  “The ministers were confident that rational orthodoxy would commend itself to the educated and influential classes whom they found in the towns and cities.  Therefore they proclaimed their scholastic gospel not only in polemical treatises and theological texts but also in innumerable sermons with such revealing titles as ‘The Reasonableness of Faith,’ ‘Trinitarians Rational,’ ‘The Reasonableness of Religion,’ and ‘The Credibility of the Gospel’ (Ibid., p. 72).  The great Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney himself (a staunch Presbyterian) said plainly, “The claim which the Scripture addresses to us, to be the one authentic and authoritative revelation from God, is addressed to our reason.  This is clear from the simple fact, that there are presented to the human race more than one professed revelation; and that they cannot be authoritative witnesses to their own authority prior to its admission. . . . The evidences of inspiration must, therefore, present themselves to man’s reason. . . . He who says he believes, when he sees no proof, is but pretending, or talking without meaning” (Ibid., pgs. 87-8).

This overemphasis on reason and rationality led to a sundering of Christ’s presence in the Southern churches.  This may be seen especially in the Southern view of the Lord’s Supper.  Most held that Christ was not truly present in the bread and the wine consumed by the Southern Christians.  The influential Rev. Dabney shall again be our representative of Dixie’s general view:  “As an orthodox Reformed theologian, Dabney had to affirm that the Lord’s Supper was a means of union with Christ.  But he defined that union in such a way that eucharistic communion became little more than a didactic message designed to produce an inward comprehension of doctrinal truths with correspondingly appropriate emotional reactions.  . . .  The Lord’s Supper simply designated the divine promise that the elect would experience the blessings of faith and sanctification; it foreshadowed and produced a certain quality of inwardness, and this alone constituted sacramental communion with Christ.  Dabney not only denied that the sacramental presence included the human nature of Christ, but he also disavowed the Calvinist teaching about a substantial, though spiritual, union between Christ and the believer in the sacramental rite itself” (Ibid., pgs. 181, 182).

Had the South listened to their Orthodox Irish forebears, they would have avoided such erroneous notions about the Holy Mysteries.  The 11^th-century Irish manuscript (which was before the Roman Catholic Norman conquest of Ireland in the 12^th century that brought Ireland within the pale of the Great Schism from the Orthodox Church), “A Treatise on the Eucharist,” written by the monk Fr. Echtgus Ua Cuanáin of Ros Cré monastery, reveals that there is much more to the Lord’s Supper than empty symbols, analogies, and promises:

 . . .

The rest is at https://southernorthodox.org/views-of-theology-southern-greek-and-irish/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Remembrances for September Addendum

 

23 Sept.

Major Richard Dowling, the son of recent Irish immigrants, he turned back a large Yankee invasion force in Sabine Pass in 1863 with a comparatively much smaller force.  Many places in southeast Texas were named in honor of him.

https://easttexashistory.org/items/show/164

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6813103/richard-william-dowling

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dowling-richard-william

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘The Persistence of Christlike Figures in Pop Culture’

 

The last few decades have seen a dramatic turn away from Christianity in the West.  And yet Christlike figures (those who lay down their lives for others that they would not die; St John’s Gospel 10:11) continue to show up as heroes in the stories of her popular arts.  There are three such productions in particular that we will look at below:  the video games Chrono Trigger (1995) and Sea of Stars (2023) and the television show Travellers (2016-18).

Protagonists

Chrono Trigger

This is a flighty sci-fi/fantasy role-playing game (RPG) involving time travel and the consequences thereof.  Crono, the main character of the game, like the God-man Jesus Christ, undergoes a self-sacrificing death and later returns to life:

Crono possesses the archetype of the hero. He is brave, daring and selfless.  . . .  When Crono confronts Lavos in the Ocean Palace of the Kingdom of Zeal as a result of the rescue mission, Crono sacrifices himself to save everyone present. With the help of time travel, his friends manage to replace him at the moment before he dies with a clone received from the Millennial Fair in 1000 AD. thus saving his life. While the other six playable characters have many lines of dialog, Crono's responses to events are usually implied only through reaction and gesture, often for a humorous effect, which wrongfully depicts him as insincere at the moment of his resurrection, as Crono and the others confront Lavos, destroy it, and return peace to Guardia.

Sea of Stars

Also an RPG.  Garl is the Christ-figure in this game.  He is not the main character, but he sacrifices himself to save the two main heroes from a powerful stroke meant for them by the main antagonist, an alchemist named Aephorul.  Garl is imminently likeable; everyone is drawn to the selfless kindness that he exudes.  His lowliness (he is the cook amongst the company of heroes) is also reminiscent of Christ’s humility.

Travellers

Like Chrono Trigger, this show also involves time travelling.  Teams from the future travel back in time to stop a meteor from colliding with the earth and devasting life upon her.  David is the image of Christ in this fictional universe.  He strongly resembles Garl – imminently likeable.  There is nothing to repel anyone from him; his meekness and humility and joy are infectious.  He is a social worker who hits the streets every day to care for the poor and forgotten, giving even his own possessions to those he encounters.  His sacrificial death comes when he ends up at the wrong place at the wrong time in his desire to offer back-up to a Traveller in need.  Locked up alone with a nuclear bomb, he is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation as he disarms it, and dies soon afterwards after suffering through his painful final hours.  His resurrection is affected by the jump at the end of the series to another timeline, where he exists, whole and hale.

Antagonists

Like Christ in the real world, these fictional representations are opposed by satanic/Antichrist figures, usually of a technological nature, further underscoring a desire for the authentic, good Christ.  Technology, notably, is often linked in various writings old and new with the occult.  Connor Tomlinson, a writer for The European Conservative, gives a few recent examples:

 . . .

The rest is at https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-persistence-of-christlike-figures-in-pop-culture/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘Red State Wins and Losses vs Leviathan’

 

By ‘Leviathan’ we mean that monstrous merger of the federal government with giant corporations that menaces so many of our lives here in the United States, and also in countries abroad.

First up, a rather significant win for Red State lawfare – ESG investing is on the run:

 

We have been covering the full on implosion of ESG and "green" investing for the better part of the last 6 months and today, the wreckage continues.

 

That's because mega-bank JP Morgan has officially left a $68 trillion investor coalition that is "focused on pressing the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to decarbonize," according to Bloomberg.

 

In other words, the "fight" to decarbonize is imploding.

 

 . . . And the damage for the Climate Action 100+ may only be getting started. Lance Dial, a Boston-based partner at law firm K&L Gates LLP, told Bloomberg: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more defections, especially given that there’s now a cost, such as potential litigation, that wasn’t there when companies joined.”

 

He added: “Attorneys general have subpoenaed firms about their membership of these groups.”

 

 . . . “The political winds aren’t rewarding climate-active firms today, but climate risk and regulations aren’t going away in the mid to long run, so short-term decisions may need to be undone when those longer term threats begin to manifest or regulators clamp down harder,” said Michael Sheren, a former senior adviser at the Bank of England who’s now a fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

 

“JPMorgan pulling out matters because it sends the wrong, short-sighted signal and gives cover for others to do the same," he added.

 

And we're sure they will...

 

We noted earlier this year, "ESG" has become a "dirty word" on Wall Street. 

 

For some context, peak ESG and related synonyms, such as "climate change" and "clean energy" and green energy" and net zero," among other terms, peaked at 28,000 mentions in the first quarter of 2022. Ever since, the number of mentions has rapidly plunged. Halfway through the first quarter earnings season, mentions are around 4,800.

Much praise is due to the AGs of Missouri, Tennessee, and all the others who have used their offices to protect plain folks from these Wall Street vultures.

Unfortunately, the Legislature of the very Red State of South Dakota didn’t seem to notice any of this and, under the sway of the green economy/carbon capture lobby, is in the process of undermining individual private property rights so they can score some FedGov/corporate largess:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/02/garlington-red-state-wins-and-losses-vs-leviathan/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!