THAT TIME HAS COME

The Doorway to Pure Prayer

2011-09-08T03:51:00.000-07:00

Prayers:
Because if it’s in the mind it’s also in the heart. An interview on prayer
By The Orthodox World, vol 41, no. 1
Feb 17, 2007, 21:28

Humble-Mindedness : The Doorway to Pure Prayer

Over the past ten years it has become a common occurrence for pilgrims on Mount Athos to make the one-hour trek from Vatopedi Monastery to the Kellion of St. George. The long and dusty uphill trail passes by monastery fields and within sight of the place where St. Gregory Palamas labored. After several steep ascents, the trail branches off onto a winding path that cuts across the verdant mountainside. In springtime, the thick foliage threatens to choke the passageway, while a myriad of wildflowers paints a dazzling landscape—a fitting offering to the mountain’s protectress, the Theotokos. Proceeding past the ruins of centuries-old monastic dwellings, the pilgrim arrives at a terraced plot of land overlooking the Aegean Sea. There, amidst well-tended gardens and enclosed by a rustic, tree-limb railing, stand a few whitewashed stone buildings adorned with blue trim: the Kellion of St. George. Outside, sitting on benches, one would find a few pilgrims waiting in hope of receiving a few profitable words from the humble Elder, Hieroschemamonk Dionysius (Ignat).

Four years ago in these pages we presented the life story of Elder Dionysius [1] in a three-part article on the Elders of Kolitsou Skete, a Romanian dependency of Vatopedi Monastery, Mount Athos, Greece. On April 28/May 11, 2004, this righteous Romanian Elder reposed in the Lord after a long, God-pleasing life of ninety-five years. Elder Dionysius had been a monk for eighty-two years, seventy-seven of which were spent on Mount Athos, and sixty-six of which were spent in the same kellion. He was a wonderful, loving monk and spiritual father, well known by his fellow Athonite monks but largely unknown to those outside the Holy Mountain until the last fifteen years or so.

Elder Dionysius was born in Romania in 1909, the youngest son of eight children, and was baptized with the name Dimitry. He was always close to his older brother George (later the Monk Gymnasius), and followed him into the monastic life—first in Romania in 1922 and then on Mount Athos in 1926. After ten years of extreme physical hardship and struggle on the Holy Mountain, the two brothers came under the spiritual direction of Elder Gideon (Chelaru). They were also able to obtain (and restore, both physically and spiritually) a kellion of their own, dedicated to the Great Martyr George, in Kolitsou Skete. Fr. Gymnasius attained great holiness before his repose in 1965, and Elder Gideon died a righteous death in 1979 [2]. For almost ten years Elder Dionysius’ only constant co-struggler in the St. George Kellion was Schemamonk John (Shova) [3]. There were, however, a small number of spiritually experienced monks nearby to whom he could go for spiritual advice, including Elder John (Goutsou) (†1996) [4], Elder Dometian (Trihena) of the St. Hypatius Kellion (†1984) [5], and more recently Elder Joseph the New of Vatopedi Monastery.

Elder Dionysius was one of the last living links to the holy ascetics who lived on Mount Athos during the first part of the twentieth century. He was a man of deep spiritual prayer, who engaged in the noetic activity spoken of in The Philokalia. Many who have benefitted from his counsel commented that the most common theme of his encouragement to his fellow strugglers was “patience, patience, and more patience.”

Although the Elder had been born of simple farmers and had spent most of his life in obscurity, his renown drew a constant stream of pilgrims seeking a spiritual word. Toward the end of his life the fathers of the kellion would have to lock the gates so that the Elder could rest his body, which was exhausted by strict ascesis and illness. Even then people would scale the gates just to talk to Fr. Dionysius. Students and world leaders, Greeks and Americans, all flocked to receive a blessing from the rough and weathered hands of the ascetic. Even the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, was at the Elder’s funeral, paying his respects along with two hundred monks from all over the Holy Mountain.

In memory of this holy Elder, we are presenting an interview with him containing much profitable counsel. The interview was conducted in May 2001 by Hierodeacon Cleopa Paraschiv, author of the Romanian book The Prayer of Jesus: The Way of Uniting the Mind with the Heart [6]. At that time the Elder was ninety-two years old, blind and physically infirm, but rich in the spiritual wisdom that is born of long and unremitting labor.

1. On the Jesus Prayer

Question: Most pious Elder, what is the purpose of our life in this temporal world?

Answer: The main purpose of our earthly life is to be saved, to arrive in the Kingdom of Heaven. Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us: “Be holy, just as your Father in Heaven is holy!” (cf. Matt. 5:48). During this earthly life, with the help of Divine Grace and our good Christian deeds we can enter the ranks of the saints. And if, because of our lack of virtue, we cannot join the ranks of the saints, we should strive to inherit Paradise. By no means can you simultaneously be a good Christian and commit sin. If you commit sin, you depart from the Grace of God and unite yourself to the devil. Thus, you depart from the Church, from the Holy Mysteries and from the Divine teachings in order to satisfy your own passions, which the devil has settled in your soul. You should not obey your passions. That’s why the Church sings: “From my youth do many passions war against me …” (Hymns of Degrees, Tone 4). That’s why the Holy Scripture tells us: Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man (Col. 3:9–10). Because if we’re of the old man, we’re the slaves of passions and sins.

Question: What is the teaching of the Holy Fathers about the human spirit and the demonic spirit?

Answer: The human spirit becomes a demonic spirit through sin. The devil sows the seeds of bad deeds in our heart through the working of our energy and thoughts. If you accept the bad seeds into your heart, they’ll start sprouting. And if you’re not careful to throw them away and purify your heart with the Grace of the Holy Spirit and good Christian works (prayer, fasting, Confession, Holy Communion, etc.) they’ll take root and grow. And from that moment on, the devil will go away from you, because from that moment on he’s sure that you’ll follow your passions to every bad thing.

Question: So, if you’re dissolute, does Divine Grace depart from you and does the spirit of fornication lead you to all kinds of depraved sins and unnatural sins?

Answer: Of course. But it’s more serious, in that they become like natural deeds. You think and say that in no way can you leave these sins. That’s why, from the beginning, we should observe bodily and spiritual purity. We will have great help in our spiritual warfare if we observe bodily and spiritual purity, as is the case with monastic life. And the lay people should have marital relations with restraint, on the days permitted by the Church, and only after an Orthodox marriage ceremony. The devil knows this and that’s why he tries so hard to cast people into the sins of fornication. These many evils of our days are from the demons, who want in this way to defile the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is a Christian’s body, and afterwards to lead it into every evil thing. Once you’ve committed sins of dissoluteness you can’t pray any more; you cease participating in the Holy Liturgy, you stop confessing, and you can’t perform other good Christian deeds anymore.

Owing to this worldly spirit—which forms from childhood around the heart through poor education, pornographic movies, advertising, desires, sins, etc.—the Christian can no longer pray, nor can he do a good, salvific deed. But even those who have fallen into great sins can correct themselves, with the help of Divine Grace. This struggle and deliverance from sins and from the demons will be counted unto them as martyrdom.

Question: After Baptism, is the devil expelled from the depth of our heart so that he now works from outside?

Answer: He works from outside the heart. But if we sin, we allow him to penetrate into the depths of the heart. This is what a passion is. From now on, this passion will lead us, but not even now does Divine Grace leave us. God gave man total freedom. The Grace of the Holy Spirit showed him the difference between right and wrong. It showed us the way to the Kingdom of Heaven, and the way which leads to perdition—hell. God tells us: I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life (Deut. 30:19). The Grace of the Holy Spirit could have made it impossible for man to ever fall. But in that case he would have had neither personality nor virtues, but would have been an animal or a robot. None of God’s creations has the freedom that man has. The Christian who fulfills God’s commandments with the help of Divine Grace may become a saint. And God is so good that even when we fall into sins and cry to Him in repentance, “Lord, forgive me! Lord, help me!” He comes to us and helps us to rise from our sins. That is why our Lord Jesus Christ told us, Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden with sins, and I will give you rest (Matt. 11:28)!

However, if the passions have settled in a man and have become like a new sinful nature, that man will say, “It’s impossible to cut off these passions!” This is especially so because we are in the last times, when mankind has become careless and insensible towards spiritual things. Whether one is a layman, a monk or a priest, one isn’t concerned over passions and sins. This a great danger because thereby we allow the demons to progress in controlling us.

Question: Where does our pride come from?

Answer: Pride is only from the demons. Through Holy Baptism, God has forgiven the ancestral sin and personal sins committed before Baptism, and has given us the Grace of the Holy Spirit of perfection, telling us, Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matt. 5:48).

Question: But the effects remain!

Answer: We should cut them off through the Grace of God, which will always help us on our way to perfection. But since we have been created with freedom, we must fight in order to defeat the passions and the sins. For example, if you smoke you have the power to say, “I’ve confessed, and with God’s help I will smoke no more from now on!” But the old man within you will say, “You’ve smoked for so many years! You won’t be able to! You’ll get sick and die!” But if you have faith, strengthened by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, you’ll respond, “I’ve made my decision, and with God’s help I’ll quit smoking no matter what!” And then the Grace of the Holy Spirit will descend upon you and will help you in every way. But if you think like this: “I’ll give up smoking, but I’ll smoke for one or two more weeks and after that I’ll quit, no matter what,” then you’re not decided, you don’t have your will strengthened by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, and you won’t give up smoking.

Question: May parents’ sins be transmitted to their children?

Answer: To parents who have great sins and vices (profligates, alcoholics, drug users, smokers, etc.) there may be born children with physical and mental illnesses. This is confirmed by medical studies as well. But here intervenes the Divine Grace present in the Holy Mysteries—Baptism, Chrismation, Holy Confession, Holy Communion, Holy Unction, and Marriage—which will help the child be saved. For example, a child who is born blind has other Divine gifts compared to a child who is born healthy, in order to live in this life and be saved. But the sins which parents commit after the child’s birth may also have negative repercussions on the spiritual and bodily state of the child. Moreover, through the poor education they give to a child, parents can instill passions in his heart which are destructive to the soul. We have examples in the Holy Scripture and in Holy Tradition that from pure and righteous parents there have been born children who became saints, such as the Mother of God, St. John the Baptist, etc.

2. On Humble-mindedness

Question: St. Silouan the Athonite says that the only thing a Christian should learn as long as he lives in this earthly life is humble-mindedness [7].

Answer: That’s true, father. The Christian should first learn what humility is in order to be able to humble himself afterwards, in every moment of his life, before people and the demons [8]. In this way he will grow spiritually, and his heart will be filled with the Grace and fragrance of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the Holy Trinity, the Mother of God, the Holy Angels and all the Saints will make their home in his heart. In short, his heart will become a spiritual Paradise. And if you have the Lord of Sabaoth, you will be happy wherever you are. Unfortunately, people today are educated in the spirit of self-love, pride, vainglory, dissoluteness, love of money, etc., and their heart becomes a hell, full of sins and unclean spirits. Thus, the proud man tortures himself and tortures others, too. Humble-mindedness is a Christian virtue which you should try to have every moment of your life.

Question: What is humility of heart?

Answer: Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us: Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls (Matt. 11:29). With the help of Divine Grace and our good Christian deeds, our stony hearts will change into spiritual hearts. That’s why God tells us, My son, give Me thine heart (Prov. 23:26). The eye of your heart should always be on God. Thus do we hope to be saved, and the Grace of the Holy Spirit will always help us.

3. The Means of Facilitating the Prayer

Question: The Athonite Fathers advise us to say the Jesus Prayer with repentance and not mechanically. What can you tell us about this?

Answer: The whole work of the Prayer of Jesus is for repentance! Because we pray: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” This means repentance. Because if you pray without repentance it means that you have high-mindedness and are on the wrong path. Why do we pray to our Lord Jesus Christ to have mercy on us? Because we’re sinners. So, we say this prayer only for repentance. If you have high-mindedness, no matter how little, God will not have mercy on you. The devil knows this, because he fell due to his high-mindedness. Because of this, the devil sows the passions in the heart of any man in the world, through his high-mindedness. The enemy whispers to us, “Glory to God! You’re a monk. You’re not like other people. You’re a sinner but you’re not like other people.” This is spiritual destruction for a Christian. The more important the gifts are that you have received from God—whether you are a bishop, priest, deacon, monk, doctor, professor, engineer, etc.—the more indebted to God you should consider yourself to be, and more sinful than other people. If the Holy Apostle Paul—who was raised up to the third heaven and who saw Mysteries which eye hath not seen … neither have entered into the heart of man (I Cor. 2:9), humbles himself, saying, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief (I Tim. 1:15)—then what can we take pride in, who are full of passions and sins? Because the more you purify yourself of your sins and draw near to God, in the Divine Light you see your passions and sins in their true magnitude, and the darkness in your heart.

So, if you consider yourself to be more sinful than all people and even than the demons who enslave you in every bad thing, then the Holy Spirit will descend upon you. High-mindedness is very harmful for our spiritual life! That’s why St. John of Damascus says in the Canons to the Mother of God, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, by the prayers of Thine All-pure Mother, have mercy on me, a sinner, who am more sinful than any man in the world!” He did not say this out of formality, but thanks to his humble-mindedness he considered himself more sinful than any man in the world. Only in this way will the All-good God help us to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, because a humble sinner is better before God than a proud righteous man. He who has every good deed but is high-minded will be left by God to fall into sins and to be humbled in this way. That is why our Lord Jesus Christ gave us the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee. The Pharisee had good deeds, but his mind became exalted, and he said, “I am not like everyone else and like that greedy Publican.” God did not bless him for this high-mindedness. And the Publican didn’t even dare look up to heaven and said, “Good Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!” And God, because of his humbleness, blessed him. Thus, he left the Temple justified and blessed by the Grace of the Holy Spirit.

Question: How can we defeat a powerful angry thought?

Answer: This spirit of anger comes because you do not have humble-mindedness. But you should struggle, because in a moment of rage your mind and reason darken and you can do many evils. You should humble yourself, ask for forgiveness and pray to God to help you, because our Lord Jesus Christ told us, Without Me ye can do nothing (John 15:5). That’s why we become angry: because we’re proud, we pretend that we’re someone important and that we’re right.

Question: It often happens that we have many obediences within the community life of the monastery, and I’m saddened because I don’t have time enough for prayer and reading.

Answer: Father, if you endure obedience without murmuring, God will send down upon you the Grace of the Holy Spirit, and the humble prayers which you also make are received by Divine Goodness. When you do your obedience without murmuring, you have peace of soul. You should do your obedience as a son of God by Grace and not as a slave or an animal. If you’re taken and given another obedience, you should not murmur, but say, “This was God’s will! I’ll do it with all my love.” And God will bless you with His Grace.

Question: However, I have this spiritual dissatisfaction because I can’t pray, I can’t fulfill my rule of prayers and prostrations!

Answer: It doesn’t matter! Be at peace! God will give you what you could not fulfill because of the blessed reasons. Be patient! All will pass—may the Good Lord grant you patience! Remember that patience is baked at midnight (prayer) and is eaten in the daytime. If you did not pray at midnight, you will not be patient in the daytime. The Holy Apostles were unable to keep vigil together with the Savior Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, and that’s why they did not have the Divine power to resist the temptations of the next day. A little patience! In your patience possess ye your souls (Luke 21:19).

Question: I am attacked by evil thoughts, blasphemous thoughts. Are they from the demons? They do not leave me alone in the Church either! What shall I do?

Answer: Pay no attention to them! Leave them alone. Let them howl in your mind. Pray to God with humility: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” Thus, they’ll pass by themselves, naturally. Because if you stay and converse with them and the enemy sees this, they’ll give you trouble. You should say in your mind: “I’m a monk and I believe and do everything the Holy Orthodox Church teaches me!”

Question: I torture myself the most when I judge my neighbor!

Answer: Father, the greatest danger for each of us is when we judge others. Do you know why? When you judge your neighbor, and especially priests, your father confessor, or your elder, the first thing that will happen is that the bodily passions will fight you more than at other times. This is allowed by God because you did not pay attention to your own sins and judged others instead. But we should arm ourselves with the sharpest sword against the demons and their wiles, which is humble-mindedness. Thus, if you see a man committing a sin, say in your mind, “I’m much worse than he is.” But not only with your lips—you should be convinced that you really are worse than he is. Even if I didn’t commit that sin in deed, I did it by desire, by thought, or by agreeing to it. And I’m a monk (for a monk, a sin committed in thought is as severe as a sin committed in deed by a layman). Furthermore, we don’t have the right to judge anyone. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us, Judge not, that ye be not judged (Matt. 7:1). Because if we judge, we’re proud and God will allow us to fall into great sins in order to humble us so we can see our sins. And if we humble ourselves, God will remove that passion and the warfare which comes upon us from the demons. Because humble-mindedness drives the devil away like fire. But we should be in a state of watchfulness and discernment in everything.

Question: How can we be united with God?

Answer: You should purify your soul and body from all the passions and, little by little, you’ll come to perfect love for God. But you should partake of the Grace of God in the Holy Mysteries, pray much, fast, keep vigil, and perform other good Christian works in order to establish humble-mindedness in your mind and heart. Being humble-minded, praying, and having discernment, a man draws near to God with spiritual joy. Thus, he will have many temptations, especially so as to be humbled. No matter what spiritual step you are on, if you are not humble-minded the enemies will knock you down in a moment. On the foundation of humble-mindedness you can build all good works: obedience, spiritual tears, Divine love….

Question: How can a Christian find quietness for praying, a Christian who lives in the tumult and noise of a city?

Answer: We should try to obtain as much as possible! We should not be negligent. Because negligence is the greatest danger for the soul of each man. It means you have no mercy for your own soul, and thus you’re in great spiritual danger. You didn’t do your [prayer] rule? Negligence tells you, “It doesn’t matter.” You didn’t fast? Negligence tells you, “It doesn’t matter.” Did you commit fornication? Negligence tells you, “It doesn’t matter.” We should strive as much as we can and God will help us to be saved. The greater the temptations are, the greater the Grace of God will be and the greater the crown. But God will not allow us to be tempted above our strength. If we have prayer and purity of soul and body, the Grace of the Holy Spirit will descend upon us and all great difficulties will easily be solved. These hard times for the salvation of our soul were prophesied by the Holy Fathers. A disciple asked his Elder, “Father, look, we’re powerless and the enemy fights us. If that’s the way it is as now, what will it be like in the last times?” The Elder responded, “Son, in the last times, the monks will be like laymen and the laymen will be like demons!” But I know people who live in the center of Bucharest and lead a pure and spiritual life.

Question: Christianity is the religion of love. But there are Christians who say that they can’t love their neighbor even with a natural, human love. What shall we say about Divine, holy love?

Answer: This happens because their heart is full of desires and sins. But man is not born with passions. He’s born pure. With the passage of years, through everything he does, he acquires his passions. Sin enters your nature after you start embracing and loving it. Man is not created by God to be bad. By no means! Man is good, but his education and society corrupt him. But let us strive for salvation of soul and God will help us.

Question: This year, when I drew near the Holy Mountain by ship, a bad spirit was fighting me to go back. Was it a demonic or worldly spirit?

Answer: Father, the demonic and worldly spirit are one and the same! The worldly spirit is a demonic work. The Holy Apostle John said almost two thousand years ago, The whole world lieth in wickedness (I John 5:19). This means that the world is led by and works with the spirit of pride, love of money, vainglory, profligacy, theft, lying, etc.

5. On Gathering the Mind

Question: When we say the Jesus Prayer aloud, it can be spoken or chanted. Which way is the best?

Answer: Spoken.

Question: I have read in the writings of the Holy Fathers that if we speak the Prayer, demonic thoughts can enter into the pauses between the words.

Answer: Demonic thoughts can come in if you chant it, too. The most important thing is to be humble-minded, and for your mind to be attentive to the words of the Prayer and not wander about everywhere. Your mind, spirit, and heart should be directed towards our Lord Jesus Christ. We should make an effort, and the Grace of the Holy Spirit will help us pray.

Question: Owing to worldly worries and demonic and human temptations, our mind is scattered all the time. How can we gather our mind under such conditions?

Answer: The Holy Apostle Paul teaches us: Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks (I Thess. 5:17–18). We should pray with repentance and with humble-mindedness and have hope in the goodness of God, Who has helped us so many times in our prayers.

Question: When you pray reading the Psalter, Akathists, the Prayer Rule, or the Seven Praises [9], the heart warms up. Can this warmth of heart be used in order to concentrate ourselves when we say the Jesus Prayer?

Answer: Father, these are subtle things. But if you have spiritual joy and the peace of the Holy Spirit is within you, there’s no need to search whether it’s in the heart, the mind or the soul. Because if it’s in the mind it’s also in the heart, and if it’s in the heart it’s also in the mind and in the soul. If it’s in the mind, it’s also in the heart and if it’s in the heart it’s also in the mind, because that spiritual joy is a Divine work. It’s impossible for there to be gladness in one place and discontent in another. Because the gift of the Holy Spirit sanctifies a man entirely when it descends upon him. The man is all spiritual joy.

Question: While practicing the Jesus Prayer, there may occur a pain in the heart. Is it a good thing to concentrate on that place?

Answer: At such times you can’t say the prayer with the lips, but only with the mind. The heart is not in a state of illness, as some practitioners of the Jesus Prayer wrongly think. In those moments, the heart experiences spiritual joy and spiritual tears course down from the eyes.

Question: If you say the Jesus Prayer for a long time, does the mind get tired?

Answer: Of course. It’s very important that the mind be pure and peaceful, because if it’s occupied with thoughts it gets tired more rapidly. And if the devil also meddles with his temptations, the mind becomes darkened and scattered and will have to labor spiritually for a longer time. That’s why the Holy Fathers left all worldly worries and went to the desert or to the heart of the mountains, so as not to see or hear anything, and they would eat a little piece of dried bread every few days. Living this way they would purify their minds perfectly and draw them closer to the good Heavenly Father. But we have testimony from the Holy Fathers that there were people even in royal palaces who had the Jesus Prayer. At that time there were more pure people who were more pleasing to God than there are nowadays.

Question: When the mind becomes tired from saying the Jesus Prayer, is it good to read the Psalter, Akathists, the writings of the Holy Fathers, or to sing troparia or the Doxology?

Answer: Until the Jesus Prayer is established perfectly within us, we will not be able to say it ceaselessly. It is good to alternate and say other prayers too, or to read or sing religious songs. However, blessed physical labor will also help us very much. Even if we have the Jesus Prayer, we should not give up the rule of prayers and prostrations which we have received from our father confessor.

Question: On Holy Mount Athos, I saw that there are cells in which the Athonite Fathers do their [prayer] rule and the Seven Praises saying the Jesus Prayer.

Answer: It’s true. But our father confessors advise us that the rule should not be omitted for any reason. In church, in some sketes and cells they replace the Seven Praises with the Jesus Prayer. One of the Fathers comes to the kliros [10] and utters aloud one hundred times: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” Then another father takes his place and so on, for a time equivalent to the Seven Praises. The other fathers who are in the church listen attentively and repentantly. The old fathers said that while they were practicing the Seven Praises in this way in the church of the St. Anne Skete, an Elder saw the Savior Jesus Christ coming down in the midst of them.

6. Learning the Jesus Prayer

Question: How is it better to learn the Jesus Prayer: synchronized with your breathing or synchronized with your heartbeat?

Answer: I believe it’s easier to learn the Jesus Prayer with the breathing. St. John Climacus says that your prayer should be united with your breathing. Just as you breathe in order to be able to live, so should you pray in order to feed your soul with the Grace of the Holy Spirit. When you breathe in, say, “Lord Jesus Christ Son of God,” and when you breathe out, say, “have mercy on me, a sinner!” Since you’re a sinner, you should cast the passions and sins out of your heart and introduce our Lord Jesus Christ into your heart. Because you direct all the passions and sins into your heart with your thinking. Through the Jesus Prayer we aim at drawing Jesus Christ into our heart when we say, “Lord Jesus Christ Son of God”; and when we say, “have mercy on me, a sinner!” we drive out the passions and sins which are there in our heart. Calling upon the name of Jesus Christ ceaselessly, a Christian becomes deified. But care, perseverance, and quietness of mind are needed. That’s why the Fathers left for the desert, for remote places, in order to have quietness and to be able to concentrate their mind. With much speaking, even if it’s beneficial, you can fail. St. Arsenius the Great said, “I have regretted speaking, but I have never regretted being silent.” But we who talk all the time and waste our time uselessly—how can we say, “Lord Jesus Christ?” Regarding the learning of the Jesus Prayer, whether based on breathing or on the heartbeat, every Christian should conclude, from his own experience, which method is more useful.

Question: Since nowadays we no longer have hesychia, stillness of mind, is it appropriate to take part in the liturgical life as often as possible (the Holy Liturgy, Confession, Holy Communion, Holy Unction) in order to purify ourselves from sins and to pray more easily?

Answer: The Fathers who teach such things take into account the weakness and the worries of modern-day people. That’s why, instead of staying at home and praying on a little stool, it’s better to take part in the Holy Liturgy, to confess and receive the Eucharist with the help of the Grace of the Holy Spirit present in the Holy Mysteries, to listen carefully to the prayers, chants and teachings of the Church so your heart can be purified by the Grace of the Holy Spirit. But preparation is necessary for Holy Communion, as the Holy Apostle Paul teaches us.

Question: The Jesus Prayer may be uttered with pain of heart. How do you recommend our Christians to practice it?

Answer: One must say the Jesus Prayer with a heart broken through suffering, so that spiritual tears will course down from your eyes. This is a Divine gift which very few acquire. So, we should say the prayer calmly, with discernment—because if you do not have discernment, other temptations may occur, such as damage to the heart, mental illnesses, etc. Our tempter has a treasury of evils and has grown old in evil. He even dared to tempt our Lord Jesus Christ.

Question: Is the sensing of God in our heart a prayer too?

Answer: Yes, it is. The feeling of God in your heart is also a prayer. But this is a great Divine gift. When you have the presence of God in your heart you don’t use words anymore, so as to keep the spiritual joy in your heart as long as possible. If you have fear of God in your heart, everything you do will draw you near to God, everything will purify you of sin and you will feel the presence of God in your heart as spiritual joy, peace, Divine love.… Because we learn from the Holy Gospels that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps. 110:9). There’s a great deal of human wisdom now. So many things have been discovered and invented. But very few of the wise men of this world give glory to God, Who gave them the mind, wisdom and power to discover and create these things. Most of them say, “I did it!” But there is no passion worse than egotism before God. No action, no deed that is done egotistically, is accepted by God. Thus, the proud man, no matter what he does, descends moment by moment, hour by hour, into the depths of hell.

7. Mistakes in Practicing the Jesus Prayer

Question: What are the more serious mistakes made by those who practice the Jesus Prayer?

Answer: Pride of the mind is the greatest danger and few are delivered from it. You can defeat it only if you are humble-minded. But humble-mindedness should be firmly rooted in your soul, heart and thinking. Humble-mindedness is a virtue which is acquired through great efforts and spiritual struggles. We must fight, and the All-good God, seeing our pains, will not leave us to be defeated by the demons. We must be careful, especially with the sin of judging our neighbor. For instance, you see a man talking to a woman and start judging them, thinking that they’ll commit fornication. At that moment, the spirit of fornication will enter your soul, mind, and heart.

Question: While practicing the Jesus Prayer, there may occur in our heart a warmth which is from the spirit of fornication. How can we be delivered from this temptation?

Answer: Father, this is the biggest problem! If you do not have humility, then, no matter what you do, delusion and demonic temptation will appear. That’s why the Holy Prophet David tells us, I was brought low and He saved me (Ps. 114:6)! We can be delivered from all the temptations you enumerated in your book The Prayer of Jesus: The Way of Uniting the Mind with the Heart, and from others which you did not enumerate, if we have humble-mindedness. The devil can’t enter the heart of a man who has humble-mindedness. The most powerful weapon against the demons that each of us has is humble-mindedness. It’s not prostrations or fasting or all-night vigils, because if you don’t have humble-mindedness, at the first demonic attack your soul will be defiled by the wicked spirits of fornication, vainglory, anger, etc. So, if you don’t have humble-mindedness, salvation is difficult and full of temptations. These temptations are allowed by God so that you can see your infirmities and humble yourself. See what the Holy Apostle Paul tells us: We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against … spiritual wickedness in high places (Eph. 6:12). But we cannot conquer unless we have humble-mindedness! If you say with humble-mindedness: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” the hostile devil will not be able to draw near us with his temptations. The tempter, the devil, draws near when we become high-minded or accept thoughts and words of pride and vainglory from people or demons; for instance: “See how much you’ve advanced in praying!” or, “You can see that you’re not like others!” In fact, this is the goal toward which the devil strives in order to make us high-minded, and in this way to deprive us of prayer.

Question: But can the devil attack us with thoughts of anger, envy, hatred, fornication and other similar thoughts?

Answer: Yes. That’s why you should uproot your main passions from your heart—through Confession, penance, prayer, good deeds, and almsgiving.

Question: But the Holy Fathers say that the practice of the Jesus Prayer helps the most with the quelling of a man’s passions!

Answer: Of course! These must be done together: the Jesus Prayer along with the good Christian works which I mentioned before. The Jesus Prayer changes the old man into the new, spiritual, Divine man. When you establish Jesus Christ in your mind, soul and heart, you have become a throne of Divinity, a temple of the Holy Spirit. And Divine Grace brings purity and holiness to your mind, soul, and heart. But for this we must make an effort. Before receiving Communion of the Holy Mysteries, we should purify our soul and body, saying the Jesus Prayer. And when we want to sleep, we should say the Jesus Prayer. The Grace of the Holy Spirit and our guardian angel will be with us if we fall asleep having the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in our mind.

Question: What can you tell us about warmth of the kidneys, which is natural, and which can occur during the practice of the Jesus Prayer?

Answer: The Holy Neptic [11] Saints teach us that this warmth which comes from the kidneys is a natural warmth, which is born of the work of the will. This warmth brings harshness, agitation and coldness into the soul. One who prays should avoid this warmth while practicing this prayer. He should pay no attention to it, and should not concentrate on it. It’s good to do physical work, which will lead to the disappearance of this warmth. It’s not an easy thing to reach perfection by means of the Jesus Prayer, but we should labor and fight spiritually, because God does not ask anything of us that is beyond our strength.

Question: If you pray while having bad thoughts (of pride, anger, fornication, etc.), can these irritate the other fathers and brothers in the monastery too?

Answer: If you have bad spirits in your heart while practicing the Prayer, they will fight against the other fathers and brothers in the monastery, too.

Question: How is it better to say the Prayer of Jesus, in the full or the short form? “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” or, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!” or, “Jesus, have mercy on me!” or, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”

Answer: It depends on one’s mind and on his spiritual state. It’s best to say it completely, because in this case we recognize the Divinity of our Savior Jesus Christ, we ask for His mercy and we acknowledge our sinfulness. But when there’s much disturbance within us and outside us and we can’t concentrate anymore, then we cry with repentance, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” It’s important to cry out with repentance!

Question: What is good for a beginner to do in order to learn and practice the Jesus Prayer?

Answer: First of all, with the help of Divine Grace, a beginner should stop committing great sins. For this a beginner should look for a good spiritual father for Confession and in order to make a good Christian beginning. Then, he should regularly attend the Divine Liturgy, as often as possible; he should fulfill his daily rule of prayers and prostrations given by his spiritual father, and practice the Jesus Prayer twice a day for at least fifteen minutes, in a quiet place. He should learn and practice the foundation of all good works, the virtue of humble-mindedness, because if you do not humble yourself before God, men, and demons [12] you will lose everything. He should cut off his own will, live in obedience, and accept joyfully whatever happens to him. Failure to cut off one’s own will, contradicting others, and justifying oneself represent the beginning of high-mindedness.… That’s why you should humble yourself and be obedient. When you are sincere, not doubting, but have humble-mindedness, the Grace of the Holy Spirit will descend upon you. This is a good foundation and you will be able to grow spiritually, fighting against temptations, having the Jesus Prayer as an unconquerable weapon. If you have humble-mindedness, you can defeat the passions. This does not mean that you have become perfect; but when you have the Grace of humble-mindedness, with the help of God’s power you can struggle against the passions, sinful men, and the demons.

Question: How can we keep our mind purified from evil thoughts?

Answer: If you humble yourself, the Grace of the Holy Spirit will keep your mind pure. But if you do not obey, if you do not cut off your will, if you do not humble yourself, you distance yourself from God’s Grace and cannot resist unclean, demonic thoughts.

Question: Are there moments in which God’s Grace leaves us?

Answer: The moments in which God’s Grace leaves us are those in which we commit great sins. But he who has humble-mindedness is never abandoned by God.

Christian Humility Conquers Pride

2011-09-08T03:50:00.000-07:00

Christian Humility Conquers Pride
by Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes
Boise, Idaho, USA
November 2003

As Christians, each and every one of us should strive to acquire humility, for there is no better thing in this life then to live in humility, loving one another and loving God with all our hearts. So often, though, pride gets in our way – and once the heart becomes corrupted by pride we begin to lose our love for not only our God, but also for our neighbor. So it is absolutely vital for our spiritual health that we defeat pride by humbling ourselves in love before our gracious God, and letting that love spread out to touch everyone around us, friend and enemy alike.

Each of us knows that if we continue on our Christian path towards our salvation, we must avoid pride at all cost, since pride consumes all that is good in this life. Our example is the humility shown us by Christ our Lord, which brings great satisfaction to the mind, heart, and soul, like a wonderful spiritual fragrance that comes from the love of our God. What is more important than anything in this life is the love of our God for us! If we desire this love of our Lord God, then we must consider humility as a great Christian virtue in our life.

St Paul writes these moving words in his Epistle to the Philippians (Ch. 2, v.5-8): “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”

This is a powerful picture of true humility for us, a picture that should touch us and cause us day and night to strive to have such humility for ourselves. So pride must be defeated, that spirit of pride in the human heart that can only bring us to despair and loneliness. The despair and loneliness is the absence in our lives of our Lord Jesus Christ and the recognition of His love for us all. Our Lord God loves a humble heart!

St Peter, in his First Epistle, puts this very clearly (Ch. 5 v5b-7): “Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”

What a wonderful truth!

So we have these challenges before us: To defeat the spirit of pride. To be clothed with humility. To be reconciled with each other and with God, so that He may bless us.

Deliverance can be at our doorstep when we as Orthodox Christians seek the help of the Holy Spirit to overcome pride. With pride overcome, our souls by the Holy Spirit then see the Lord, and He is indeed meek, and lowly - this is indeed very special humility. The Holy Spirit can help and will help us and so with urgency we should seek the blessings of the Holy Spirit to allow our lives to be transformed.

One simple act of reconciliation with those around us is to humbly seek their prayers for ourselves. Just to make this little request is a blow in the face for our pride! Through loving prayers for one another we become true brethren of our Church, brothers and sisters loving one another, and always seeking with humility the love of our God, who blesses us with His love.

The earth is the Lord’s, and every person should humble himself and seek to live with profound peace and love while we are on this earth. It is only with this spirit of humility that we can receive the riches of the Kingdom of God, passing them on to our neighbors and receiving the riches He has given them in return. Then we can finally say that there is great joy on earth! Heaven and earth are truly united when we have humility and love for our God and for one another.

Finally, when the soul gives itself to the will of God and conquers pride, then the mind contains nothing but God, and the soul stands before Him with humility, having a pure mind and heart. Peace to your soul!

Humbly In Christ Our Lord,

+Very Rev. Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes
Who prays for you!

Holy Elders on Television

2011-09-08T03:49:00.001-07:00

On Television: Comments by Various Saints and Holy Elders

From the Spiritual Counsels of the Blessed Elder Paisios the Athonite

On how TV is damaging to our souls—especially to youthful ones

Television has done us great damage. It's especially destructive for children. A seven-year-old child came to the hermitage once. I saw the demon of television speaking through the child's mouth, exactly as demons speak through the mouth of the possessed. It was like a baby born with teeth. It is not easy to find normal kids; they are turning into little monsters. And you see they don't get to think for themselves, they only repeat what they have heard and seen on television. That's why they have come up with television to begin with: to make people numb and dumb, so that they will take what they hear and see on television for a fact and act accordingly.

That we should be trying to lead our children to seek to turn on the "spiritual television"

[Mothers must be helped to] understand that television dulls their children's minds. They lose the ability to think on their own, to think critically—not to mention the damage it causes to their eyesight. And we are talking about man-made television. But there is another kind—a spiritual television. When people uproot their old self, and the eyes of the soul are cleansed, they can see into the future without the aid of any machines. Have they told their children about this other kind of television? If they won't, these boxes will make our children dumb."

From the Spiritual Counsels of the Blessed Elder Lawrence of Chernigov (Russia)

The God-pleasing Holy Elder used to say, "Blessed, and thrice-blessed is the man who does not desire, and who will not see the abominable face of the Antichrist. He who sees him and hears his blasphemous words, his promises of all earthly treasures, he will be deceived and will go to meet him and bow down to him. He will perish together with him and will burn in the eternal fire."

They asked the Elder, "How will all this come to pass?" The holy Elder said with tears, "In the holy place, the abomination of desolation will stand. And it will show the foul seducers of the world. And they will be deceiving the people who have fallen away from God, and will perform false miracles. And after them, the Antichrist will appear. And the whole world will see him at the same time."

Then the fathers asked the Elder, "Where in the holy place? In the church?" The Venerable one answered, "Not in the church, but in every house. In the corner, where the holy icons now stand and hang, there will stand captivating devices which will delude the people. Many will say, 'We need to watch and listen to the news.' And behold, in the news the Antichrist will appear. He will mark his people with the seal, and he will hate Christians. The last persecutions of the Christian soul who will refuse to receive the mark of Satan will begin. A Christian will not be able to neither buy nor sell anything. But despair not, the Lord will not abandon His children. There is no need to fear.

From the Spiritual Counsels of the Blessed Elder Anthony of Russia

Satan has gotten man to arrange his entire lifestyle so that there is completely no quiet time, time for contemplating the past day, week, or month. Everything is occupied with entertainment. And in this system of entertainment, television is given the privileged place of honor. The lion's share of free time is 'eaten up' by it, that idol of contemporary civilization. I would call it a cruel despot and tyrant, to whom the greater part of mankind is subject, in a servitude never before witnessed in the world. For slaves feel their lower position because they have been brought to it by force. But here the servitude is voluntary, even pleasant at first glance. Just the bitter fruits of worldliness, cruelty, and depravity demonstrate that, as in any kind of slavery, only the master benefits. And the horns of the master even poke out of the screen. Therefore, in this system of preparing people for the coming of antichrist, the television has been given the not just the role of consuming free time, its destructive role is far greater. A person watches the news, even the Orthodox news, and it seems to him to be something necessary and useful, at any rate, not harmful. But the actual news occupies only a small portion of the time. The rest is an analysis of what happened, that is, a view of what happened which must be formed by those watching. And the view of the customers is that which is given by those who control the given information...From this, from the hypnotic effect of the television program, a person loses his ability of thinking for himself, of thoughtfully perceiving the events that are happening, and finally, of forming his own world-view.

We began speaking about the decline in relationships between people today. The root of this decline lies namely in the absence of individual thought and consideration of what has happened, corresponding to a personal world-view. And this, by no means, is a justification for the search of today's "individual," no.

I said this, because there was always someone in the kitchen with my mother. In the evening, after supper, a large samovar was prepared, and everyone, whoever might be spending the night, settled down to drink tea. A conversation started. It was so interesting! These stories of the simple people were so edifying. My father laughed at our love of spending the evening in the kitchen, considering that there was nothing for an educated person to gain from semi-illiterate people. But, having spent a couple of evenings with us, he changed his opinion. The people who gathered were all Orthodox and they knew the world, but not by watching television. They spoke about events from life, of which they were witnesses, or what they had heard from witnesses. In everything they looked for something edifying, the results of what had occurred, and how Divine Providence had taken part in it, as well as the free will of the person. In these discussions there appeared a great variety of thoughts and distinct world-views. People then were able to not just hear, but to listen, and in general, they much preferred to listen than to speak. Although, I repeat, each of those present had something to say.

I digress, but it's interesting that these simple people, at a time of seeming prosperity and contentment in the empire, already saw the approaching catastrophe. And this was not so much as a result of their associating with the Elders of Optina or Kiev, or from the sermons of the righteous John of Kronstadt, as it was a result of their ability to observe what was happening and draw conclusions, based not on an abundance of material available, but on the preservation of spirituality by society. It was namely the lack of faith, not simply faith in the existence of God, but faith as the fulfillment of Christ's commandments, which led these people to think that the coming disaster was inevitable. I will return again to this 'kitchen' gathering, but now, concerning our life.

Yes, contemporary gatherings on that level are simply not possible. The thing is, that even when people have gathered together at one table, their relation to the Faith is varied. As the wise David said, 'The foolish has said in his heart, there is no God!' Just the rejection of the existence of God is both insanity and a sure path to insanity. And this is not the madness of those pagans that were enlightened by the Apostles and Holy Fathers of the first centuries of Christianity. Concerning the pagans of today, the Apostle said: 'For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.' What kind of normal gathering is possible under these conditions?! People love to talk, but not listen, to teach, but not to learn. What unites all of these people around one table? Intoxicants—spirits, and plenty of food, that is, what is on the table, not who is at the table. Nothing soul-profiting can come out of such an environment, for as the saints taught, you do not speak about God with a full stomach—and even more so, with a drunken head!

There is one more terrible evil from the television, but unfortunately, it's far from the last. This evil is the undermining of the authority of the Church. It is planned and diabolically cunning. It is in everything—in mocking the clergy, the Orthodox rituals, in placing the occult, paganism, in opposition to Christianity, in everything. Everything is saturated with hatred for the Truth. Not much time will pass before they will openly mock Christianity and holy things on television. Broadcasts concerning the Theotokos will be especially permeated with hatred; from everything will flow the poison of diabolic evil. Only it will be under the veil of humor, comedy. 'Laughing hell' will take the work of ridiculing everything Divine, and spiritual, all the way to the end. And the end will be in the one who appears and tries to take the place of God. And he will enter immediately into every home. How can a person enter every home at the same time?! We say that that is one of the qualities of God—being everywhere present—even the angels move about and exist in time. But the Church teaches that antichrist will enter immediately into every home; this seems to be a contradiction.

But no, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is the vessel of truth, of Divine truth. In imitation of being everywhere present, antichrist will enter into every home simultaneously with the help of the television. Everyone will receive him into his house, and he'll receive him voluntarily! And he'll receive him, he'll receive him, for he will want to be prepared for this, prepared properly, because he didn't heed the instructions of the Good Pastor to flee to the desert, it doesn't appeal to him—it's boring and dry in the desert!"

"Fr. Anthony, and where is it now, this desert?!"—I couldn't restrain myself.

"Most esteemed father, you are not slow-witted, but the plastering of your church is taking more of your time than it should, otherwise you wouldn't have asked that question. But forgive an old man! You are impressed by the externals, but what is inside doesn't sadden you. One temple not made by hands in the human soul is worth ten stone temples! Unfortunately, Catholicism was imported during the time of the accursed Peter, and especially during the Unia, so that now we judge everything by the externals, such as crosses and miters. Take and read the writings of the Hieromartyr Archbishop Hilarion Troitsky, he was a wise hierarch. I have saved excerpts from his speeches.

The main thing in the desert is the monotony, there's nothing to catch your eye, everything's the same. The devil creates a mirage, as if there is vegetation, water, gold finally; but you must turn to Christ, as the holy desert-dwellers wrote, pray, cross yourself—and everything disappears. And so today you must strive for such a state of soul, so that your eye is not caught by anything. So that everything around you is the desert…but if you see something that is tempting—pray, cross yourself, confess. Condemn yourself that you saw a temptation in the desert, which means you wanted to see it, more precisely, you were disposed to seeing it.

What, you're surprised? Here, I'll give this example. A person goes to the forest to collect mushrooms. There are many poisonous mushrooms there but he doesn't even notice them, no. There is only one good type worth looking for—he sees it from afar, he notices it right away. He's a good mushroom collector and his basket will be full. But the bad mushroom collector—he sees only poisonous mushrooms, even when he actually notices a huge good one! And in his basket there's nothing to look at. The good mushroom collector saw the poisonous ones—he saw, but he paid them no attention, they did not catch his eye. And then he will talk about and remember the good ones, his soul—will glow. [Good thoughts, images, ideas are the good mushrooms; the evil one's suggestions, the evil all around, are not collected, are not seen, are not caught by the eye.]

So it is with sin. A person sees only sin and sinners around him, his attention is directed at this. One way or another he will allow what he sees to pass into his mind, and he becomes a participant in the sin. But pay no attention to all this lawlessness, burn your own faults into ashes, do battle with them and be displeased with them—and there is no defilement. There is your desert. But, the first time you notice—you're displeased, the second time—you already show an interest in what those people are doing. But the third time—you already want to try it! That's the way it is, and that's why it says to flee to the desert. But on the other hand, you should understand this literally also, since antichrist will not be allowed to gain full and absolute control over us, and I saw in the West those hidden from his horned servants—the Lord will not permit it. Of course, whoever wants salvation, and for its sake abandons the comfort and convenience of the city and goes off to a deserted place, will be very safe.But people will comfort themselves with the possibility of salvation everywhere until the Second Coming. Soon they will assign everyone a number, in order to give antichrist an account, and then they will introduce special card-passports—and here it is serious—it will be possible to determine the position of every person. Can one avoid all of this? Yes, only you can't trade, or buy, or obtain housing, etc. And people will go to get these numbers and passports, even those who consider themselves to be Orthodox, and they will stand in line for them. And what, do Holy Scripture and Tradition speak of anything else?! There is your desert. The people trusted in God, and they received food from angels, or they were satisfied with so little that today many people consider it to be a fairy tale—contrary to reason!

Saint John of Kronstadt

Most men not only bear Satan's burden willingly in their hearts, but they become so accustomed to it that they often do not feel it, and even imperceptibly increase it. Sometimes, however, the evil enemy increases his burden tenfold, and then they become terribly despondent and fainthearted, they murmur and blaspheme God's name. The usual means that men of our time take to drive away their anguish are—entertainments, cards, dancing, and theatres. But such means afterwards increase still more the anguish and weariness of their hearts. If, happily, they turn to God, then the burden is removed from their heart, and they clearly see that previously the heaviest burden was lying on theit heart, though frequently they did not feel it. O, how many men there are who have "forsaken [God] the Fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no [living] water"! Men have very many such broken cisterns—nearly everybody has his own. The broken cisterns are our hearts, our passions.

From My Life in Christ, p. 58. How much more applicable is this today in our Age of Diversion, in which video games, Internet, movies and television are everywhere?! We are Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Businessamusing ourselves to death." The rest of the quotes were collected from various sources or sent to me by email. Posted on 11/12/2007.

Formation of the Hellenic Christian Mind

2011-09-08T03:45:00.000-07:00

Demetrios Constantelos

The Formation of the Hellenic Christian Mind

From his book: Christian Hellenism. Essays and Studies in Continuity and Change Publishing by Aristide D. Caratzas, New Rochelle, New York & Athens ISBN: 0-89241-588-6

TELL this tο the king; the decorated court has fallen tο the ground, Phoebus nο longer has a cell, nor laurel of prophecy, nοt babbling fountain; even the chattering water has dried up.
Anonymous, Fourth Century A.D.

The medicæval Greek or "Byzantine" mind was the product of the fusion of several intellectual, cultural, and religious traditions of antiquity, such as the Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Iranian, and Christian. But it was the humanistic mind of ancient Hellas and the Christian faith that contributed the most to the genesis, formation, and evolution of the Byzantine mind. The thought of the ancient Greeks was very much alive during the Byzantine era because the Greek classics -literatιιre, philosophy, history, art, education and even mythology- constituted the curriculum of education throughout the Byzantine millennium.

Because the Byzantine era was profoundly religious, the future of the ancient Greek cultural heritage -especially literature and philosophy- in the Byzantine Empire was determined primarily by the attitude of the Church toward secular learning.

I

Tο appreciate the place of the classics in the Byzantine state, one needs to understand the nature of the conflict between Greek thought and Christian faith as it evolved in the early Christian centuries. The encounter between Christianity and classical padeia (education) produced the forces which determined the future of the Byzantine Greek mind.

As early as the Apostolic age, attempts were made to present the new faith in a way that nοn Jews would understand. St. John wrote the fourth Gospel for people of Greek background. John's opening words "Ιn the beginning was the Logos," as well as his meditative, mystical, symbolic and philosophical terminology are borrowings from Heraclitus, the Stoics, and Hellenic thought in general. His well chosen words logos, light, darkness, flesh, birth, son, life, eternal life, bread of life, water of life, sign, spirit, resurrection, and many more were intended to stress not only the pre-existence of Logos the Christ, but also God's involvement in history outside of ancient Israel. The implication was that the God of Israel was the God of the Greeks, Romans, Scythians, and others, that there was nο essential conflict between Greek thought and Christian faith.

This line of thought was further developed by Christian thinkers trained in the classics, such as some of the Apostolic Fathers. For example, Justin the philosopher and martyr (d.ca. 165) taught that God can be discovered through the writings of Greek philosophers. The truth concerning the nature and attributes of God was established by the Greeks through the application of reason (logos), especially through Heraclitus and Socrates. Justin emphasized that all have a share in Christ whether Christians, Jews, Greeks or Romans. "All those who lived according to reason are Christians, even though they were classed as atheists." He emphasized that Plato's teachings or the doctrines of the Stoics, the poets and the prose authors of Greek antiquity, were not contrary to Christ's. "For each, through his share in the divine spermatic Logos, spoke well . ... Whatever has been spoken aright by any man belongs to us Christians." (1)

Part of Western Christianity adopted a different line of thought; for example, Tertullian, the second century Christian apologist, scornfully satirized those who "advocated a Stoic or a Platonic or a dialectic (Aristotelian) Christianity." Latin Christianity wrestled for several centuries with Tertullian's question "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" (2) Greek Christianity had achieved from an early age a balance between the wisdom of the two cities: the Thyrathen, or Hellenic and the sacred, or Hebraic. Christianity received Hellenic thought as a gift of Divine Providence.

The Western attitude toward the classical humanities was determined by the literacy or lack of it that prevailed in the West following the barbarian invasions. While Christianity had made little progress among the Roman aristocracy in the Western Roman Empire, and the educated classes there displayed a strong resistance to the new faith, those ordinary people who had converted to Christianity regarded contact with classical learning dangerous; its study was, if not sinful, playing with fire. This fear, which corresponded to the mentality of the more conservative and traditional Roman (in contrast to the more restless and inquisitive Greek) affected even the cultivated Christians who had accommodated the new faith to classical culture.

Twο important anecdotes illustrate this point. Jerome, one of the best minds of Western Christendom, loved to read Cicero. But every time he read his beloved author, Jerome felt guilty. Ιn vain had he tried to convince himself that what he was doing was not sinful. Ιn a dream he attempted to convince Christ that he was a faithful Christian but the Heavenly Judge answered his plea "Ι am a Christian" (Christianus sum) by the rebuke "A Ciceronian you are indeed, but not a Christian" (Ciceronianus es, nοn Christianus). (3)( )( )

At the end of the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great (AD 590-604) caustically reproved the bishop of Vienna for teaching literature. Gregory said: "One mouth cannot contain the praises of Christ and the praise of Jupiter." (4) He was bitterly opposed to classical learning even though he proved to be a progressive and reforming pope.

That some Roman popes distrusted clerics who had been educated in the classics is illustrated by another story from the seventh century. Theodore of Tarsus had received an excellent training in the classics in both Tarsus and Athens. When he was elected Archbishop of Canterbury, Pope Vitalian, who consecrated him in 668, expressed fear and doubt of Theodore's orthodoxy. The Roman pontiff charged Abbot Hadrian to accompany Theodore to Britain and keep "a diligent eye οn Theodore lest he teach anything contrary to the true faith after the manner of the Greeks." (5). Gilbert Highet writes that "there was always strong opposition within the Church (Western) to any study of classical civilization, because it was the work of a world which was corrupt, pagan, dead, and damned."(6) Nevertheless, at least the Roman classics were preserved in the West, through study and transcription in certain monastic communities of the Western Church.

But let us move back to the East. Ιn addition to Justin the philosopher, Aristides and Athenagoras of Athens and later Clement and Origen of Alexandria exerted great efforts to present Christian teachings in a 1anguage and style that educated gentiles would understand. During the early Christian centuries and, in particular, in the fourth and fifth centuries, Christian intellectuals, such as Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzos, and Gregory of Nyssa; perceived that many aspects of classical thought, philosophy, ethics and the thought of Plato in particular, came very close to Christian teachings. Thus Greek philosophy, anthropology, political thought, ethics, and psychology were placed at the service of Christian theology. Classical literature nο longer was considered unsuitable for the Christian faithful. "Like a bee, Ι shall gather all that conforms to the truth, even extracting help from the writings of our enemies (pagan authors)," (7) writes the eighth century theologian John of Damascus.

When educated pagans began to be converted to Christianity and when educated Christians began to delve into the study of the Greek classics, a conflation was achieved between Greek classics and Christian doctrine. The study of the classics was guaranteed as a result of the adoption of views such as those of the influential Basil the Great, expounded in the treatise "Exhortation to Young Men as to Hοw They Shall Best Profit by the Writings of Pagan Authors." (8)

The Greek Church arrived at the conclusion that the study of Hellenic wisdom was both useful and desirable, provided that the Christian rejected the evil and retained all that was good and true. Christianity was baptized in the Greek stream of language and thought, in the Greek cultural milieu and Hellenistic historical setting. As a whole, however, the Fathers of the Greek Church did not seek to borrow essence and content from ancient Greek thought, for these they possessed in their sacred Scriptures. They intended to borrow methodologies, technical means, terminology, and logical or grammatical structures in order to build up the Christian edifice of theology, of doctrine and thought. Nevertheless, in this effort Christian revelation did not escape infiltration by Greek thought, and Greek cultural and intellectual influences became interwoven with Christian faith. A harmonious convergence was achieved between Greek thought and Christian faith, and a balance has prevailed in the Eastern Church to the present day.

Tο be sure, attempts were made to upset the balance. For example, the Emperor Julian (360-363) made serious efforts to restore not only classica1 learning but also the Olympian deities. John Italos in the eleventh century and George Plethon Gemistos in the fifteenth maintained that the classical religious and intellectual tradition offered everything, if not more, that man needs to know and to possess than Christianity. Other ecclesiastics, such as Epiphanios of Cyprus and Anastasios of Sinai, believed that Christianity was self sufficient and that it could not be reconciled with the classical tradition. But neither the enemies of Christianity nor the adversaries of the classics prevailed. Apollinarios the Younger established the equilibrium when he stated that "the good wherever it is found is a property of the truth." (9) The Church recognized in this principle the legacy of the Greek classics and united them with the Christian tradition. Thus we observe in the Byzantine era the continuity of the Greek past, the Hellenistic heritage united with the new element of the Christian faith.

Whether in the fifth, the ninth or the twelfth centuries, Christian professors and scholars wrote οn both theological and classical themes. The study of the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the classical Greek poets, historians, rhetoricians, philosophers and literary men formed the core of the curriculum. The same teachers who supervised classical studies also wrote treatises and commentaries οn Christian theology and Biblical exegesis. Byzantine paideia was Hellenic Christian paideia. Because of the survival of the classical tradition, we find in the mediæval Greek era many men who dared to question not only theological opinions but even dogma, and a few restless minds ventured even to emulate the speculative mind of the ancients. Of course, they were characterized as "heretics." Heresy derives from the Greek "hairesis," which means choice, and there was room for intellectual and religious choices.

Intellectual, cultural and social historians increasingly realize that Byzantine society was not as rigidly conservative or static in its ideology or as inflexibly bound by its religious dogma as was maintained in the past. Admittedly, the Byzantines viewed theology as the inner and superior learning, but the outer, or "secular" learning was not neglected for it was part and parcel of their paideia. For example, Eustathios, the twelfth century Metropolitan of Thessalonike, was not timid in writing commentaries οn Homer and was not afraid to quote passages from Sappho. John Mauropous, the bishop of Euchaita, directed special prayers to Christ asking him to accept Plato and Plutarch in his kingdom because they differed very little, if at all, from the Old Testament prophets. Ιn the fourteenth century, George of Pelagonia utilized more material from the Greek wisdom of antiquity than from the Christian Scriptures in his composition of the vitα of Emperor St. John Vatatzes. It was because of its attachment to Greek learning and its broadmindedness that the Greek Church and Byzantium as a whole were accused by the Latin West of being "worldly," "heretical" or "schismatic." The Latin Christian West for several centuries, in particular from the late sixth century to the age of Thomas Aquinas, had proscribed profane Hellenism. Even though certain important minds, such as Macrobius and Jerome, had tried to bridge the gap between pagan and Christian Hellenism, Western monasticism contributed to a drastic decline of Greek thought in Western culture for four centuries (600-1000). Champions of Greek thought such as Boethius ran the risk of being charged with heresy and magic. At times even civilized practices that had been introduced from the Greek East were condemned as sinful. For instance, the Byzantine Princess Theophano, wife of Otto II (973-983) and regent for Otto III (983-1002) and one of the ablest empresses ever to reign in Germany, was seen after her death by a visionary Western nun to be burning in Hell because of her habit of taking baths; the early death of her cousin Maria Argyre, the wife of the Doge of Venice, was similarly considered by Peter Damian to deserve divine punishment because Maria had introduced the use of forks to Venetian dining tables. (10) Ιn the Greek East, heresies and religious sects were dissident forms which emerged from the mainstream of cοntemporary intellectual and spiritual life, or offspring born from the fusions and matings of Judeo-Hellenic Christianity and Greek thought. The very fact that many of them kept cropping up in the course of more than ten centuries is indicative of a fertile intellectual ground and the tolerant religious atmosphere there. It was the broad and variant religious and spiritual climate that made the old issues-theological, philosophical, Judaic, Greek, or Oriental-far from obsolete or academic in any given centιιry.

The Greek Christian mentality concerning the place of the classics in the Church may be illustrated by another text preserved in a questionnaire attributed to Anastasios of Sinai (d.ca.700 A.D.). The question was: "Shall Christians pray for the salvation of those pagans (Hellenes) who had died before the coming of Christ, or should they anathematize them?" (11) Anastasios answered that the faithful should indeed pray for them and not condemn any one of them because both John the Baptist and Christ Himself had descended to Hades and had preached the gospel of salvation to all who had died before the Christian era (1 Pet. 3:19).

It was not unusual to find Christian intellectuals attacked because of their great attachment to classical learning. For example, the fifth-century prefect of Constantinople, Kyros Panopolites, who wrote beautiful lyrics, was banned from Constantinople as a "Hellene." But even though he was accused of paganism, he was ordained Bishop of Kotyaion, a remote diocese in Phrygia. During the reign of Theophilos (829-842), Leo the Mathematician, a professor at the University of Constantinople, was accused of paganism because of his attachment to ancient lore. The tenth-century scholar and diplomat, Leo Choirosphaktes, was assailed for his devotion to ancient drama and music and for his leaning toward classical culture. However, very seldom do we find an intellectual being burnt at the stake because of his love for the classics. Many of those accusations were politically motivated and often proved harmless. The study of the mind of ancient Greece was too long-standing a tradition to be overthrown by personal jealousies. Even monks, the most conservative element of Byzantine society, were advised to study ancient or secular writings. Nicholas Kabasilas, a fourteenth-century mystic, maintained that the saints themselves are incomplete personalities if they have not received sufficient instruction in profane or worldly literature.

Furthermore, intellectual challenges to the established tradition and faith were not uncommon in the Greek East and even dogma was never petrified and stifling. There was growth and development. Divine revelation was viewed not as a sudden heavenly lightning or as an unpredictable thunderbolt, but as a cosmic sun, slowly rising with the origin of man, culminating in the person of Christ, and continuing under the guidance of the Paraclete (Holy Spirit); that is, they believed in a revelation whose rays penetrated many minds and thoughts through various ways and channels.

The balance between Greek thought and Christian faith became more and more precarious after the eleventh century. But it was after the thirteenth century that intellectuals attempted to upset the balance by stressing the significance of Greek knowledge over Christian dogma.

There were others who rejected both philosophy and theology. The revival of the works of the skeptics Pyrhho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus encouraged the belief that both theology and philosophy, or Christian faith and Greek thought are futile abstract exercises. (12)

The revival of the Greek classics, of scholarly and artistic interests after the thirteenth century reached its apogee in the fifteenth century. George Plethon Gemistos was the most challenging representative of Greek learning. He openly attempted to upset the balance between Greek thought and Christian dogma. Plethon was not only an advocate of "the Greek nation and the rise of Greek nationalism," but in his later years called for a revival of ancient Greek religion to replace traditional Christianity. Plethon might have been the first to seriously challenge the claims of Christianity after Celsus of the second and Emperor Julian of the fourth centuries. Plethon's controversy with contemporary theologians, Gennadios Scholarios in particular, constitutes the last important phase of the conflict between Greek thought and Christian orthodoxy, at least for the ancient and mediæval periods. (13)

II

But what in particular of the classical tradition survived in the Greek, or Byzantine Middle Ages which contributed to the formation of the Byzantine mind? Practically everything. The Byzantines took pride in being the inheritors and preservers of the Hellenic classical tradition. Byzantine society was an educated society, and its education rested οn two legs, the Greek and the Christian. The first included, of course, the Greek language, the official language of the empire. Ιn fact, many Byzantine intellectuals felt so strongly about the Greek language that they mimicked the language of the ancients. Byzantine historians imitated Thucydides, Xenophon, and Herodotus. Hagiologists imitated Plutarch, and the writers of religious drama emulated the great tragedians. Ιn other words, continuity with pagan Hellenism remained alive, and public education was in the hands of the laity. Revivals of humanistic and classical activities arose from both ecclesiastical and publicly sponsored education.

By the eleventh century, Constantinople had three schools of higher learning where medicine, botany, zoology, mathematis, philosophy, law, rhetoric and other disciplines were studied. But the classical tradition was taught even in primary and secondary education. Grammar, syntax, reading, writing, arithmetic, geometry, music, anatomy and astrology were the usual subjects in the curriculum. After the sixth century most children of freemen were being educated free of charge in state-owned or church and monastic schools. The state schools were open to all children regardless of nationality or class.

As in Greek antiquity, when the pupil was made to read Homer and poems by good poets and learn them by heart, so also in Byzantine times the student was obligated to read Homer (and later the epic of Digenis Akritas) as well as the Bible. Aesop's fables were memorized at the age of 14 or later, and students often had to memorize all of Homer. They began by memorizing five lines of the Odyssey, and after they knew the whole of the Odyssey, they moved οn to the Iliad.

The art of public speaking required the study of the great rhetoricians, particularly Aeschines, Isocrates and Demosthenes. Education was offered to both sexes. There were outstanding women either in letters and history or in politics. Athenais-Eudokia, the wife of Theodosios II (408-450), was a renowned fifth-century classicist. Ιn the eighth century, Irene, who preferred the masculine title basileus, became the first female emperor of the Christian era, while Anna Komnene in the twelfth became a leading historian of the Middle Ages. Women became physicians and even prominent literary figures. But the education of the Byzantine woman was usually moderate or even poor, nοt extending beyond the fourteenth year of age.

Tutorial teaching was very common, but we find public schools even in remote villages in Cappadocia. For example, we learn that St. Theodore of Sykeon, even though born out of wedlock, faced nο disability in receiving his early education in his native village in central Asia Minor, the eparchy of Galatia.

Higher education was available in several well known academies. Athens, Alexandria, Antioch, Beirut, Gaza, Constantinople, Thessalonike, Mistra, Nicæa, Nikomedeia and Trebizond were the most important centers of higher learning. Some of them, of course, fell to the Arab conquerors after the first quarter of the seventh century.

Emperors who did not patronize higher learning were the exception. Some became great patrons of learning, such as Constantine the Great (307-337), Theophilos (829-842), Constantine ΙΧ (1042-1055), the Komnenoi emperors, John ΙΙΙ Doukas Vatatzes (1221-1254), Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259-1282), and Andronicos II (1282-1328).

The fifth century marked a definite turning point in Byzantine higher education. Theodosios ΙΙ founded in 425 a major university with 31 chairs for law, philosophy, medicine, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, rhetoric and other subjects. Fifteen chairs were assigned to Latin and 16 to Greek. The university was reorganized by Michael ΙII (842- 867) and flourished down to the fourteenth century.

The ninth century was more important for the future of the classics than any previous century. There was a reorganization of the university and a definite and serious revival of classical learning. And since the boundaries between the lay and ecclesiastical spheres of interest were nonexistent, Christian and classical learning were conjoined.

From the middle of the ninth century we have several figures who cοntributed to the survival and indeed the promulgation of the Greek classics, such as Patriarch Photios, John Geometres, Leo the Mathematician, Arethas of Caesarea, Leo Choirosphaktes, Michael Psellos, John Italos, John Mavropous, Eustathios of Thessalonike, Anna Komnene, Theodore Lasaris, Theodore Metochites, Plethon Gemistos and George Scholarios.

We must note here that the term "revival" does not imply that classical learning was dead in the previous three centuries. The Greek East did not experience a revival like the Western Renaissance because the classica1 tradition was an integral part of Byzantine education, and Greek learning was not confined to isolated monastic communities. It was taught in Constantinople, in Thessalonike, in Nicæa, in Mistra and elsewhere. Even the iconoclastic controversy reveals the existence of Greek learning, for the victory of the iconophiles has been viewed as the victory of the Greek mind over the Semitic.

Photios in the ninth century was deeply versed in the classical authors, including the mythographers. His Myriobiblos is a collection of notes οn various classical books read by himself his pupils, and his friends. Photios gave preference tο Aristotle in philosophy and to the Athenian orators and historians in literature. Ιn contrast to Photios and his school, there were others who admired and read Plato, the Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus, and the tragedians and lyric poets.

John Geometres admirably exemplifies the scholar who blended harmoniously the sacred and the profane. "He speaks of pagan Greek writers as often as of Christian saints." (14) His poems are full of references to classical authors: Xenophon, Sophocles, Homer, AEchylus, Euripides and others. Plato is "the teacher of immortality" and Aristotle "the definer of the bounds of mind and nature."(15)

Arethas of Caesarea, who lived in the tenth century, had all kinds of manuscripts copied, including Euclid, Plato, Lucian and Aristides, and was a student of many classical writers.

John Mauropous, one of many distinguished eleventh-century intellectuals and an eminent professor of rhetoric in Constantinople, is a brilliant example of a man who had achieved a balance between his sacred and his classical education. His writings mention the Bible and Church Fathers, but he derives also a great deal from Epicurus, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch and others. Ιn one of his poems he stressed the affinity between Plato and Christ's ethics, claiming that Plato and Plutarch were Christians in their essentials. He prayed: "Ιf my Christ, you should wish to exempt any of the pagans from your threats, choose for me Plato and Plutarch. For both these in thought and deed showed how very near they were to your laws. They may not have known that you are the God of all, but this is only a further claim οn your mercy, the gift through which you desire to save all men." (16)

Michael Psellos, who lived in the eleventh century, may not have been an exception in his knowledge of certain classical authors. While still a boy, he knew the whole Iliad by heart. Psellos exhorted his students to imitate the industry and example of Plato and Pythagoras, and he himself tried to emulate the style of Demosthenes and Thucydides. When he contrasted the present with the past, Psellos found in ancient Greece all the virtues which he wished to see in his students. He loved Plato in particular. Ιn a controversy with the Patriarch, his former friend, John Xiphilinos, Michael cried out: "Your holiness and most wise: Plato is mine, indeed he is mine!" (17)

Anna Komnene confirms that classical learning was very much alive in the twelfth century. She was herself excellently trained in it. "Ι was not ignorant of letters, for Ι carried my study of Greek to the highest pitch . . .Ι studied the works of Aristotle and the dialogues of Plato carefully, and enriched my mind by the 'quaternion' of learning!" (18) Anna cites profusely Plato, Demosthenes, Aristotle and above all, Homer. Eustathios of Thessalonike, who lived in the twelfth century, was the ideal Græco- Christian scholar. Unquestionably a devout Christian, he was also a great classical specialist, an authority οn Homer who wrote monumental commentaries οn Homer's epics, as we have already observed. The emphasis οn the classical heritage became more pronounced in the later centuries of the Byzantine Empire. Classical learning had been the foundation of Byzantine education. The Church Fathers owed much to the nοn-Christian tradition and "it cannot be sufficiently emphasized that the accepted canon of Byzantine scholarship was the judicious use of all sources of knowledge."(19)

The survival of the Greek classical tradition is reflected not only in philosophical thought or in the teaching of the Greek language but also in the secular and even the religious art of the period. It was fashionable to decorate amphoras, glass buckets or other items with mythological scenes and images of classical influence. Marble slabs as well as floor mosaics depict similar secular themes.

Even ancient Greek religious concepts and practices survived into the Christian Middle Ages. Ιn Greek antiquity, the deity moved freely in history and religion was a very real force. Ιn the Greek Middle Ages, religion was of vital importance to the state as well as in the daily life of the individual. Ιn Greek antiquity temples, sacred groves and statues were dispersed everywhere, reminding the people of the nearness of the supernatural. Ιn Byzantium, icons of Christ and symbols of the saints decorated churches and houses, public buildings and city gates, perennial reminders of the presence everywhere of God and the sacred.

Ancient Greek religious mysticism, too, influenced Christian mysticism. The teaching concerning theosis is a recurrent theme in the writings of Greek Fathers of the Bγzantine era. According to Byzantine theology, the ultimate destiny of the faithful is to achieve theosis (deification, divinity), that is eternal life in God (but not absorbed and annihilated by God, as in pantheism). Theosis became synonymous with salvation, and salvation meant the state in which the human lives eternally in the presence of God; damnation meant the absence of God from the life of the human. For Byzantine theology, the theosis of being is achieved through religious experience.

The idea of theosis, however, was not foreign to nοn-Christian Greek thought; the state of theosis was to be achieved not through theology, but through philosophy, through paideia, philosophical askesis and intellectual growth. For Greek thought, philosophia is the path, the anabasis (ascent) to theosis. Plato writes that the righteous man will not be neglected by God, and that man "by the practice of virtue will be likened unto god so far as that is possible for man." Plato's teaching is echoed in the writings of the Neoplatonists. Ammonios of Alexandria writes that "philosophy is like- ness in God so far as that is possible for man." Ιn the fourth century, the philosopher Themistios declares that "philosophy is nothing else than assimilation to God to the extent that it is possible for man." (20)

Last but not least, the survival and the contribution of the Greek classics to the development of the Byzantine mind can be inferred from the fact that there were many libraries stocked with volumes of the classical heritage. For example, the Imperial Library of Constantinople in 475 possessed 120,000 volumes, including the famous parchment, 120 feet long, upοn which were inscribed Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The library was destroyed by fire but it was rebuilt in the sixth century.

Ιtι the eighth century, the library of the Oikoumenikon Didaskaleion, which was destroyed in the fire of 726, included "many and good books" of both Christian theology and Greek classics. (21) But the Byzantine Empire had other state, church monastic, and private libraries which were stocked with numerous manuscripts of the works of classical authors. Many of them were destroyed and many more found their way to Western European capitals following the catastrophic Fourth Crusade, and after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. Libraries preserved the Greek literary tradition which contributed to the growth of the Byzantine mind. Ιn the words of Socrates, the fourth century ecclesiastical historian:

«Greek literature certainly was never recognized either by Christ or his Apostles as divinely inspired, nor οn the other hand was it wholly rejected as pernicious. And this they did, Ι conceive, not inconsiderately. For there were many philosophers among the Greeks who were not far from the knowledge of God... for these reasons they have become useful to all lovers of real piety.» (22)

Ιn Byzantine society, the better-off families took education for granted. Education was available to clergymen and laymen alike. There were church schools and academies as well as secular schools and universities. There were public as well as private tutors, secular as well as clerical patrons of learning. Even in their worst days, the Byzantines never lost their sense of priorities. Libraries had to be built along with hospitals, hospices, orphanages, old-age homes and other public institutions. Ιn the fields of historiography, ecclesiastical poetry, liturgical writings, doctrinal and spiritual expositions, art and mosaics, the Byzantines proved outstanding. The Byzantine mind was dynamic, changing and developing throughout the ten centuries of its existence. Continuity of established tradition as well as new life can be found in the art, music, spirituality, literature and learning of every period including some years after the fall of Constantinople.

Furthermore, in political and military organization and administration the Byzantine Empire displayed a tremendous capacity for adaptation and growth. Ιn the later period even Emperors such as John VIII Palaiologos (1425-1448) advocated discussion and freedom of expression. Greek methods, such as committees, voting and dialogue, belie those who contend that imperial pressure was a permanent constraint οn this freedom. Economic problems, social interests and administrative changes clearly indicate that the internal history of the mediæval Greek world was far from being uniform and static. Tο be sure, there was continuity with the Greek thought, literature, history and culture of antiquity, but mediæval Greek civilization was a new synthesis, something living, organic, changing from century to century, even from generation to generation and from place to place. For example, there is a strong continuity between the language, literature and culture of Pontos and the Peloponnesos, but there are many differences as well. Like ancient Greek, mediæva1 Greek civilization was characterized by a unity of diversity. (23)

The term paideia means both civilization and education. When Werner Jaeger used the term paideia to describe the ideals of Greek cιιlture, he meant to indicate that the Greeks believed that men progressed in civilization not by gaining power or wealth, but by educating themselves. (24) It is a well known fact that the Byzantines much preferred negotiation to confrontation, and most of their wars were defensive. They measured their achievements and their international status not by their power or their wealth but by their spiritual values and their education. The great books of antiquity as well as their οwn histories, poetry, epics, theological works, philosophical treatises and speeches served to educate their readers. The Byzantines did not create literature or art for their οwn sake. Both were designed to serve their people. Thus the best of classical literature was transformed by the admixture of Christian thought in order to serve intellectual and spiritual needs. The Byzantine mind was primarily a spiritual mind.

The definitive book οn the Byzantine mind has not been written. Nevertheless, it is my perception that the Byzantines were concerned with civilization, and civilization is not chiefly concerned with wealth, power or possessions but rather with the education of the human mind and the refinement of the human psyche. According to this definition, the richest state in the world, a society of unlimited wealth and comfort, would still not be a "civilization." Such a state would be what Plato described as "a city of swine, eating, drinking, mating and sleeping until they died." (25)

Byzantine civilization was primarily a spiritual civilization active in the cultivation and the ultimate salvation of the human person. It was gιιided by the principle that it was the duty of each human being not to extend his or her power or multiply his/her wealth beyond the necessary needs but rather to enrich the mind and save his οt her soul. The first was provided by the Greek classics and the second was promised by the Christian faith. Therefore, the Greek classical humanities and Christian doctrine were the two most important elements of the Byzantine mind.

NOTES

1. Justin, Apologia Ι.46, II.13, ed. Bibliotheke Hellenon Pateron, vοl. 3 (Athens, 1955), 186, 207.

2. Tertullian, De Praescriptione haereticorum VIII. 9-11, ed. R. F. Refaule and P. De Labriolle, Sources Chrétiennes (Paris, 1957), 98.

3. Jerome, Ep., ΧΧII,30.

4. Gregory the Great, Ep., ΧΙ. 34.

5. Venerable Bede, Ecclesiestical History, 4.1, ed. Β. Colgrave and R. Mynors (Oxford, 1969).

6. Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1957), 8.

7. John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa, PG, 94, 524-5.

8. Basil the Great "Exhortation tο Young Men ..." PG 31, 563-590.

9. Socrates Scholastikos, Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.16, PG 67.

10. Steven Runciman, "Byzantium and the Renaissance" Tbe University of Arizona Bulletin, (1970), 506.

11. Anastasios of Sinai, "Questions," Νο. 3, PG 89, 764.

12. Donald Μ. Nicol, "The Byzantine Church and Hellenic Learning in the Fourteenth Century," SChH, 5 (1969), 23-57.

13. D.J. Constantelos, "The Last Phase of the Conflict between Greek Thought and Christian Orthodoxy in the Greek Middle Ages" Alumni Lectures 2. (Hellenic College, Brookline, Mass. 1972), 9-18.

14. J. Μ. Hussey, Church and Learning in tbe Byzantine Empire, 867-1185 (New York, 1963 reprint of 1937 edition), 33-36.

15. John Geometres, "Carmina νaria," PG 106, 917, esp. poems 13 and 14.

16. P. De Lagarde, Editor, Iohannis Euchaitorum metropolitae (Gottingen, 1882), p. 24; also in PG, 120, Poem 43.

17. Michael Psellos, Epistulae, ed. Sathas, ΜΒ, 5,444 and Hussey, οp.cit., 86.

18. Anna Comnena, Alexiad, Prologue, tr. E.R.A. Sewter, The Alexiad of Anna Comnena (Harmondsworth, 1969), 17

19. Hussey, οp.cit., 106-07.

20. Plato, Republic, Χ.12.613; Porphyry, Isagogen sive V νοces, ed. by A. Busse, Commen. in Artist. Græca IV, pt.III, (Berlin, 1891); Themistius, Orationes quae supersunt 21.32d, ed. N. Schenkl, G.Downey, and A.F.Norman (Leipzig, 1965-74), 43. 6-7.

21. Konstantinos Manaphes, Hai en Konstantinoupolei Bibliothekai (Athens, 1972), 25-31.

22. Socrates Scholasticos, Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.16, PG 67.

23. Cf. J.Μ. Hussey, "Gibbon Re-written: Recent Trends in Byzantine Studies" in Re-Discovering Eastern Christendom, eds. A.N. Armstrong and E.J.Β. Fry (London, 1963), 95-105.

24. Werner, Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, tr. Gilbert Highet, νοl. 1 (Oxford, 1946), xiii-xxiv.

25. Platο, Republic 372, 4; Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition, οp.cit., 546-49.

Byzantium From Chinese Records

2011-09-08T03:38:00.000-07:00

East Asian History Sourcebook:
Chinese Accounts of Rome, Byzantium and the Middle East, c. 91 B - 1643 AD

Source

From: F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient: Researches into their Ancient and Mediaeval Relations as Represented in Old Chinese Records (Shanghai & Hong Kong, 1885), pp. 35-96.

Scanned and edited by Dr. Jerome S. Arkenberg, Department of History, California State University Fullerton. The text has been modified by Dr. Arkenberg. [Any modernization © 2000 Jerome S. Arkenberg.]

From the Hsin-t'ang-shu, ch. 221 (written mid-11th Century AD), for 1060 AD:

Fu-lin [Byzantium] is the ancient Ta-ts'in [Roman Syria]. It lies above the western sea [Indian Ocean]. Some call it Hai-hsi-kuo [i.e., "country on the west of the sea"]. It is 40,000 li distant from our capital and lies in the west of Shan [Armenia]; north you go straight to the Ko-sa tribe [Khazars] of Tu-ch'ueh. In the west it borders on the sea-coast with the city of Ali-san [Alexandria]. In the south-east it borders on Po-si [Persia]. Its territory amounts to 10,000 li; of cities there are four hundred; of soldiers a million. Ten li make one t'ing; three t'ing make one chih. Of subjected small countries there are several times ten. Those which are known by name are called Ala-san [Charax Spasinu] and Lu-fen [Nikephorium]; Ala-san is direct north-east, but we cannot obtain the number of li of its road; in the east, by sea 2000 li, you come to the Lu-fen country. The capital of Fu-lin [Constantinople] is built of granite stone; the city is eighty li broad; the east gate is twenty chang[235 feet] high and chased with yellow gold [bronze]. The royal palace has three portals which are beset with precious stones. In the middle portal there is a large golden scale; a man made all of gold, standing [a clepsydra]. On the yard of that scale there are hanging twelve little balls, one of which will fall fown whenever an hour is completed. In making the pillars of palaces they use se-se, and in making the kingposts of their roofs they use rock crystal and opaque glass; in making floors they use beams of fragrant wood and yellow gold; the leaves of their folding doors are of ivory.

Twelve honored ministers have joint charge of the government. When the king goes out, a man follows him with a bag, and whatever complaints there may be are thrown into the bag; on returning he examines into right and wrong. When the country is visited by an extraordinary calamity, the king is deposed and a worthier man is placed in his position. The king's official cap is like the wings of a bird, and pearls are sewn on it; his garments are of embroidered silk, but there is no lapel in front. He sits on a couch with golden ornaments; at his side there is a bird like a goose, with green feathers; when his majesty eats anything poisonous it will crow. There are no roofs made of earthen tiles; but the roofs are overlaid with white stones, hard and shining like jadestone. During the height of summer heat, water is laid up and made to flow down from the top, the draught thereby caused producing wind. The men there cut their hair; they wear embroidered clothing in the shape of a gown that leaves the right arm bare. They ride in heavy and light carriages and carts covered with white canopies. When going out or coming back they hoist flags and beat drums. Married women wear embroidered tiaras. The millionaires of the country are the official aristocracy. The inhabitants enjoy wine and have a fancy for dry cakes. There are amongst them many jugglers who can issue fire from their faces, produce rivers and lakes from their hands, and banners and tufts of feathers from their mouths, and who, raising their feet, drop pearls and jadestones. They have clever physicians who, by opening the brain and extracting worms, can cure mu-sheng [a sort of blindness]. The country contains much gold and silver; the jewel that shines at night and the moon-shine pearl; large conches; che-ch'u [mother-of-pearl?]; carnelian stones; mu-nan [a kind of pearl]; king-fishers' feathers [lapis lazuli]; and amber. They weave the hair of the water-sheep [shui-yang] into cloth which is called Hai-hsi-pu [cloth from the west of the sea]. In the sea there are coral islands. The fishers sit in large boats and let wire nets into the water down to the corals. When the corals first grow from the rocks they are white like mushrooms; after a year they turn yellow; after three years they turn red. Then the branches begin to intertwine, having grown to a height of three to four chih [up to five feet]. The net being cast the coral roots get entangled in the net, when the men on board have to turn round in order to take them out. If they miss their time in fishing for it the coral will decay. On the western sea [Indian Ocean] there are markets where the traders do not see one another, the price being deposited by the side of the merchandise; they are called "spirit markets." There is a quadruped called Ts'ung; it has the size of a dog, is fierce and repulsive, and strong. In a northern district there is a sheep that grows out of the ground; its navel is attached to the ground, and if it is cut the animal will die. The inhabitants will frighten them by the steps of horses or by beating drums. The navel being thus detached, they are taken off the water plants; they do not make flocks. During the 17th year of Cheng-kuan [643 AD] the king Po-to-li [Constans II Pogonatus, Emperor 641-668 AD] sent an embassy offering red glass and lu-chin-ching [green gold gems], and a cabinet order was issued as an acknowledgment. When the Ta-shih [Arabs] usurped power over these countries, they sent their general, Mo-i [Mo'awiya, then Governor of Syria, afterwards Caliph 661-680 AD], to reduce them to order. Fu-lin obtained peace by an agreement, but in the sequel became subject to Ta-shih. From the period Ch'ien-feng [666-668 AD] till the period Ta-tsu [701 AD] they have repeatedly offered tribute to the Han [Chinese] court. In the seventh year of the K'ai-yuan period [719 AD] they offered through the ta-yu [a high official] of T'u-huo-lo [Khazarstan] lions and ling-yang [antelopes].

Crossing the desert in the south-west of Fu-lin, at a distance of 2,000 li there are two countries called Mo-lin ['Alwa, or Upper Kush] and Lao-p'o-sa [Maqurra, or Lower Kush]. Their inhabitants are black and of a violent disposition. The country is malarious and has no vegetation. They feed their horses on dried fish, and live themselves on hu-mang [the Persian date--Phoenix dactylifera]. They are not ashamed to have most frequent illicit intercourse with savages; they call this "establishing the relation between lord and subject." On one of seven days they refrain from doing business, and carouse all night.

From the Nestorian Stone Inscription, cols. 12-13 (written 781 AD):

According to the Hsi-yu-t'u-chi and the historical records of the Han and Wei dynasties, the country of Ta-ts'in [Roman Syria] begins in the south at the Coral Sea, and extends in the north to the Chung-pau-shan [hills of precious stones], it looks in the west to "the region of the immortals" and "the flowery groves"; in the east it bounds on "the long winds" and "the weak water" [the Dead Sea]. This country produces fire-proof cloth [asbestos]; the life-restoring incense; the ming-yueh-chu [moon-shine pearl]; and the yeh-kuang-pi [jewel that shines at night]. Robberies are unknown there, and the people enjoy peace and happiness. Only the luminous [i.e., Christian] religion is practised; only virtuous rulers occupy the throne. This country is vast in extent; its literature is flourishing.

From the Sung-shih, ch. 490 (written late 13th Century AD), for 960-1279 AD:

The country of Fu-lin [Byzantium]. South-east of it you go to Mei-lu-ku [Kilikia ("Cilicia")]; north you go to the sea [Black Sea]; both forty days' journey; west you go to the sea [Mediterranean], thirty days' journey; in the east, starting from western Ta-shih, you come to Yu-tien [Khoten], Hui-ho and Ch'ing-t'ang, and finally reach Zhongguo [China]. They have during former dynasties not sent tribute to our court. During the tenth month of the fourth year of the period Yuan-feng [November, 1081 AD], their king, Mieh-li-i-ling-kai-sa [Michael VII Parapinaces Caesar], first sent the ta-shou-ling [a high official] Ni-si-tu-ling-si-meng-p'an to offer as tribute saddled horses, sword-blades, and real pearls. He said: the climate of this country is very cold; houses there have no tiles; the products are gold, silver, pearls, western silk cloth, cows, sheep, horses' camels with single humps, pears, almonds, dates, pa-lan [a kind of date], millet, and wheat. They make wine from grapes; their musical instruments are the lute, the hu-ch'in [the "tea-pot-shaped lute"]; the hsiao-pi-li[a kind of flageolet]; and the p'ien-ku ["side drum"]. The king dresses in red and yellow robes, and wears a turban of silken cloth interwoven with gold thread. In the third month every year he goes to the Temple of Fou-shih [ "Temple of Buddha", here meaning either Muhammed or Christ; in other places the Qu'ran is described as Fou-ching".], to sit on a red couch [palanquin?] which he gets the people to lift. His honored servants [ministers, courtiers, priests?] are dressed like the king, but wear blue, green, purple, white mottled, red, yellow, or brown stuff, wear turbans and ride on horseback. The towns and the country districts are each under the jurisdiction of a shou-ling [chief, sheik?]. Twice a year, during the summer and autumn, they must offer money and cloth [chin-ku-po]. In their criminal decisions they distinguish between great and small offences. Light offences are punished by several tens of blows with the bamboo; heavy offences with up to 200 blows; capital punishment is administered by putting the culprit into a feather bag which is thrown into the sea. They are not bent on making war to neighboring countries, and in the case of small difficulties try to settle matters by correspondence; but when important interests are at stake they will also send out an army. They cast gold and silver coins' without holes, however; on the pile they cut the words Mi-le-fou, which is a king's name. The people are forbidden to counterfeit the coin. During the sixth year of Yuan-yu [1091 AD] they sent two embassies, and their king was presented, by imperial order, with 200 pieces of cloth, pairs of white gold vases, and clothing with gold bound in a girdle.

Ma Tuan-lin, Wen-hsien-t'ung-k'ao, ch. 330 (written late 13th Century AD):

Ta-ts'in [Roman Syria], also called Li-kan [Syria], has been first communicated with during the later Han dynasty. This country, as being in the west of the western sea [Persian Gulf], is also called Hai-hsi-kuo [i.e. "western sea country"]. Its king resides at the city of An-tu [Antioch]. In the palaces they use crystal in making pillars. From T'iao-chih [Babylonia] west, crossing the sea, you make a crooked journey, ten thousand li. Its distance from Ch'ang-an [Hsi-an-fu] is 40,000 li. This country is even and upright; human dwellings are scattered over it like stars. Its territory amounts to a thousand li from east to west and from north to south. It contains over 400 cities and several tens of small tributary states. In the west there is the Great Sea [the Mediterranean]. On the west of the sea there is the royal city of Ali-san [Alexandria]. They have keepers of official records and foreigners trained in reading their writings. They cut their hair and wear embroidered clothing. They also have small carriages with white canopies, and hoist flags, etc. Every ten li make one t'ing; thirty li make one hou, the same as in Zhongguo [China]. The country contains many lions who are a great scourge to travellers; for unless going in caravans of over a hundred men and being protected by military equipment, they will be hurt by them. Their king is not a permanent one, but they want to be led by a man of merit. Whenever an extraordinary calamity or an untimely storm and rain occurs, the king is deposed and a new one elected, the deposed king resigning cheerfully. The inhabitants are tall, and upright in their dealings, like the Han [Chinese], whence they are called Ta-ts'in, or Han.

Amongst precious stones they have the hsieh-chi-hsi [the chicken-frightening rhinoceros stone]. They mix several fragrant substances and fry their juice in order to make Su-ho [Storax]. The country produces gold, silver, and rare precious things; the jewel that shines at night, the moon-shine pearl, amber, opaque glass, tortoises, white horses, red bristles, tortoise-shell, black bears, red glass, the p'i-tu-shu [a kind of rat], large conches, ch'e-ch'u, carnelian. The Ts'ung [a quadruped] comes from the western sea [Persian Gulf]; some are domesticated like dogs, but they are mostly fierce and nasty. In the northern possessions of this country there is a kind of sheep which grow naturally out of the ground. They wait till the germs are about to sprout, and then protect them by raising walls lest the beasts at large should eat them. Their navels are connected with the ground; if the navel is cut by force, the animal will die; but if by the sound of striking some object they are frightened, this will cause them to disconnect their navels, and they may be taken off the water-plants; they will not form flocks. There is further the Mu-nan, a pearl of jade color, originating in the coagulation of saliva in the mouth of a flying bird; the natives consider it a precious substance. There are jugglers who can let fires burn on their foreheads; make rivers and lakes in their hands; raise their feet and let pearls and precious stones drop from them; and, in opening their mouths produce banners and tufts of feathers in abundance. With regard to the hsi-pu [fine cloth] manufactured on their looms, they say they use the wool of water-sheep in making it; it is called hai-chung-pu. They make all kinds of rugs; their colors are still more brilliant than are those manufactured in the countries on the east of the sea. They always made profit by obtaining the thick plain silk stuffs of Zhongguo, which they split in order to make foreign ling kan wen [damask and purple-dyed mustered goods], and they entertained a lively trade with the foreign states of Ar-hsi [Arsacids, or Parthia] by sea. About 700 or 800 li south-west in the Chang-hai, you come to the Coral Islands. At the bottom of the water there are rocks and the corals grow on them.

The inhabitants of Ta-tsin use large sea-going ships having on board nets of iron. They get a diver first to go down and look for corals; if the nets can be let down, they drop them. When the corals first appear they are white, and by degrees they resemble sprouts, and break through. After a year and some time has elapsed they grow through the meshes of the net and change their color into yellow; they will then throw out branches and intertwine, having grown to a height of three or four ch'ih [four to five feet], and the larger ones measuring over a ch'ih [15 inches] in circuit. After three years, their color has turned into a beautiful carnation red. They are then again looked after to ascertain whether they can be gathered. The fishers thereupon get at the roots with iron pinchers and fasten the net with ropes; they let the men on board turn the vessel round, raise the net and take it out, and return to their country, where the corals are polished and cut according to fancy. If not fished for at the proper time they are liable to be worm-bitten.

In this country they make gold and silver coins; ten silver coins are worth one gold coin. The inhabitants are just in their dealings, and in the trade there are not two prices. Cereals are always cheap, and the budget is well supplied. When the envoys of neighboring countries arrive at their furthest frontier they are driven by post to the royal capital and, on arrival, are presented with golden money. Their king always wished to send envoys to Zhongguo; but the Ar-hsi wished to carry on trade with them in Han silks, and this is the cause of their having been shut off from direct communication. It was, further, hard to cross the great sea, travelling merchants taking three years' provisions on board to make this passage, whence the number of travellers was but small. In the beginning of the Yuan-chia period of the emperor Huan-ti [151-153 AD], the king of Ta-ts'in, An-tun [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus], sent envoys who offered ivory, rhinoceros' horns, and tortoise-shell, from the boundary of Jih-nan [Annam]; this was the first time they communicated with us. Their tribute contained no precious stones whatever, which fact makes us suspect that the messengers kept them back. During the Ta-k'ang period of the emperor Wu-ti of the Chin dynasty [280-290 AD] their king sent envoys with tribute. Some say that in the west of this country there is the Jo-shui [weak water] and the Liu-sha [flying sands] near the residence of the Hsi-wang-mu [western king's mother] not far from the place where the sun sets.

The Wai-kuo-t'u ["map of foreign countries"] says: From Yung-ch'en north there is a country called Ta-ts'in. These people are of great size; they measure five or six ch'ih [six to seven feet] in height. The Kuei-huan-hsing-ching-chi says: The Fu-lin country is in the west of Shan [Armenia], separated by hills several thousand li; it is also called Ta-ts'in. Its inhabitants have red and white faces. Men wear plain clothes, but women wear silk stuffs beset with pearls. They have many clever weavers of silk. Prisoners are kept in the frontier states till death without their being brought back to their home. In the manufacture of glass they are not equalled by any nation of the world. The royal city is eighty li square; the country in all directions measures several thousand li. Their army consists of about a million men. They have constantly to provide against the Ta-shih. On the west the country bounds on the western sea [the Mediterranean]; on the south, on the southern sea [Red Sea?]; in the north it connects with K'o-sa T'u-ch'ueh [the Khazars]. In the western sea there is a market where a silent agreement exists between buyer and seller that, if the one is coming the other will go, and vice-versa; the seller will first spread out his goods, and the purchaser will afterwards produce their equivalents, which have to wait by the side of the articles to be sold till received by the seller, after which the purchase may be taken delivery of. They call this a spirit market.

There is also a report that in the west there is the country of women who, being affected by the influence of water, give birth to children. It is further said: the country of Mo-lin [ 'Alwa, or Upper Nubia] is on the south-west of the country of Yang-sa-lo [Jerusalem?]; crossing the great desert 2,000 li you come to this country. Its inhabitants are black and of ferocious manners. Cereals are scarce, and there is no vegetation in the way of shrubs and trees; horses are fed on dried fish; men eat hu-mang, that is, the Persian date. The country is very malarious. The hill tribes which one has to pass in pursuing the overland road of these countries, are of the same race. Of religions there are several kinds: there is the Ta-shih, the Ta-ts'in, and the Hsun-hsun religion; The Hsun-hsun have most frequent illicit intercourse with barbarians; while eating they do not speak. Those who belong to the religion of Ta-shih have a rule by which brothers, children and other relatives may be impeached for crime without implicating their kin, even if the crime be brought home to them. They do not eat the flesh of pigs, dogs, donkeys, and horses; they do not prostrate or kneel down before the king, nor before father or mother, to show their veneration; they do not believe in spirits, and sacrifice to heaven alone. Every seventh day is a holiday, when they will refrain from trade, and not go in or out, but drink wine and yield to dissipation till the day is finished. The Ta-ts'in are good physicians in eye-diseases and diarrhea, whether by looking to matters before the disease has broken out [i.e., whether by the prophylactic method], or whether by extracting worms from the brain [trepanning].

In the south-east of this country you go to Chiao-chih [Cochin China]; there is also a water-road communicating with the I-chou and Yung-ch'ang principalities [both in the present Yunnan]. Many rare things come from there. It is said that in the west of Ta-ts'in there is the water of a sea; west of the seawater there is a river; the river flows south-west; west of the river there are hills extending from south to north; west of the hills there is the Red Water; west of this is the White Jade Hill; west of the Jade Hill is the Hill of the Hsi-wang-mu [western king's mother] who lives in a temple built of jadestone. Coming from the western boundary of Ar-hsi [Parthia], following the crooked shape of the sea, you also come to Ta-ts'in [at Aelana (modern Elat)], bending round over 10,000 li. Although in that country the sun, the moon, and the constellations appear not different from what they are in Zhongguo, former historians say that in the west of T'iao-chih [Babylonia] you go a hundred li to the place where the sun sets; this is far from being true.

In the 17th year of Cheng-kuan of the T'ang dynasty [643 AD] the king of Fu-lin, Po-to-li [Constans II Pogonatus, Emperor 641-668 AD], sent envoys offering red glass and green gold ching[stones, gems, dust], and a cabinet order was issued as an acknowledgement. The Ta-shih waged war against the country which in the sequel became subject to them. Between the periods Ch'ien-feng and Ta-tsu [666-701 AD] they repeated their court offerings. In the seventh year of K'ai-yuan [719 AD] they offered through the ta-yu [a high official] of T'u-huo-lo [Khazarstan] lions and ling-yang[antelopes].

The Dwarfs. These are in the south of Ta-ts'in. They are scarcely three ch'ih [four feet] large. When they work in the fields they are afraid of being devoured by cranes. Whenever Ta-ts'in has rendered them any assistance, the Dwarfs give them all they can afford in the way of precious stones to show their gratitude. The Hsuan-ch'u. Their country contains many "birds of nine colors," with blue pecks, green necks, red-brown wings, red breasts, purple crests, vermilion feet, jade-colored bodies, yellowish backs, and blackish tails. Another name of this animal is "bird of nine tails," or chin-feng [the brocaded phoenix]. Those which have more blue than red on them are called Hsiu-luan [embroidered argus pheasant]. These birds usually come from the west of the Jo-shui [weak water]. Some say that it is the bird of the Hsi-wang-mu [western king's mother]. The coins of the country are the same as those of the country of San-t'ung. The San-t'ung are a thousand lisouth-west of Hsuan-ch'u. The inhabitants have three eyes, and sometimes four tongues by means of which they may produce one kind of sound and speak one language. They trade in plantains, also in rhinoceros' horns and ivory; they make golden coins on which they imitate the king's, also the queen's face [with the king's together.]; if the husband is changed, they use the king's face; if the king dies, they re-melt the coin. The above three countries border on Ta-ts'in whence they are here appended.

Ala-san [Charax Spasinu] was heard of during the Wei dynasty. It is subject to Ta-ts'in. Its residence lies right in the middle of a river. North you go to Lu-fen [Nikephorium] by water half a year, with quick winds a month. It is nearest to Ch'eng-ku of Ar-hsi [Parthia]. South-west you go to the capital of Ta-ts'in; we do not know how many li. Lu-fen was heard of during the Wei dynasty. It is subject to Ta-ts'in. Its residence is 2000 li distant from the capital of Ta-ts'in. The flying bridge across the river [the bridge over the Euphrates at Zeugma] in Ta-ts'in west of the city of Lu-fen is 240 li in length. The road, if you cross the river, goes to the south-west; if you make a round on the river, you go due west.

Fu-lin. In the south and east of the country of Fu-lin you go to Mei-lu-ku [Kilikia ("Cilicia")]; north you go to the sea, forty days' journey; west you go to the sea, thirty days' journey. In the east, starting from western Ta-shih you come to Yu-tien [Khoten], Hui-ho, Ta-ta [Tartary], and Ch'ing-t'ang, and finally reach Zhongguo [China]. They have during former dynasties not sent tribute to our court. During the tenth month of the fourth year of the period Yuan-feng [November 1081 AD] their king Mieh-li-i-ling-kai-sa [Michael Caesar] first sent the ta-shou-ling [a high official] Ni-si-tu-ling-si-meng-p'an to offer as tribute saddled horses, sword-blades and real pearls. He said: the climate of this country is very cold; houses there have no tiles; the products are gold, silver, pearls, western silk cloth, cows, sheep, horses, camels with single humps, pears, almonds, dates, pa-lan, millet, and wheat. They make wine from grapes. Their musical instruments are the lute, the hu-ch'in, the hsiao-pi-li, and the p'ien-ku. The king dresses in red and yellow robes, and wears a turban of silken cloth interwoven with gold thread. In the third month every year he goes to the Temple of Fou, to sit on a red palanquin which he gets the people to lift. His honored servants [ministers, courtiers, priests?] are dressed like the king, but wear blue, green, purple, white mottled, red, yellow, or brown stuff; wear turbans and ride on horseback. The towns and the country districts are each under the jurisdiction of a shou-ling [chief, sheik?]. Twice a year during the summer and autumn they must offer money and cloth. In their criminal decisions they distinguish between great and small offences. Light offences are punished by several hundreds' of blows with the bamboo; heavy offences with up to 200 blows; capital punishment is administered by putting the culprit into a feather bag which is thrown into the sea. They are not bent on making war to neighboring countries, and in the case of small difficulties try to settle matters by correspondence; but when important interests are at stake they will also send out an army. They cast gold and silver coins, without holes, however; on the pile they cut the words Mi-le-fou which is a king's name; the people are forbidden to counterfeit the coin.

During the sixth year of Yuan-yu [1091 AD] they sent two embassies, and their king was presented, by Imperial order, with 200 pieces of cloth, pairs of silver vases, and clothing with gold bound in a girdle. According to the historians of the T'ang dynasty, the country of Fu-lin was held to be identical with the ancient Ta-ts'in. It should be remarked, however, that, although Ta-ts'in has from the Later Han dynasty when Zhongguo was first communicated with, till down to the Chin and T'ang dynasties has offered tribute without interruption, yet the historians of the "four reigns" of the Sung dynasty, in their notices of Fu-lin, hold that this country has not sent tribute to court up to the time of Yuan-feng [1078-1086 AD] when they sent their first embassy offering local produce. If we, now, hold together the two accounts of Fu-lin as transmitted by the two different historians, we find that, in the account of the T'ang dynasty, this country is said "to border on the great sea in the west"; whereas the Sung account says that "in the west you have still thirty days' journey to the sea;" and the remaining boundaries do also not tally in the two accounts; nor do the products and the customs of the people. I suspect that we have before us merely an accidental similarity of the name, and that the country is indeed not identical with Ta-ts'in. I have, for this reason, appended the Fu-lin account of the T'ang dynasty to my chapter on Ta-ts'in, and represented this Fu-lin of the Sung dynasty as a separate country altogether.

Chao Ju-kua, Chu-fan-chih (written late 13th Century AD):

The country of Ta-ts'in [Roman Syria], also called Li-kan [Syria], is the general meeting-ground for the nations of the western heaven, and the place where the foreign merchants of Ta-shih [the Arabs of the Caliphate] assemble. Their king is styled Mie-lu-ku. He rules at the city of An-tu [Antioch]. He wears a turban of silk with gold-embroidered characters, and the throne he sits upon is covered with a silken rug. They have walled cities and markets with streets and lanes. In the king's dwelling they use crystal in making pillars; and they use plaster in lieu of tiles. They frequently erect tabernacles with seven entrances all round, each holding a garrison of thirty men. Tribute-bearers from other countries pay their respects below the platform of the palace steps, whence they withdraw on having offered their congratulations. The inhabitants are tall and of bright complexion, somewhat like the Han [Chinese], which has been the cause of their being called Ta-ts'in. They have keepers of official records and foreign interpreters knowing their style of writing. They trim their hair and wear embroidered dresses. They also have small carriages with white canopies, and flags, etc.; and at the distance of every ten li there is a t'ing, and at the distance of every thirty li there is a hou. There are in the country many lions who will attack travellers and may devour them unless they go in caravans of a hundred men and be protected by military equipment. Underneath the palace they have cut into the ground a tunnel communicating with the hall of worship at a distance of over a li. The king rarely goes out; but, to chant the liturgy and worship, on every seventh day he proceeds by way of this tunnel to the hall of worship where, in performing divine service, he is attended by a suite of over fifty men. But few amongst the people know the king's face; if he goes out he sits on horseback, protected by an umbrella; the head of his horse is adorned with gold, jade, pearls and other jewels. Every year the king of the country of Ta-shih who is styled Su-tan [Sultan] sends tribute-bearers, and if in the country some trouble is apprehended, he gets the Ta-shih to use their military force in restoring order. Their food mainly consists in cooked dishes, cakes and meat; they do not drink wine; but they use vessels made of gold and silver, and help themselves to their contents by means of ladles; after meals they wash hands in a golden bowl filled with water. The products of the country consist in opaque glass, corals, raw gold, brocades, sarcenets, red carnelian stones and real pearls; also the hsieh-chi-hsi, which is the same as the T'ung-t'ien-hsi. At the beginning of the Yen-hsi period [158-167 AD] the ruler of this country sent an embassy who, from outside the frontier of Jih-nan [Annam], came to offer rhinoceros' horns, ivory and tortoise-shell, this being the first direct communication with Zhongguo. As their presents contained no other precious matters and curiosities, it may be suspected that the ambassadors kept them back. During the T'ai-k'ang period of the Chin dynasty [280-289 AD] further tribute was brought from there [at the time of Diocletian]. There is a saying that in the west of this country there is the Jo-shui [weak water] and the Liu-sha [flying sands] near the place where the Hsi-wang-mu [western king's mother] resides, and where the sun sets.

The Tu-huan-ching-hsing-chi says: The country of Fu-lin is in the west of the Shan [Armenia] country; it is also called Ta-ts'in. The inhabitants have red and white faces. Men wear plain clothes, but women wear silk stuffs beset with pearls. They are fond of wine and dry cakes. They have many clever weavers of silk. The size of the country is a thousand li. Their army consists of over 10,000 men and has to ward off the Ta-shih. In the western sea there is a market where a silent agreement exists between buyer and seller that, if the one is coming the other will go, and vice-versa, the seller will first spread out his goods, and the purchaser will afterwards produce their equivalents, which have to wait by the side of the articles to be sold till received by the seller, after which the purchase may be taken delivery of. They call this a spirit market.

From the Ming-shih, ch. 326 (concluded 1724 AD), for 1368-1643 AD:

u-lin [Byzantium] is the same as Ta-ts'in [Roman Syria] of the Han period. It first communicated with Zhongguo [China] at the time of the emperor Huan-ti [147-168 AD]. During the Chin and Wei dynasties it was also called Ta-ts'in, and tribute was sent to Zhongguo. During the T'ang dynasty it was called Fu-lin. During the Sung it was still so called, and they sent also tribute several times; yet the Sung-shih says that during former dynasties they have sent no tribute to our court, which throws doubt on its identity with Ta-ts'in. At the close of the Yuan dynasty [1278-1368 AD] a native of this country, named Nieh-ku-lun, came to Zhongguo for trading purposes [Pope John XXII appointed Nicolaus de Bentra to succeed John de Monte Corvino as Archbishop of Cambalu, that is, Peking, in the year 1333; and also sent letters to the emperor of the Tartars, who was then the sovereign of China." Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History,trans. James Murdock, Vol. II, p. 359; cf. Remusat, Nouv. Mel. Asiat., Vol. II, p. 198. Bretschneider, Arabs, etc., p. 25, says: "It is possible that the Nie-ku-lun of the Chinese Annals is identical with the Monk Nicolas. The statement of the Chinese that Nicolas carried on commerce does not contradict this view. Perhaps he trafficked in fact, or he considered it necessary to introduce himself under the name of a merchant."]. When, after the fall of the Yuan, he was not able to return, the emperor T'ai-tsu, who had heard of this, commanded him to his presence in the eighth month of the fourth year of Hung-wu [September 1371 AD] and gave orders that an official letter be placed into his hands for transmission to his king, which read as follows: "Since the Sung dynasty had lost the throne and Heaven had cut off their sacrifice, the Yuan [Mongol] dynasty had risen from the desert to enter and rule over Zhongguo for more than a hundred years, when Heaven, wearied of their misgovernment and debauchery, thought also fit to turn their fate to ruin, and the affairs of Zhongguo were in a state of disorder for eighteen years. But when the nation began to arouse itself, We, as a simple peasant of Huai-yu, conceived the patriotic idea to save the people, and it pleased the Creator to grant that Our civil and military officers effected their passage across eastward to the left side of the River. We have then been engaged in war for fourteen years; We have, in the west, subdued the king of Han, Ch'en Yu-liang; We have, in the east, bound the king of Wu, Chang Shih-ch'eng; We have, in the south, subdued Min and Yueh [Fukien and Kuang-tung], and conquered Pa and Shu [Sze-chuan]; We have, in the north, established order in Yu and Yen [Chih-li]; We have established peace in the Empire, and restored the old boundaries of Zhongguo. We were selected by Our people to occupy the Imperial throne of Zhongguo under the dynastic title of 'the Great Ming,' commencing with Our reign styled Hung-wu, of which we now are in the fourth year. We have sent officers to all the foreign kingdoms with this Manifesto except to you, Fu-lin, who, being separated from us by the western sea, have not as yet received the announcement. We now send a native of your country, Nieh-ku-lun, to hand you this Manifesto. Although We are not equal in wisdom to our ancient rulers whose virtue was recognized all over the universe, We cannot but let the world know Our intention to maintain peace within the four seas. It is on this ground alone that We have issued this Manifesto." And he again ordered the ambassador Pu-la and others to be provided with credentials and presents of silk for transmission to that country, who thereafter sent an embassy with tribute. But this embassy was, in the sequel, not repeated until during the Wan-li period [1573-1620 AD] a native from the great western ocean [Fra. Matteo Ricci--mentioned in a subsequent account of Italy as the foreigner who arrived] came to the capital who said that the Lord of Heaven, Ye-su, was born in Ju-te-a [Judea] which is identical with the old country of Ta-ts'in; that this country is known in the historical books to have existed since the creation of the world for the last 6,000 years; that it is beyond dispute the sacred ground of history and the origin of all wordly affairs; that it should be considered as the country where the Lord of Heaven created the human race. This account looks somewhat exaggerated and should not be trusted. As regards the abundance of produce and other precious articles found in this country, accounts will be found in former annals.

Manuel II Palaeologus : THE VIRTUE OF A KING

2011-09-08T03:31:00.000-07:00

Manuel II Palaeologus : THE VIRTUE OF A KING

from
Precepts of kingly education, to his son John

On virtue and the goodness of a king, to his son John

Translated by Elpenor

Greek Fonts

Manuel II Palaeologus Resources

OF GOD himself cares and thinks about us, good as we know that He is, what is the reason of so much pain, why don’t we understand the Grace, whether things are arranged for us in that or another way? Ungratefulness and complaint belong to a soul that is cruel, even if she believes in God.

Precepts..., PG 156.361

The measure of food is what each person needs, but in education we need always the greater... it’s helpful for the soul to be initiated in something good even at the hour of her parting from the body.

Precepts..., PG 156.368

He who trusts everyone and he who trusts none, are both destroyed. Although both attitudes are deadly, if you had to choose between them, it would be better to suffer wrong from the courage of your trust, instead of always being suspicious of all men.

Precepts..., PG 156.329

All who have the same reference and relationship with the first and all-perfect good, they all love each other and are made good, because they have with each other the exact same relationship.

On virtue..., speech II, PG 156.412

It is impossible, indeed impossible, if we wish it not to achieve this aim: because we don’t want the passions of our soul to be cured, this is why they use to persist in us... No one is in despair, except for the one who thinks it befits him to be in despair... Even if someone transcends in sin all the people who have been born so far, and I will add, all who will be until the end of the world, even then, it is impossible to make God hate him.

On virtue..., speech VI, PG 156.485, 492, 505

Fight neither against the brothers in Christ, nor against whatever nation, even a barbaric nation, if it made peace with you and wishes to keep it... I think all would call a fool someone who would believe that there is in the world a complete stranger. Because we are all children of One, even if we differ in language or whatever, even in faith. Well, human beings as we are, we need to care about people, and to wish for all any good, to help anyone, as is just and possible. Because our nature is common, and one earth for all, one roof, one light and one air is extended above all of us from the Creator. And in one word, what is His, is common to all of us. But you need also to understand what is more distant and less distant (because there exist many degrees in affinity) and to be good with all, as far as that depends on you, and to those who are closer to you, to offer yourself with due affinity and warmth in your relationship.

Precepts..., PG 156.353-6

Utah's Anti-Greek Past

2011-09-08T03:28:00.000-07:00

Helen Papanikolas, one of the great chroniclers and ethno-historians of the Greek-American experience has written extensively about the difficulties encountered by early Greek immigrants to Utah where she grew up. In her essay, "The Exiled Greeks" ( a must read for its insights on the early Greek-American experience) she says the following:

Greeks without countrymen already employed in Utah worked their way across the country laying rails over the prairies, building roads, digging sewers, disposing of offal in slaughterhouses, and clearing land of sagebrush. They rode freights, munching bread and dried beans, trying to learn a few words of the new language from small, gilt-edged, Greek-English dictionaries bought in New York and Chicago. They climbed onto wrong freight cars, their food giving out, always alert for railroad detectives their countrymen had warned them against. They hid from town officials who would charge them a three-dollar head tax and jail them if they could not pay it. They were stunned by the hate of Americans. "The scum of Europe," "depraved, brutal foreigners" they were called in print, taunted and jeered when they asked for work. In coffeehouses along the way, they heard of attacks on Greeks: the burning of Omaha's Greek Town and the routing of a gang of Greeks clearing sagebrush south of Boise, Idaho, by masked men on horses, whips and guns in their hands

Greeks steadily arrived, found temporary sanctuary in Greek Town, and were sent to the Carbon County mines, Murray-Midvale smelters, Bingham Canyon mines, Magna mill, Garfield smelter, north of Ogden for railroad-gang work on the Oregon Short Line (later Union Pacific), and the Denver and Rio Grande in Utah and Colorado. Those from nine to fourteen years of age became water boys.

The greatest number of men were sent to railroad section and steel gangs where pay was as low as twenty dollars a month and where they were isolated for months until winter when they were laid off. Besides extensive branch-line building, narrow gauge tracks were being replaced by wider, standard track that would allow freight to proceed from one line to another without having to be unloaded and reloaded. Laying track and keeping it in repair was a major industry and a wholly immigrant occupation. Census taking was haphazard and Greeks known to have been in Utah working on railroad gangs are not found in Polk's city directory.

The men lived in tents and in railroad cars and worked under Japanese foremen, later replacing many of them. Although the Greeks were reviled as "undesirable aliens" and not "white," the more distinctive appearance of the Japanese caused their ruthless displacement. The early association of Greeks and Japanese lasted during their prolonged bachelorhoods. They wrestled, vied with each other in feats of strength, and were favorite card-playing companions.

Between jobs on section gangs the men returned to Greek Town. Although they were fulfilling family obligations decreed by Greek tradition, for the first time in their lives they had steady work and could spend a portion of their savings in coffeehouses, restaurants, saloons, candy stores, and bakeries. In crowded, pungent-smelling importing stores, they bought octopi, Turkish tobacco, olive oil, goat cheese, liqueurs, figs, and dates. They gathered in coffeehouses for their most satisfying recreation, discussions based on the stands taken by Greek-language newspapers. These invariably turned into brawls over Greek politics: the men were either royalists upholding King Constantine or partisans of Premier Eleftherios Venizelos.

During World War I, the Greeks were castigated in newspapers for refusing to enlist immediately. Still expecting to return to their country, they were wary that the war would again give powerful nations the opportunity to further cut up portions of Greece under the guise of being her protectors. This Greek nationalism was a puzzle to Americans: why this concern for the land they had left? Not only were the Greeks "unassimilable," but they were "whelps who think nothing of getting American dollars under the American flag but who would not turn a hand over to save that flag from being dragged in the dirt by the Kaiser's dirty cutthroats."

As hysteria against Germany mounted, Greeks began enlisting, but animosity swelled. Two lynchings of Greeks were thwarted at this time, one of a Greek who had killed the brother of fighter Jack Dempsey, the other of a Helper Greek who had allegedly contributed to the delinquency of a minor--a ride in his new car bad precipitated the mob action. In both incidents, Greeks armed themselves and arrived in time to prevent the lynchings.

The Italians did not fare much better even though they had arrived earlier. Philip F. Notorianni relates the plight of the early immigrants:

Nativism in Utah began with an ignorance of Italian culture and was compounded by Italian participation in the 1903 strike and stereotyped images presented in numerous press reports, both nationally and locally. A typical example was a newspaper article entitled: "Whisky, Knives, and Bad Blood." As early as 1893, the Building Trades Congress reported at their meeting of June 10 that the Culmer Jennings Paving Company of Salt Lake City was employing "dagoes" and passed a motion to communicate to the city council, asking them to remedy the "dago" situation by insisting that the company abide by their contract to employ "white men." The above factors were combined with a Mormon genealogical doctrine that classed peoples as either of the House of Israel (Mormons believed they were from the lineage of Ephraim) or Gentiles. England, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and Belgium were said to be the countries containing "a considerable number of the blood of Israel amongst their people which must be gathered." Although some Protestant Italians did convert to Mormonism and emigrate to Utah, southern Europeans were classified as Gentiles.

Newspaper reports and editorials of the early quarter of the century are replete with anti-Italian, antiforeign sentiments. In Lucile Richens's "Social History of Sunnyside," she states: "I was raised with a whole hearted contempt for Greeks, Italians, and other southern Europeans who lived there...Intermarriage with foreigners was considered almost as bad as death. If they had become Americanized it was not so bad." Thus, children instilled with hatreds and prejudices for "foreigners" grew to perpetuate further the notion of the inferiority of southern and eastern European immigrants.

A 1914-15 thesis, entitled "On the Housing Problem in Salt Lake City," was submitted and approved by the Sociology Department of the University of Utah. The study began as an investigation of housing on Salt Lake's west side but ended as an undocumented degradation of southern and eastern Europeans, primarily Italians and Greeks: "The Greeks and Italians are perhaps the most careless and shiftless people found...Comfort to them is unknown unless it is in the form of a smoke by the fire or a drink. Not only is this true of the hundreds of men who rent a house for themselves...but of the families as well...The standard of living among them [Italians] is lower than of any other nationality. The author also noted:Of all people that do not have sufficient recreation, the Italians are by far the worst off. They seem to have no initiative or resources of their own...They lack a fighting and persevering spirit that might lead them to a better life.

Anti-foreign sentiment reached a peak in the 1920s. In regard to the 1922 strike in Carbon County, one newspaper article asked, "Is Carbon County a Part of the State of Utah or is It a South European Dependency?" It continued: "Hundreds of Red-Blooded American Men with Families want to Know why they Have to Submit to the Blatant Lawlessness Effrontry of South European Domination." These attitudes led to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan in Utah. Klan activity, at a peak in 1924 and 1925, manifested itself in parades, demonstrations, and threats. A fiery cross was burned at Helper in September 1924, with hooded Klansmen seen in the vicinity of the Mormon church. In 1925 articles of incorporation of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were filed in Salt Lake City by W. M. Cortner, Harry B. Sawyer, and L. W. Taverner. The doctrines of the Utah Klan were similar to those of other branches, "...to uphold Americanism, advance Protestant Christianity, and eternally maintain white supremacy."

The Ku Klux Klan of Utah created tension, anger, and fear. Many immigrants lived in a state of uncertainty. They became concerned at the possibility of Klan lynchings and violence, such as existed in the neighboring state of Colorado. In response to these tensions, nationalities banded together for mutual aid. Individuals were unsure of what the Klan was trying to achieve; their impulse was to steer clear. When asked who the Klan members were, one immigrant replied, "Well if he tell you this is a Ku Klan you say goodbye, you never talk to him any more. That is it."

Who was Metaxas? A quick overview for the non-initiated

2011-09-08T03:27:00.000-07:00

Ioannis Metaxas is among the most prominent personalities in Greek history since the War of Independence, but outside Greece he is a quite unknown figure. What follows here is a short biography of Metaxas, intended to be a quick overview of him and certainly not an indepth article.

Ioannis Metaxas was born born in Kefalonia, Greece, an island of wonderful beauty in the Ionian Sea. A career soldier, he served in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, studied military science in Germany and fought again in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, in which he was assistant chief of the general staff. He was later chief of staff, but was exiled (1917) to Italy, along with most other prominent figures of Constantine I's government, as pro-German when Greece joined the Allies in World War I.

He returned in 1920 and became prominent as a royalist politician during the Republic of 1924-35. After the monarchy had been reestablished in Greece, Metaxas became premier in April, 1936. With the support of King George II, Metaxas dissolved parliament on August 4th, 1936 and established a National Socialist regime. Hence the name of his regime.

Metaxas' grandiose vision was to create a Third Greek Civilization based on its glorious Ancient and Byzantine past, but what he actually created was more a Greek version of the Third Reich. Within 6 years, he implemented dozens of social, industrial and economic reforms while stabilizing the tumultuous political situation of those years. Furthermore he gained estability for the country's macroeconomic figures and engaged himself in an intensive diplomatic activity with foreign countries and especially those in the neighbourhood. As a curiosity but also as a remarkable trait of his personality, Metaxas, despite being nationalist, favoured demotiki, the folkish dialect of the Greek language.

But Metaxas is remembered chiefly for his reply of "OKHI" (no) to Mussolini's request to allow Italians to go across Greece at the beginning of WWII, thus maintaining Greece's policy of strict neutrality. The Italian ambassador to Greece Grazzi, had visited Metaxas and had handed to him Mussolini's ultimatum. Mussolini was demanding his troops to occupy Greece throughout the war claiming to ensure Italy's safety against any English incursion. If refused to do so, Italy would attack Greece.

Metaxas response, expressing the wish and the spirit of the Greek people, was simple and worthy of the one Leonidas, the Spartan King, gave the Persians two thousand and five hundred years earlier: "MOLWN LAVE" ("COME AND GET ME"). It was worthy of the one Konstantinos Palaiologos, the last emperor of Constantinople gave the Ottoman Turks when asked to surrender the city: "ELATE NA THN PARETAI" ("COME AND TAKE HER").

Metaxas response was OKHI - NO.

The Italians then attacked but Metaxas, who had been long aware that the greatest foreign threat to Greece was Italian expansionism, had long prepared the Army and the Nation in general for a war eventuality. After Mussolini's attack, Metaxas personally took command of the Army, leading and organizing it in such an efficient way that the Greek army, being much weaker (8 times smaller in numbers) than Italy's, humiliated the Italians, bringing them back to Albania, the Italian headquarter from which the attack had been enacted. The victory proved Metaxas' skills on military strategy and raised him as a new, contemporary Leonidas.

It was during his succesful leadership of the military operations against the Italians that Metaxas died. It was a mysterious death, and some rumours circulating at the time pointed out that he was in fact assassinated by either the Italian secret services or the British, the latter because he had refused the British to intervene in Greece. In fact, after his death the king replaced Metaxas with Alexander Koryzis, who agreed to allow British forces to enter Greek soil, so the picture is nothing but suspicious. The fact is, that Metaxas died as a true hero and as an ancient Greek chieftain, leading his fellow men to defense the Fatherland. Either naturally died or murdered, Metaxas' decease meant that Greece would have lose the greatest man of modern Greek history since the Independence War in 1821.

A Civilization without Heart

2011-09-08T03:26:00.000-07:00

A Civilization without Heart

February 11th, 2008 by E-Blog

Although the Gates of Vienna Blog focuses on the relationship between the West and Islam, occasionally hosts philosophical posts on the identity of Europe as such. A recent post of that kind is about a book that sees in “secondarity” the main characteristic or foundation of the European identity, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, by Rémi Brague.

Secondarity means that the West borrowed everything from elsewhere, mainly from the Greek and Jewish traditions. Being always and fundamentally second or “eccentric”, i.e., not being essentially identified with any culture – contrary to the way Byzantium understood itself as essentially Greek, an example that the author uses and explains – the West is more free to change, transform or re-invent its identity, more ready to develop, grow, expand and improve.

The theory of a western history that follows a progress-line belongs to the era of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’. The more demanding our thinking becomes, the more this theory collapses. Is Kant or Hegel more ‘advanced’, compared with Plato? Is Goethe or Hoelderlin more ‘advanced’, compared with Homer? Is Wesley or Luther more ‘advanced’ compared with Augustine or Maximus Confessor?

In reality there has been only one progress, in science and technology (and a really interesting question would be, why ancient Greeks, who discovered science, did not have a great interest in it). Not even in politics can we speak about a progress, since the older monarchic governments of the West and the current ‘democratic’ ones, in many and the most crucial aspects, are inferior to the governments of ancient Greece and Byzantium.

Therefore, what we have is a book that starts from a false/vague equation of the West with Progress, and continues with false arguments to prove it. Unfortunately, the aspects and arguments used, right or wrong, can not promote our understanding of the West, nor of the cultures that the West supposedly surpassed. However, the book contains a significant truth, because, even if not all peoples with a secondary culture travel to the planets, yet in order to achieve planetary traveling a people has to be homeless.

The West is perhaps the only civilization in the earth’s history that is homeless, unable to find a home in any of the cultures it adopted and transformed for itself, unable to find a home anywhere, ‘predestined’ in eternal departure, it became the only civilization without a heart, that is, without having faith in God as its central, most important, social value. Is this an achievement, and can it be compensated with planetary traveling, atomic bombs and advanced medicine?

On the other hand, Byzantium, the only political organisation that lasted for a thousand years, in the middle of attacks from the North, South, East and even from the West, may seem that in the end lost the battle, yet the appearances deceive. Byzantium does not exist as a political organisation anymore, but is alive and strong culturally in the millions of Orthodox Christians. It is important to remember that even Russia’s degradation to the point of the soviet tyranny is due precisely to the degree of the westernization of Russia, a westernization that was tyrannical and servile.

Let us return to a hint already mentioned above. Why ancient Greeks, who discovered science, did not show a great interest in it, nor in technology?

Anyone who knows Greek history is aware that the Greeks had a home. A real home is not some habitation, nor a blind attachment to a culture, but the persons one loves. If you lose these persons, what science and technology can comfort you?

The Greeks did not develop their interest in science and technology, because these means can not really overcome death. This is why philosophy and faith in God monopolised their interest. Therefore, when we say that the West is homeless, we can’t mean only lack of identification with this or that culture, but essentially lack of love. Only the absence of love can explain all this effort for discoveries, technological innovations, endless will to power and survival in a world where death is the ultimate Ruler. The West is eccentric indeed, if heart is the centre.

Hellenic Europe: Problems of Greek Continuity

2011-09-08T03:24:00.000-07:00

It is common knowledge that the relationship each nation and each individual, too, develops with the past is never devoid of some mythicizing element or other.

Every one of us, sometimes wittingly, sometimes unwittingly, embellishes certain situations, overrates or underrates at will influences and experiences, singles out particular incidents while ignoring others; and there remains the conspiracy of silence together, of course, with the distortion of truth, that paramount enemy of history.

Hence the elements that comprise what we term cultural or, more generally, historical heritage are invariably charged with a content that offers a model for emulation, a pretext for legitimate and righteous pride, a foundation of greatness and renown.

Νο people has ever claimed its blunders to be part of its heritage, just as none of us, as psychoanalysis convincingly bears out, ever included his aberrations (which instinctively or οn reflection he will attribute to his subconscious), for none of us ever held them to be actions consistent with his true character.

Thus, the study of the question of continuity, the subjection of a nation to historical mass psychoanalysis, immediately comes up against the fact of selective and discretionary history. Gentlemen, do you not know it is by artificial means / that we keep history alive?, trumpets the Cypriot poet Mondis.

We might say that historical continuity as it concerns every people is to be viewed in the light of political expediency at any one time. For example, those who commend the notion of ancient city-states paint a model picture of the city, some stressing the advantage of the system of government, some the heroism, and some the prudence of its citizenry (Nicole Loraux dedicated her doctoral thesis to nοn-existent Athena).

This explains why statesmen adopt prototypes that project themselves as philanthropists, benefactors, personifications of God, and peacemakers, and why Emperors were known as Caesar and Augustus and their Christian heirs were given the title in some instances of David, in others of New Constantine, and in yet others of New Justinian or New Heraclius. It is the same with symbols that summarily hark back to historic greatness (as does, for instance, the double-headed eagle of Byzantium); while exploits are still assessed today in terms of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, and feats of gallantry are weighed in the scales against Achilles, cunning against Odysseus, and male and female beauty against Narcissus and Helen.

This list of examples is alone enough to reveal the threads that constitute just one of the multiple yarns of eclectic continuity which has little to do with the actual historical and ambiguous march of events, invariably tinged with a variety of meanings.

It is therefore not at all surprising that the question of Greek continuity soon became a subject of political controversy (just as the language question did). Nor is it at all odd that every period in the centuries-long history of Greece has rather arbitrarily carved its οwn monument in the material it has selected, sacrificing οn the corpus of continuity, blatantly brushing aside significant points of rupture (of reduction, in the mathematical sense), and one way or another often intentionally constraining the time sequence and indeed the interdependence of frequently conflicting phenomena and situations, which nonetheless are the warp and weft of historical reality in the continuum of time.

Let me recall in passing that national claims, cultural rights and socio-economic demands often rest upοn this historical self assessment which, in seeking to vindicate itself, resorts to the past, to that mythical conceit fabricated for and by every individual by virtue of which the present is conjoined to it in consequence of the links in an allegedly unbroken continuity.

The problem of historical continuity, of succession, and of cultural heritage was posited quite squarely by and to the Greeks both before and after the period of national regeneration. "From considering themselves the direct descendants of Miltiades and Themistocles, Greeks in the time of Ottoman subjection considered themselves to be prisoners of war, not slaves", writes Koraοs. Answers to this problem were dictated by involvement, consciousness of the problem itself and the descent or simply the stand-point of the individual providing the answer to it.

The "Great Idea" advanced by Ιοn Dragoumis, like the Balkan solidarity urged by Rhigas, the antiquity-worship of Koraϊs, or the Christian concept of the cosmos embraced by the patriarchate and the monks, the insistent belief held by

Paparrigopoulos, or the confession uttered by Palamas (...in all Greek lands Romiosyni is one and the same), down to the verse in a poem by Elytis (...and my native land a mural with Frankish or Slav overpainting which if you chance to think of restoring it you go straight to prison and must explain yourself. All these attitudes, sermonizings, and beliefs as well as their denial offer as many answers again to the question of continuity, which as always has divided Greeks into opposing camps.

Ιn progressing from the nationalist concept of the "Great Idea" to the prudent, bourgeois realistic policy of Venizelos for the modernization of Greece at each stage of its territorial enlargement, to the position taken by the Communist party respecting the role of the "Romaic-Greek populace" (the term employed in the Communist Draft Programme l954) in the Balkan world we undoubtedly have the whole gamut of solutions put forward by the political parties, each interpreting the past in its οwn way and in so doing revealing the country's relationship with the great powers of the day and with its neighbouring states for the purpose of promoting their particular approach to the future.

Ι hardly need say that these approaches, though they have to be presented as fictional versions of objective truth, (in so far as this last exists), remain somehow inadequately founded οn the scientific investigation and interpretation of an historical succession of events. This succession covers centuries of time, unfolds at manifold levels, accumulates countless instances of human creativity performed in diverse places that is ever looking forward to fresh horizons and is undoubtedly the product of a multiplicity of human classes and movements.

Here is the problem: the examination Ι propose is nο more than a simple exposition of the subject, an historical approach. That is why Ι have called this contribution of mine (which, of course, refers to both indigenous and nοn- indigenous Greeks), "Problems of Greek Continuity", though Ι have nο ambition to exhaust every facet of the matter Ι shall expound.

Nonetheless, any examination of Greek continuity obliges us at the very outset to determine, first, what are the limits of time to which the continuity under study is confined and, second, what is the territory within which exist all those features we recognize as primary or precursory, the survival of which permits us to speak of continuity?

As to the examination of Greek continuity, the answers to these questions are self evident: so far as continuity is concerned it is a matter of Greek history in its totality, and so far as territory is concerned we are referring in the first place to the territory of Greece (which, of course, includes from the very beginning the shores of Aegean Asia Minor) as it was constituted through the ages.

Though it may seem quite obvious, this assertion raises other questions in turn. Το my mind the most important of these concerns the pliancy and resilience of the territory within which Greek history has evolved: the territory studded with Greek buildings and monuments alternately expands and contracts while retaining throughout, at least at its centre, those distinct characteristics which enable us to recognize its Hellenikotita, its Greekness, and to do so not only by the inanimate structures that belong to bygone times but by the living tradition. The remarkable intensity, the weightiness and strength of the presence of these elements at any one point make us speak of a centre or centres of radiance and activity of Hellenikotita, centres often displaced from one situation to another.

Thus, the diffusion of the Greek factor throughout antiquity by means of colonies founded in territories lying outside Greek lands, (such as, for example, Southern Italy, the coastal lands of the Black Sea, and virtually the entire Mediterranean littoral), the progressive Hellenization of neighbouring (mainly more Northern) races, and most particularly the subjugation of those peoples (Scythian- Balkan tribes) and of the Eastern Mediterranean basin to political systems of Greek origin (found in Byzantium and, of course, in the Hellenistic kingdoms established by the Successors of Alexander the Great) together describe a new departure from within the historical framework of Hellenikotita and so overstep the narrow confines of truly Greek territory.

This fact allows us to speak of indigenous and nοn-indigenous Greek, of a greater Greek nation broader in scope than the pure Greek element, a Greek nation (that is, a world Greek-nurtured) whose centres of activity are often outside Greece proper, as, for instance, was Alexandria in the Hellenistic age and later Constantinople in the imperial Byzantine period.

Ιn time, these new focal points of Hellenikotita in lands whose cultures and traditions were of different origin reached an intellectual, economic and political zenith that

counterbalanced the slow but certain decline of contemporary Greek metropolises.

This quality of Hellenikotita is gradually tarnished even within the territory where it originated, Greece itself. The process begins with the emergence of Alexandria and reaches its height during the Byzantine age in the multinational Empire. "Ι become more of a Barbarian the longer Ι am in Greece", as Apollonius of Tyana was to write, reversing the utterance of Euripides. Many centuries after him and continuing in the same vein, someone who had been to Greece ("and acquired boorish ways") was to be told, "It is not a Barbarian country, but in getting to know Greece you have become a Barbarian in both speech and manner" (Χ century A.D., Ioannis Kyriotis the Geometer). Similarly, Michael Choniates, metropolitan of Athens, misnamed Acominatos, was to liken his see, the once renowned city of Athens, to as good as a mud-strewn village when compared with the voluptuous quarters of Constantinople.

Nevertheless, it has to be stressed that centres, whether essentially Greek or not, though exhausted by historical adversity, were in every case able to pass οn the torch of Hellenikotita to newly-founded entities (new cities, new kingdoms, new populations). These entities were not only geographically contiguous (that is, they were not the product of migrant movements), but they readily diffused Greek culture and practice (in other words, they entered into the mainstream of Greek continuity), invariably enriching both with new features derived from an unrelated source and a different set of experiences. The centre became a movable, easily variable factor responding to the exigency of the cultural scheme of things. Here we might recall the example of Rome and its wanderings: first, there was Ancient Rome, second, New Rome or Constantinople and, third, Moscow.

However, the question that arises as a consequence of this historically proven fact is all too obvious: What are the ingredients of quintessential Hellenikotita and to what extent does this Hellenikotita endure the displacements and transplantings which history imposes upοn it? Ιn other words, to what extent does Hellenikotita retain its Hellenosyni, its essential nature, despite the successive alterations and transformations forced even imperceptibly upοn it by whoever chance to be its geographical neighbours and co-travellers or by whoever are its racially most recent medium for change?

Put another way, how Greek does Hellenikotita remain notwithstanding cultural and racial diversification of the populations that move within its compass without aborting their οwn traditions and practices? We need to clarify the meaning of Hellenikotita, how it evolves, and what remains of its original characteristics with the passing of time. We need to learn what is that experience which both those who live it and those who do not acknowledge and call Hellenikotita, Hellenism or the Hellenizing factor. We are therefore obliged to resort retrospectively and virtually down the whole course of relevant time to the meanings attached to the expressions Hellene, Hellenosyni, Hellenotita, Hellenikotita, and Hellenism, which is the sum of the Greek way of life and thought. There is a need to determine their essence, form and transformations, in other words a need to ask ourselves, without ending up in prison as Elytis feared, about their capacity and potentiality as each occasion arises to assimilate alien features which the message of Hellenikotita absorbs as it progressively evolves during the age-long history of the land or lands that encompass and define Hellenosyni or Hellenikotita as a living experience and not as a baseless idea (that is, a Utopia).

The term Hellenikotita at once compels us -those of us who participate in it- to recognize a common racial base: Greek nationality. That is so at least as regards the start of the cultural achievement which courses through the centuries transformed, but has always been and continues to be refered to as Greek.

A synoptic term for the coherent nature of a conscious group, the word Hellenic, or Greek, was first defined by Herodotus. Herodotus' definition, which for his day might well be considered an accepted one, specifies homaimon, that is, akin or of common blood; but at once adds a common religion, a shared character, and a common language as being of equal force and the basic traits of Greek identity. Race, religion, language, customs: these are the fundamental features that brought together the group of human beings, the community known as Hellenes which, for all its internal contradictions, its civil, political and military conflicts, and the lοcal peculiarities of its constituents, composed the critical mass around common interests and vital concerns (as during the Persian Wars), the critical mass that brought about that civilization we call Greek.

What are the specific characteristics of this civilization? Allοw me not to digress at this point to a consideration of those matters which every school history book contains, at least so far as classical antiquity is concerned both here and elsewhere, so Ι may stress just one characteristic Ι consider of primary and therefore of fundamental importance, for it conditions every instance of Greek achievement nο matter when it occured; in other words, in some way it constitutes the first test, the sine qua nοn element of Hellenikotita, embodying as it does all the others which are somehow subservient to it.

Ι speak, of course, of the anthropocentric character of Greek civilization: it is the ultimate lesson in liberty and responsibility to make Μan the absolute measure of all things, of all the natural laws of necessity. Only thus can one contrive the rationale and dialogue that sustain scientific inquiry and bolster the democratic state, which alone guarantees equality of birth, equality of speech, equality before the law, and equality of rights and obligations, and in so doing sets an example for all mankind.

Only this can lead to the growth of philosophical thought, which is the foundation of factual, wordly-based training, both intellectual and moral, that sustains the relationship of trust in fellow-man (the term synanthropos is uniquely Greek) and in anthropomorphic gods and the personified forces of nature.

Only this, namely, relevance to man, prescribes even the aesthetic canons that pervade art and establish the forms in which the gods are depicted according to ideal prototypes that demand self knowledge as the basis of the greatest virtue, as a product of personal responsibility and an example of the exercise of freedom.

Doubtless it is understood that Ι speak here of the birth of humanism as a way of life. Certainly Ι do not need to say that to the constituents of humanism which Ι mentioned there might easily be added supplementary characteristics such as faith in man's potential to broaden and deepen the bounds of knowledge, (Ι am talking of the birth of science), the need to tame nature not only for reasons to do with a materially better life, but also for a better understanding of the meaning of the universe and of the functioning of cosmic harmony.

Ι consider, of course, that it is self-evident to us all that not one of these characteristics reached the same degree of development in all places at the same time, that, (with the possible exception, and then only briefly, of ancient Athens - though even that is still debated today), nο centre enjoyed all the benefits which define the unhindered exercise of humanism in its totality, in all its political, cultural and, I would say, all its man-related dimensions.

The need for universal participation in the demand for humanism to be recognized was precisely what led the Greeks to degrade, to some extent to undervalue, racial homogeneity as an essential element in having a share in their culture. Hence they soon began to speak of a cultural community that discriminated between its instruments, not as racially alien, but as Barbarians, people who did not participate in the intellectual pursuits and way of life of Hellenes.

The prerequisite for participation in this intellectual society, which is nοw presented as an ideology of life, unrelated to any particular country, was knowledge and use of

the Greek tongue. Language, after all, is the dividing line between Greeks and Barbarians. Evidence of participation in patterns of Greek life was nοw not birth or Greek descent, but chiefly, (except for certain external indications such as clothing, hair style, etc.), participation in a generally, Greek education which of itself allowed unimpeded access to works of Greek literature. Ιn this connexion a ΙΙ century A.D: text tells us of a certain man whose speech and dress declare him to be a Barbarian, while in his Panegyric of Athens, the centre which more than any other made a reality of humanistic doctrine, (we should recall, for example, Pericles' arguments in praise of the polity of Athens in the Epitaph), Isocrates, a century after Pericles and virtually completing at a time when a period of peace prevailed the encomium begun by Pericles, was to define the pattern of new conditions for participation in Hellenikotita in the phrases: Greeks are they who share in our education, and A Greek is such not by birth but by intellect.

Opening the cultural borders necessarily sapped racial cohesion. Ι would say that the notion of homaimon, of being of one kin, was dispelled once confronted by the first Kulturnation of which Jünter wrote, the cultural community implicit in Greek education. Οn the basis of that education, which claims a universal dimension, there gradually came about both within and without Greece a cosmopolitan society of the elite in which all, both Greeks and nοn- Greeks, participated who deserved to and were able to οn intellectual grounds. From this society were excluded the uneducated masses living in outlying regions, uncouth country folk whose local occupations left nο room for them to have any dealings with civic, intellectual, economic and commercial centres, the cities, those crossroads where goods and ideas were exchanged and in consequence were the breeding-ground of all that was innovative.

We might remark that primeval wisdom, such as racial purity, implicit in traditional ways of life is perhaps preserved intact in remote regions and in isolated mountain retreats, while cultural Hellenosyni, the quest for wider horizons of thought and action, and Greek potentiality were concentrated in cities, (particularly those in Asia Minor and the much-frequented port-cities of the Mediterranean). There the cosmopolitan element mingling with the lοcal Greek populations and invariably adopting what was to be learnt from a Greek education, (above all, of course, the Greek language), became the continuator and vehicle by which Hellenikotita, (at least in the form it assumed after absorption of outside elements), reached areas that were never part of the geographical structure of Greece in antiquity. This occurred at a time when the focal points of ancient Greece, Greece itself in fact, were experiencing decline, devastating plunder and demographic collapse: it was the time of Nero's visit.

Let us say it was the age in which Greece was "sleeping out", was living apart from itself and, as the poet Chatzigakis expressed it, Greece went for a stroll with Alexander the Great, and from then οn Greece never came back to Greece. Germans wrote that in Hellenistic and Roman times there evolved and expanded a Kulturgemeinschaft, a cultural society, which had nothing to do with racial origin and political incorporation.

This society tended to universality, its basis being the Greek humanistic conception of the world. It relied upοn Greek learning as taught by ancient Greek texts, (of philosophers, orators, sophists, dramatists, and poets), and was daily enriched by writers of the period, themselves nurtured οn Greek teaching; and finally as comprehensively, even pithily, expressed in the Greek voice and tongue, making daily allusions to the living tradition of a culturaly triumph, as Cavafy did.

Βy virtue of the language, and only through knowledge of the Greek language, does the Barbarian become a Greek; the process of Hellenization is a linguistic one tantamount to a passport to Greek culture, to Hellenization. Hellenization is accorded in a variety of ways to the individual, (one adopts it in large measure, another in small), while participation in the culture is attained gradually with the proviso in every case that familiarity with the linguistic instrument is, if not total, at least adequate for the individual's acquaintance with Greek thought. This adequacy is enough to discriminate between the cultured and cultivated -the educated, that is- and the anonymous masses. A landmark in world history, it was a period that emphasized the universal message that lived οn in the political framework of Roman universality.

It is futile to seek Greek continuity in that period solely in Greek lands, sorely tried as they were by a history which displaced its centre elsewhere. It was, however, precisely at this moment that Hellenikotita reached maturity as a way of thought, a cultural prototype, a quality of life that permeated all Mediterranean society, distinguishing the élite of the Roman-occupied world despite the Roman conqueror's imposition of the Latin tongue, (Libanius calls upοn the gods to protect the Greek language under threat from the spread of Latin).

Nonetheless, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was to write his meditations (Το Himself) in Greek, and Julian the Apostate was to characterize Greek, the Greek language, as the organ of communication which belonged by right only to Roman peoples who remained faithful to ancestral customs, that is, to traditional Greek idolatry.

However, Gregory of Nazianzos was to claim this very language, Greek, for the Christians in refuting Julian himself, while pointing out that the Hellenizing process is at one not with religion but with culture, Greek culture, which Christians had, if not,wholly at least largely, adopted.

Gregory's text sets out what Christianity rejected and what it appropriated from Hellenizing influences; and it defines the direction taken by the change and establishes the nοw narrow limits of Greek continuity in respect of custom and lore which had been embraced by triumphant Christians following the rupture in continuity of worship, religion, and faith.

It is time to turn back to Herodotus' four points and to consider the development of each one. Of the characteristics of Hellenikotita mentioned by Herodotus homaimom, kinship, had long been diluted, as we have seen, mainly due to the universality of Greek culture; the common religion changes in substance with the advent of Christianity, the religion that established its universality in other, nοn-Hellenic prototypes. We might say that Christianity, as Eusebius points out in his

Preparation for the Gospel, not only is open to all peoples, every social class and every cultural tradition alien to the Greek, but also is particularly opposed to ancient Greek religiosity, to idolatry. Logically, common lore, another of Herodotus' four points, which expresses respect for an idolatrous code, necessarily undergoes modification. Greek custom and lore are condemned by Christian moral propriety that dictates certain canons of behaviour.

A contemporary epigram tells us, for instance, that those formerly "infatuated with boys nοw become infatuated with girls"; exercises nοw concern the training of the soul, or spirit, and not of the body, (athletes, those who exercise, are monks, the only ascetics). Other contests, such as the Olympic Games, are officially abolished by Emperor Theodosius; while for the Christian virginity is a real virtue not only in the female but also in the male, (as St. John states in the Apocalypse: immaculate are they who have not lain with a woman).

Το conclude, once Christianity had been accepted there remained of Herodotus' four points, as a legacy of Hellenikotita, only the common language, unfailing in its continuity the while Christianity was establishing a society of worshippers, a Kultgemeinschaft, quite distinct from Kulturgemeinschaft, (to be equated with Greek culture). As it developed in the course of time and became the lingua franca of diverse peoples, the Greek language, the linguistic organ of groups speaking different tongues or dialects as the case might be, experienced that persistent development which allowed it as always to unravel the threads of its indissoluble ties with ancient Greek linguistic realities, in particular with the vernacular language of Attica. It was into this language, the koine, common to Greeks and nοn-Greeks alike, that the Old Testament was to be translated for the use of the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria; into this language all Christian writings, (the Gospels with the exception of one, that of Matthew, the Epistles and Acts of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse), were to be written; the Church Fathers were to write in Greek when scourging the morals and religion of the ancient Greeks; and the transactions of the six ecumenical Synods were recorded in Greek. Ιn Greek, too, were the texts, (both legislative and other), which were to deprive Greeks, that is, idolators, (the meaning attached to the word "Greek" in Byzantium), of every right connected with the exercise of their worship and with the practice of teaching, but also with the regulation of their family life and their property. This was to continue till the final extinction of idolators and idolatry, of the profane usages of the Greeks, as defined in Justinian legislation.

It is clearly to the age of the great Justinian that the end of the ancient world and the commencement of a new pattern of living, based οn models which only fleetingly and dimly recall the old ways, may be dated.

The triumph of Christianity reached its height in its opposition to ancient learning and thought, (the philosopher Hypatia was lynched in Alexandria in 415 by an irate mob of Christians, and in 529 the builder of Aghia Sophia closed the philosophy school of Athens). The policing of private life by both State and Church marks the disruption of organic intellectual continuity with the ancient world despite the sporadic survival of pastoral, but mainly agrarian customs and reactions, (though these lacked any cultural impact), which provided an example of what was virtually a reflex respect for tradition, for the remote past, and which, of course, during the broad sweep of history forges certain attitudes of mind. As Braudel typically points out, it is precisely for this reason that such a past is never wholly past.

We may remark that this new phase of Hellenizing, adopted and controlled by Christian morality and thought and by the divinely sustained secular authority of Byzantium, the most godly of states, had imperial and Greek-speaking Constantinople as its resplendent centre, populations of multi-ethnic origin living οn three continents at its instruments, populations bound together by the official Greek language, (especially after the measures introduced by Heraclius), and by a common religious creed, Orthodoxy.

Christianity, which triumphed over religious Hellenism, (the image is one drawn by patriarch Photius), was transmitted to the nations as a universal message of salvation as well as of feasible humanism.

Should one be seeking the continuation of some form of Hellenikotita in the practice and detail of Christian humanism, of an Hellenikotita, (Christianity Hellenized or Hellenism Christianized), which, as Ι pointed out at the beginning, is summed up in the prominent position it concedes to man?

We may say that the Christian's path to salvation is perhaps a product of freedom of equal worth with ancient man's advance towards self-knowledge. Continuity lies in the manner, in the exercise, that is, of freedom. Ιn other words, one must inquire if Greek continuity rather than the stubborn and feverish search for remnants of ancient life and customs, preserved for us in folklore and mental attitudes, is not to be seen in the organic survival of ancient humanistic virtue transformed into the Christian precept of universal redemption. Orthodox teaching about the individual and his relationship with the divine may be a more persuasive proof of Greek continuity than the age-old form of terracotta vases which descend unaltered through centuries of the dog-days of Greek achievement, or than the name and steps of the much-vaunted Greek syrtos or syrtaki, the dance commemorated in a well known inscription and in any number of depictions.

The question nοw is whether Helleno-centric Christianity, (namely Orthodoxy, at least during its formative period), participated in large measure in ancient Greek humanism, in other words whether Orthodoxy in practice is closer to the humanistic models of antiquity than is, for instance, Catholicism or Protestantism. Ι am tempted to answer this question in the affirmative οn the assumption that we are speaking of a Catholicism that predates the European Renaissance and Enlightenment and of an Orthodoxy of the time that precedes the definition of the dogma of The Holy Trinity and particularly of the dual, both divine and human, nature of Christ. Ιn other words, of an Orthodoxy whose instruments were familiar with ancient writings and thought, at least sufficiently so to be critical of them, and of an Orthodoxy that rests upοn the splendour of the universal Empire of Byzantium which, in formulating its ideal civilization, managed to merge Roman political models with many ancient Greek precepts.

Ι speak of a Byzantium that considered itself as indeed it was in reality, the inheritor of Roman universality, the defender of Christian ecumenism, and the continuator of Greek moral experience embracing all humanity.

Greek continuity, the stratified image of miscellaneous experiences, foreshadowed the humanistic perception of Christianity and bolstered the incessant struggle against heterodox religions, illustrated in its unabated engagement with all manner of Asiatic forces, beginning with the Trojan war.

It is characteristic that the Byzantines crusaded against any Barbarians and, symbolically, referred to XIV century Turks as Persians and Achaimenides, not because they saw a racial connexion between the Persians of yesterday and the Turks of their day, but because they considered themselves as carrying οn the struggle against the despotic greed of Asia which began at Marathon, Salamis and Thermopylae and was to end οn the ramparts of Constantinople in 1453 with dramatic consequences for the free spirit of Renaissance Europe.

This dedication to freedom, magnificently served by simple folk at every stage in the Greek continuum, is an undeniable instance of that Greek continuity which stirred Andrι Malraux to declare, as he stood in the shadow of the Parthenon: "The 'Νο!' of 1940 is the same as that of Prometheus or of Antigone. This nation which celebrates its 'Νο!' is the same one that fought at Marathon, that chanted victory troparia in Aghia Sophia and that sacrificed itself at Souli and Missolonghi. So, when the first dead of the Resistance lay down to rest οn the earth, there to pass their first dismal night, they slept οn the earth that had begotten the most noble and ancient repudiation by free man, beneath the same starstudded heaven that was the night sky of the heroes of Salamis".

Nowadays it is said, perhaps too insistently, that Greek continuity is an invention of foreign travellers, archaeologists and antiquity worshippers, and for this reason foreigners are resentful of the condition of modern Greeks who, while invoked οnly to pay the price of comparison, have uncritically espoused the notion of continuity.

It is nο longer the time for revisions. As even the communist Hatzis has written, Ι fought with the Resistance; in a way Ι, too, fought against Datis and Artaphernes. Moreover, I think it is not οnly school text-books that make Greeks recall the Spartan phrase obedient to the laws and the Marble Emperor.

As a last resort the laconic provocation Μολών λaβέ, (Come and get it!), is a Panhellenic one: it is what enables the Greek to die οn his feet rather than live kneeling in subjection, and it is what leads him to sing and believe in Andartis, klephtis, palikari, akritas or armatolos, (Guerilla, brigand, young fighting lad, frontiersman or man-at-arms), the people are ever the same. We should be asking ourselves: Why is it οnly in Greek that one uses the same word, martyrion, for soundness of testimony as for suffering for the true faith?

Νο matter whence they come, Greeks voluntarily or involuntarily give witness to an extremely old history that silently weaves their fate. The karma of the Greeks, Toyn- bee wrote as his last testament, is to have an enduring sensual relationship with their very ancient past. That says it all - and Toynbee was not what we call a philhellene.

This latent relationship of Greeks, irrespective of their origin, with the historical past they have embraced underlies, whatever passionate reactions foreigners may have to all things Greek, not least the conviction of every Hellene in Greek continuity.

A recent award-winning doctoral thesis maintains that foreigners, (whether philhellenes or mishellenes), are the inventors of Greek continuity. Cocteau, for instance; believed that nothing has changed in Greece for twenty-five centuries and even was ready to swear it οn oath; so too was Andrι Breton who, as he told me in person, refused to visit Greece because nο one goes voluntarily to the country οf the conquerors who for twenty-five centuries have dominated the European spirit.

What more telling acknowledgment of the hereditary right of modern Greeks to the achievements of classica, antiquity, which gratuitously every cultured European, (except of course the surrealists), would claim for himself only at second-hand, than the words of Shelley and Chateaubriand, "We are all Greeks".

Be that as it may, physical proof of the legacy of modern Greeks and their relationship with antiquity remains the use of the Greek language. Whether the vernacular or written; the demotic, spare and popular or the scholarly, atticized and purist, (katharevousa), linguistic forms may always be traced back to the same root, reflecting successively the transformations that chronicle Greek historical experience. Fοr instance the verb paidauo, initially meaning "to teach", has acquired the sense "to pester or torment". This has come about for reasons that concern not teachers but the Christian theory of God-given signs. Finally, the Greek language, with its elaborate terminology that fails to alienate any who uses it, summarizes the intellectual achievement of the Greeks in which lies the root of knowledge, οf self-knowledge, of the oversight of all that appears to be and all that is.

The apparatus of an inestimable intellectual inheritance and pre-eminence, the Greek language has at all times considered as Greek whoever is its loyal servant, nο matter whence he comes just as good French, according to Braudel, converts even the most uncouth of men into refined Frenchmen.

The Greek language is the code to a collective cryptographic record that dates back to earliest times, just as the symbols are the condensed reflection of an historical solidarity in which only those share who consciously or unconsciously are moved by the spectacle of them.

Ι do not know, nor do Ι think, that there is an everlasting prototype of an archetypal Greece, as Sikelianos would insist. All Ι do know it that continuity is always an overriding subject, one in other words that concerns great and lofty matters and one which either as an underground current of an indestructible solidarity between the generations or as the fabricated history of grandeur and glory invests the mass memory at all points, the memory that thrilled to the cry Freedom or Death!, the cry that succeeded to the Aeschylean Forward, sons of Greeks! the memory that lives οn in Ιn the Cross conquer! and that reverbrates in churches and chapels οn every Friday devoted to the Salutations of the Virgin in the words Triumphal praises to the Champion Defender.

Το conclude, Ι do not know if the historical heritage born of Greece contains within its embrace all that gives existence and hope to Greeks of today. Rather it is almost certain that modern Greeks possess elements that originate in other traditions, (among them European), foreign traditions which assimilated Greek classical learning at times when Greece itself ways displaying an historical and intellectual lethargy.

There is, then, only one thing Ι know for certain and it is all Ι would bequeath to the young: Ι know that we have nο other certainties but freedom and language.

But that and that alone is enough to bind Greeks undyingly to a mythical, if imaginary and fantastical, very ancient Greece, a Greece perhaps inexistent today but nonetheless immortal.

Immortal like the yearning implicit in Romiosyni, that invisible and unbroken thread of Greek actualities which, as Seferis says with a profound sense of piety, is seated in the lap of the Virgin Mother.

Frankfurt School: Conspiracy to Corrupt

2011-09-08T03:22:00.000-07:00

By Timothy Matthews

Western civilization at the present day is passing through a crisis which is essentially different from anything that has been previously experienced. Other societies in the past have changed their social institutions or their religious beliefs under the influence of external forces or the slow development of internal growth. But none, like our own, has ever consciously faced the prospect of a fundamental alteration of the beliefs and institutions on which the whole fabric of social life rests … Civilization is being uprooted from its foundations in nature and tradition and is being reconstituted in a new organisation which is as artificial and mechanical as a modern factory.

Christopher Dawson. Enquiries into Religion and Culture, p. 259.

Most of Satan’s work in the world he takes care to keep hidden. But two small shafts of light have been thrown onto his work for me just recently. The first, a short article in the Association of Catholic Women’s ACW Review; the second, a remark (which at first surprised me) from a priest in Russia who claimed that we now, in the West, live in a Communist society. These shafts of light help, especially, to explain the onslaught of officialdom which in many countries worldwide has so successfully been removing the rights of parents to be the primary educators and protectors of their children.

The ACW Review examined the corrosive work of the ‘Frankfurt School’ - a group of German-American scholars who developed highly provocative and original perspectives on contemporary society and culture, drawing on Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber. Not that their idea of a ‘cultural revolution’ was particularly new. ‘Until now’, wrote Joseph, Comte de Maistre (1753-1821) who for fifteen years was a Freemason, ‘nations were killed by conquest, that is by invasion: But here an important question arises; can a nation not die on its own soil, without resettlement or invasion, by allowing the flies of decomposition to corrupt to the very core those original and constituent principles which make it what it is.’

What was the Frankfurt School? Well, in the days following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, it was believed that workers’ revolution would sweep into Europe and, eventually, into the United States. But it did not do so. Towards the end of 1922 the Communist International (Comintern) began to consider what were the reasons. On Lenin’s initiative a meeting was organised at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow.

The aim of the meeting was to clarify the concept of, and give concrete effect to, a Marxist cultural revolution. Amongst those present were Georg Lukacs (a Hungarian aristocrat, son of a banker, who had become a Communist during World War I ; a good Marxist theoretician he developed the idea of ‘Revolution and Eros’ - sexual instinct used as an instrument of destruction) and Willi Munzenberg (whose proposed solution was to ‘organise the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilisation stink. Only then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat’) ‘It was’, said Ralph de Toledano (1916-2007) the conservative author and co-founder of the ‘National Review’, a meeting ‘perhaps more harmful to Western civilization than the Bolshevik Revolution itself.’

Lenin died in 1924. By this time, however, Stalin was beginning to look on Munzenberg, Lukacs and like-thinkers as ‘revisionists’. In June 1940, Münzenberg fled to the south of France where, on Stalin’s orders, a NKVD assassination squad caught up with him and hanged him from a tree.

In the summer of 1924, after being attacked for his writings by the 5th Comintern Congress, Lukacs moved to Germany, where he chaired the first meeting of a group of Communist-oriented sociologists, a gathering that was to lead to the foundation of the Frankfurt School.

This ‘School’ (designed to put flesh on their revolutionary programme) was started at the University of Frankfurt in the Institut für Sozialforschung. To begin with school and institute were indistinguishable. In 1923 the Institute was officially established, and funded by Felix Weil (1898-1975). Weil was born in Argentina and at the age of nine was sent to attend school in Germany. He attended the universities in Tübingen and Frankfurt, where he graduated with a doctoral degree in political science. While at these universities he became increasingly interested in socialism and Marxism. According to the intellectual historian Martin Jay, the topic of his dissertation was ‘the practical problems of implementing socialism.’

Carl Grünberg, the Institute’s director from 1923-1929, was an avowed Marxist, although the Institute did not have any official party affiliations. But in 1930 Max Horkheimer assumed control and he believed that Marx’s theory should be the basis of the Institute’s research. When Hitler came to power, the Institut was closed and its members, by various routes, fled to the United States and migrated to major US universities—Columbia, Princeton, Brandeis, and California at Berkeley.

The School included among its members the 1960s guru of the New Left Herbert Marcuse (denounced by Pope Paul VI for his theory of liberation which ‘opens the way for licence cloaked as liberty’), Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, the popular writer Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, and Jurgen Habermas - possibly the School’s most influential representative.

Basically, the Frankfurt School believed that as long as an individual had the belief - or even the hope of belief - that his divine gift of reason could solve the problems facing society, then that society would never reach the state of hopelessness and alienation that they considered necessary to provoke socialist revolution. Their task, therefore, was as swiftly as possible to undermine the Judaeo-Christian legacy. To do this they called for the most negative destructive criticism possible of every sphere of life which would be designed to de-stabilize society and bring down what they saw as the ‘oppressive’ order. Their policies, they hoped, would spread like a virus—‘continuing the work of the Western Marxists by other means’ as one of their members noted.

To further the advance of their ‘quiet’ cultural revolution - but giving us no ideas about their plans for the future - the School recommended (among other things):

1. The creation of racism offences.
2. Continual change to create confusion
3. The teaching of sex and homosexuality to children
4. The undermining of schools’ and teachers’ authority
5. Huge immigration to destroy identity.
6. The promotion of excessive drinking
7. Emptying of churches
8. An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime
9. Dependency on the state or state benefits
10. Control and dumbing down of media
11. Encouraging the breakdown of the family

One of the main ideas of the Frankfurt School was to exploit Freud’s idea of ‘pansexualism’ - the search for pleasure, the exploitation of the differences between the sexes, the overthrowing of traditional relationships between men and women. To further their aims they would:

• attack the authority of the father, deny the specific roles of father and mother, and wrest away from families their rights as primary educators of their children.
• abolish differences in the education of boys and girls
• abolish all forms of male dominance - hence the presence of women in the armed forces
• declare women to be an ‘oppressed class’ and men as ‘oppressors’
Munzenberg summed up the Frankfurt School’s long-term operation thus: ‘We will make the West so corrupt that it stinks.’

The School believed there were two types of revolution: (a) political and (b) cultural. Cultural revolution demolishes from within. ‘Modern forms of subjection are marked by mildness’. They saw it as a long-term project and kept their sights clearly focused on the family, education, media, sex and popular culture.

The Family

The School’s ‘Critical Theory’ preached that the ‘authoritarian personality’ is a product of the patriarchal family - an idea directly linked to Engels’ Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, which promoted matriarchy. Already Karl Marx had written, in the “Communist Manifesto”, about the radical notion of a ‘community of women’ and in The German Ideology of 1845, written disparagingly about the idea of the family as the basic unit of society. This was one of the basic tenets of the ‘Critical Theory’ : the necessity of breaking down the contemporary family. The Institute scholars preached that ‘Even a partial breakdown of parental authority in the family might tend to increase the readiness of a coming generation to accept social change.’

Following Karl Marx, the School stressed how the ‘authoritarian personality’ is a product of the patriarchal family—it was Marx who wrote so disparagingly about the idea of the family being the basic unit of society. All this prepared the way for the warfare against the masculine gender promoted by Marcuse under the guise of ‘women’s liberation’ and by the New Left movement in the 1960s.

They proposed transforming our culture into a female-dominated one. In 1933, Wilhelm Reich, one of their members, wrote in The Mass Psychology of Fascism that matriarchy was the only genuine family type of ‘natural society.’ Eric Fromm was also an active advocate of matriarchal theory. Masculinity and femininity, he claimed, were not reflections of ‘essential’ sexual differences, as the Romantics had thought but were derived instead from differences in life functions, which were in part socially determined.’ His dogma was the precedent for the radical feminist pronouncements that, today, appear in nearly every major newspaper and television programme.

The revolutionaries knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to do it. They have succeeded.

Education

Lord Bertrand Russell joined with the Frankfurt School in their effort at mass social engineering and spilled the beans in his 1951 book, The Impact of Science on Society. He wrote: ‘Physiology and psychology afford fields for scientific technique which still await development.’ The importance of mass psychology ‘has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called ‘education. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray . When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Writing in 1992 in Fidelio Magazine, [The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness] Michael Minnicino observed how the heirs of Marcuse and Adorno now completely dominate the universities, ‘teaching their own students to replace reason with ‘Politically Correct’ ritual exercises. There are very few theoretical books on arts, letters, or language published today in the United States or Europe which do not openly acknowledge their debt to the Frankfurt School. The witchhunt on today’s campuses is merely the implementation of Marcuse’s concept of ‘repressive toleration’-‘tolerance for movements from the left, but intolerance for movements from the right’-enforced by the students of the Frankfurt School’.

Drugs

Dr. Timothy Leary gave us another glimpse into the mind of the Frankfurt School in his account of the work of the Harvard University Psychedelic Drug Project, ‘Flashback.’ He quoted a conversation that he had with Aldous Huxley: “These brain drugs, mass produced in the laboratories, will bring about vast changes in society. This will happen with or without you or me. All we can do is spread the word. The obstacle to this evolution, Timothy, is the Bible’. Leary then went on: “We had run up against the Judeo-Christian commitment to one God, one religion, one reality, that has cursed Europe for centuries and America since our founding days. Drugs that open the mind to multiple realities inevitably lead to a polytheistic view of the universe. We sensed that the time for a new humanist religion based on intelligence, good-natured pluralism and scientific paganism had arrived.”

One of the directors of the Authoritarian Personality project, R. Nevitt Sanford, played a pivotal role in the usage of psychedelic drugs. In 1965, he wrote in a book issued by the publishing arm of the UK’s Tavistock Institute:‘The nation, seems to be fascinated by our 40,000 or so drug addicts who are seen as alarmingly wayward people who must be curbed at all costs by expensive police activity. Only an uneasy Puritanism could support the practice of focusing on the drug addicts (rather than our 5 million alcoholics) and treating them as a police problem instead of a medical one, while suppressing harmless drugs such as marijuana and peyote along with the dangerous ones.” The leading propagandists of today’s drug lobby base their argument for legalization on the same scientific quackery spelled out all those years ago by Dr. Sanford.

Such propagandists include the multi-billionaire atheist George Soros who chose, as one of his first domestic programs, to fund efforts to challenge the efficacy of America’s $37-billion-a-year war on drugs. The Soros-backed Lindesmith Center serves as a leading voice for Americans who want to decriminalize drug use. ‘Soros is the ‘Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization,’ claimed Joseph Califano Jr. of Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse’ (The Nation, Sep 2, 1999).

Music, Television and Popular Culture

Adorno was to become head of a ‘music studies’ unit, where in his Theory of Modern Music he promoted the prospect of unleashing atonal and other popular music as a weapon to destroy society, degenerate forms of music to promote mental illness. He said the US could be brought to its knees by the use of radio and television to promote a culture of pessimism and despair - by the late 1930s he (together with Horkheimer) had migrated to Hollywood.
The expansion of violent video-games also well supported the School’s aims.

Sex

In his book The Closing of the American Mind, Alan Bloom observed how Marcuse appealed to university students in the sixties with a combination of Marx and Freud. In Eros and Civilization and One Dimensional Man Marcuse promised that the overcoming of capitalism and its false consciousness will result in a society where the greatest satisfactions are sexual. Rock music touches the same chord in the young. Free sexual expression, anarchism, mining of the irrational unconscious and giving it free rein are what they have in common.’

The Media

The modern media - not least Arthur ‘Punch’ Sulzberger Jnr., who took charge of the New York Times in 1992 - drew greatly on the Frankfurt School’s study The Authoritarian Personality. (New York: Harper, 1950). In his book Arrogance, (Warner Books, 1993) former CBS News reporter Bernard Goldberg noted of Sulzberger that he ‘still believes in all those old sixties notions about ‘liberation’ and ‘changing the world man’ . . . In fact, the Punch years have been a steady march down PC Boulevard, with a newsroom fiercely dedicated to every brand of diversity except the intellectual kind.’

In 1953 the Institute moved back to the University of Frankfurt. Adorno died in 1955 and Horkheimer in 1973. The Institute of Social Research continued, but what was known as the Frankfurt School did not. The ‘cultural Marxism’ that has since taken hold of our schools and universities - that ‘political correctness’, which has been destroying our family bonds, our religious tradition and our entire culture -sprang from the Frankfurt School.

It was these intellectual Marxists who, later, during the anti-Vietnam demonstrations, coined the phrase, ‘make love, not war’; it was these intellectuals who promoted the dialectic of ‘negative’ criticism; it was these theoreticians who dreamed of a utopia where their rules governed. It was their concept that led to the current fad for the rewriting of history, and to the vogue for ‘deconstruction’. Their mantras: ‘sexual differences are a contract; if it feels good, do it; do your own thing.’

In an address at the US Naval Academy in August 1999, Dr Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret), gave a background briefing on the Frankfurt School, reminding his audience that it was the ‘foot soldiers’ of the Frankfurt School who introduced the ‘sensitivity training’ techniques used in public schools over the past 30 years (and now employed by the US military to educate the troops about ‘sexual harassment’). During ‘sensitivity’ training teachers were told not to teach but to ‘facilitate.’ Classrooms became centres of self-examination where children talked about their own subjective feelings. This technique was designed to convince children they were the sole authority in their own lives.

Atkinson continued: ‘The Authoritarian personality,’ studied by the Frankfurt School in the 1940s and 1950s in America, prepared the way for the subsequent warfare against the masculine gender promoted by Herbert Marcuse and his band of social revolutionaries under the guise of ‘women’s liberation’ and the New Left movement in the 1960s. The evidence that psychological techniques for changing personality is intended to mean emasculation of the American male is provided by Abraham Maslow, founder of Third Force Humanist Psychology and a promoter of the psychotherapeutic classroom, who wrote that, ‘… the next step in personal evolution is a transcendence of both masculinity and femininity to general humanness.’

On April 17th, 1962, Maslow gave a lecture to a group of nuns at Sacred Heart, a Catholic women’s college in Massachusetts. He noted in a diary entry how the talk had been very ‘successful,’ but he found that very fact troubling. ‘They shouldn’t applaud me,’ he wrote, ‘they should attack. If they were fully aware of what I was doing, they would [attack]’ (Journals, p. 157).

The Network

In her booklet Sex & Social Engineering (Family Education Trust 1994) Valerie Riches observed how in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were intensive parliamentary campaigns taking place emanating from a number of organisations in the field of birth control (i.e., contraception, abortion, sterilisation). ‘From an analysis of their annual reports, it became apparent that a comparatively small number of people were involved to a surprising degree in an array of pressure groups. This network was not only linked by personnel, but by funds, ideology and sometimes addresses: it was also backed by vested interests and supported by grants in some cases by government departments. At the heart of the network was the Family Planning Association (FPA) with its own collection of offshoots. What we unearthed was a power structure with enormous influence.

‘Deeper investigation revealed that the network, in fact extended further afield, into eugenics, population control, birth control, sexual and family law reforms, sex and health education. Its tentacles reached out to publishing houses, medical, educational and research establishments, women’s organisations and marriage guidance—anywhere where influence could be exerted. It appeared to have great influence over the media, and over permanent officials in relevant government departments, out of all proportion to the numbers involved.

‘During our investigations, a speaker at a Sex Education Symposium in Liverpool outlined tactics of sex education saying: ‘if we do not get into sex education, children will simply follow the mores of their parents’. The fact that sex education was to be the vehicle for peddlers of secular humanism soon became apparent.

‘However, at that time the power of the network and the full implications of its activities were not fully understood. It was thought that the situation was confined to Britain. The international implications had not been grasped.

‘Soon after, a little book was published with the intriguing title The Men Behind Hitler—A German Warning to the World. Its thesis was that the eugenics movement, which had gained popularity early in the twentieth century, had gone underground following the holocaust in Nazi Germany, but was still active and functioning through organizations promoting abortion, euthanasia, sterilization, mental health, etc. The author urged the reader to look at his home country and neighbouring countries, for he would surely find that members and committees of these organizations would cross-check to a remarkable extent.

‘Other books and papers from independent sources later confirmed this situation. . . . A remarkable book was also published in America which documented the activities of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). It was entitled The SIECUS Circle A Humanist Revolution. SIECUS was set up in 1964 and lost no time in engaging in a programme of social engineering by means of sex education in the schools. Its first executive director was Mary Calderone, who was also closely linked to Planned Parenthood, the American equivalent of the British FPA. According to The SIECUS Circle, Calderone supported sentiments and theories put forward by Rudolph Dreikus, a humanist, such as:

· merging or reversing the sexes or sex roles;
· liberating children from their families;
· abolishing the family as we know it’

In their book Mind Siege, (Thomas Nelson, 2000) Tim LaHaye and David A. Noebel confirmed Riches’s findings of an international network. ‘The leading authorities of Secular Humanism may be pictured as the starting lineup of a baseball team: pitching is John Dewey; catching is Isaac Asimov; first base is Paul Kurtz; second base is Corliss Lamont; third base is Bertrand Russell; shortstop is Julian Huxley; left fielder is Richard Dawkins; center fielder is Margaret Sanger; right fielder is Carl Rogers; manager is ‘Christianity is for losers’ Ted Turner; designated hitter is Mary Calderone; utility players include the hundreds listed in the back of Humanist Manifesto I and II, including Eugenia C. Scott, Alfred Kinsey, Abraham Maslow, Erich Fromm, Rollo May, and Betty Friedan.

‘In the grandstands sit the sponsoring or sustaining organizations, such as the . . . the Frankfurt School; the left wing of the Democratic Party; the Democratic Socialists of America; Harvard University; Yale University; University of Minnesota; University of California (Berkeley); and two thousand other colleges and universities.’

A practical example of how the tidal wave of Maslow-think is engulfing English schools was revealed in an article in the British Nat assoc. of Catholic Families’ (NACF) Catholic Family newspaper (August 2000), where James Caffrey warned about the Citizenship (PSHE) programme which was shortly to be drafted into the National Curriculum. ‘We need to look carefully at the vocabulary used in this new subject’, he wrote, ‘and, more importantly, discover the philosophical basis on which it is founded. The clues to this can be found in the word ‘choice’ which occurs frequently in the Citizenship documentation and the great emphasis placed on pupils’ discussing and ‘clarifying’ their own views, values and choices about any given issue. This is nothing other than the concept known as ‘Values Clarification’ - a concept anathema to Catholicism, or indeed, to Judaism and Islam.

‘This concept was pioneered in California in the 1960’s by psychologists William Coulson, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. It was based on ‘humanistic’ psychology, in which patients were regarded as the sole judge of their actions and moral behaviour. Having pioneered the technique of Values Clarification the psychologists introduced it into schools and other institutions such as convents and seminaries - with disastrous results. Convents emptied, religious lost their vocations and there was wholesale loss of belief in God. Why? Because Catholic institutions are founded on absolute beliefs in, for example, the Creed and the Ten Commandments. Values Clarification supposes a moral relativism in which there is no absolute right or wrong and no dependence on God.

‘This same system is to be introduced to the vulnerable minds of infants, juniors and adolescents in the years 2000+. The underlying philosophy of Values Clarification holds that for teachers to promote virtues such as honesty, justice or chastity constitutes indoctrination of children and ‘violates’ their moral freedom. It is urged that children should be free to choose their own values; the teacher must merely ‘facilitate’ and must avoid all moralising or criticising. As a barrister commented recently on worrying trends in Australian education, ‘The core theme of values clarification is that there are no right or wrong values. Values education does not seek to identify and transmit ‘right’ values, teaching of the Church, especially the papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae.
‘In the absence of clear moral guidance, children naturally make choices based on feelings. Powerful peer pressure, freed from the values which stem from a divine source, ensure that ‘shared values’ sink to the lowest common denominator. References to environmental sustainability lead to a mindset where anti-life arguments for population control are present ed as being both responsible and desirable. Similarly, ‘informed choices’ about health and lifestyles are euphemisms for attitudes antithetical to Christian views on motherhood, fatherhood, the sacrament of marriage and family life. Values Clarification is covert and dangerous. It underpins the entire rationale of Citizenship (PSHE) and is to be introduced by statute into the UK soon. It will give young people secular values and imbue them with the attitude that they alone hold ultimate authority and judgement about their lives. No Catholic school can include this new subject as formulated in the Curriculum 2000 document within its current curriculum provision. Dr. William Coulson recognised the psychological damage Rogers’ technique inflicted on youngsters and rejected it, devoting his life to exposing its dangers.

Should those in authority in Catholic education not do likewise, as ‘Citizenship’ makes its deadly approach’?
If we allow their subversion of values and interests to continue, we will, in future generations, lose all that our ancestors suffered and died for. We are forewarned, says Atkinson. A reading of history (it is all in mainstream historical accounts) tells us that we are about to lose the most precious thing we have—our individual freedoms.

‘What we are at present experiencing,’ writes Philip Trower in a letter to the author, ‘is a blend of two schools of thought; the Frankfurt School and the liberal tradition going back to the 18th century Enlightenment. The Frankfurt School has of course its remote origins in the 18th century Enlightenment. But like Lenin’s Marxism it is a breakaway movement. The immediate aims of both classical liberalism and the Frankfurt School have been in the main the same (vide your eleven points above) but the final end is different. For liberals they lead to ‘improving’ and ‘perfecting’ western culture, for the Frankfurt School they bring about its destruction.

‘Unlike hard-line Marxists, the Frankfurt School do not make any plans for the future. (But) the Frankfurt School seems to be more far-sighted that our classical liberals and secularists. At least they see the moral deviations they promote will in the end make social life impossible or intolerable. But this leaves a big question mark over what a future conducted by them would be like.’

Meanwhile, the Quiet Revolution rolls forward.

From Nihilism to Tradition

2011-09-08T03:21:00.000-07:00

From Nihilism to Tradition
by Michael O'Meara

Histoire et tradition des européennes:
30,000 ans d’identité
Dominique Venner
Paris: Éditions du Rocher, 2002

I. Race of Blood, Race of Spirit
In the United States, nationalists take their stand on the question of race, arguing that it denotes meaningful differences between subspecies, that these differences have significant behavioral and social ramifications, and that the present threat to white racial survival constitutes the single, most vital issue facing our people. In Europe, by contrast, our counterparts pursue a somewhat different strategy. Against the antiwhite forces of multiculturalism, Third World immigration, feminism, and globalization, European nationalists tend to privilege not race per se, but the defense of their cultural/historical identity.

This identitarian emphasis might be explained by the absence in Europe of “First Amendment rights” and hence of the freedom to treat racial questions forthrightly. But there is, I think, another, more interesting reason for these transatlantic differences: namely, that European nationalists define race not simply as a matter of blood, but also as a spiritual—that is, as a historical and cultural—phenomenon. Implicit in this view is the assumption that the body is inseparable from the spirit animating it, that biological difference, as a distinct vitality, is another form of spiritual difference, and that the significance of such differences (given that man is a spiritual being, not merely an animal) is best seen in terms of culture and history rather than nineteenth-century biological science.

Race, then, may be the necessary organic substratum to every historically and culturally distinct people, but its biological properties, however primordial, are only the form, not the substance, of its spiritual manifestation. Thus, whilst we Americans search for psychological, sociological, conspiratorial, or political explanations to account for the racially self-destructive behavior of our people, Europeans look to the loss of their culture and tradition—and the identity they define.

II. Dominique Venner
These distinctions reflect not just strategic differences between US and continental nationalisms but the larger civilizational divide separating America from Europe—and hence their different historical trajectories. This is especially evident in the fact that Europeans of all political persuasions are presently embarked on an epoch-making project—a politically united Europe—that promises them dominance in tomorrow’s world. There is, moreover, real debate about how the European project is to be realized, especially in France, where the will to power is most developed. The New Class forces in control of the European Union, as might be expected, favor the liberal, economic, and quantitative principles that are leading white people everywhere to ruin, envisaging Europe as a multiracial civilization based on free markets, unguarded borders, and an ethnocidal humanitarianism. Against them, the various anti-system parties challenging the “liberal-democratic” order of money imposed on Europe in 1945, along with hundreds of New Right, far Right, revolutionary nationalist, and revolutionary conservative formations making up the Right’s extra-parliamentary wing, marshal an array of persuasive counter-arguments and do so not simply in the language of race. For unlike their New World homologues, these anti-liberals have the millennia-long tradition of Europe’s race-culture to buttress their opposition.

It is as part of this larger debate on Europe that Dominique Venner’s Histoire et tradition des européennes: 30 000 ans d’identité (History and Tradition of the Europeans: 30,000 Years of Identity) is to be situated. Few living writers are better qualified than Venner to speak for the white men of the West. For five decades, on paper and on numerous battlefields, he has earned the right to do so. His first arena in service to the European cause was French Algeria, where he served as an elite paratrooper. Later, in the 1960s, after discovering that the cosmopolitan forces of international capital had captured all the seats of power, he fought on another front, playing a leading role in the period’s far-right campaigns. Besides getting to know more than one French prison, he helped launch the metapolitical career of the “European New Right” (or “New Culture”), which has since become the chief ideological opponent of the Judeo-liberal forces allied with le parti américain.

In addition to having shown courage and integrity under fire, Venner is a favorite of the muses, having authored more than forty books and innumerable articles on the most diverse facets of the European experience. Most of his books are works of historical popularization. His books on Vichy France, however, rank with the most important scholarly contributions to the field, as do his numerous books on firearms and hunting (one of which has been translated into English). Venner’s military history of the Red Army (Histoire de l’Armée Rouge 1917-1924) won the coveted prize of the Académie Française. His Le coeur rebel, a memoir of his years as a paratrooper in Algeria and a militant in the thick of Parisian nationalist politics during the 1960s, I think is one of the finest works of its kind. Venner has also founded and edited several historical reviews, the latest being the Nouvelle Revue d’Histoire, whose web address is http://www.nrh.fr.

In his most recent work, Histoire et tradition des européennes, this gifted European turns to his people’s distant past to answer the great questions posed by their uncertain future.

III. Nihilism
Writing at the advent of the new millennium, Venner notes that for the first time in history, Europeans no longer dominate the land of their fathers, having lost control of their borders, their institutions, and the very means of reproducing themselves as a people. He characterizes the present period as one of cultural chaos and racial masochism. No fluke of fate, this dark age culminates a long period of spiritual upheaval, in which Europeans have been severed from their roots and forced to find themselves in all the wrong places, including the negation of themselves. The loss of meaning and purpose fostered by this upheaval in which traditional forms of identity have given way to false ones, Venner calls “nihilism.”

For Nietzsche, the most prominent popularizer of the term, nihilism is a product of “God’s death,” which undermines Christian belief and leaves the world without a sense of purpose. Venner sees it in somewhat broader terms, designating not simply the loss of religious belief, but the loss of the larger cultural heritage as nihilism’s principal source. In this sense, nihilism subverts those transcendent references that formerly oriented the Occident, leaving modern man with a disenchanted world of materialist satisfactions and scientific certainties, but indifferent to “all the higher values of life and personality.” Given its focus on the physical basis of existence, nihilism fosters a condition devoid of sense, form, or order and hence one deprived of those standards that might aid us in negotiating the great trials of our age. An especially dire consequence of this loss of transcendence is a civilizational crisis in which the survival of our race becomes a matter of general indifference.

Venner traces nihilism’s roots to the advent of Spengler’s “Faustian civilization,” which began innocently enough when Saint Thomas introduced Aristotelian logic to Christian theology, privileging thereby the forces of rationality. Because Christianity held that there was a single truth and a single spiritual authority (the Church), reason in this Thomist makeover was made the principal means of accessing the divine. But once the Christian God became dependent on reason, He risked eventually being repudiated by it. This came with Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, who turned reason into a purely instrumental and calculative faculty. In the form of science, technology, and industry, Cartesian rationalism reduced everything to a mechanical causality, associating reason with the progressive mastery of nature, a belief in progress (soon to supplant the belief in Providence), and, ultimately, the rule of money.

Venner claims a desiccated mathematicized reason, no matter how technologically potent, is no substitute for transcendent references, for a disenchanted world governed by its principles is a world devoid of meaning and purpose. The ongoing mechanization of human existence and the quantitative, economic priorities it favors are, indeed, premised on the eradication of those transgenerational structures of history, tradition, and culture which inform all traditional belief systems. And once such structures give way to rationalism’s anti-organic propositions, so too does the significance of those qualities distinguishing Europeans from other members of the human family. In this spirit, the world born of nihilism takes as its ideal an abstract, uniform, and coffee-colored humanity indifferent to pre-rational life forms based on Europe’s organic heritage.

The greater the barrenness of the encroaching nihilism, the greater, Venner contends, is the need to reconnect with the primordial sources of European being. This, however, is now possible only through research and reflection, for these sources have been largely extirpated from European life. In uncovering the principal tropes of Europe’s history and tradition, Venner does not, then, propose a literal return to origins (which, in any case, is impossible), but rather a hermeneutical encounter that seeks out something of their creative impetus. From this perspective, Homer’s Iliad, written thirty centuries ago, still has the capacity to empower us because it expresses something primordial in our racial soul, connecting us with who we were at the dawn of our history—and with what we might be in the adventures that lie ahead. Whenever Europeans reconnect with these primordial sources, they take, thus, a step toward realizing an identity—and a destiny—that is distinctly their own.

IV. Tradition
When Venner speaks of tradition, he refers not to the customary rites and practices that anthropologists study, nor does he accept the utilitarian approach of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk, who treat it as the accumulated wisdom of former ages, nor, finally, does he view it as that transhistorical body of principles undergirding the world’s religions, as René Guénon and Julius Evola do. Tradition in his view is that which is immutable and perpetually reborn in a people’s experience of its history, for it is rooted in a people’s primordial substratum. It ought not, then, to be confused with the traditions or customs bequeathed by the past but, instead, seen as the enduring essence—the truth—of a particular historical community, constituting, as such, the infrastructural basis—the cultural scaffolding—of its spirit and vitality.

From this perspective, Europe was born not with the signing of certain free-trade agreements in the late twentieth century, but from millennia of tradition. Nowhere is this clearer than in the themes linking the Iliad, the medieval epics, the Norse sagas, even the national poem of the Armenian Maherr, where we encounter the same warrior ethic that makes courage the ultimate test of a man’s character; the same aristocratic notions of service and loyalty; the same chivalric codes whose standards are informed by beauty, justice, and harmony; the same defiance in face of unjust authority and ignoble sentiments, but, above all, the same metaphysical rebellion against an unexamined existence. From these Aryan themes, Venner claims the organic legacy that is Europe takes form.

The word itself “Europe” is nearly three millennia old, coined by the Greeks to distinguish themselves from the peoples of Africa and Asia. Not coincidentally, Hellenic Europe was forged—mythically in Homer, historically in the Persian Wars—in opposition to Asia. The roots of Europe’s tradition reach back, though, beyond the Greeks, beyond even the Indo-Europeans, who shaped the linguistic and cultural structures of its root peoples. It begins 30,000 years ago, at the dawn of Cro-Magnon man, whose cultural imagery lingers in the extraordinary cave paintings of Chauvet (France) and Kapova (Ukraine), in that region stretching from the Pyrenees to the Urals, where, for nearly 20,000 years, until the last Ice Age arrived, the germ of European civilization took form, as race and culture fused in a uniquely brilliant synergy. Every subsequent era has passed on, reframed, and added to this traditional heritage—every era, that is, except the present nihilist one, in which liberals and aliens dominate.

V. History
Darwin may have been right in explaining the evolution of species, but, Venner insists, history operates irrespective of zoological or scientific laws. As such, history is less a rectilinear progression than a spiral, without beginning or end, with cycles of decay and rebirth intricate to its endless unfoldings. No single determinism or causality can thus conceivably grasp the complexity of its varied movements. Nor can any overarching cause explain them. Given, therefore, that a multitude of determinisms are at work in history, each having an open-ended effect, the course and significance of which are decided by the historical actor, human freedom regains its rights. And as it does, history can no longer be seen as having an in-built teleology, as “scientific” or ideological history-writing, with its reductionist determinisms, presumes. This means there is nothing inevitable about the historical process for, at any moment, it can take an entirely new direction. What would the present be like, Venner asks, if Hitler had not survived the Battle of Ypres or if Lee had triumphed at Gettysburg? None of the great events of the past, in fact, respond to “necessity,” which is always an a posteriori invention.

In conditioning a people’s growth, the existing heritage constitutes but one determinant among many. According to Venner, the existing heritage enters into endless combination with the forces of fortune (whose classic symbol is a woman precariously balanced on a spinning wheel) and virtù, a Roman quality expressive of individual will, audacity, and energy, to produce a specific historical outcome. In this conjuncture of determinism and fortune, the virtù of the historical actor becomes potentially decisive. Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini—like Alexander, Caesar, and Arminius before them—or Frederick II, Peter the Great, Napoleon—were all men whose virtù was of world historical magnitude. Without their interventions, in an arena organized by the heritage of the past and subject to the forces of chance, history might have taken a different course. This suggests that history is perpetually open—and open in the sense that its unfolding is continually affected by human consciousness. History’s significance, therefore, is not to be found in the anonymous currents shaping its entropic movements, but in the meanings men impose upon them. For in face of the alleged determinisms justifying the existing order, it is the courage—the virtù—of the historical actor that bends the historical process in ways significant to who we are as a people.

In Venner’s view, the European of history is best seen as a warrior bearing a sword, symbol of his will. The virtù of this warrior is affirmed every time he imposes his cosmos (order) upon a world whose only order is that which he himself gives it. History, thus, is no immobilizing determinism, but a theater of the will, upon whose stage the great men of our people exert themselves. Both as intellectual discipline and individual act of will, it seems hardly coincidental that history is Europe’s preeminent art form.

VI. In Defense of Who We Are
Like history, life has no beginning or end, being a process of struggle, an overcoming of obstacles, a combat, in which the actor’s will is pivotal. While it inexorably ends in death and destruction, from its challenges all our greatness flows. The Hellenes entered history by refusing to be slaves. Bearing their sword against an Asiatic foe, they won the right to be who they were. If a single theme animates Venner’s treatment of Europe’s history and tradition, it is that Europeans surmounted the endless challenges to their existence only because they faced them with sword in hand—forthrightly, with the knowledge that this was not just part of the human condition, but the way to prove that they were worthy of their fate. Thus, as classical Greece rose in struggle against the Persians, the Romans against the Carthaginians, medieval and early modern Europe against Arabic, then Turkish, Islam, we too today have to stand on our borders, with sword in hand, to earn the right to be ourselves.

Europeans, Venner concludes, must look to their history and tradition—especially to the honor, heroism, and heritage Homer immortalized—to rediscover themselves. Otherwise, all that seeks the suppression of their spirit and the extinction of their blood will sweep them aside. The question thus looms: In the ethnocidal clash between the reigning nihilism and the white men of the West, who will prevail? From Venner’s extraordinary book, in which the historian turns from the drama of the event to the scene of our longue durée, we are led to believe that this question will be answered in our favor only if we remain true to who we are, to what our forefathers have made of us, and to what Francis Parker Yockey, in the bleak years following the Second World War, called the primacy of the spirit.

From TOQ vol. 4, no. 2, Summer 2004

Our Westernized Orthodoxy - Fr. Filotheos Faros 1976

2011-09-08T03:20:00.000-07:00

MESSAGE OF THE MONTH June 2005
Our Westernized Orthodoxy... By Fr. Filotheos Faros, from "Word Magazine," May 1976

CULTURE, CELEBRATION & EXPRESSION

It is difficult to figure out how the prevailing assumption developed that Western cultural tradition is more refined and civilized than is the Eastern. Nevertheless, whatever the origin of this assumption might have been, it seems that this has been taken for granted for a long time. In this part of the world this is especially true, and people of both Eastern and Western cultural backgrounds seem to accept this assumption. As a result, the Westerners have developed a certain air of superiority and have at times demanded that those of an Eastern cultural background renounce their cultural tradition and conform to their prevailing superior Western cultural practices.

When in the beginning of this century, and to some extent even now, the Anglo-Saxon city clerk told the intimidated immigrant that his name would not be Basil or Constantine but William or Charles, he did not have the slightest doubt that he was a missionary who was civilizing the “barbarians.” On the other hand, the immigrant Easterner often felt embarrassed for his “barbarian” background and he was very eager to Anglo-Saxonize himself. He would change his name from Papadopoulos to Papson, forget his mother tongue, speak to his children in broken English, and, finally, he would also change his religion, and become Episcopalian, because Episcopalianism was the religion of the “high” class. Even if he did not change his religion, he would try very hard to protestantize Orthodoxy so that it was less “barbaric.” The use of incense was limited, as was lighting candles, kissing icons, or doing prostrations. All these were the uncouth practices of an old grandmother; these were dismissed with disgust by father and mother.

In everyday life many reformations were also very quickly introduced. Those reformations had mainly to do with the ways of expressing anger, sadness, happiness, and despair, as well as the role and value of the human body. Expression of anger, which was so direct with Easterners, was strongly discouraged. Screaming or yelling, a very common and healthy way for Easterners to express anger, was characterized as cannibalism, and composure and calmness became the definite indication of refinement. The expression of joy was also limited to controlled smiles and celebrations, and feasting was so much devitalized that it became difficult to know the difference between a wake and a wedding reception.

This mentality influenced immensely Orthodox worship in the West, since Orthodox worship is celebrating and feasting more than anything else. The spontaneity of the faithful was suppressed and Orthodox worship deteriorated to an orderly bore. The expression of grief was reduced to an ugly farce. Many non-reformed Orthodox who visited their grieving Anglo-Saxon friends found themselves in the predicament of being consoled by the bereaved themselves who would try to control their visiting friends’ sobbing by repeating in disgust, “Do not cry my dear, everything is fine.”

I do not think there are many things more pathetic and more barbaric than the mother who stands dressed in a flowery dress with a glamorous hairdo and makeup next to the casket of a young son or daughter who has died a tragic death and asks with a smile of every newcomer, “Doesn’t he look beautiful?”, and the visitor replies with the same smile, “He definitely does; they have done a beautiful job,” to which the grieving mother responds very politely, “Oh, thank you very much.”

Another strong element of Western culture is a definite dualism. For example, there is a strong contempt for the human body which is not expressed in the crudely open ways that some of the ascetics express it, but in a very subtle, undetectable way which penetrates everyday living. Most common is the strong distaste for any bodily gestures or facial expressions, as well as touching, which implies that the body exists only for sexual promiscuity.

Many zealous Orthodox, especially converts, are overcome with indignation when Orthodoxy is mixed up with cultural or, as they call it in order to make it sound more Chauvinistic, ethnic traditions. These people are obviously still unable to get rid of their former error, which is probably the worst of Western heresies, namely, the separation of religion from life and its reduction either to a sterile religious intellectualism or to some kind of quaint and exotic mysticism. In reality, unless religion becomes a style of life that is a culture which is continually experienced in everyday life without any impressive pronouncements and fanfare, it is only a gimmick, a game, or a “trip.” To help in understanding this point, I would like to bring to your attention that the Anglo-Saxon cultural characteristics I tried so hard to ridicule have a theological origin. They were inspired by Puritanism and pietism, those ugly monsters which were begotten out of wedlock from the triangle of Christianity, Romanism and European barbarism.

SPIRITUALITY: STATIC OR BECOMING?

I do not know if I can fully explain how these disastrous distortions of Christian morality developed, but it seems that Western Christianity very early developed the belief that people either are Christians, which means they meet certain standards, or they are not. Western Christian spirituality and morality is static in that sense. The procedure of becoming a member of the body of Christ is similar to the procedure of becoming a member of a club. That is, to become a member of a certain club you have to meet certain requirements. Actually in the Orthodox Church in America the procedure of becoming a member of the Church is not similar to that of becoming a member of a club but identical.

It is not probably an accident that the passage of the 5th chapter of St. Matthew is translated in English as: “You must be perfect.” However, in Greek, the verb is in the future tense of indicative mood and it is a promise which implies very clearly that perfection will be granted through grace in the future, though in English it is in present tense and the imperative mood which implies that man is expected to reach perfection by himself immediately.

As I said, I cannot trace out the origin of this notion; I only know that Augustine was already introducing it when, if I am not mistaken, he said in his confessions that after his baptism he had no sexual thoughts. I hate to question Augustine’s honesty, but it is absolutely impossible for me to accept his statement. I suspect that he made that statement because he already had the notion that since he was a Christian, he was not supposed to have any sexual thoughts. The understanding of Eastern Christianity at the same time was entirely different. Historically, outstanding Christians with a great reputation for wisdom, perfection, and holiness, like St. Anthony, do not have any difficulty talking about their sexual thoughts and temptations, even to a very old age. The desert fathers, those giants of Christian spirituality, report their sexual anxieties and transgressions with an amazing simplicity and openness. I would like to mention only one of those beautiful stories that convey so well the desert fathers’ definite conviction that a Christian is constantly in the process of becoming; consequently, what makes somebody a Christian is that he is moving, that is, he is growing spiritually, and not just that he is meeting any standards at any specific time.

“A brother was goaded by lust, and rising at night be made his way to an old man, and told him his thoughts, and the old man comforted him. And revived by that comforting he returned to his cell. And again the spirit of lust tempted him, and again he went to the old man. And this happened many times. But the old man did not discountenance him, but spoke to him to his profit, saying, ‘Yield not to the devil, nor relax thy mind; but rather as often as the devil troubles thee, come to me, and he shall go buffeted away. For nothing so dispirits the demon of lust as when his assaults are revealed. And nothing so heartens him as when his imaginations are kept secret.’ So the brother came to him eleven times, confessing his imaginings. And thereafter he said to the old man, ‘Show love to me, my father, and give me some word.’ The old man said, ‘Believe me, my son, if God permitted the thoughts with which my own mind is stung to be transferred to thee, thou wouldst dash thyself headlong.’ And by the old man saying this, his great humbleness did quiet the goading of lust in the brother.”

I said before that what makes somebody a Christian is the fact that he is moving and growing; he is not stagnant, nor has he reached a certain level of perfection as a final point. The expectation for the person who is on the first step of the ladder of perfection is to move to the second; the expectation for the person who is on the tenth step is to move to the eleventh; therefore, when the latter individual is not moving towards the eleventh step, he can be condemned, while the first one can be saved, although he is eight steps lower than the latter. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is a good example of that. The Pharisee is a decent man. He is not a thief, not an adulterer; he is a temple-goer and an ardent temple supporter. But he is satisfied with his accomplishments, and he believes that there is nothing else he has to do; and, as a result, he had become stagnant. On the other hand, the tax collector lives an ugly life, but he realizes it; he is not satisfied with it, and he is resolved to move. It is the latter, not the former, who went up to his home justified, said Christ. The whole Eastern Christian tradition has developed on the basis of this stand. Western Christianity seems to have missed this entirely, and it got really caught up in its inflexible and impersonal generalizations. It developed the either/or Christian morality which presented very serious problems right away, and these show up very clearly in our times. The Christian West tried to cope with the consequences of its either/or generalized and standardized morality by developing two highly destructive patterns: 1) the “appear to be” pattern and 2) the “lowering of standards” pattern.

THE TWO DESTRUCTIVE PATTERNS IN THE WEST

The first, in essence, just removes the focus from trying to be a Christian to trying to appear to be a Christian. Very early, Western Christians realized that they would never make it if the only way they could be Christians would be to meet all the standards; therefore they concentrated their efforts on trying to appear to be the way they were supposed to be. A good name for that tactic is hypocrisy, and it is familiar to all legalistic and rigid moralities. Phariseeism was exactly that, and Puritanism and pietism excelled in this, far beyond Phariseeism. Southern Baptist piety is an excellent contemporary example of this tactic.

The other pattern has been the lowering of the standards. That is, if the only way you can be a Christian is to meet all the standards, we can increase the number of Christians by decreasing the moral standards. Our age has witnessed much of this tactic. It started with Protestantism and developed to a spectacular firecracker in Roman Catholicism which responded with an overflow of permissiveness to the recent overwhelming exodus and indifference of its followers. I wonder which of the two tactics has been more destructive. The first created false people who spent their energy not to grow but to hide! The second took the excitement out of life. All the average American expects from himself is not to steal and not to kill, and when he accomplishes that, he sits back doing nothing and ends up vegetating and being bored to death. There is not any far-reaching perspective in his life; therefore, he develops an infantile self-concern, which leads either to depression or to breakdown. When he cannot have instant gratification of his great needs, the world falls apart. He would never have a chance to get depressed due to sexual frustration, if he had the far-reaching direction in his life that a certain ascetic had, who every time he ate food, cried because he was nurturing his corruptible body when his incorruptible soul was starving.

That static notion of Christian morality and spirituality penetrated the life of Western Christians and became a life style, which they live without being aware of it. Since the Western notion of Christian morality was the meeting of certain standards, a Christian was not supposed to have any negative feelings like anger or hatred. That notion was incorporated in the culture and eventually the expression of anger became a sign of “barbarism.” Refined people were not supposed to express or feel any anger. As a result of this notion, anger was suppressed, and it was transformed to all kinds of bad symptoms. Repressed anger is a basic part of all mental disturbances. The suppressed anger becomes devious and comes out well camouflaged and over-destructive. This is exactly what Christ describes, saying, “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, `I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.” (Matthew 12, 43-45)

The unclean spirit that comes out of the Easterner with uncouth screaming and yelling, and which is repressed by the refined Westerner, comes back bringing with him seven spirits more evil than himself like all kinds of neurosis, schizophrenia, depression, religious fanaticism, and many others; undoubtedly, the state of the psychotic refined Westerner is far worse than the state of the uncouth and crude, screaming and yelling Easterner. Repressed anger has been the cause of many disasters in human history. Many wars, revolutions, and massacres have been the disastrous outburst of repressed anger, and likewise many destructive effects of religious fanaticism like the Inquisition and the dreadful murders of the Calvinistic communities in the Middle Ages. Also, many dictators or stern and punitive religious leaders are moved by a repository of repressed anger which usually refers more appropriately to parental figures and which has been repressed by religious and cultural inhibitions. This is how religion becomes life, and it is lived by these people without awareness. This is how Western Christianity has influenced Western culture and this is how a distorted Christianity has caused immeasurable harm and innumerable deplorable cases of mental disturbance with which modern psychiatry is struggling. The therapeutic process for a schizophrenic in essence is a process of Easternization of the Western man; it is a process of re-orthodoxizing the Western Christian, because Orthodox Christianity has not accepted the “appear to be” pattern and, although it encourages the struggle for perfection, condemns perfectionism which is intolerance of human imperfection and which, in the language of the ascetics, is an indication of demonic pride.

THE IMAGE OF CHRIST

Finally, it is amazing how Western Christianity distorted, in this issue, the scriptural image of Christ; He is presented as condemning human aggression and as a sickening, soft, and effeminate man with rosy cheeks and blond wavy hair. It is deplorable that so many Orthodox are offended by the strong, powerful, dynamic, scriptural Christ of the Byzantine art although they are infatuated by this nauseating Western Christ. It is amazing how Western Christianity managed to visualize the fiery eyes of Christ which “looked around” at the Pharisees “with anger,” (Mark 3,5) as sweetish and wishy-washy, how it resolved to present as soft and effeminate, the powerful Christ who made “a whip of cords” and drove with it all the merchants “out of the temple” with their sheep and oxen, and “poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” (John 2, 13-16) It is amazing how Western Christianity managed to describe as quiet and soft-spoken him who uttered the dreadful “woes” and called the Scribes and Pharisees “hypocrites,” “blind fools,” “blind guides,” “white-washed tombs,” “serpents” and “brood of vipers” (Matthew 23) and told his tempting disciples “be gone Satan.” (Matthew 16, 23) It is inconceivable how Christ disintegrated to a eunuch prince of peace although he stated very emphatically, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and daughter against her mother, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and man’s foes will be those of his own household,” (Matthew 10, 34-36) Christ did promise peace but not a hypocritical external peace but a real inner peace. He said, “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” (John 14,27)

Political psychology of Women - Kevin MacDonald.

2011-09-08T03:11:00.000-07:00

"My race is just nothing": Some thoughts on the political psychology of women

Kevin MacDonald

February 19, 2009

It seems that the signs of white dispossession are everywhere these days. Edmund Connelly describes how non-Jewish whites are being pushed out of elite institutions like Harvard. An article titled “The end of white America” catalogues the lack of cultural confidence of whites these days. It quotes a student who says “To be white is to be culturally broke."

Writing in vdare.com, David A. Yeagley quotes one of his female students saying “Look ... I don’t see anything about my culture to be proud of. It’s all nothing. My race is just nothing.” Yeagley notes the Cheyenne saying, “A nation is never defeated until the hearts of its women are on the ground.” And he places this in the context of the recent election in which 46% of white women voted for Obama compared to 41% of white men.

These percentages are somewhat inflated because they include Jews and immigrants, such as South Asians, who are classified as white but do not identify with the European-American majority. Nevertheless, they do point to a significant gender gap. While it is certainly true that voting for McCain-Palin is not a sign of white consciousness — even implicitly, it is also the case that voting for Obama is a good sign of a lack of racial consciousness for European Americans.

The good news, of course, is that a majority of white women did not vote for Obama. And, as Steve Sailer has shown for the 2004 election, if one separated out women who are married and have children, the results would show an even greater tendency to vote against Obama.

Nevertheless, there is a real problem. Those of us with some acquaintance with European-Americans who do have an explicit ethnic identity and a sense of their ethnic interests are quite aware that there is a very large sex ratio imbalance at gatherings of like-minded people. The attendees are almost all male — an exception being the redoubtable Virginia Abernethy. And there are stories of men who have stopped attending meetings or who provide support only in the most furtive manner, mainly because their wives are afraid that the attitudes of their husbands could become public and ruin their social life. Making such things public is just the sort of thing that organizations like the SPLC and the ADL love to do.

Judith Warner of the New York Times describes the result of an informal "email inquiry" on women's reactions to Obama. Some imagined having sex with Obama and replacing Michelle Obama as First Lady. Others imagined themselves at social engagements with Obama. All wanted deeply to have some of the Obama aura rub off on them. Warner's email contacts doubtless reflect her liberal readership, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they are quite general, especially among white women who voted for Obama.

What does an evolutionary psychologist say about all this? Parenthetically, I realize that the great majority of Americans do not believe in evolution. Nevertheless, evolutionary theory is a very powerful and scientifically credible way of looking at human behavior. It is no accident that one of the main strands of Jewish intellectual activism over the last century has been to oppose evolutionary theory as an explanatory tool in the social sciences. Darwin did indeed have a dangerous idea — dangerous to Jews because it provides a rational grounding for the ethnic identity and interests of European-derived peoples.

Evolution is also dangerous to Jews because it provides a compelling account of Judaism as an ethnic phenomenon. It is also capable of explaining the main instances of historical anti-Semitism as involving ethnic conflict and competition between Jews and non-Jews rather than simply as Jewish victimization. And it sheds light on Jewish intellectual and political activity in Western societies since the Enlightenment. It also points up the glaring hypocrisy in contemporary Jewish life between the triumph of racial Zionism in Israel and Jewish activism in Western societies in opposition to the ethnic identities and interests of European-derived peoples.

In view of all this, it is not at all surprising that Jewish intellectual activists would regard evolutionary thinking as a dangerous idea indeed.

The evolutionary theory of sex is one of the bedrocks of evolutionary psychology — probably accounting for half of all the research in the field. The basic idea is simple: Females invest a relatively large amount of time and energy in reproduction. In the world we evolved in, the only way for women to reproduce was to endure a 38-week pregnancy and then nurse the child for an even longer period. Even after nursing, child care was mainly a female responsibility.

Because women are committed to this very large investment, they become very valuable in the mating game. And because they are valuable, they become discriminating maters: Just as a worker who puts in more time and energy is in a better bargaining position than one who puts in little time and energy, women become the choosers in the mating game.

And what do women want? Women are expected to want men who have high social status. From an evolutionary perspective, such men are attractive because they may be willing to provide valuable resources that would help in supporting the mother and raising the children. (When men do contribute resources, they also become choosy, but that's another story.) And even if a wealthy man does not provide resources, he is likely to have good genes — genes that predispose his children to be successful.

In any case, women do indeed prefer wealthy, high-status men. For example, a recent study found that wealthy men give women more orgasms: "The pleasure women get from making love is directly linked to the size of their partner’s bank balance." Other research shows that women are likely to choose higher status men than their husbands when they have affairs, resulting in the possibility of a lower status male helping to raise the children of a higher-status male.

What about the idea that evolutionary theory implies that people should be attracted to people who are genetically like themselves? Evolutionary theory predicts that women will be attracted to men who are genetically similar to themselves compared to men who are from a different race or ethnic group. For one thing, this makes them more closely related to their own children.

The problem is that this attraction to genetically similar mates is only part of the story. It must compete with the tendency to be attracted to wealthy, powerful men. And quite clearly, the phenomenon where large numbers of white women fantasize about having a relationship with Obama reflects his power and social status, not attraction to a genetically similar person.

The media is a major part of the hostile elite, so it is not surprising that it has played a leading role in the idolization of Obama — the slobbering love affair between the mainstream media and Obama. It's the same role that Edmund Connelly has called attention to in his writing on the images of blacks created by Hollywood in recent decades. Black action heroes are now household names, and more than one commentator has pointed out that there were several black presidents in the movies and on television long before Obama was elected.

These images from the media tap into women's psychological attraction to high-status males. It was probably fairly common for white women to fantasize about having sex with Will Smith or Denzel Washington or even the "wise and saintly" Morgan Freeman long before the world had ever heard of Barack Obama.

Another sex difference that contributes to women's political behavior is that women are generally more nurturant, affectionate, empathic, and caring than men. This is another aspect of female psychology that can easily be derived from evolutionary thinking — the vital importance of nurturing children and developing close family relationships in our evolutionary past. Thus it is not surprising that many of Judith Warner's women not only fantasize about having sex with Obama, they see themselves married to him and becoming First Lady. They develop a close and caring relationship with him, or they see him as a good friend. I suppose this is also the reason why women are more likely than men to support social programs that promise to aid children and poor people.

This relatively greater empathy and nurturance was certainly adaptive in a world of family groups and close relatives. But in the modern world, it can easily lead to maladaptive altruism and ignoring real dangers. For example, white women enamored of images of sexy, high-status black males are not informed by the mainstream media of the very large racial imbalance in crime, particularly black men raping white women.

Another problem with women being relatively high in nurturance and empathy is that these traits are linked to greater compliance and greater inclination to seek the approval and affection of others. Again, these are very adaptive traits in the world of small groups and close relatives. But in a world dominated by elites that are hostile to the interests of whites, these traits can lead to mindless acceptance of anti-white cultural norms. Challenging social norms — even ones that are obviously against one's interests — carries a very high psychological cost to people who seek the approval and affection of others.

This implies that once the intellectual and political movements described in The Culture of Critique had seized the intellectual and moral high ground, they became difficult indeed to dislodge. Challenging these norms brings accusations of moral turpitude ringing down from the most prestigious political, media and academic institutions of the society. People who seek the approval and affection of others are definitely not inclined to go there. This in turn may well be a large part of the explanation for why there are so few women at gatherings of European-Americans concerned about the future of their people and culture.

This paints a fairly bleak picture. But there are some rays of hope. It is likely that at some point the gap between rhetoric and reality in American life will be so large that no one will believe what they are hearing from the hostile elites that dominate public discourse — much like the Soviet Union in the decades before its fall. When that happens, the cultural icons promoted by the media will lose their credibility and allure as well.

And because of the internet, the opportunity to hear divergent opinions and become aware of information that is suppressed by the mainstream media has never been greater. All around us we can see the collapse and increasing irrelevance of the old media. The internet has already created communities where prestige and social approval can be obtained completely outside the norms created by our hostile elites. And at least some of these communities are dedicated to transforming America by asserting the legitimacy of white identities and interests.

The dispossession of whites is already substantial, but it promises to be a whole lot more obvious as time goes on. As whites become a minority, it is difficult to imagine that they won't develop more of a group consciousness and challenge the prevailing anti-white norms. And that includes even the more nurturant and empathic among us.

Rude Jude Talks Oscar

2011-09-05T04:18:00.000-07:00

http://rudejude.tumblr.com/post/80697712/oscar

motherfuckin queen latifah fucked up my favorite part of the oscars: the dead people part. i tivoed that shit just to see the dead actors. nobody wants to see her big, U.N.I.T.Y., who you callin a bitch, livin single ass, in a blue dress butchering a shitty song for the dead. isaac hayes deserved better than that. paul newman deserved better than that. ricardo montebon deserved better than that. shit, alicia keys was there tonight, she’s not good enough to sing? no let’s get a fucking rapper to do the honors. the camera panned to latifah’s ass like 3 times during the dead people shit. why? because i want to see the living when celebrating the dead. hrrmmm and real classy you liberal fucks for barely clapping and showing charleton heston no love.. i know he likes gun but shit let bygones be bygones, dude did planet of the apes. give’m a break, he was moses

…..and the “citizen cane best movie ever made, shit doesn’t stink” award goes to slumdog millionaire. i mean dag, i thought the movie was cool but get off their dick. they act like the only other movie to come out besides slumdog was pineapple express. what it win like 15 awards?

a special fuck you goes out to bill mahr. way to repeatedly plug your shitty documentary film, while giving out the best doc award you tacky asshole. you even found a way to bitch that you weren’t nominated too. class act. i saw your doc, it sucked. it was lazy and one sided. it didn’t deserve a nomination. you told me everything i already heard from youtube propaganda videos, dick. the only thing religulous did successfully was make the first pro-jewish anti religion movie i ever saw.

i was on the horn with my homie emile and he was all bummed cause mickey rourke didnt win best actor for the wrestler. i was like, “who won?” he told me sean penn, for milk. i was like dude what you expect? you wanna win an oscar? your best bet is to be playing the part as one of the three following: a jew in a concentration camp ala adrian brody, a functioning retard ala rainman, or you better be chugging cock, if you’re gay with aids that’s even better. if you’re a gay retarded jew in the holocaust you’re golden. hollywood loves that shit because it’s run by jews and gays and retards. they relate. i’m not saying it’s a conspiracy, it just tugs on their heart strings. sean penn was tongue kissing the fuck outta dudes in that flick so you know mickey rourke didnt stand a chance. fuck it. rourke still has his pretty face.

the wrestler was the shit by the way. it reminded me of my dad. he wasnt a wrestler but he’s a man that lost everything chasing a dream he never quite caught and alienated a bunch of people on the way. it hit close to home it tugged on my heart strings, i guess we’re all a little biased. when it comes to who we want to get the award.who the fuck cares the oscar’s are a crock of shit anyway, i just watch it to look at the dresses ;)

Ancient Historians’ Views on Sparta

2011-09-05T04:16:00.000-07:00

To have an understanding of a subject is not only to know about it; inadvertantly one will formulate an opinon about it. Sometimes the evidence of a view one holds is not blatently obvious at first glance.

Many historians wrote about Sparta. Not many of them Spartans themselves, rather they were external entities that looked from the outside to the inward-looking society. (See What We Know About Sparta). Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch all wrote about Sparta in some fashion, but how did they view it?

Aristotle

When one looks on Aristotle’s writings, one gets the idea he complains a lot about the Spartan society. Aristotle was many things; a philosopher, mathematician, historian… but above all, he was from rival Athens around the time that Sparta was in major decline. By the 4th century the city Sparta was a dwindling cluster of farming villages and Athens was a major center of culture, architecture and production. It is with this context in mind that Aristotle views Sparta.

He is extremely critical of the Spartan system, especially of their emancipated women.

“The license of the Lacedaemonian women defeats the intention of the Spartan constitution, and is adverse to the happiness of the state.” - Aristotle, [On the Lacedaemonian Constitution]

“The Spartans brutalise their children… they go about it completely the wrong way.” -Aristotle, [Politics]

“The Lacedaemonian constitution is defective in another point; I mean the Ephoralty…the Ephors are chosen from the whole people… who, being badly off, are open to bribes. -Aristotle [On the Lacedaemonian Constitution]

Plato

Aristotle is a pupil of Plato, but has entirely contradictory views about Sparta. Plato admired the Spartan system, especially the women. He is writing in the same time period as Aristotle when the Spartan system was at critical level, but before it was utterly destroyed in the Battle of Leuctra. However, he saw democracy in Athens turn corrupt and devastating, witnessing the trial of his mentor Socrates, and saw a better alternative in the Spartan system.

“Spartan women abstain from woolwork, but instead weave for themselves a life which is not trivial at all but arduous.” - Plato

“Sparta, in as far as they relate to pleasure, appear to me to be the best in the world…” Plato [Laws]

Thucydides

Thucydides admired Sparta’s eunomia (good order) but criticised some aspects of it, for example their culture and city. He wrote mostly of the Peloponnesian War between rivals Athens and Sparta, which Sparta won, perhaps it is why he admires the methods Sparta used.

“Suppose the city of Sparta were deserted, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe a great power existed there.” -Thucydides

“…On the contrary, a modest style of dressing, more in conformity with modern ideas, was first adopted by the Spartans” - Thucydides

Xenophon

Xenophon admired the Spartan system and its military power. He appeared to like some of Sparta’s cultural insights. He offers a rare glimpse into Sparta as an Athenian who left to stay in Laconia. A.Andrewes noted “…all the admiration lavished on Spartan military virtue by Xenophon…”

“He taught the children from a desire to render them more dexterous in securing provisions, and better qualified for warfare.” - Xenophon

“willingness to obey, prevailed among them” - Xenophon

“and instead of their clothes to make them delicate, Lycurgus required them to become used to a single garment all year round, the idea being that thereby they would be better prepared for cold and heat.” - Xenophon

Plutarch

Plutarch was extremely admiring of the Spartan system, its constitution, culture and women. He was writing 500 years after the events, however, and as A.Andrewes outlines - much of the Lycurgus myth Plutarch cites throughout his entire work has been worked up through the ages until it is regarded as almost fact by Plutarch’s time.

“There was nothing disgraceful in the light clothing of the girls, for they were modest…” - Plutarch, [Lycurgus]

“The nurses displayed care and skill…” - Plutarch, [Lycurgus - (in regard to bringing up Spartan boys)]

“All the rest of their education made them well-disciplined and steadfast in hardship.” - Plutarch

Conclusion

Ancient Greek writers were as fallible to critical opinions as modern; it is with this in mind that historians studying Sparta are careful to remember the context of which the source is writing in.

Universalism, Moral Theory, and Ethnoanarchism

2011-09-05T04:06:00.000-07:00

Universalism, Moral Theory, and Ethnoanarchism:
A Challenge to Contemporary Nationalism
By Matt Raphael Johnson

One of the more cutting criticisms of nationalism as a social and ethical movement is that it engenders an inequality of moral claims; that is, one’s nationalism necessarily comes at the expense of another’s, and it inherently demands the limitation of other or “opposing” nationalist claims. Hans Morgenthau’s famous “ABC paradox” is a manifestation of this difficulty. His 1957 article, “Paradoxes of Nationalism,” asks the question of moral consistency: Nation A invokes the principles of nationalism against nation B, while denying it to C, one of its own minorities. All societies have minorities. However, almost all societies have invoked nationalist principles against outsiders. Therefore, the anti-nationalist would conclude, nationalism is not a consistent theory of politics at all, but a convenient tool to use against outside opponents.

Nationalist theory, in the ethnic and cultural sense, rejects the existence of this paradox. Modern, liberal governments more often than not benefit from having a militant minority to use against nationalist parties, groups, and movements within the society who challenge the “multiethnic” state. Instead of considering the state as the locus of the nation, which is an error, the notion of the ethnos needs to be the central focus if Morgenthau’s criticism is to be withstood. The ethnocommunity is the primary variable in politics as well as world history; rejecting the statist model of the nation, the ethnocommunity controls its destiny within whatever territory it finds itself. There is no such thing as the “multiethnic” state, then, and the ethnonation becomes the focus of authority in terms of social life wherever it has settled.

The fallacy of the so-called “paradox” is that Morgenthau is speaking of states rather than ethnonations, and his paradox assumes the centrality of the state. A state might invoke its “cultural patrimony” against outsiders, but, for the sake of its own formal power, might deny it at home. Keep in mind, however, that states do not have “cultural patrimonies”: only nations do. On the other hand, Morgenthau’s criticism fails as an ethical one in that the ethnonation, even in a diaspora’s small numbers, should be the centerpiece of social and political authority, administering the social life of a people who consider themselves members. Of course, such a view radically undercuts state authority, and can exist only when the state is replaced by a cultural idea of the ethnocommunity.

Morgenthau’s argument is rather common, and recurs within the literature on nationalist thought and practice. However common and fashionable it may be, the argument is false. Nationalism, far from being essentially exclusivist in relation to other nationalisms, is inherently a universalist idea: nationalisms do not, and cannot, come at the expense of other nationalisms unless the others’ claims are too expansive and hence illegitimate to begin with. In other words, the ethnos becomes the focus of social authority. Therefore, it is ethnic belonging, not a specific territory or a formalized administration, that assumes the ethical mantle of legitimacy. Members of the ethnos are ruled, then, by the historical experience of the nation as a whole through its traditional institutions—rather than by the formal institutions of the modern state as its “administrative” apparatus. This might be considered a type of ethnonational anarchism, in which the formal and territorially-based institutions of the Leviathan are replaced, organically, by the traditional language, institutions, and experience of the ethnos. A citizen, then, belongs to the life of an ethnos, rather than the administration of a state, and is integrated into that ethnos through the guilds and system of internal distribution that the group has developed over the centuries.

In contemporary times, ethnic groups reach well over state lines through language clubs, churches (such as the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad), the institutions of a diaspora (such as relocation and housing services, etc.), and ethnic institutions of various types. Ethnonationalism, as an ethical foundation for civilization’s reconstruction, might make use of this foundation to provide those institutions with actual governing power and control over the economies of their communities centering around ethnic membership, though a membership that is culturally based, rather than one based on blood.1

Ethnonationalism centers itself on a cultural self-determination that takes its normative force in that the culture forms and nurtures the people under its care, making them truly individuals. Without culture and its institutionalization, individuals become mere embodied egos demanding satisfaction of their impulses; civilization becomes impossible and eventually unravels. Nationalism, then, takes the communal culture of a people (considered as making up the ethnos) as normative in the sense that it not only offers a coherent and civilized moral code (one necessary for properly social behavior within the community), but also contains the imperative (or moral motivation) of an institutionalized tradition; nationalism offers a particularly rich idea of moral psychology. When nationalism is connected to the concept of empire (that is, the subjugation of others for the benefit of the imperial power), it then becomes illegitimate, for it—by definition—interferes with the cultural aspirations of subject peoples.

Thus, within its proper bounds, nationalism, at least of a contemporary kind, demands a radical decentralization of world power and global politics. Politics becomes cultural; it becomes the expression of the ethnocommunity because it is only within the confines of a well-defined cultural community that ideas of “the good” or “rights” make any sense. Such words are culturally bounded. Liberalism, through its long and sordid history, has defined itself as precisely opposite this, claiming that justice is a purely procedural matter, rather than a substantial one, thus rendering culture unimportant and ornamental. This has led to the elimination of communal autonomy under the Leviathan, and, in turn, created the “abstract” notion of a consolidated public policy. Given that liberalism developed in the specifically cultural milieu of Western Europe, the idea is self-refuting as well as corrosive.

Liberalism must define itself in this way, for if the individual (ego) is supreme, culture is normative if and only if one so “chooses” it (itself self-refuting, in that the intellectual power to choose, and any interest in the moral results, derives from one’s surrounding moral environment and upbringing). Culture becomes a pleasant ornament, but ultimately not normative for a society (it is usually considered “repressive,” for it interferes with the economically profitable gratification of the passions and impulses); liberalism must demand that the individual ego rest upon itself, namely its drives.

Nationalism claims that politics and ethics exist only as part of a cultural patrimony, with its long-established ideas of the “right” and the “good,” that has created civilized individuals capable of studying moral philosophy or indeed caring about moral action. Otherwise, justice must begin and end with the demands of the individual ego, unconstrained, with justice never becoming an object to be realized, but resting on certain procedural norms which must be devoid of any cultural or moral foundation lest justice be considered by liberalism heteronomous.

Far from ethnocommunitarianism being relativistic, it is part of a natural law tradition that posits man as he can in no other way be posited: as the product of a community. Thus, the development of the community, including all the goods it has brought into existence for—cultural stability, education, language, material satisfaction, aesthetic experience, etc.—becomes the citizen’s by right. It is a Kantian deontology—but one removed from the abstract “individual” possessing, inexplicably, abstract rights somehow “adhering “ to his personhood—that renders rights and duties far more stable by way by connecting them with a functioning and living community; a community of language and historical experience that makes political life and words like “right” and “good” intelligible. If the goods promised by the very concept of community (rather than any specific community) are vitiated, then the community’s legitimacy can be questioned. Therefore, if one of the goods of a community is the protection of human life (a rather uncontroversial claim) and the community, somehow corrupted, begins to make legal the practice of abortion, thereby destroying its own progeny for personal gain and convenience, that aspect of the community needs to be fought, for it contradicts it own claim to existence. If a community, existing, minimally, to protect life, begins to extinguish itself on the Baalian altar of convenience, then it contradicts itself and is thus rendered immoral.2

Immanuel Kant’s error was to believe that ethics can be reducible to the most common element in humanity, that is, the concept of willing a law in general, which is the basis of the so-called “categorical imperative,” or the moral idea that any act of willing, in order to be called “right,” must be amenable to formulation as a “universal law.” Such universalism contains nothing of ethical value (as Hegel was later to charge), since it is an ethical void that is soon replaced by the far more vivid and concrete ideas of sensual gratification and egoistic behavior. It rejects the communal parameters which make any kind of choosing even possible. The weakness of Kantianism lies in the fact that the moral infrastructure such that “universalism” might be acceptable and considered “good” is a creation of civilized society.

The preexistence of the cultural structure of the nation, that is, the national community at whatever level, is necessary for the abstractions of the “will,” “intellect,” or even “natural law” and “right” to make any sense whatsoever. The very utterance of such terms is saturated with historical experience, for without it, the terms would have never come into existence and would not have the moral force they do. In other words, there are no abstract rights. “Rights,” as the term is used in modern political discourse (or what passes for it), are abbreviations of long-standing social practices and historical experience that have been reduced to slogans and propositions for the sake of easy communication, as well as less praiseworthy ends. To conclude from this that they are separable from historical experience is an inexcusable nonsequitur.

Thus Kantianism does not stand by itself, but is dependent upon the already existing social norms of eighteenth century Prussia, accepted solely due to the fact that the surrounding society has properly socialized the Prussians to demand some accounting of moral behavior. In other words, to care about right and wrong, and about proper and social behavior in general, is something that arises through the development of communal life and is inseparable from it. This is perennially the problem with moral theory based on abstract grounds. The “abstraction”—whether it be “rights” or “duty” (or some other such “imperative”)—never actually exists except as an abbreviation of an already developed sense of moral life that is itself the product of centuries of human behavior, historical experience, and mutual suffering that provide such ideas with their genesis, formulation, institutionalization, and moral force.

It is the nation, the community united by language and historical experience, not the “categorical imperative,” that socializes people to be civilized and moral. One can take Kant seriously only after reflecting on the fact that it is the civilized life that makes such questions even meaningful, never mind providing answers. Before even caring about whether or not one’s “will” can be formulated into a “universal law,” that is, can be done by everyone without contradiction, one must be civilized already. Kant’s ideas serve to place liberalism on a more German and idealistic metaphysical foundation, and find a less “philosophical” formulation in John Stuart Mill, several decades later, in the so-called “harm principle” found in On Liberty.3 For Kant, the notion of “universality” means that the moral worth of an action is dependent upon it being “universalized” without contradiction, defined as severe social dislocation. Therefore, a Kantian can say that lying is immoral for, if one were to universalize lying, i.e. imagine everyone lying all the time, then social life would quickly cease, for no one could ever believe what anyone said about anything. Therefore, lying is evil because it is socially self-contradictory.

Without the cultural community, Kant’s ethics becomes merely an eccentric hobby, a hobby that is incapable of giving us reasons for taking the idea of the “universal law of willing” seriously; in other words, there is nothing inherent in this ethical universalism and formalism that makes anyone interested in following it in the short term. Nietzsche did it terrible damage precisely for this reason. Once one rejects the moral imperative of cultural community, then there is really no reason why even “social contradiction” is any barrier to one’s behaving immorally. All that a neo-Nietzschean needs to say is that, taking a cue from Hegel, the will, the ego comes first, and the life of society is thus its product. From this proposition, logically untenable, it is impossible to avoid its consequent, that all cultural attachments are arbitrary and thus ultimately trivial and ornamental. Its force is then heteronomous and therefore unethical. Putting this differently, one would only listen to Kant or Hegel because there is already an inborn sense of community and emotional attachments to it and its welfare: “inborn” because any moral question, in order to make sense, must be formulated in such a way that it is salient to community life, and can only be salient if it is formulated in the language and basic conceptual apparatus of the ethnic community in question, taking into account their historical experience, sensitivities, weaknesses etc. Such a problem is the eternal difficulty of analytic methods in philosophy. To posit a “moral agent” is to posit an analytic abstraction, not a human being.

Kant’s interest in universalism and moral equality derives from strands of thought found within the entire history of Western European moral philosophy. Kant merely took a sliver of thought from his own culture and provided it with its own origin, the naked, abstract will that comes, literally, from nowhere. One might be attracted to it only so far as one is already socialized within an already existing humane morality. Such invariably comes from one’s cultural community or the nation. Only later does one theorize.

The development of a nationalist consciousness within a certain people requires only that the cultural norms of a society be normative for its politics within the confines of natural law. This is an alternative formulation of the idea of “self-determination,” a normative requirement for any nationalism whatever, and is the very substance of free action in the terms of international politics. The question remains, then, what does a nationalist do when nationalism rises within the borders of a historic enemy?

This question has long been vexing for nationalists. The answer is that nationalism is justified to the extent it is not inherently expansionist. To the extent a nationalist movement seeks to unite those under its cultural patrimony, it does not nor can it reject the claims of even its enemies to do the same. Furthermore, it is not in the nation’s interest to absorb those likely hostile to be to it. Such policies often derive from a ruling class that is alienated from the cultural patrimony of its own people, viewing culture not as a means in itself, but to some further end, such as political power.

An ethnos most certainly is not merely any group of people that develops common interests; nor is it synonymous with the state, but a possible list of a few requirements for a group to qualify as a nation might be listed here as an aid to the present argument:

* A nation must be defined by a common culture, a culture that is normative for an entire way of life, politically and ethically, rather than something specific, such as a social organization structured for a limited purpose. Yankee fans and computer geeks, then, do not form nations, for the simple reason that the nation is necessary for these second-order attachments to make sense, or even to exist.

* A nation is united by a common language though it is reasonable to claim that dialects and related languages might well coexist (such as Polish and Ukrainian; Spanish and Portuguese; Cantonese and Mandarin, etc.).

* A nation must be an entity of long standing. That is, a nation must have an objective ground in history; it must be the product of a long development. As the distinguished British political scientist Ernest Barker once pointed out, “The nation is a congeries of wills, acting through centuries.”4 Developmentally, a nation is the visible manifestation of the character of its people—a natural, organic synthesis that emerges over centuries from common traditions, customs, and folkways.

* A nation must view itself as such, that is, be aware of itself as such; this is the subjective ground of nationalism.

To the extent that any nationalist movement seeks to expand itself beyond these confines, it becomes not a nationalist movement, but an imperial movement, and thus a movement against the core ideas of nationalist theory. When a movement becomes imperial, the nation’s neighbors have every right to defend themselves. Beyond this, there is no moral ground for one nation to demand that another not become conscious of itself, or form its own institutions according to its own experience. Thus, nationalism can never of itself be synonymous with imperialism or wars of conquest. Warfare is legitimate only to defend the common cultural patrimony that is the nation, even if part of that patrimony happens to lie across a state border.

The solution to the endless problems of “minority rights,” “irredentism,” and other such irritants in world politics is the building of the autonomous ethno-community, absorbing social, religious, and economic life under its aegis. Self-determination is vitiated by the outworn and incorrigibly violent state apparatus, where bureaucracy inevitably takes interests to itself outside of the cultural patrimony which birthed it, thereby making itself odious to the ethnos. Therefore, the ethnic group expresses its rule through its own individuality, its own historical experience objectified in institutions such as craft guilds, ethnic churches (such as in eastern Orthodoxy), and local assemblies in tune with the tradition of the community in question. From these institutions does a properly representative system of rule come about, for representation is not about the shifting sands of individual self-interest or the demands of the libido, but rather the solid ground of the historical experience of a national history, the ethnos, the actual “individual” of history and politics. The institutions of rule, indigenous to a people, then take control over the aspects of social life impinging its members, objectifying historical experience and, therefore, the structure of maturity and intellect that creates citizens, rather than egos. The empowerment of the ethnos over and above the interests of the state is central to true freedom, identity, belonging, and peace among peoples. It is a true diversity in the Herderian, not the modern, sense.

Matthew Raphael Johnson is presently the editor of The Barnes Review: A Journal of Nationalist Thought and History, based in Washington, D.C. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1999, completing his dissertation on the relationship between modern science and political ideology through the work of Michael Oakeshott. He has published in numerous journals, including The Social Justice Review, the Plains Song Review, Rossia XII (Russian language), Foaie (Romanian language), and The Constantian: The Journal of the Constantian Society. His first book, Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality: A Concise History of Imperial Russia, has recently been released by the Foundation for Economic Liberty Press in Washington, D.C. At present, his research interests include the moral theory of ethnonationalism, as well as Russian ethnonationalism and Orthodox tradition.

End Notes

1. There is no question that a “blood” tie is a tenuous one for European ethnicities. Most European states presently are a mix of peoples, and over the centuries, the peoples themselves have mixed. Therefore,members of each family must decide for themselves which cultural patrimony they identify with. None of this entails a “rejection” of the others, but an understanding that cultural heritage is not an “ornamental” association, and that political allegiance cannot be separated from historical experience and the patterns of thought the ethnos engenders.

2. It needs to be made clear that abortion is evil because it kills babies. As seen from the perspective of national life, however, it is additionally an evil in that it destroys what the community was called into existence to protect, namely its own progeny, who will build upon the capital of historical experience and make additional contributions to their culture and, possibly, the world at large. In other words, the natural law, designed by God (as such objective laws certainly cannot seriously be described as random interaction, which is also a contradiction), implants in mankind the drive for community for its very survival. To then use the resources of that community to destroy that which it protects, namely life, is an absurdity and proves the immorality, decadence, and weakness of whatever community permits it.

3. Stated briefly, the “harm principle” goes like this: The moral agent can act as he wishes, and the authorities are only permitted to interfere with his self-will whenever there is a manifest harm committed. What “harm” means is anyone’s guess, and has not satisfactorily been dealt with in the literature. Often, “harm” is reductively defined as “physical damage” to persons or property.

4. Ernest Barker, National Character and the Factors in Its Formation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927), 5.

Church on Relations with Heretics

2011-09-05T04:04:00.000-07:00

The Church on Relations with Heretics

Matthew Rapahel Johnson

The Orthodox do not expect the other Christians to be converted to Orthodoxy in its historic and cultural reality of the past and the present and to become members of the Orthodox Church—Statement of the Orthodox delegates at the WCC General Assembly in Nairobi in 1975

We order any Bishop, or Presbyter, that has accepted any heretics’ Baptism, or sacrifice, to be deposed; for “what consonance hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath the believer with an infidel?” (Canon 56 of the Apostles)

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Many have begun to upbraid me for my position on the grace of the sacraments for those who believe the heterodox have mysteries. The simple fact of the matter is that there cannot be two Orthodoxies. One is true, the others, false. Today, there are two “orthodoxies,” the first, based at the Phanar, and is an integral part of the global ecumenical movement and globalist elite forces. The other is the “suffering Orthodox,” those in resistance, who refuse to recognize or compromise with the secularization of the world, which, to a great extent, now almost completely dominates the mind of “world Orthodoxy.”

Overwhelmingly, the True Orthodox in Greece and elsewhere have rejected the idea that grace can exist in a church body that holds that heretics, that is, Roman Catholics and Anglicans, do have sacraments and can achieve salvation. They have rejected the idea that two orthodoxies can exist side by side. It was the Greek new calendar church that first claimed that the True Orthodox do not have mysteries, yet the papists do. It was the new calendarists who launched bloody and violent reprisals against the True Orthodox in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, destroying churches, profaning the mysteries and assaulting priests and faithful.

These are spiritual thieves, plundering the spiritual flock, and they will enter the sheepfold (the Church), climbing up some other way, using force and trampling upon the divine statutes. The Lord calls them robbers (cf. St. John 10:1). Indeed, their first task will be the persecution of the true pastors, their imprisonment and exile, for without this it will be impossible for them to plunder the sheep.
Therefore, my son, when you see the violation of patristic tradition and the divine order in the Church, the order established by God, know that the heretics have already appeared, although for the time being they may conceal their impiety, or they will distort the Divine Faith imperceptibly, in order to succeed better in seducing and enticing the inexperienced into the net. (St. Anatolii the Younger of Optina, 1922).

Ecumenism is a heresy because it claims that grace exists outside of Orthodoxy, and, as a result, truth has no relation to salvation, grace or sacraments. Those who are a part of the ecumenical movement hold this to a man, and hence, there can be no question from a strict canonical point of view that they are no longer Orthodox. The patristic/canonical authority for all this, though familiar to most, is reprinted below. Those who are new to this controversy must read this material. The True Orthodox number about 2000 parishes throughout the world, and have pronounced synodically that the synods of Moscow and the Greek world are schismatic. There is no official statement on the Romanians, Serbs, Georgians or Bulgarians. These have been considered “irregular,” such as the Matthewites or certain Ukrainian groups, rather than graceless.

In other words, the True Orthodox have not synodically rejected the grace of the Serbs, etc. Since Serbia and Georgia have left the World Council of Churches (WCC) there is some reason to hold them as a part of Orthodoxy, however irregular due to their communion with the Phanar. Nevertheless, the independent Serbian metropolitanate of Christopher, a 33rd degree Mason has refused to follow Belgrade in this matter, one can easily conclude that the Serbs in America fall into the same heresy as the Greeks. Since Serbs in America receive communion maybe once a year, it is a rather moot point whether they are a apart of Orthodoxy.

It should be reiterated that these synodal decisions of the True Orthodox, Russian and Greek, refer only to sacramental grace. The pious Orthodox, maybe confused as to their status, receive all the grace that they would merely as praying, without the sacramental life. Hence, salvation is possible if there is no moral culpability, as is clearly the case throughout the world. Holding Orthodoxy in one’s being is all that is necessary for salvation, regardless of the irregularity of such a position. In these confusing times, times the True Orthodox are not helping by their factiousness, the faithful Orthodox will see God, regardless of their position.

The fact remains that the New Calendar was anathematized by all Orthodoxy, all the historic patriarchates, prior to 1921. Between 1902 and 1904, the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople have anathematized the New Calendar and the papal mentality that undergirds it. No Orthodox body, outside of the most severe emergency, has the authority to rewrite tradition to suit their needs. Certainly this applies to something so intimately familiar to all Orthodox as the calendar. It created a schism in Orthodoxy, introduced Orthodoxy to the structured, elite-funded ecumenical movement, and crated an “Orthodox papacy” in the Phanar.

The Masonic Young Turk movement made certain that all Patriarchs of Constantinople were Masons, and that includes the well known Mason Meletios IV (both patriarch of Constantinople and Alexandria, even after his formal deposition, who had reached the 33rd degree), as well as lesser known Masons such as Basil III and Photios II. The Lodge at Constantinople, under Patriarch Meletios IV recognizes the sacraments of the Anglicans. In 1948, another Freemason is “elected,” Athenagoras a 33rd degree Mason. Athenagoras said, “We are in error and sin if we think that the Orthodox Faith came down from heaven and that the other dogmas [i.e. religions] are unworthy. Three hundred million men have chosen Mohammedanism as the way to God, and further hundreds of millions are Protestants, Catholics and Buddhists. The aim of every religion is to make man better.”

Iakovos, head of the Greek sect in America, and a Mason, of sorry memory, referred to the canons as “pseudo-documents” and “prejudices” that prevent union with the western “Christians.” He is venerated still by the Greek church, though has yet to be “canonized.” He believed that the Talmudic Jews were our “fathers in the faith," and regularly received cash advances from the ADL. The Patriarchs of Constantinople regularly pray and concelebrate with the popes. In 1965, the papal name is inserted into the diptyches of Constantinople, denoting full communion. The ROCOR under St. +PHILARET the New Confessor, rejects all communion with the ecumenists as a result, and joins with the Greek Old Calendarists, long confessing the gracelessness of the ecumenist mysteries. After +PHILARET’s death, the ROCOR’s policy will change, something predicted by the great Archbishop +AVERKY of blessed memory.

Demetrios is then elected “Patriarch of Constantinople” in 1972, and in his case, is a public Mason, reaching the 33rd degree, having, as all Masons, taken their oath to Lucifer/Prometheus at the 13th degree, and repeated thereafter. He will proclaim that the Roman Catholics and Anglicans have sacraments, and that, therefore, they are part of the Orthodox church. All of “world Orthodoxy” accepts it. He writes the following:

. . . .the Holy Church of Christ in Constantinople embraces the Bishop of Rome and the Holy Church in Rome, in the incense, acceptable to the Lord, of the pentarchy of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, in which the Bishop of Rome is defined as presiding in love and honor, ascribing all honor to Your Holiness,... first in rank and honor in the universal Body of the Lord.

The facts are clear: all of the Patriarchs of Constantinople have been Masons and Luciferians since the 1920s. Parthenios of Alexandria himself was a Mason and praised Islam as a “true Religion” as president of the World Council of Churches. Yet “world Orthodoxy” maintained communion with him, and made communion with the Phanar their core argument for being “canonical.” In the meantime, the Antiocheans entered into communion with the Jacobites and encouraged Anglican parishes to become “Orthodox” without ever abjuring Anglicanism. So under the AOC in America, Anglican parishes, using organs, unleavened bread and openly venerating post-schism saints, are called “western rite Orthodox.”

The Phanar had long since been venerating post-schism western “saints,” and icons are painted of Paul VI of Rome and placed in the churches of the New Skete “monastery” in New York. By 2003, the ROCOR is concelebrating with the Masonic Phanar in Ireland and elsewhere. Specifically, on April 24, 2003, the ROCOR and the Phanar concelebrate in Dublin, Ireland. The ROCOR< despite all they have done for humanity, were (and are) taken in by the lures of worldly influence and mainstream “acceptance.” The result? Confusion, more schism and more harsh feelings and ill-will.

But the worst, the most openly evil, was the 1983 Vancouver Statement of the WCC, which explicitly “affirmed” an ecclesiology that rejected the necessity of Christ for Salvation. This was the first in a series of steps that allowed the Serbs, long on the WCC payroll, to eventually bite the hand that fed them and leave that organization.

The document in question is called, “My Neighbor's Faith and Mine, Theological Discoveries Through Interfaith Dialogue: A Study Guide” (Geneva: WCC, 1986). After claiming the need "a more adequate theology of religions," the group stated, “that in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the entire human family has been united to God in an irrevocable bond and covenant. The saving presence of God's activity in all creation and human history comes to its focal point in the event of Christ. . . because we have seen and experienced goodness, truth, and holiness among followers of other paths and ways than that of Jesus Christ..., we find ourselves recognizing a need to move beyond a theology which confines salvation to the explicit personal commitment to Jesus Christ.” This was signed by all members of the WCC, including all Greek New Calendar jurisdictions that have yet to repent of it. World Orthodoxy continues to commune with the Phanar. As a result, there can be no question that Moscow, Bucharest, Athens, the Greeks and the Finns are heretics, worse than papists (for at least the latter do not claim to be “Orthodox”), and a humiliation for all True Orthodox peoples.

Allow me to be clear: The vulgar quoting from canons is not the aim here. The canons, almost completely unknown to the “average Orthodox” in the nave, are necessary to good church order, but they are not sufficient to it. We call the Orthodox Church the manifestation of the Spirit, that is, the Third Person of the Trinity, rather than the manifestation of Christ in the flesh. The Sprit, and this is at the root of the difference between the papal party (east and west) and the Orthodox one, is the representative of a Holy Freedom. We are freed from the law, but it is a far cry from saying we are freed from the necessity of true church order. Hence, the reality is that “canonicity” has become nearly meaningless, deriving as it does from the pens of hobbyists, neophytes and amateurs. But what the Spirit gives to us is a freedom within order and the fullness of the faith: canon law, the living witness of the saints, monastic typika, the divine services, pilgrimage, mystical experience, the giving of alms and the giving of self in a very real and often painful way. All of these together (and all of these that cannot be rendered in language) are at the basis of good Orthodox order and canonical life. And it is here, even more than the violation of a strict canonical order, that the difference between the two Orthodox churches arise. Nevertheless, the relevant canons, etc. are reprinted below.

*******

Those who attack the Church of Christ by teaching that Christ's Church is divided into so-called "branches" which differ in doctrine and way of life, or that the Church does not exist visibly, but will be formed in the future when all "branches" or sects or denominations, and even religions will be united into one body; and who do not distinguish the priesthood and mysteries of the Church from those of the heretics, but say that the baptism and Eucharist of heretics is effectual for salvation; therefore, to those who knowingly have communion with these aforementioned heretics or who advocate, disseminate, or defend their new heresy of Ecumenism under the pretext of brotherly love or the supposed unification of separated Christians, Anathema! (ROCOR, 1983)

Concerning the fact that those belonging to the Church must not be allowed to go visiting the cemeteries or the so called martyria of any heretics, for the purpose of prayer or of cure, but, on the contrary, those who do so, if they be among the faithful, shall be excluded from communion for a time until they repent and confess their having made a mistake, when they may be readmitted to communion. (Canon IX of Laodicia (Also approved by the Ecumenical Synods))

If any clergymen, or laymen, enter a synagogue of Jews, or of heretics, to pray, let him be both deposed and excommunicated. Canon LXV Of the Holy Apostles)

Let any Bishop, or Presbyter, or deacon that merely joins in prayer with heretics be suspended, but if he had permitted them to perform any service as Clergymen, let him be deposed. (Canon XLV of the Holy Apostles)

One must not join in prayer with heretics or schismatics. (Canon XXXIII of Laodicia)

Do not err, my brethren: if anyone follow a schismatic, he will not inherit the Kingdom of God. If any man walk about with strange doctrine, he cannot lie down with the passion. Take care, then, to use one Eucharist, so that whatever you do, you do according to God: for there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the union of His Blood; one altar, as there is one bishop with the presbytery and my fellow servants, the deacons." (St. Ignatius Of Antioch, Epistle to the Philadelphians, 3:2-4:1, 110 A.D.)

The present age is rich not in ascetical feats of piety and confession of faith, but in cheating, lies, and deceits. It is noteworthy that several hierarchs and their flocks, for the most part Russians, have already fallen away from Ecumenical unity, and to the question: "What dost thou believe?", reply with references to self-proclaimed heads of all sorts of schisms in Moscow, America, and Western Europe. It is clear that they have ceased to believe in the unity of the Church throughout the whole world and do not wish to admit it, attempting to bear calmly the refusal of the true Church to have relations with them, and imagining that one can supposedly save ones should even without communion with Her... Those who have cut themselves off from Her deprive themselves of the hope of salvation, as the Fathers of the Sixth Ecumenical Council teach concerning this, having recognized the renegades as being totally devoid of grace , according to the word of Christ: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.”

Unfortunately, some Orthodox laymen, even, alas, many priests (and hierarchs) have subjected themselves to this state of gracelessness, although still retaining the outward appearance of the church services and the apparent performance of the Mysteries. (The 1934 paschal encyclical of Vladyka Anthony (Khrapovitsky))

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: This is the law of the Passover: no stranger shall eat of it. And every slave or servant bought with money - him thou shalt circumcise, and then shall he eat of it. A sojourner or hireling shall not eat of it. In one house shall it be eaten.” (Exodus 12:43-46.)

We shall not escape sharing in that punishment which, in the world to come, awaits heretics, if we defile Orthodoxy and the holy Faith by adulterous communion with heretics. St. John the Merciful

All the teachers of the Church, all the Councils, and all the Divine Scriptures, exhort us to flee those who uphold other doctrines and to separate from communion with them. (Confession of Faith, XII, 304, Saint Mark of Ephesus)

With a great voice, Saint John Chrysostom declared that not only heretics, but also they who hold communion with them are enemies of God. (Saint Theodore the Studite , Letter to the Abbot Theophilus)

Concerning the Faith, the heretics were totally shipwrecked; but as for the others, even if in their thinking they did not founder, nonetheless, because of their communion with heresy, they too were destroyed with the others. (Saint Theodore the Studite, Letter to the Patriarch of Jerusalem [PG 99, 1164])

“The divine and sacred canons say: ‘He who has communion with an excommunicate, let him be excommunicated, as overthrowing the rule of the Church.’ And again: ‘He who receives a heretic is subject to the same indictment...’ The great apostle and evangelist John says: ‘If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching with him, do not greet him and do not receive him into your house; for he who greets him communicates with his evil deeds’ (II John 10-11). If we are forbidden merely to greet him on the way, and if inviting him into our house is prohibited, how can it be otherwise not in a house, but in the temple of God, in the sanctuary at the mystical and terrible Supper of the Son of God... Whoever belches out the commemoration of him who has been worthily cut off by the Holy Spirit for his arrogance towards God and the Divine things, becomes for that reason an enemy of God and the Divine things.” (From an Epistle of the Martyred Fathers of the Holy Mountain to Emperor Michael Palaeologus against the heretical Patriarch John Beccus of Constantinople)

“If anyone breaks any ecclesiastical tradition, written or unwritten, let him be anathema” (Eighth Proceeding of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod)

To those who hold in contempt the sacred and divine canons of our blessed fathers, which, by sustaining the holy Church of God and adorning the whole Christian Church, guide to divine reverence, ANATHEMA (Eighth Proceeding of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod)

Among us, neither Patriarchs nor Councils were ever able to introduce innovations, because the defender of Religion is the very Body of the Church---that is, the people themselves --- which desire to have their Religion eternally unchanged and identical to that of their Fathers. (Reply of the Orthodox Patriarchs of the East to Pius IX, issued in 1848)

As we walk the unerring and life-bringing path, let us pluck out the eye that scandalizes us-not the physical eye, but the noetic one. For example, if a bishop or presbyter-who are the eyes of the Church-conduct themselves in an evil manner and scandalize the people, they must be plucked out. For it is more profitable to gather without them in a house of prayer, than to be cast together with them into the gehenna of fire together with Annas and Caiaphas (St. Athanasius the Great, PG 26:1257c)

He that saith not ‘Anathema’ to those in heresy, let him be anathema (Seventh Ecumenical Council)

I adjure all the people in Cyprus who are true children of the Catholic Church to flee as fast as their feet can carry them from those priests who have fallen and submitted to the Latins; neither assemble in church with them, nor receive any blessing from their hands. For it is better for you to pray to God in your homes alone than to gather together in churches with the Latin-minded (Germanos II, Patriarch of Constantinople, PG 140:620a)

It is good to be at peace with all, but [only] when they are of one mind with us as regards piety; for peace with that which is just and proper is a most excellent and profitable possession; but when it is with that which is evil or enslaving, then it is most disgraceful, and of all things the most shameful and harmful. For there is an evil concord and a good discord; there is a good severance, and an evil concurrence. And if friendship become a cause of perdition for some, then hatred becomes a virtue for them. Better is division for dispassion’s sake than concord effected for the passions’ sake. (Joseph Bryennius, the teacher of Saint Mark Eugenicus)

That one must not accept the blessings of heretics, which are rather misfortunes than blessings. (Canon 32 of the Council of Laodicea)

That one must not join in prayer with heretics or schismatics. (Canon 33 of the Council of Laodicea)

The dearest thing of all for the Christian is the Truth, for the sake of witnessing to which the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth, as He Himself said to Pilate (Jn 18:37). And for the true Christian there can be only one desirable unity--unity in the Truth of Christ--the pure, undistorted, uncorrupted Truth, without any admixture of diabolic falsehood, not envenomed by any compromise with it. From this point of view, all these appeals for "peace" and "unity" are unacceptable, for they come from people who encroach on our principal treasure--the pure and undefiled truth of the teaching of Christ that has been preserved by us, and who wish to substitute for it a lie which is of the devil. The "unity" which is now envisaged by the enemies of the pure truth of Christ is not unity in Christ. It is that unity which the Antichrist, who wishes to subject all to himself and to found his kingdom on earth, is striving to create. ("On the Situation of the Orthodox Christian in the Contemporary World by Archbishop Averky of Syracuse)

Those that are not reborn by the divine grace in the only ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH, they do not consist of (comprise) any church, neither visible nor invisible." (St. Nektarios of Aegina)

As there is one God and one Lord, so also true dignity is expressed by oneness in the image of the One Principle. And so, the one Church, which heresies make an effort to cut into many, is likened by oneness unto the nature of the One. We call the ancient Catholic Church one according to her essence, according to our concept of her, according to her origin and preeminence. (Presbyter Clement of Alexandria)

For whomever the Church is not mother, God is not father. (Hierarch Cyprian of Carthage)

Undoubtedly, we are only saved as living and organic members of the theanthropic body of the Savior, namely of the Church, of a holy Church, apostolic Church, catholic Church because the Church is nothing but the whole theanthropic life of Christ, extended to all the centuries and to the whole eternity. (Fr Justin Popovich, The Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ)

Be glad and rejoice that you were granted to be pious Orthodox Christians. Likewise again cry and mourn for the impious and unbelievers who walk in darkness, in the hands of the devil. (St Kosmas Aitolos)

Only the Religion of Christ unites and all of us must pray that they come to this. Thus union will occur, not by believing that all of us are the same thing and that all religions are the same. They are not the same...our Orthodoxy is not related to other religions. (Elder Porphyrios)

...But as for those who...severe themselves from communion with their president, that is, because he publicly preaches heresy and with bared head teaches it in the Church, such persons are not only not subject to canonical penalty..., but are worthy of due honor mong the Orthodox. For not bishops, but false bishops and false teachers have they condemned, and they have not fragmented the Church's unity with schism, but from schisms and divisions have they earnestly sought to deliver the Church. (Canon XV of the First-Second Council of Constantinople)

Hiding behind the 'high-minded' aim of 'removing inter-religious discord' and 'the reunion of believers in one fraternal family', the theorists of ecumenism forget to mention one thing. This is that in such a reunion, the greatest and most precious thing of all will be lost - that is the truth of the Law of God, buried underneath the burden of false human reasoning. Like all heresies, ecumenism lies when it offers the fraternal union of Truth with the lie, cunningly pretending that it does not understand the unnatural nature of such a union, hoping that people bewitched by high-minded slogans will not notice the dreadful forgery. (Metropolitan IOANN of St Petersburg (+ 1995))

*******

Hence, what is the logical and canonical conclusion? The New Orthodox are aware of Freemasonry and its cult of Lucifer/Prometheus, they are aware of the canons against relations with the heretics, they are aware that the canons decree that the heterodox are graceless, they are aware that fleeing from their bishops is legitimate according to the canons themselves. Hence, they are willfully apostates, aware of their apostasy, but their main passions, pride and a desire for mainstream acceptance, has destroyed them. Certainly noting new in Orthodox history. Since the True Orthodox bishops have synodically proclaimed the New Greek Church schismatic, those who remain orthodox are forced to conclude, despite our feelings to the contrary, that the New Orthodox do not have grace, and that they are worse than the papists. Of course, this refers to the institutions of the New Calendar churches, not to individuals.

The Abomination of Desolation has entered into the very altar of the church, and the True Orthodox must flee from it, not make excuses, as I did for so many years. The struggle is to build our house chapels, engage in intense proselytization, and above all, fear nothing. In this day and age, the internet has made our position crystal clear for all to see. There is no excuse for the Orthodox in the local Greek church not wanting to tell Aunt Matilda that he is no longer going to the family church. The information is there for all; those who refuse to act on it, even though they know it is correct from a canonical point of view, are culpable, and have lost eternal life and the immortality of their soul. Orthodoxy is not an “establishment” religion, and when it does become part of an “establishment,” it loses its soul, it becomes complacent and, slowly, becomes obsessed with worldly power and prestige. St. John Chrysostom saw this fact, the Old Believers saw it, the catacomb Orthodox saw it, and we are seeing it again. The New Orthodox have learned nothing, they have forgotten everything.

The New Orthodox are basically decent, secular people who have a respect for the “rich tradition” of the church, but see it as little more than a part of the “rich fabric” of American diversity. The church is a social institution, a vaguely “conservative” presence, but nothing more. They have inserted themselves into America life, its media and its prejudices, and, as a result, exist solely as a superficial “Christian” body. Those coming from Holy Cross or St. Vladimir’s have little by way of spiritual formation, and are taught a highly distorted, trivial and perfunctory version of the ancient faith.

The Orthodox tradition, however, is very different. Our life is one of struggle and persecution. The New Orthodox bishops are not persecuted and do not suffer. Yet, the Apostle Paul says the opposite. The New Orthodox life is one of relative ease. The True orthodox mission is to flee, to build alternative communities and an alternative economy. The Old Believers have proven that this can be done, and that their settlements were more literate, more pious and more prosperous than that of the mainline Orthodox. For one to claim the Orthodox mantle, yet be completely satisfied with the modern global economy and political system, is an apostate on that account alone. We are revolutionaries and separatists. At no level, not from the prophets, nor apostles or our saints, have we been anything else. We are outcasts. We are hated and persecuted. Yet, Christ and his apostles said that this is our lot. How few wonder why this is apparently not the lot of world Orthodoxy, a group that does not suffer at all, and is accepted by the world that Christ ordered his people to flee. World Orthodoxy is not, but rather an integral part of the world, and, as a result, partakes of its sins, its power relations and its money. The True Orthodox have the mantle of the prophets, while the “ecumenical Christians” have that of the temple prophets, the well paid lackeys of the corrupted Israelite power structure. Nothing has changed in 3000 years. We have no reason to expect it ever will. For our part, we struggle and suffer.

jenab6 on Marx

2011-09-05T03:58:00.000-07:00

http://jenab6.livejournal.com/18374.html

Karl Marx was right about the injustices of capitalism, but he was wrong about the remedy. Capitalism's biggest fault is that individual merit only determines success at the beginning. As time goes by, wealth gathers into the hands of a minority, where it becomes a decisive advantage in the pursuit of more wealth. The measure of man moves from his genes to his bank accounts, from his blood to his wallet, from what he is to what he owns. The possession of wealth becomes the supreme survival trait, easily overmatching strength, dexterity, agility, stamina, and, in the end, even intelligence.

The reason it works is the availability of exosomatic energy resources, chiefly fossil fuels. As long as money can buy gasoline, rich men can pretend that fossil power, put to use in engines, is power inherent in them as men. No one without money-privileged access to nature's accumulated stores of exosomatic energy can compete with those who do.

That's what Ayn Rand left out of Atlas Shrugged. It's a fantasy, of course, but it is a fantasy very seductive to rich people, who believe it because it flatters them. Ayn Rand spoke much of "men of ability," leaving it very strongly implied that what enabled them was their personal qualities, such as intelligence or decisiveness. She spoke often of coal-burning engines and other industrial uses of fossil fuels. But she used every trick she could think of to prevent her readers from connecting the ability with the fuels and observing that her "men of ability" really weren't so much superior to everyone else as their wealth might lead one to suppose. In real life, wealth brings such men privileged access to exosomatic energy resources, which then become their enabler.

The simple fact is, the employer merely stands between the customer and the labor. He listens, and then he points. He produces nothing himself and could be outdone by any of his workers were he to try it.

When fossil fuels are depleted, as eventually they must be, the illusion will be dispelled: the lumberjack will again know himself stronger than the owner of the bulldozer, the engineer will again know that he is smarter than the corporate manager who once bossed him, and the banker will understand, at long last, that he is worthless. When fossil fuels are depleted, nature will present mankind with the bill for his accumulation of genetic defects, which temporarily had been put on the credit card of technology, and many hereditary lines will suddenly discover that they are not really fit to live in this world.

But Marxist socialism isn't a good remedy to capitalism. It leads merely to the exchange of one kind of exploiter (the capitalists) by another (the communist party). The workers don't actually get to behave as if the country were theirs; no, they must toe the communists' political lines and jump through the communists' legal hoops, more or less as they once did for their employers, or for corporate lawyers.

Marxism has "tragedy in the commons" type failures. Capitalism has one of these, too, but capitalism's commons is the entire world and everything in it, including the "non-player" people (the working folks), and the tragedy doesn't happen until the world is all used up. Socialism has tragedies in the commons on a much smaller scale, being the result of presuming all workers equals, even though they are not, and pretending that each worker ought to be paid the same for being "on the job" for an hour.

Every worker knows that it is useless for him to display exceptional talent or diligence, since he won't be paid for it, and what eventually happens is workers just show up and read books or drink vodka, unless the secret police appear to see whether everyone is working. Then one guy gets dragged off and executed, and everyone else works hard until they aren't scared any more, then they go back to reading books and drinking vodka.

Capitalism is like a cancer. It grows like mad, kills a world, and dies along with it. Marxism is like having chronically low energy while most of your body parts have been assigned to the wrong places.

However, it is a mistake to consider Marxism as the only kind of socialism. Marxism is socialism based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, members of economic classes. That's the wrong idea that causes much of the trouble with it. Nature's laws never produced any special reason for people to identify with their economic class.

But there is a kind of socialism that is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, members of biological communities: families on the small scale, races on the large scale, with tribes being somewhere in the middle. Nature's laws did create a special reason for people to identify with their biological communities, though it requires explanation.

Millions of years ago, evolution was making animals more competitive by making them bigger, stronger, and more ferocious. The fossil record shows that dinosaurs kept gaining size and power. After a while, though, the point of diminishing returns was found, as the mass-to-muscle-power ratio set a limit on how large an animal could be without being unduly burdened by his own weight. At that point, additional increases in size were evolutionarily counter-survival, and further adaptive advantage had to be found by other means.

With the evolution of mammals, nature had settled on intelligence as the new means for evolutionary progress. But now there was a new trade-off: between the amount of time the mother remained pregnant, thereby being burdened and endangered, and the amount of time required for the formation of the baby's brain. Nature's compromise was somewhat longer pregnancies, but the baby was born without the ability immediately to care for itself. If the mammal babies were forsaken by their mother, as reptile babies usually are, they'd be easy prey for any carnivore or omnivore.

Nature's remedy was to evolve a new emotion for mammals, and that emotion was love, perhaps first expressed as the maternal instinct to take care of babies. That allowed mammal brains to grow larger with time. It also overcame the "tragedy in the commons" problem for biological collectives—up to a point, anyway.

A socialism based on the idea that people are primarily members of biological collectives might actually work, whereas Marxism, which is based on the wrong sort of collective, never has worked so far.

Jerry Abbott

Hitchens, Obama, and the War Party

2011-09-05T03:56:00.000-07:00

Hitchens, Obama, and the War Party

Posted by Richard Spencer on October 13, 2008

Christopher Hitchens’s endorsement of Barack Obama should be fodder for at least two or three days of blogospheric chatter. Yes, that Christopher Hitchens, the Bolshi who became a neocon and endorsed Bush in ‘04. (Not that there’s too much ideological difference between Bolshevism and neoconservatism, especially after the latter group gave up writing about the “unintended consequences” of public policy and started dreaming of global revolution.) Hitchens is also the man who became National Review’s favorite Leftist once he started backing Washington’s noble war of liberation against the “fascist” Saddam Hussein. Chief NR theologian Michael Novak dubbed the author of God is Not Great a “treasure.”

Well, after this one, I imagine Hitchens’s books will elicit much less gush when they’re reviewed in NR’s illiterate “Book, Arts, & Manners” section, and the man probably won’t get as many invites to come “defend” World War II with Victor Davis Hanson on those Hoover Institution webcasts. A five-year love affair has reached its end.

Don’t worry about Hitchens though, he’ll quickly find work elsewhere, and NR’s loss will undoubtedly be The New Republic’s gain (or is it the other way around?).

Anyway, with regard to the endorsement itself, most will probably focus in on Hitchens’s ad hominem attacks against the GOP standard bearers—and Hitchens has, indeed, rejected McCain and Palin specifically because of their personalities: The senior senator suffers “from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical”; Palin is “simply a disgrace.”

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

Beyond all this, Hitchens makes a more important point—and one that will, no doubt, be lost on most commentators:

On ‘the issues’ in these closing weeks, there really isn’t a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their “debates” have been cramped and boring affairs as a result.

And the “issues” Hitchens refers to aren’t just the bailout and tax cuts but Iraq and America’s foreign policy more generally:

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that ‘issue’ I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience.

Organs like NR have worked very hard to define conservatism on the basis of support for the Iraq war and one’s willingness to “confront” various international bogeymen. Well, if Hitchens is correct (and I think he is), NR & friends will be able to get their global-hegemon fix from Obama and Biden just as with McCain and the Barracuda.
Going forward, this means that with an Obama victory, the divide between the neocon-mainstream Right and the “paleo”-alternative Right won’t in the least “fade in significance” (as if the two sides could reconcile and start working together to oppose socialized medicine or whatever.) To the contrary, the paleo-neo divide is likely to grow wider. As Daniel Larison argues:

To the extent that Obama is relatively hawkish on most things except Iraq, which Republican hawks deny for electoral reasons now but will rediscover once he is in power, we will see exactly the same splits between the hawks who side with the Obama administration’s interventions in (name a few countries where we have no business being) and the conservatives who do not believe these interventions to be in the national interest. It will be very much like what we saw in the 1990s. Mainstream, ‘responsible and ‘realist’ conservatives and Republicans will support Obama’s actions, and a significant but largely uninfluential minority on the right will protest against them. All of the bogus arguments war supporters have trotted out for years to justify the Iraq debacle will be turned around on them, and most of them will end up backing the next intervention to halt a ‘genocide,’ ‘liberate’ another country or stop weapons proliferation. They will delight in the frustration of the antiwar left and praise the bipartisan consensus in favor of American hegemony.

Although it might be hard to imagine now, if Obama would decide to bomb Iran, bully Putin, or even order some ridiculous intervention in Darfur, Frum, Lowry, the Podhoretzs, and the Kristols would all be there to root him on and label the whole thing “patriotic.” Hichens would even get in on the act and offer up a post-Trotskyist justification or two.

For the neocons, with “enemies” like Obama and Hitchens, who needs friends?

The Mass Man

2011-09-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

The Mass Man By Joseph Bottum
Thursday, July 24, 2008

Every thinker has one idea—and after he formulates it, all his subsequent works are no more than elaboration: developments and revisions of the same basic intuition. Or so, at least, claimed the French philosopher Henri Bergson, and if ever there was a definitive example, it’s José Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish writer who lived from 1883 to 1955.

There’s a reason Ortega is remembered for his 1929 book, The Revolt of the Masses. He authored many other works, including History as a System, The Origin of Philosophy, The Dehumanization of Art, and The Mission of the University. But he remains, more than any author I can think of, remembered as the author of a single idea, the one he put forth in his Revolt of the Masses.

Ortega’s accomplishment in that book was to identify a new sociological species: mass man. As The Revolt of the Masses explains, the mass man is not just an ordinary man, and he is not associated with any particular class. He is, rather, a product of European historical development, a kind of human being born for the first time in the nineteenth century.

The description Ortega gives is not particularly enjoyable. The mass man lives without any discipline, and—as Ortega remembers from Goethe—“to live as one pleases is plebian.” The mass man “possesses no quality of excellence.” He demands more and more, as if it were his natural right, without realizing that what he wants was the privilege of a tiny group only a century ago. He does not understand that technological wonders are the product of an intricate cultural process for which he should be grateful. “What before would have been considered one of fortune’s gifts, inspiring humble gratitude toward destiny, was converted into a right, not to be grateful for, but to be insisted on,” The Revolt of the Masses claims.

What Ortega understood is that the nineteenth century created the kind of human being who would become the dominant social force in the twentieth century—and thus that there is no way back to the aristocratic style of politics that dominated history for millennia. Mass man, fortified by an array of rights, is in charge of historical destiny.

The danger of that fact, however, lies in mass man’s lack of even a rudimentary understanding of culture. Here Ortega draws a critical distinction between civilization and culture. Civilization is the sum of the technical and technological tools that make life as we know it possible. And culture is that civilization’s underpinnings—the set of ideas, motives, and religious truths that gave birth to civilization.

So, for instance, mass man is oblivious to the fact that much of what is known in modern times as science started as a theoretical or theological game in the seventeenth century. The serious underpinnings of science were apparent to René Descartes, for instance. One of the founders of modern science, Descartes points out in several of his letters that his philosophical conception of God is indispensable for his new conception of science—since it is a view of God as capable of changing even the truths of mathematics.

In other words, it was a new theological concept that ignited the scientific project. Ortega admits that scientific civilization can go on living without being continuously propelled by culture. He warns, however, that if we exhaust our cultural resources, we will roll back to the level of barbarism. Civilization is like a vending machine, whose buttons we press to get a desired good, but after a while it requires maintenance: “History tells us of innumerable retrogressions, of decadences and degenerations. But nothing tells us that there is no possibility of much more basic retrogressions than any so far known, including the most radical of all: the total disappearance of man as man and his silent return to the animal scale.”

If anything, the dangers posed by mass man are worse today than when Ortega wrote. Globalization has let other countries into a competitive realm with Europe and the United States. In fact, it has spread around the world all of the cultureless aspects of modernity.

This, in itself, may not be a reason to worry. The technologies exist, and the rising wealth of manufacturing is slowly lifting good portions of the world out of poverty.

At the same time, the countries benefiting from globalization—China, for instance—seem interested only in the civilization of Western technology. The Chinese, on their own admission, are unprepared to accept what Ortega called the cultural underpinnings that created Western technology. The Asian nations have shown little interest in individual freedoms, democratic institutions, the workings of European and American educational institutions, and the free exchange of ideas.

In the West, we cannot think of technological inventiveness without the cultural ideas that stand behind economic civilization. The globalization of mass man may well reveal whether Ortega was right about the possibility of “the total disappearance of man as man and his silent return to the animal scale.”

Gun Control and Genocide

2011-09-05T03:49:00.000-07:00

Gun Control and Genocide by Gary North April 27, 2005

Sunday, April 24^th marked the 90^th anniversary of the first genocide of the twentieth century: the Turkish government’s slaughter of over a million unarmed Armenians. The key word is "unarmed."

The Turks got away with it under the cover of wartime. They suffered no greater postwar reprisals for this act of genocide than if they had not conducted mass murder of a peaceful people.

Other governments soon took note of this fact. It seemed like such a convenient international precedent.

Seventy-nine years after that genocide began, Hotel Rwanda opened for business.

The Hutus also got away with it. Ironically, at least a decade before – I wish I could remember the date – Harper’s ran an article predicting this genocide for this reason: the Hutus had machine guns. The Tutsis didn’t. The article was written as a kind of parable, not a politically specific forecast. I remember reading it at the time and thinking, "If I were a Tutsi, I’d emigrate."

It did not pay to be a civilian in the twentieth century. The odds were against you.

BAD NEWS FOR CIVILIANS

The twentieth century, more than any century in recorded history, was the century of man’s inhumanity to man. A memorable phrase, that. But it is misleading. It should be modified: "Governments’ inhumanity to unarmed civilians." In the case of genocide, however, this is not easily dismissed as collateral damage on a wartime enemy. It is deliberate extermination.

The twentieth century began officially on January 1, 1901. At that time, one major war was in full swing, so let us begin with it. That was the United States’ war against the Philippines, whose citizens had the naïve notion that liberation from Spain did not imply colonization by the United States. McKinley and then Roosevelt sent 126,000 troops to the Philippines to teach them a lesson in modern geopolitics. We had bought the Philippines fair and square from Spain for $20 million in December, 1898. The fact that the Philippines had declared independence six months earlier was irrelevant. A deal’s a deal. Those being purchased had nothing to say about it.

Back then, we did body counts of enemy combatants. The official estimate was 16,000 dead. Some unofficial estimates place this closer to 20,000. As for civilians, then as now, there were no official U.S.-reported figures. The low-ball estimate is 250,000 dead. The high estimate is one million.

Then World War I opened the floodgates – or, more accurately, the bloodgates.

TURKEY, 1915

The diplomatic game is always verbal. The G-word is verboten. Turks accept – though resent – "tragedy." Hence, all official reports from government-funded sources all over the world – except Armenia – refer to the "Armenian tragedy." This game of diplomacy has been going on since the end of World War I. Reagan was the only President to have used the correct term. President Bush diplomatically used "mass killings" in his a 2003 reference to the event. He also referred to "what many Armenian people have come to call the ‘Great Calamity.’" Many Armenians call it this? Really? Name two. He also said:

I also salute our wise and bold friends from Armenia and Turkey who are coming together in a spirit of reconciliation to consider these events and their significance. I applaud them for rising above bitterness, and taking action to create a better future. I wish them success, building on their recent and significant achievements, as they work together in a spirit of hope and understanding.

Again, name two.

Not being even remotely diplomatic in matters genocidal, I prefer to use the dreaded G-word. The Armenian genocide of 1915 had been preceded by a partial ethnic cleansing, which took two years, 1895–97. About 200,000 Armenians were executed.

This event served as the background for Elia Kazan’s great movie, America, America (1963), which was nominated for the Oscar in 1964. Kazan tells a fictionalized version of his Greek uncle’s emigration to America. Kazan’s family followed in 1913. The movie begins with a Greek and an Armenian, friends, who are warned by their former military officer, a Turk, of trouble coming. It comes. Turkish officials lock the Armenian along with other Armenians inside a church. Then they burn it down. The Greek sees this. He vows to get out of the Ottoman Empire and go to America. The movie traces his journey. America was a sanctuary. If ever there was a movie on America, the sanctuary, it’s America, America.

The Armenians were easily identifiable. Centuries earlier, the conquering Ottoman Turks had forced them to add the "ian/yan" sound to their last names. They were dispersed throughout the empire, so they did not possess the same kind of geographical concentrations and strongholds that other Christians did in Greece and the Balkans. They never did organize armed resistance forces. That was what led to their destruction. They could not fight back.

They were envied because they were rich and better educated than the ruling society. They were the businessmen of the Ottoman Empire. The same was true in Russia. The same resentment existed in Russia, though not with the intensity of the resentment in Turkey.

Non-Turkish estimates range from 800,000 to 1.5 million Armenians killed. Most of these deaths were low-tech but high efficiency. The army rounded up hundreds or thousands of civilians, drove them into wilderness areas, and waited until they starved to death.

GENOCIDE? NONSENSE!

It is still the official position of the Turkish government that this was not genocide; it was a relocation for military reasons. You see, there was a revolt being planned by Armenians and Russians in the border region of Van. This was the explanation provided in 1915 by the Turkish Consol General in New York, in a statement published in the October 15, 1915 issue of the New York Times. An autonomous republic was set up in Van, which was run by someone named Aram. (We read it here first.)

Then, somehow, things just got out of hand. The government was powerless. You know: just like all other governments during wartime with respect to the activities of officials in defense of the nation. Helpless. What’s a government to do? Therefore, in recent days, a minor official for the Turkish government has apologized.

"We apologize to the Armenians for us and our ancestors not having been able to prevent the Genocide." These are the words of Jashar Arif, representative of the International Exchange Confederation, who is a Turk. He has arrived in Armenia together with several other Turks to take part in the events of the 90^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

The Turkish government still maintains that the rulers had expected the Armenians to join with Russians to fight Turkey. As recently as April 24, the Philadelphia Enquirer reported that Yasar Yakis, the head of the Turkish Parliament’s European Union Affairs Committee, explained the reasons for the relocations. "The Armenians were relocated because they cooperated with the enemy, the Russians, and they . . . killed Ottoman soldiers from behind the lines."

Armenians were systematically killed all over the Empire, not just on the Russian border. Relocation to a camp usually means providing food, shelter, and basic amenities. It doesn’t mean letting people starve in the wilderness.

The written text of the government’s order is controversial. It was a state secret. One version was smuggled out of Turkey in 1916. It is posted online. As with all such secret orders, it should not be accepted automatically. But it serves as a starting point for full-scale research: open archives openly arrived at.

Our fellow countrymen, the Armenians, who form one of the racial elements of the Ottoman Empire, having taken up, as a result of foreign instigation for many years past, with a lot of false ideas of a nature to disturb the public order; and because of the fact that they brought about bloody happenings and have attempted to destroy the peace and security of the Ottoman state, and the safety and interests of their fellow countrymen, as well as of themselves; and, moreover, as they have now dared to join themselves to the enemy of their existence [i.e., Russia] and to the enemies now at war with our state – our Government is compelled to adopt extraordinary measures and sacrifices, both for the preservation of the order and security of the country and for the welfare and the continuation of the existence of the Armenian community. Therefore, as a measure to be applied until the conclusion of the war, the Armenians have to be sent away to places which have been prepared in the interior villages; and a literal obedience to the following orders, in a categorical manner, is accordingly enjoined on all Ottomans:

First. – All Armenians, with the exception of the sick, are obliged to leave within five days from the date of this proclamation, by villages or quarters, and under the escort of the gendarmerie.

Second. – Though they are free to carry with them on their journey the articles of their movable property which they desire, they are forbidden to sell their lands and their extra effects, or to leave the latter here and there with other people, because their exile is only temporary and their landed property, and the effects they will be unable to take with them, will be taken care of under the supervision of the Government, and stored in closed and protected buildings. Anyone who sells or attempts to take care of his movable effects or landed property in a manner contrary to this order, shall be sent before the Court Martial. They are free to sell to the Government only the articles which may answer the needs of the Army.

Third. – Contains a promise of safe conduct.

Fourth. – A threat against anyone attempting to molest them on the way.

Fifth. – Since the Armenians are obliged to submit to this decision of the Government, if some of them attempt to use arms against the soldiers or gendarmes, arms shall be employed against them and they shall be taken, dead or alive. In like manner those who, in opposition to the Government’s decision, refrain from leaving or seek to hide themselves – if they are sheltered or given food and assistance, the persons who thus shelter or aid them shall be sent before the Court Martial for execution.

What happened subsequently was fully consistent with this order.

The Turkish government said in 1989 that the archives regarding the non-existent genocide were now open. But, as it turned out, they were not open to Armenians studying the non-existent genocide.

What the archives prove, according to the Turkish government, is that the Turks were the victims of mass murder by Armenians. Yes, it’s hard to believe. But that’s what the archives show. We can take the Turkish government’s word for this. On April 25, a report appeared on the website of the International Relations and Security Network which is partially funded by the Swiss defense agency. Here, we read:

Armenians say at least 1 million of their ethnic kin died between 1915–17 as a result of a deliberate policy of extermination. They say the policy was initiated by the Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti), or CUP, which then ruled over the empire. Ankara claims the death toll is grossly inflated and that 300,000 Armenians died during these years. It also says the deaths were the result of negligence, interethnic strife, or wartime operations. It says the CUP leaders – also known as the Young Turks – had no intention of wiping out the empire’s largest remaining Christian community. While admitting to the massive deportations of 1915 – which followed the massacre of 200,000 Greeks – Turkey’s official historiography says the transfers were aimed at preventing Armenians from collaborating with Russia. Tsarist Russia was then at war with the Ottoman Empire and its German ally. Turkey’s official historiography also asserts that more than 500,000 Turks died at the hands of Armenians between 1910–1922.

On April 25, 2005 – hot off the TurkishPress.com site – we learn of that ruthless counter-genocide.

Turkish Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy leader Onur Oymen said on Monday, "if you must express grief about Armenian casualties, you also have to talk about more than half a million Turks who were killed in the same incidents."

In a written statement, Oymen said that the decision of the U.S. president Bush not to use the term "genocide" represents the reality.

We must not be too happy about Mr. Bush’s statements, told Oymen. "We know for sure that 513,000 Turks were butchered by Armenians. Don’t we have a right to ask for sympathy for the murdered Turks?"

"If you are going to mention these incidents and express grief for the Armenians who lost their lives in those incidents, it is our right to expect a word of sympathy for more than half million Turks in the same incidents."

All right, his story is a bit scrambled. It’s now up to 513,000 Turks in 1915–17, rather than 500,000 Turks 1912-22. But it’s all there. In the archives.

We are also assured by a spokesman of the Turkish Ministry of Justice that Turkey has had enough of this genocide nonsense. Quite enough. On April 25, 2005, TurkishPress.com posted this story.

Turkish Minister of Justice and Government Spokesman Cemil Cicek has indicated that, after many years of leaving the issue of so-called genocide to historians, it is now high time for Turkey to start disproving all allegations in various countries.

High time, indeed! Those historians, tied as they are to misleading primary source documents, simply cannot be trusted. They do not pay sufficient attention to primary source documents of official Turkish assurances for 90 years that nothing was happening or had happened, preferring instead to cite unreliable eyewitness accounts of what did happen. Armenian political influence is behind this.

Cicek noted that Armenians influenced the parliaments of the countries in which they are powerful and succeeded in obtaining parliament decisions in their favor in 15 countries.

Ah, yes: the well-known Armenian International Network, which dominates parliaments around the world.

As Turks, we wished that, instead of turning incidents of the past into a topic of hatred and anger, they should be brought to daylight by the historians with an approach looking at the future. . . .

Based on our archives and confidence in our history and culture, we can say that no genocide took place.

THE BLUE BOOK

What has stuck in the craw of the Turkish government for almost 90 years is an official report issued by the British government, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916. If you don’t think governments stick by their official versions of history, consider this April 22, 2005 story in London’s Financial Times.

Turkey challenges genocide ‘fraud’

By Vincent Boland in Ankara

Published: April 22 2005

The Turkish parliament was yesterday preparing to ask the UK to repudiate a historical document that is considered to form the basis of the claim that Armenians were victims of genocide by Ottoman Turks during the first world war.

The initiative comes on the eve of Sunday’s 90^th anniversary commemorations among Armenians of what they regard as the start of the massacre of up to 1.5m people.

The move is likely to exacerbate the bitter dispute between Turks and Armenians. Supporters of the Armenian cause, particularly in France, are lobbying for the European Union to delay the start of Turkey’s accession talks for EU membership until Turkey acknowledges a "systematic extermination" in 1915.

Turkish MPs completed and signed a letter to both houses of the UK parliament arguing that the document was "a fraud based on fabrications, half truths and biased reports and perceptions" of what happened and "a masterpiece of propaganda and tool of deception".

The document, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-1916, was written by the British historian Arnold Toynbee and included in a publication known as the Blue Book, by Viscount Bryce, a British diplomat. It was an official Westminster document, which is why the Turkish parliament wants the House of Commons and House of Lords to act.

Turkey rejects the charge of genocide. It insists that the true death toll among Armenians was about 600,000 and that many died from the effects of civil war, starvation and deportation. It says the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Turks at the time are overlooked.

The letter, which was made available yesterday by the Turkish parliament in the original Turkish and in English translation, will be sent to London imminently.

The letter says British propaganda in the first world war aimed to portray the destruction of the Ottoman Empire as a key aim of the war, to "render British colonialism in Anatolia and Mesopotamia palatable", and to encourage the US to join the Allied side. The Ottoman Empire collapsed into many nations after the war. Its Anatolian heartland is now Turkey.

The British embassy in Ankara declined to comment on the letter. Some Turkish historians say the document has stood the test of time; others say Mr Toynbee later distanced himself from its findings, which were based on eyewitness accounts.

The official UK position is that the massacres were "an appalling tragedy" but that the evidence is not "sufficiently unequivocal" to categorise them as genocide under the 1948 United Nations Convention on Genocide.

Viscount James Bryce was a master historian. His book, The American Commonwealth (1888), is still read by American historians as a primary source document regarding educated English opinion about America. He served as Ambassador to the United States from 1907–13.

The name Arnold Toynbee may ring a bell. By the 1950s, he was one of the most prominent historians on earth. His 12-volume study (1934–61) of 26 civilizations is unprecedented in its breadth. The Treatment of Armenians was his first major publication.

Why some Armenian organization has not bought a copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro 7 and scanned in the full volume, with the documents, remains a mystery to me. The book is in the public domain: pre-1923. But Toynbee’s summary is online. This section, which appears in Part VI, "The Deportations of 1915: Procedure," is enlightening. Read it carefully. It is the crucial aspect of the entire genocide. The government confiscated their guns.

A decree went forth that all Armenians should be disarmed The Armenians in the Army were drafted out of the fighting ranks, re-formed into special labour battalions, and set to work at throwing up fortifications and constructing roads. The disarming of the civil population was left to the local authorities, and in every administrative centre a reign of terror began. The authorities demanded the production of a definite number of arms. Those who could not produce them were tortured, often in fiendish ways; those who procured them for surrender, by purchase from their Moslem neighbours or by other means, were imprisoned for conspiracy against the Government. Few of these were young men, for most of the young had been called up to serve; they were elderly men, men of substance and leaders of the Armenian community, and it became apparent that the inquisition for arms was being used as a cloak to deprive the community of its natural heads. Similar measures had preceded the massacres of 1895–6, and a sense of foreboding spread through the Armenian people. "One night in winter" writes a foreign witness of these events," the Government sent officers round the city to all Armenian houses, knocking up the families and demanding that all weapons should be given up. This action was the death-knell to many hearts."

I own a copy of The Treatment of Armenians. Or, rather, my wife does. In it, there are two accounts of events in Van, which is where the Turks say a revolt broke out, thereby justifying the forced relocation. These reports were written by Y. K. Rushdooni (as it is spelled in The Treatment of Armenians), my wife’s grandfather. They are extremely detailed: street by street activities. Some might think they are just too detailed. Not so.

Y. K. Rushdoony had a photographic memory. Once, his son Haig caught him in his easy chair in front of the fire, head down, eyes closed. "You were sleeping," Haig kidded him. "I was meditating on what I have just read," he replied. "Come on," Haig said. "You were asleep." He handed Haig the book. "Ask me anything about the pages where the book is open to." Haig did. He said that his father began answering each question, word for word, by what was on the page. He went on for two pages. Haig told me this story 50 years later and confirmed it yesterday. "It was the only time I ever challenged him." When, in his old age, Y. K. began to lose his eyesight, he memorized dozens of psalms, so that he could read them at family gatherings. If his sons knew, they did not tell him. Haig, a Ph.D. in geography, has a good memory. Rousas John, his older brother, was also generally regarded as no slouch in the memory department – a master of the footnote. Ask him a question after one of his lectures, and you might get another lecture. (His dying words, after he had briefly exposited a passage that his son had read to him on his deathbed, were these: "Are there any questions?") But, compared to their father, they both said, they were outclassed.

On her way home in 1915, his pregnant wife came across her father’s remains in the street. He had been hacked to death. Y. K. took her, his young child, and a £100 sterling note that had been given to him when he graduated from Edinburgh, and fled across the border into Russia. The boy drowned in the escape. The money – hard currency – got the two of them across Russia to Archangel, and from there they bought passage to the United States. Rousas was born in 1916 in New York City.

GUN CONTROL

Lenin disarmed the Russians. Stalin committed genocide against the Kulaks in the 1930s. At least six million died.

The model for 1968 Gun Control Act – even the wording was taken from Hitler’s legislation of 1938, which was a revision of the 1928 law passed by the Weimar government. A good introduction to this politically incorrect history of American gun control is on jpfo.org: Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

When Mao’s troops took a village, they would kidnap rich people. They would then offer to return the victims in exchange for money. The victims would be released upon payment. Then they would be kidnapped again. This time, the demand was for guns. Then they would be released again. This made the deal look reasonable to the families of the next victims. But once they had the community’s guns, the mass arrests and executions began.

The idea that the individual has a right of self-defense is written into the U.S. Constitution: the second amendment. Carroll Quigley, who taught Bill Clinton history at Georgetown, was an expert in the history of weaponry. He wrote a 1,000-page book on medieval weaponry. He argued in Tragedy and Hope (1966) that the American Revolution was successful because the Americans possessed weapons that were comparable to those possessed by British troops. This, he said, was why there were a series of revolts against despotic governments in the eighteenth century. When government weapons became superior, the move toward smaller government ceased to be equally successful.

There is a reason why governments are committed to disarming their citizens. They want to maintain the monopoly of violence, no matter what. The idea of an armed citizenry is anathema to most politicians. After all, what’s a monopoly for, if not to be used?

CONCLUSION

Genocide happens.

It doesn’t happen whenever the would-be targets own guns.

How the Sexual Revolution Took All the Fun out of Heterosexuality

2011-09-05T03:47:00.000-07:00

How the Sexual Revolution Took All the Fun out of Heterosexuality

Posted By Brunette Republican Sex Kitten On August 4, 2007

I've been rereading Jane Austen of late, and I find myself noticing something her era – and, in fact, most eras in history before this one – had that ours doesn't: a healthy attitude towards heterosexuality.

Although I don't practice it myself, I am completely in favor of heterosexuality. Obviously, none of us would even be here if it weren't for heterosexuality. And nature provided that, since the species needs it, most of us will enjoy it. And by the by, I'm not simply talking about the reproductive act here. As far as I can tell, straight men and women genuinely enjoy each other's company, and their differences. Heterosexuality is a good thing for civilization.

There has never been a culture that did not have marriage. Feminist revisionist historians have tried to depict marriage as a "comfortable concentration camp" (in Betty Friedan’s famous phrase) in which women were imprisoned by men who really preferred the company of highly educated courtesans or athletic teenage boys. Well, Carolyn LaGraglia (Domestic Tranquility) did a good job of debunking that myth, as well as the myth that before the 1960's, women didn't enjoy sex. Every generation believes that it was the first to discover sex and pities those innocents who begat them with nary a thrill. (Judith Martin, better known as Miss Manners, pointed out, "There has never been a better excuse for the wild life than that it is an understandable, if not justified, reaction against being repressed by parents. Never mind that this was the same excuse used by those parents and their parents before them – it's so good an explanation that it has been passed down in some families for generations.") Statistics show that married people are generally happier than unmarried ones, and that heterosexual marriage is the best thing for most people.

When we think of it today, we tend to think of parents and other authority figures in bygone eras as the sworn enemies of heterosexuality. Those mean old parents were always chaperoning their youngsters so they couldn't have sex, forcing them to marry people they didn't like, etc. What they forget is Regency parents setting up parties whose chief purpose was for their unmarried offspring to dance with and talk to members of the opposite sex so that grandchildren could ensue. Parents in the antebellum South did the same thing; remember that barbecue with Scarlett O'Hara sitting under a tree surrounded by young men? And they also did this in Victorian England. And in the 50's, though by then it was high school dances the grownups arranged just so the teenagers could practice their heterosexuality skills. And earlier. And probably throughout human history. Yeah, there were always duennas hanging around to prevent the young people from having sex before they got married, but nonetheless the atmosphere seems to have been a profoundly favorable one.

I'm pointing all this out because we don't have this attitude today. We have acquired a deeply neurotic attitude toward heterosexuality.

For one thing, heterosexuality is anti-feminist, and feminism is "in" nowadays. I'm not going to qualify this and claim that heterosexuality isn't really antifeminist. If you think that feminism means that women ought to have the right to own property and not be forced by their families to marry men they don't like, then I suppose it isn't. But since American women have had those rights for a very long time and feminists are still shrieking that this is a sexist patriarchal society, one can only conclude that that is not what feminist means.

In the 60's, some especially deranged women started declaring that "The only real feminist is a Lesbian." In The Femme Mystique, one essayist tells us of an ironic incident in the 60's, when a butch Lesbian who owned a Lesbian bar told her, "I hate feminists." That bulldyke had good instincts. Real Lesbians had been following their own inclinations for decades, braving arrest, institutionalization, and ostracism for it. Suddenly straight feminists stomped in wearing construction workers' boots, declared themselves to be Lesbians because they hated men rather than because they loved women, and started telling the actual Lesbians how to be dykes.

These ersatz Lesbians were correct about one thing: their objectives were totally inconsistent with heterosexuality. Heterosexuality pretty much requires admitting that men and women are different, and more than that, being glad about it. I don't think that most feminists' problem with it has much to do with not wanting to be tyrannized by some bully just because he has a penis. My grandmothers weren't feminists, nor did they have the dubious benefits of Women's Lib, but my grandfathers certainly didn't tyrannize them. No, I think the real objection most feminists have is that they are, remember, liberals, and liberals can't grasp the concept of considering other people. Being married, or having any other kind of serious relationship, involves a good bit of yielding to the other person – for all concerned – and sometimes letting the other have their own way. Liberals are so fixated on their own "authentic self" and "personal identity" that ever restraining themselves is abhorrent to them. (This, by the way, is why liberals are still abusive parents and teachers despite their allergy to authority. They won't teach children that manners or hard work are necessary, but they will throw a tantrum if the children don't cater to their neuroses.) Guess what? Marriage isn't going to happen without it, and since over 90% of women are straight, that means it's heterosexual commitment that won't be successfully happening.

Heterosexuality is a very powerful force. There is no known cure. So what feminism has spawned is millions of women who have the urge to practice heterosexuality yet have been convinced that everything involved in it is terrible and that they should instead want "independence" and "fulfilment" (things very few men have ever had, let alone women). Just yesterday I came across yet another tedious essay on how the "male gaze" was making TV shows a hostile environment for women. This has led to a bipolar attitude. The last time I bothered to read an issue of Glamour magazine, some years back, most of the magazine was, of course, articles about how to make yourself beautiful or sexy or thin, and advertisements for products that will help with this. But the lead article was about sexual harassment, and chronicled the so-called "harassment" a few women endured for one week. None of them were physically touched, nor did any man make any crude proposals. However, they contended they were "harassed" constantly because men stared at them in public places. Think about that: most of the magazine was about ways to get men to look at women, and the main article was complaining that they do.

So feminism is one problem. The other is the Sexual Revolution. In the bad old days when women were oppressed, they had the absolute right to say no to sex. Nowadays, the attitude is different. It isn't just the permissiveness; there's also a huge amount of pressure on people to have sex. There seems to be an assumption that this is actually an obligation. Think that over again: in the dark oppressive days before the Sexual Revolution, women were obliged to have sex with their husbands. In today's enlightened society, they are obliged to have sex with the men – or teenage boys – they go to the movies with. Men who are not supporting them, protecting them, at least pretending to be faithful to them, possibly not even buying the tickets. In Scream, to cite just one example, the teenage heroine talks about how patient and saintly her boyfriend is for putting up with her unreasonable refusal to have sex with him, referring to herself scornfully as "sexually anorexic".

Back when women were not expected to have sex with men they weren’t married to, the “male gaze”, flirting, and compliments were affirmation women could enjoy. A whistle or a wolfish look was a request for something the man and woman both knew he wasn’t going to get. It was safe. With modern pressure to have extramarital sex, women feel on some level that they are “obliged” to come across, and responding to flirting with anything other than hostility could be considered leading the man on. The Sexual Revolution has made male appreciation a threat instead of a compliment.

So what heterosexuality has become is a recreational activity that career women squeeze in between their vitally important pursuits of data entry, running a cash register, or selling real estate. It's become something feminist-inclined women and "liberated" men deplore even as they engage in it, because there is no way around the fact that it is impossible to practice heterosexuality without to some degree violating the tenets of feminism, especially since many straight women subconsciously believe that "the only real feminist is a Lesbian" and feel guilty for wanting a man around at all.

And for the young, the situation is even bleaker. I find myself envying the cheerful interest in the opposite sex displayed by teenagers in old books or movies. In fact, I'm always given a jolt every time a mother in a classic novel is actually happy to see a young man looking at her daughter. Nowadays, parents who care about their children at all have to face the fact that given the cultural climate, if their teenagers are allowed out of the house, the odds are excellent that they will have sex. Even apart from the psychological damage of sex without commitment and at a too-young age, damage that liberals insist does not exist, there's also the uncompromising danger of pregnancy or disease. This means that parents who care have to view every date with the utmost suspicion. Is this boy going to make their daughter a mother at 15? Is this girl going to give their son his first VD before he even goes to college? At an age when young people ought to be exploring the delight of having two sexes in the world and finding the person they will spend their lives with, their parents have instead to do whatever they can to discourage any attraction they see because of where it may lead, or else press condoms and pills on their children so that they will not suffer too much from their folly.

Then there's the misguided type of parents who caused this situation to begin with. They're encouraging their teenagers or college-age kids to have casual sex; if we're lucky, they'll convince them to take precautions. They're encouraging their daughters to try to turn themselves into imitation men so that, instead of being enslaved to marriage and motherhood, they can achieve the immense privilege of spending their lives pushing paper across a desk while strangers being paid minimum wage raise their children and Burger King cooks their dinner.

All the fun's been taken out of heterosexuality. If it weren't such a powerful force in human nature, the species would be dying out.

Article printed from MND: News and Commentary Since 2001: http://mensnewsdaily.com

URL to article: http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/08/04/how-the-sexual-revolution-took-all-the-fun-out-of-heterosexuality/

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from
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