Interesting work, I'm curious to see where this goes.
I'm reminded of theologian John Hick's idea of the transition between a "cosmic maintenance" paradigm to a "personal transformation" paradigm (roughly, pre-axial to axial). In archaic Indo-European religions, the ritual focus often made man an active participant in the cosmos, e.g. the ritual recapitulation of the birth of the world by way of the primordial giant (Agnihotra, Ashvamedha, etc). Same with the Egyptian state cult, Aztecs, Chinese (especially Shang). Man was once not just a steward of the world, but an active and necessary maintainer of its existence.
Yes! Bellah was good on this as well, commenting on Levy-Bruhl's "Le monde mythique" in aboriginal religion:
"Primitive religious action is characterized not, as we have said, by worship, nor, as we shall see, by sacrifice, but by identification, 'participation,' acting-out. Just as the primitive symbol system is myth par excellence, so primitive religious action is ritual par excellence. In the ritual the participants become identified with the mythical beings they represent. The mythical beings are not addressed or propitiated or beseeched. The distance between man and mythical being, which was at best slight, disappears altogether in the moment of ritual when everywhen becomes now. There are no priests and no congregation, no medi- ating representative roles and no spectators. All present are involved in the ritual action itself and have become one with the myth." - Bellah, Religious Evolution
Couple of comments, three small and tangential, one larger and addressing the feasibility of this considering its written as an evaluative call-to-action.
Firstly, somewhat nitpicking, when you say “non-dualist”, what do you mean by that? As I understand it, the non-dual doctrines of the east such as Vedanta and Buddhism teach that the non-dual reality(Emptiness, ParaBrahman), are devoid of illusionary qualities and creative actuality. In the case of Emptiness, its the lack of dependently originating conditions, for the ParaBrahman, devoid of Maya or superimposition. Both of these doctrines and the ultimate realities in each are transtheistic and idealistic. I’m not sure that Platonism satisfies as a “non-dual” doctrine either, this explicitly refers to the esoteric teachings of the Dharmic and eastern religions.
One should be careful to not use “non-dualism” as a synonym or colloquial for “monism” or “pantheism”. As monism can encompass things like materialism or inert/indeterminate ontologies like “neutral monism”. It seems to me what you’re looking for is a kind of animistic naturalism and or pantheism that is less refined and abstracted.
Secondly, why say that most forms of Paganism don’t have a concept of sin or a soteriology?
In the German religion we see the a soul thats consistent of composite parts, the form/body, awareness, memories and fortune, and then the fylgja, or spirit that accompanies the soul. At death some elements of the soul are lost like the body, memories wash away in the hel-river down to the well at the base of the world tree as the axis mundi. These memories and fortunes accumulate and dwells within your ancestors in their halls. It is from there that the seers of our people can draw from that wisdom, fortune, etc, to guide the living. One’s awareness or spirit may dwell there as well, or be reincarnated. More significantly, the worst kinds of shameful deeds result in rejection by your ancestors, leading all of the remaining elements to Nastrond to be dissolved or used where possible(like the awareness which can reincarnate).
Nastrond has an implication of dissolution. Your ancestors reject your company, so one is sent to the pit wherein the composite parts are scrapped and rendered down to a point where all individuality is lost. Your fortune, your memories, now rendered inaccessible by your folk for future wisdom or use. Ones deeds were so worthless and shameful as to be hidden away and destroyed very painfully. Moreover, dying heroically also leads one to Valhalla. In Greco-Roman religion, even outside of the cults or something like Platonism, we saw impiety(Asebeia) and Hamartia, and a separation of the soul from the body wherein it could end up in Tartarus, Elysia, or just generally, the underworld. The early Vedic religion was almost entirely centered around reaching Svarga. If you mean that they didn’t have a concept of original sin, then yes, but to say that there was no soteriology or wish for desirable afterlives is not apt.
Thirdly, in the 10th point in the citations section, you seem to suggest that Buddhism isn’t paganism under the belief that it doesn’t involve ancestor veneration and nature worship. Only one of these is true. We see the Buddha outline in the suttas that one is indebted to their parents and cannot repay them except in bringing wisdom to them, or making them whole in respect to the teachings.
We see clear ancestor veneration and the permission of idolatry in the Tirokudda Kanda, Adiya Sutta, and in DN16.
Finally, I feel that a major problem with implementing a biocentric religion or social order would require a massive decrease in our standard of living and what to expect from society materially speaking. Its not just a matter of using our technology and productive capacities in a more mindful and efficient way, almost the entirety of the worlds population has to go, and we would likely have to just abandon industrialism outright. As no amount of green policies or half-assed attempts to clean up the ever growing mess and consumptive drive of industrial civilizations are going to cut it.
This also plays into the birthrate problem, it has nothing to do with incentivizing families with monetary supplementation, the entire safety net of technology(ones that make family units unnecessary) has to go. The reason our ancestors had large families was primarily due to the fact that they had to have someone care for them as they aged, and because infant mortality was so high that by and large a parent couldn’t become attached to their children until they reached adolescence. Husbands and wives stayed together to avoid poverty, the material conditions that fostered the kind of natalism we’re looking for were of abject poverty. Unless we are willing to give up almost every element of our lifestyle currently, which is also instrumental in our immigration(invasion) problem, we will never see a society or social organization that is dignified in respect to nature. Even if we as a race do, we have orientals and africans, as well as indians who are just reaching the same kind of industrial status that we’ve had for a while.
In that way a kind of global ludditism is necessary. This sort of thing is talked about in the anprim circles, “rewilding”, but its highly unlikely and in reality suicidal, as almost no contemporary populations would be genetically robust enough to endure that decline, the dependency on technology is so deep, and the maladaption is so severe that if something happened to the machine, it would likely mean humanity’s extinction. Most of our infrastructure would have to go completely, and be rebuilt around horses, bicycles and walking. This entire thing(commerciality)is dependent upon roads and vehicles. There would be decades of plastic clean up after we move completely to nuclear and solar power. The conditions that we would need to satisfy for this to be realized and not be a kind of reflective artifact would require dozens of miracles back to back in a row. Trying to not paint a bleak picture here, but it’s very much likely that man will continue to repeatedly bite the hands that feed it and be punished for it over and over until his extinction. As there really isn’t anyway out of an extinction event. I have no idea why these conditions have developed or resulted, what kind of divine or ultimate explanation there is for it, but man will keep up with the machine because he has to. It makes for a totally awkward and unintuitive existence, and shines light onto exactly why world denying and world rejecting worldviews have dominated in popularity since the iron age. I think that in these conditions it would be rather concerning to say that this is “all that there is”, and place my own eggs in the basket outside of the world for that very reason, having faith that inevitably somehow this will all be made sensible to me thereafter.
As I said before, to have a completely Indo-European spirituality, one has to have Bronze age conditions, and I don’t see that as likely or perhaps even possible. We would need to actually make a society and material order worth living in, that one could be integrated into and feel no desire to be free of, one that is devoid of the frustrations and agonies that we see now. I feel that by and large even most reactionaries and dissident rightists superficially protest industrialism and capitalism, mostly due to some gross or obscene element of it, and not its systemic or philosophical core. Feels like it would be dead in the water, as it would be very difficult to sell this as an alternative to the average person, who uses a hundred gallons of water a day and expects to eat cheap meat thrice a day, so on and so forth.
Interesting work, I'm curious to see where this goes.
I'm reminded of theologian John Hick's idea of the transition between a "cosmic maintenance" paradigm to a "personal transformation" paradigm (roughly, pre-axial to axial). In archaic Indo-European religions, the ritual focus often made man an active participant in the cosmos, e.g. the ritual recapitulation of the birth of the world by way of the primordial giant (Agnihotra, Ashvamedha, etc). Same with the Egyptian state cult, Aztecs, Chinese (especially Shang). Man was once not just a steward of the world, but an active and necessary maintainer of its existence.
Yes! Bellah was good on this as well, commenting on Levy-Bruhl's "Le monde mythique" in aboriginal religion:
"Primitive religious action is characterized not, as we have said, by worship, nor, as we shall see, by sacrifice, but by identification, 'participation,' acting-out. Just as the primitive symbol system is myth par excellence, so primitive religious action is ritual par excellence. In the ritual the participants become identified with the mythical beings they represent. The mythical beings are not addressed or propitiated or beseeched. The distance between man and mythical being, which was at best slight, disappears altogether in the moment of ritual when everywhen becomes now. There are no priests and no congregation, no medi- ating representative roles and no spectators. All present are involved in the ritual action itself and have become one with the myth." - Bellah, Religious Evolution
Why does that latter depiction not fit within the definition of steward?
Stewardship implies an externality
Pseudo corporate memphis illustration
Couple of comments, three small and tangential, one larger and addressing the feasibility of this considering its written as an evaluative call-to-action.
Firstly, somewhat nitpicking, when you say “non-dualist”, what do you mean by that? As I understand it, the non-dual doctrines of the east such as Vedanta and Buddhism teach that the non-dual reality(Emptiness, ParaBrahman), are devoid of illusionary qualities and creative actuality. In the case of Emptiness, its the lack of dependently originating conditions, for the ParaBrahman, devoid of Maya or superimposition. Both of these doctrines and the ultimate realities in each are transtheistic and idealistic. I’m not sure that Platonism satisfies as a “non-dual” doctrine either, this explicitly refers to the esoteric teachings of the Dharmic and eastern religions.
One should be careful to not use “non-dualism” as a synonym or colloquial for “monism” or “pantheism”. As monism can encompass things like materialism or inert/indeterminate ontologies like “neutral monism”. It seems to me what you’re looking for is a kind of animistic naturalism and or pantheism that is less refined and abstracted.
Secondly, why say that most forms of Paganism don’t have a concept of sin or a soteriology?
In the German religion we see the a soul thats consistent of composite parts, the form/body, awareness, memories and fortune, and then the fylgja, or spirit that accompanies the soul. At death some elements of the soul are lost like the body, memories wash away in the hel-river down to the well at the base of the world tree as the axis mundi. These memories and fortunes accumulate and dwells within your ancestors in their halls. It is from there that the seers of our people can draw from that wisdom, fortune, etc, to guide the living. One’s awareness or spirit may dwell there as well, or be reincarnated. More significantly, the worst kinds of shameful deeds result in rejection by your ancestors, leading all of the remaining elements to Nastrond to be dissolved or used where possible(like the awareness which can reincarnate).
Nastrond has an implication of dissolution. Your ancestors reject your company, so one is sent to the pit wherein the composite parts are scrapped and rendered down to a point where all individuality is lost. Your fortune, your memories, now rendered inaccessible by your folk for future wisdom or use. Ones deeds were so worthless and shameful as to be hidden away and destroyed very painfully. Moreover, dying heroically also leads one to Valhalla. In Greco-Roman religion, even outside of the cults or something like Platonism, we saw impiety(Asebeia) and Hamartia, and a separation of the soul from the body wherein it could end up in Tartarus, Elysia, or just generally, the underworld. The early Vedic religion was almost entirely centered around reaching Svarga. If you mean that they didn’t have a concept of original sin, then yes, but to say that there was no soteriology or wish for desirable afterlives is not apt.
Thirdly, in the 10th point in the citations section, you seem to suggest that Buddhism isn’t paganism under the belief that it doesn’t involve ancestor veneration and nature worship. Only one of these is true. We see the Buddha outline in the suttas that one is indebted to their parents and cannot repay them except in bringing wisdom to them, or making them whole in respect to the teachings.
We see clear ancestor veneration and the permission of idolatry in the Tirokudda Kanda, Adiya Sutta, and in DN16.
Finally, I feel that a major problem with implementing a biocentric religion or social order would require a massive decrease in our standard of living and what to expect from society materially speaking. Its not just a matter of using our technology and productive capacities in a more mindful and efficient way, almost the entirety of the worlds population has to go, and we would likely have to just abandon industrialism outright. As no amount of green policies or half-assed attempts to clean up the ever growing mess and consumptive drive of industrial civilizations are going to cut it.
This also plays into the birthrate problem, it has nothing to do with incentivizing families with monetary supplementation, the entire safety net of technology(ones that make family units unnecessary) has to go. The reason our ancestors had large families was primarily due to the fact that they had to have someone care for them as they aged, and because infant mortality was so high that by and large a parent couldn’t become attached to their children until they reached adolescence. Husbands and wives stayed together to avoid poverty, the material conditions that fostered the kind of natalism we’re looking for were of abject poverty. Unless we are willing to give up almost every element of our lifestyle currently, which is also instrumental in our immigration(invasion) problem, we will never see a society or social organization that is dignified in respect to nature. Even if we as a race do, we have orientals and africans, as well as indians who are just reaching the same kind of industrial status that we’ve had for a while.
In that way a kind of global ludditism is necessary. This sort of thing is talked about in the anprim circles, “rewilding”, but its highly unlikely and in reality suicidal, as almost no contemporary populations would be genetically robust enough to endure that decline, the dependency on technology is so deep, and the maladaption is so severe that if something happened to the machine, it would likely mean humanity’s extinction. Most of our infrastructure would have to go completely, and be rebuilt around horses, bicycles and walking. This entire thing(commerciality)is dependent upon roads and vehicles. There would be decades of plastic clean up after we move completely to nuclear and solar power. The conditions that we would need to satisfy for this to be realized and not be a kind of reflective artifact would require dozens of miracles back to back in a row. Trying to not paint a bleak picture here, but it’s very much likely that man will continue to repeatedly bite the hands that feed it and be punished for it over and over until his extinction. As there really isn’t anyway out of an extinction event. I have no idea why these conditions have developed or resulted, what kind of divine or ultimate explanation there is for it, but man will keep up with the machine because he has to. It makes for a totally awkward and unintuitive existence, and shines light onto exactly why world denying and world rejecting worldviews have dominated in popularity since the iron age. I think that in these conditions it would be rather concerning to say that this is “all that there is”, and place my own eggs in the basket outside of the world for that very reason, having faith that inevitably somehow this will all be made sensible to me thereafter.
As I said before, to have a completely Indo-European spirituality, one has to have Bronze age conditions, and I don’t see that as likely or perhaps even possible. We would need to actually make a society and material order worth living in, that one could be integrated into and feel no desire to be free of, one that is devoid of the frustrations and agonies that we see now. I feel that by and large even most reactionaries and dissident rightists superficially protest industrialism and capitalism, mostly due to some gross or obscene element of it, and not its systemic or philosophical core. Feels like it would be dead in the water, as it would be very difficult to sell this as an alternative to the average person, who uses a hundred gallons of water a day and expects to eat cheap meat thrice a day, so on and so forth.