As we develop our analysis of Tradition here and at Gornahoor, as well as a critique of the modern world, there will arise several reasons why Tradition is preferable to modernity. One reason I will briefly reflect upon here is permanence.
The modern world, both in the values it projects and practical way it runs, is in a constant state of flux. Nothing is built to last, no person assumes it will, and few these days stop to ask why we would bother investing in transient, non-permenant solutions in our lives. Even government is content to close with “this will do for now,” as the Congress of the United States did in July with the non-solution it offered of a super-commitee on the deficit. Essentially, it was an elaborate way of saying we prefer to do nothing. There is always some bright idea waiting over the horizon, that great glorious tomorrow which never comes.
In traditional parlance, we refer to this as the spirit of becoming, as opposed to a spirit of being. We are always on the journey to some new and brighter place, which will inevitably come, and anything we have in the meanwhile is merely holding us over. The roots and ramifications of this philosophy are found in Theosophy, with its false emphasis on “continual evolution,” in Marxist analysis, and in Americanist “capitalism.” In Theosophy, the effect is spiritual. In Marxism and “capitalism,” the effect is material. In both cases, the result is the same: “Why invest today for what I can buy better tomorrow?” This attitude was built in to the recent real estate collapse, wherein people bought into a home with the assumption that the selling price would rise and they would simply sell it later to buy a better house. Gone were the ancestral homes of yesteryear, wherein people invested into but one dwelling once, and passed it on through generations as a patrimony, the people belonging to the land as much as it belonged to the people. All of society was built around this sense of permanent domicile. Many often speak of not knowing their neighbours now. People often knew their neighbours so well in times past because the neighbours were always the same. The modern man, by contrast, has attached himself to nothing. People leave the places they grew up in to seek a better living, better entertainment, even better weather. When a town lacks these incentives or even loses them, communities simply dry up overnight, as if there was nothing to them. Witness the decline of Riverside and Victorville California. People do not know their neighbours because the neighbour will probably change multiple times. It often surprises people to hear me say my great-grandmother, of blessed memory, lived in her same house for almost 60 years. To think at one time multiple generations would have passed through the same home!
As a result of this mentality, the crisis in society, and in the family, stems back farther than the last 40 years. Once people abandoned the single domicile attitude and instead opted for less permanent strictures, the stage for decline was set. No longer attached to a land, people lost their ancestors. No longer attached to ancestors, people lost tradition. Losing tradition, people lost their faith. In losing their faith, people lose their family. Once people decided to live on the wings of the golden tomorrow, rather than capitalizing on the now, people bought into “the dream.” Society has become based on fantasies, not of a grand and glorious nature, but of a base and material one. People live thinking about what they will do next! All of modern marketing is geared to create dissatisfaction. Be unhappy with your current life! Be unhappy with your current self! Become someone or something more new, glamorous, and shiny! Sure, our new model was the best ever 6 months ago, but with a few minor changes the current one is even better! Buy now, have credit card ready!
The free market Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard once pointed out that, given economies of scale, and the speed of changing information, if all the artificial structures holding up the large corporations were removed, they would collapse. Artificially low-interest rates, inflated currency, globalist economic structures, “free trade” agreements, government sponsored banks, large amounts of credit, etc. all prop up a over inflated economy and corporate structure. The edifice keeps getting built higher and higher, in the hopes of staving off the day of reckoning. Try as they might though, the modern economic and political structures, built on bloated falsehoods and fakery, are doomed to collapse. It is inherent in their design. They were never meant to last. The very nature of the modern world is to be dissatisfied and agitate for ever more change. We must constantly move forward to our destiny, whatever that is. One often wonders if leftism even has an end result in mind? It is difficult to believe that at one time societies believe they were currently living in a blessed state. Byzantium, for example, considered itself the incarnation of the Christian polis, the fulfilment of a sacred destiny. The Holy Roman Empire saw itself as the revival of the glory of Rome. They did not believe they would become those things, they were those things.
To this Tradition responds with a society of being, not becoming. All that is great and wonderful exists now, and we must seize the day to capture the victory. This is not to say we cannot aspire to greater things, merely that we be content with our current state and capitalize on it. There is no need to become someone else, live another place, or wear the latest fashion to find satisfaction. All the tools of our victory are within us at all times, and they exist in the spirit of the universe. You are born and put where you need to be. By living in the now, rather than tomorrow, our opportunities become clear, our happiness evident, and our gifts and abundance overwhelm us. If people realized what they have right now, in this time, they could conquer all things. No more looking to some tomorrow. ” For he saith: In an accepted time have I heard thee; and in the day of salvation have I helped thee. Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2nd Epistle St. Paul to Corinthians 6:2) Semper Victoria! Always Victory!
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