A new morality

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It is high time that Western man changes his consciousness of moral matters. As a consequence people will change their ways. Today, we seem to have accorded human life, as such, with a sanctified status as the supreme good. It wasn’t like this earlier in history. The Bakhtiari nomads are portrayed in Bronowski’s documentary series from the seventies (The Ascent of Man). It was time for an old man to die. He had lost his zest so he chose not to follow the others who waded over the river during the yearly wandering. He just sat down on the hillside and awaited death. This event, which was regarded as wholly natural by the tribespeople, was played out before the camera. I am not saying that this is worthy of imitation. I am only saying that mankind has viewed these matters differently in earlier times. I am not advocating a return to olden ways, but perhaps we could learn something from history.

Charitable deeds toward the needy has become an obsession, but this has as a consequence that nature is overtaxed. It is a double standard of morality. We ought to leave something behind for future generations, too, and not only think of the generations that are alive today. It is not self-evident to always give our support to all forms of human life. In earlier times it was not obligatory to subsidize the expansion of the human population in the Third World. There is a marked tendency to subsidize passive human life, because it panders to the basest emotions, whereas we should really give our support to a self-supporting human culture that can fend for itself without plundering nature. But people don’t seem to care. The greater the population, the better it is. My country is invaded with people from Third World countries, who are for the most part simple people with a primitive psychology. To subsidize these people is reckoned as the highest good, by most of my countrymen. The majority will eat, defecate, copulate, and lead completely meaningless lives in a civilization which is only capable of fending for their material needs, and nothing more. It has only destructive consequences.

In fact, what really counts is the growth of the human soul, and not the passive and vegetating human flesh. The materialist obsession with multiplication of humanity must come to an end. It builds on a Marxist doctrine: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” The Communist persecutions in the USA during the fifties builds on a misconception. McCarthy thought that the threat was represented by Communist individuals. In fact, it was the Communist way of thought, the obsession with a materialist interpretation of the world, which was infiltrating the human soul. The spirit isn’t the center of attention anymore. It is the growth and well-being of human flesh that counts. Thusly, we need to be nourished and passively fed, according to the dictum: “to each according to his needs”.

If the human soul and the divine spirit remains the center of attention, the survival and well-being of every individual isn’t that essential. Charity is precious, provided that it comes from the heart. But if charity derives from a doctrine that has been programmed into the head, it will lead to evil consequences. First priority ought to be the individual life with a spiritual connection. A better balance between spirit and matter obviates those setbacks in Fascism, Communism and Nazism, and global wars, in which individual life suddenly counts for nothing. The only thing that counts are the State and the Dogmas. Today, this standpoint is represented by radical Islamists, who want to accomplish the Caliphate, the Muslim state, in which religious law rules.

Thus, as Communists and Socialists subscribe to a dogmatic form of charity (to each according to his needs), they will turn to the other extreme and worship the Communist state as the highest good, whereas the individual counts for nothing. Behind this materialist obsession with the sustainment of human flesh hides a collectivistic spirit that accords life with no value at all, and which aims to eradicate individuality. I have written about it in my Thanatos article, here. It seems to be a pendulum movement in history. The obsession with keeping each individual alive and wholly sustained changes into the opposite standpoint of collectivism where the individual counts for nothing, who can easily be sacrificed in war effort, or as a slave to the state. These are the opposite sides of the same coin, materialism and its flip side, Thanatos — the spirit of death.

A conscious obsession with keeping human flesh alive is also an unconscious obsession with the spirit of death, that is, an unconscious worship of the slave state and the regulated and perfectly controlled society where individuality will perish. Thus, the spirit of collectivism is the enemy of the spirit of the individual. Americans always talk about “individual freedom”. They should know that the spirit of Communism and Thanatos does not manifest in individuals, nor in President Obama, as has been alleged. It works differently. It slowly takes over the soul of people. It comes to expression in the obsession with keeping human flesh alive at all cost, and providing for the material needs of the global population, the striving for opulence, and making one’s own life as materially comfortable as possible. There is a monster hiding in materialism, which threatens individual freedom. A simpler lifestyle, more in tune with nature, can ward off this threat.

Mats Winther
 
My country is invaded with people from Third World countries, who are for the most part simple people with a primitive psychology. To subsidize these people is reckoned as the highest good, by most of my countrymen. The majority will eat, defecate, copulate, and lead completely meaningless lives in a civilization which is only capable of fending for their material needs, and nothing more. It has only destructive consequences.
I sincerely hope you’re a troll, because all the alternatives are worse. 😦

But let me assume charitably, for a moment, that you’re just throwing these points up for debate, and are trying to be provocative as debaters often are. (I’ve done my share of debating and judging debates, so your tactics no longer shock me…) 😃

Let’s have some clarity in terms.

First, “Third World country”. In today’s globalizing world, the term is meaningless except in purely economic or statistical terms. For example, it’s no use quoting the “astronomical” infant mortality rates of a “Third World country”, when you well know that most “first world countries” have astronomical abortion rates that, when factored in, actually equalize the odds a little.

Second, “primitive psychology” is a very relativistic judgment. The material culture of, say, an African tribe, an Arabian nomadic group, or a South Indian village may seem “primitive” to a modern, technological man. But “technologically primitive” does not equal “psychologically primitive”. King Solomon didn’t have the Internet, but I’m sure he was much wiser than you or I. As a mental health professional, I can tell you that the people of my (nominally “Third World”) country do not have “primitive psychologies”; this is a racist myth that even the most secular psychologists have abandoned.

Third, define “meaningless”. What is a “meaningful” life to you? A farmer in a village may find meaning from the growth of his crops, the care of his family and his livestock, and the traditions and rituals of his ancient gods. A woman living in a tribal society may find meaning in bearing children, rearing them, and handing on oral and instrumental traditions to the next generation. Why should we consider a modern child with an X-box more “advanced” than a “primitive” child with a wooden doll or a boomerang? It’s unfair to judge “meaning” by what you think it ought to be. Certainly, a person from one culture can have trouble adapting to another, but this works both ways; in a traditional society, your values and ideals may also appear “meaningless”. Ultimately, we (that is, mortal men, no matter how “sophisticated”) cannot make final judgments on meaning, because we are not the final authorities.

I wish you all the best in finding your way out of the maze you seem to have wandered into, and I leave you with the words of a better man than I:

"But remember what a lot of the philosophy is! Remember what sort of conduct those highbrows often present to the highest! All about the Will to Power and the Right to Live and the Right to Experience — damned nonsense and more than damned nonsense — nonsense that can damn.” (G. K. Chesterton) :o

Obligatory disclosure of conflict of interest: as an academic psychiatrist from a “Third World” country, I find your statements unrealistic, and even bordering on delusional.
 
So to summarize this and the adjacent thread. In the interest of becoming more enlightened we should :
  1. Kill the helpless infants.
  2. Kill the old people.
  3. Not be so doggone charitable / focused on charity to those alive in the middle.
Fascinating. Thankfully the Church has replaced these notions with goodness. In those cultures where this evil has managed to regain a foothold it intends to return them to some level of civilization again soon.
 
The Bakhtiari nomads are portrayed in Bronowski’s documentary series from the seventies (The Ascent of Man). It was time for an old man to die. He had lost his zest so he chose not to follow the others who waded over the river during the yearly wandering. He just sat down on the hillside and awaited death. This event, which was regarded as wholly natural by the tribespeople, was played out before the camera.
Mats Winther
I’ve seen the documentary, and you can’t say that the old man chooses to die. He dies because he’s too weak to cross the river and continue the very strenuous journey. Maybe he could have gone on for a bit longer but ultimately he knows he can’t make it. And the tribespeople can’t do anything about that, because their whole livelihood depends on making the journey with their flock.
 
It is high time that Western man changes his consciousness of moral matters. As a consequence people will change their ways. Today, we seem to have accorded human life, as such, with a sanctified status as the supreme good. It wasn’t like this earlier in history. The Bakhtiari nomads are portrayed in Bronowski’s documentary series from the seventies (The Ascent of Man). It was time for an old man to die. He had lost his zest so he chose not to follow the others who waded over the river during the yearly wandering. He just sat down on the hillside and awaited death. This event, which was regarded as wholly natural by the tribespeople, was played out before the camera. I am not saying that this is worthy of imitation. I am only saying that mankind has viewed these matters differently in earlier times. I am not advocating a return to olden ways, but perhaps we could learn something from history.
Part of your post omitted due to length ( Linus).
Actually, I did read your article; or more truthfullly, I scanned it closely. Your case is way over generalized. True, people coming into the country, to some extent, do carry cultural baggage that goes back to the dim mists of history. However, this need not be fatal, since it is amenable. But that requires something more than Psychology or Psychiatry, it requires Evangalization into Christianity, which alone can provide an unchanging morality and the individual motivation to overcome the " dark mists " of the past.

I would also suggest that Christianity, at least as defined by the Catholic Church, does not preach the retreveal and fatening up of " all flesh " as you suggest. Indeed, if you read the various Encyclicals of the past hundred years or so and the documents from Vatican II, which few have read and fewer contemplated, we do what we can where we can according to principles of " soliderity " and " subsidierity, " and by these means we hopefully might cause the light of reason and faith to be turned on when the Good News is preached. This is the only way the masses can be reached and " civilized, " but more importantly, it is the only way individual souls can be converted and hopefully be saved. And, only this way can civilization be saved - as you and we all desire. 👍
 
The way in which some of you guys are fixated on the well-being and proliferation of the human flesh is downright anti-Christian. Earlier in history, people were more concerned with the welfare of the soul, whether or not people would be allowed entry to heaven. Today, the materialistic, paradisal, welfare state is regarded the new heaven. But it is an illusion.

In the present day, we overvalue vegetative and unconscious life and underestimate spiritual and individual life. We ought to acknowledge the moral conflict involved between these two forms of life. Sometimes one must leave room to the growth of the individual at the price of vegetative and unconscious life. The notion that all human life is always divine and must be protected at all costs is what underlies the expansive population of Subsaharan Africans and their immigration to the Western world. The biggest immigrant group in Sweden is the Somali nationality. The majority of them lead passive lives. Approximately 83% are unemployed. Most Western people seem to think this is ideal. The more humans there exist on earth the better it is, whether or not they are merely vegetating. But this policy is catastrophic. Population growth devastates the earth.

We do not care about the sufferings of nature and of animals nearly as much. We think that animals merely follow a machinelike program, and have no real feelings, corresponding to death’s anguish or sorrow. Nothing could be more wrong. They are more exposed to and more defenseless against their own terror, pain,and anguish, than are humans. A human being can always withdraw into himself, into his inner intellectual universe, but an animal is left at the mercy of his/her feelings and pains.

There cannot be biological life without enormous suffering. Simple organisms, like fish, are driven by fear. They can experience sheer terror as they easily panic. Certain species of aquarium fish can be so terrified that they sometimes, at a sudden movement outside the aquarium, die out of shock. Dwarf gouramis live in matrimony, and the male is responsible for building the nest. I once observed how a female discovered her dead husband, which I hadn’t had time to remove. The male had hid himself in a corner, behind the filter, and turned his belly up. The female panicked when she discovered him. She swam uncontrolledly and speedily in diverse directions and tried to swim through the glass in sheer chock. She ended up hyper-ventilating in a corner. I would like to have spared her that chocking experience.

Moreover, A man in Helsinki, Finland, left his ground floor apartment in a tidy state. When he came home he found a dead elk in the living room. It had jumped in through the window and, panicking, it had completely trashed the living room, including the stereo equipment. There were blood everywhere. It is a horrible death, and it amply exemplifies the monumental suffering of living creatures. Fox traps are still used to catch foxes and other animals. Foxes have been known to gnaw their leg off and linger off to a slow death.

If the animal kingdom must put up with so much suffering, including the agony of death and the extinction of their own kind, why can’t the human species carry some of the load, too? Why must we always expand our species, maximize welfare and well-being for ourselves, and remove all the suffering of humanity, while at the same time chewing up the earth like a voracious monster? We are so mean that we refuse to give the pigs filings to root in and to rest on. They have to make do with a concrete floor.

The only thing that is really essential, in today’s ideology of welfarism, is how to create more of these voracious monsters, called homo sapiens, and how to make their lives as comfortable as possible, at extreme costs to the environment. The ideology of global welfarism, including the nearly religious principle of human maximization, seems to be blindly accepted across party lines. The politicians don’t question it. As a human being, I feel ashamed for my own species. But we needn’t be voracious monsters, if we only could abandon our species egoism and fixation on well-being for all humanity at all cost. We must learn to tolerate the darkness of nature, including our own suffering and death, like humanity did in earlier times. In my article, Symbolic Poverty, here, I argue that we ought to tolerate life’s sufferings and acknowledge the dark side of existence.

Mats Winther
 
The way in which some of you guys are fixated on the well-being and proliferation of the human flesh is downright anti-Christian. Earlier in history, people were more concerned with the welfare of the soul, whether or not people would be allowed entry to heaven. Today, the materialistic, paradisal, welfare state is regarded the new heaven. But it is an illusion.
How can you be so right about this and be so wrong about everything else?
The notion that all human life is always divine and must be protected at all costs is what underlies the expansive population of Subsaharan Africans and their immigration to the Western world. The biggest immigrant group in Sweden is the Somali nationality. The majority of them lead passive lives. Approximately 83% are unemployed. Most Western people seem to think this is ideal. The more humans there exist on earth the better it is, whether or not they are merely vegetating. But this policy is catastrophic. Population growth devastates the earth.
Shorter: You’re racist. Why not just start tearing down your obscene welfare state for everyone? This is why the welfare state is dangerous. Not only can and will it bankrupt nations but it will lead to comments like this about deciding who and who is not “worthy” of said welfare. Either it’s a welfare state for all, or it’s not. You don’t get to decide that since Somalis lead “passive lives” that they are not entitled to government assistance when they emigrate to your country. That’s sick.
We do not care about the sufferings of nature and of animals nearly as much. We think that animals merely follow a machinelike program, and have no real feelings, corresponding to death’s anguish or sorrow. Nothing could be more wrong. They are more exposed to and more defenseless against their own terror, pain,and anguish, than are humans. A human being can always withdraw into himself, into his inner intellectual universe, but an animal is left at the mercy of his/her feelings and pains.
Human beings suffer more precisely because we have souls and intellects. We are far better at creating personal hells than we are at creating anything that resembles heaven. I won’t even bother with the rest of your comments that basically state that human beings and animals are essentially of the same value. They’re not. We should be good stewards of the Earth, but we should not kill ourselves so that animals can have cushier existences. That’s ludicrous.

By the way, if you’re really super-concerned about the declining amount of resources on Earth (which is nonsense by the way. We find more and more each day) then advocate for humanity to go into space and colonize first our solar system and then the rest of the galaxy. That would not only be pretty darn cool, but it would also spare us from ideologies that are based partially on lowering humans down to the animal level and then additionally categorizing certain peoples as more or less worthy of existence based on their utility.
 
Sounds like the old criticism of people as “speciest” agenda.
 
Morals are divine laws given to us by God. They cannot change.

Man can change his mind about morals but as he does so he is only bringing himself more or less in line with God’s laws.

Morality itself, however, is objective, and it is given to us from God through his Church.

-Tim-
 
Wait – you are fully aware of the emotional effect that the suffering of even an animal has on us, and seem to approve of that reaction, but you expect people to deliberately permit the suffering and death of other human beings when they could prevent it?

You have some good points – we should pay more attention to our impact on the world and use of resources, we should flee materialism and strive to cultivate the soul rather than pamper the body, and collectivism is a perversion of charity that can lead to very nasty places. But then you wrap everything up in an insanely elitist and racist proposal that is no less nasty.

No, thanks, fella.

Usagi
 
Sounds like a situation looking for an “ultimate solution.”

Humans don’t learn from history very well. Not even fairly recent history! 😦
 
Mr Winther, with your apparent low regard for human life does that mean you favor abortion, or will you reserve and encourage it for the “underclass” only?
 
Sad. There have been various forms of new morality written over the years and they don’t make sense - ever. The Hippies wanted us to go back to nature, form communes, live off the land, leave man’s mechanized culture behind. They also favored hedonism over any rational morality. “Do your own thing, man.” And ended up having sex with whoever, living with whoever, smoking dope, getting drunk and not caring much about the “unenlightened.”

“The Man” - meaning a rational, functional society - was “oppressing” everybody. We needed FREEDOM to do whatever the heck crossed our minds. Natural, organic, so on and so forth. In the end, they looked different but they had to go to work or stay on welfare and just while away the hours gettin’ high and livin’ with their ‘old lady’ or not. And then they got old.

Let me know when that faster than light drive gets developed. Until then.

🍿

Peace,
Ed
 
In City of God, St Augustine argues against those who believe that the gods are to be worshipped for the sake of temporal advantages. On the contrary, God is to be worshipped for the sake of eternal life. Augustine repudiates earthly welfarism. Its followers is called the earthly city. The community that looks beyond the worldly ideals is called the heavenly city.

It seems that many people in this forum would benefit from reading City of God, which is regarded one of the greatest masterpieces in Western history.

Mats
 
Because it is extremely important, especially with regards to the current political situation in the Western world, where the ideal of the “earthly city” is running amuck. Since I posted this in 2012, thing have gone downhill, exactly in the direction that I, and also the most important thinker in Western history, namely St Augustine, warned against.

As example of the degeneration of Christian thought, I give the following excerpt from the net: “Christian love is giving to others those things that you would want them to give you if you were in their situation–and it’s doing so even if they can’t pay you back”. Obviously, then, it revolves around money and material assets. The message has developed into an ideology centering on materialism and global welfare, thus turning the spiritual content of the message into its very opposite.

I discuss the forms that evil takes in the modern world in the following article. Today, the predominant expression of evil is no longer Nazism, because the devil has donned new clothes. He always changes shape.

Mysterium Iniquitatis–The mystery of evil

M. Winther
 
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