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Tuesday, September 17, 2024

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!

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