Slavery and the Moral Crisis

The reappearance of slavery has highlighted the moral crisis in Western Civilization. By reappearance of slavery is meant the lawful and public reappearance of slave markets in the Islamic State. The clandestine slave-trade has always been around, but is illegal and makes no pretense of being lawful or justified by religion or statue.It is interesting, and symptom of the moral crisis that many Progressives condemn past slavery in the U.S.A. as the countries original sin, but are silent about slavery in Islam. It seems doubtful any Progressive would condemn Islam as having slavery as an original sin. Slavery is allowed by Islamic law. The crisis is the silence and inaction of Western Civilization to slavery, genocide, and the destruction of indigenous people. These are all actions that have been condemned by Western values. They run contrary ti traditional Christian values which form the presuppositions of Western morality. So why the silence and inaction? The answer is the moral crisis has long been going on in Western Civilization, but what is the moral crisis? To state the problem briefly our metaphysical presuppositions no longer support our ethics.(I have written some on this before in my essay:"Civilization and Abstraction"). It could be asked why is it a problem that our metaphysical presuppositions do not support our ethics? To begin with, we must understand the function of our metaphysical presuppositions. The function of our metaphysical of our metaphysical presuppositions is to give a consistent and coherent account of our experience of the world. Our metaphysical presuppositions determine how we cut up,and or interpret our experience of the world. If our metaphysical presuppositions do not support our ethics, it means our ethics can be violated with no consequences, or repercussions.Ethics becomes like a Castle in the air, resting on nothing. In other words, ethics is a fantasy that can be violated whenever it is expedient to do so. The crisis started in the Renaissance when the geocentric model of the cosmos was overthrown. The top-down system of the cosmos was broken. The physical basis of the top-down system was removed. Then Darwin totally destroyed the top-down system with his theory of natural selection. Natural selection destroyed the notion of immutable, unchangeable Forms that are the foundation of existence. Instead, entities and species are built from the bottom-up, and not copies of Forms that reside in a divinized mental realm. Even worse species are not the result of reason, but random chance. For much of its history Western Civilization has adhered to a double theory of truth, posited by Rene Descartes. That there are two realms (substances) the physical (body) and, the mental (mind) which both have a separate truth. So science can be true in the physical realm, and religion can be true in the mental realm. This is of course, the substance dualism of the Cartesian compromise. Immanuel Kant rebuilt and strengthened the Cartesian compromise, with hes dualism of the phenomenal realm and the thing in itself.: the double theory of truth. This compromise is of course untenable. There cannot be two opposing separate truths. The attempts to find a new basis for ethics has resulted in much of the idiocy in recent Western philosophy. The most popular and successful alternative has been Progressivism. We have all heard the sanctimonious moralizing of the Progressive left, but what is Progressivism? The roots of Progressivism ho back to apocalyptic Christianity. The redistribution of wealth and the forceful removal of those in power can be found in apocalyptic movements back to the Medieval age.(see John Ball), but we shall only go back to the eighteenth century in Germany. In the eighteenth century there was a revival of apocalyptic Christianity in Germany, and from this revival it is possible to draw a straight line to Marxism. Marxism of course provides the metaphysical basis for the progressive movement. The most important thinker and preacher of the revival was F.C. Oetinger. Let us look at some quotes from Oetinger. (All quotes are taken from Ernest Benz'a book:"Mystical Sources of German Romantic Philosophy") First let us observe Oetinger's view about progressive revelation. "Thus, the divine life, like any other life, also has its periods of development. The difference is simply that God is the freest being of all and that the developmental periods of hes life depend only on hes liberty..." Each period of divine revelation constitutes a limitation within himself... The choice of what is to be revealed and what is to remain hidden depends upon the freewill of the mind and spirit, which is at the same time that of the Father of all things" As I said one can draw a straight line from Oetinger to Marxism. History is a constant unfolding of a progress to the Eschaton (Golden age, Parousia). History is always noves forward, it is an unfolding, not a series of ups and downs. History has a destination, there is purpose, not series leading nowhere in particular. The end of history is of course, the rule of the Paraclete, Christ reign on Earth. Oetinger also has ideas on what this perfect society would look like. Another quote: "Secondly, they should possess all goods in community and not get upset about things being their own property. In fact, men possess a great number of things in common, churches, schools, roads, and streets, waterways, markets, noble estates, hospitals, etc. By nature, each has the right to use the goods of another as much as the other to use his" It would be hard for a Marxist to improve on the above quote. The redistribution of wealth is the first and most important commandment of of Progressivism. So Progressivism starts out as apocalyptic Christianity. It must be said Progressivism has kept its apocalyptic character. As Hinduism gave birth to Buddhism so apocalyptic Christianity gave birth to Progressivism. Both Buddhism and Progressivism are seperate religions. Why? The reason they are separate is they hold different metaphysical views then their parent religions. The metaphysical presuppositions are different. Progressivism is a religion because it is soteriological. The function of Progressivism is to bring about salvation to humankind. If we define religions by function, all religions are soteriological, but not apocalyptic. Progressivism is the religion that has replaced Christianity in the governments of Western countries. The metaphysical views of Progressivism was worked out by Engels, Marx, Mussolini, etc. Although Progressives use much of the same terminology of Christianity, it disfigures and reconfigures the terms, and uses them for an alternative narrative. We shall begin with the obvious differences between the Christian and Progressive view. Christianity is based on a supernatural dimension, Progressivism is based on the physical world. This is why Progressives claim to be scientific, which of course is absurd. Progressives take their ideology way beyond observed facts and counter to physical facts all the time. To underscore how unscientific Progressivism is, it is based on Lamarckaian ideas of evolution, that acquired characteristics can be passed on to the next generation. In natural selection there is change not progress. Darwinism has no end point. Another example of the physical basis of Progressives is that there values are physically based. The highest good for Progressives is equality of material wealth, all Progressive values are economic. Values like; liberty, freedom of conscience; are not only rejected, but anathema to Progressives. To make the difference between Progressivism and Christianity more clear, let us examine the metaphysical presuppositions of Christianity that led to the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century. This shall also explain the moral crisis. We shall examine two presuppositions drawn from Christianity, and one derived from alchemy, that became a presupposition of Western Civilization in the Renaissance, and is too important to be ignored. It shall also show how the traditional values of Western civilization and Progressivism differ. The first presupposition of Christianity that we examine is the equality of humans in the eyes of God. By equality is meant that each human is able to work out their own salvation, no one is privileged. Everyone starts out the same.Everyone has the opportunity to be saved or damned. Ending up in Heaven or Hell is hardly equality of outcomes.Even though all humans start out equal, what they do with there freedom makes them unequal in outcome. What Christianity is saying is that each human is sovereign and must work out their own salvation or damnation; no class or group is privileged, It is not an outside agent like the state that determines the fate of souls. It is common to hear Progressives say "the government owns everyone" or we all belong to government." That there must be a powerful government to equalize everyone. Again, the redistribution of wealth that is the first and most important commandment of Progressives. For the far left or fundamentalist Progressive private property must be abolished. Of course, slaves by definition cannot own property. It seems what the far left or fundamentalist Progressive wants is universal slavery, where everyone is equal by being owned by the government. Since all values for the Progressive are material; the Progressive does not recognize values like freedom.or self determination, because they are not material commodities. It also must be noted, that the idea of human equality is not universal religious idea. Hinduism had a caste system, and Isam allows for slavery. To sum up so far, the Progressive has undermined the Christian idea of equality, by making it economic equality, and equality of outcome.It is government that controls the fate of people, not the people themselves. So why do Progressives condemn slavery in the past, and not in the present? One reason could be the slavery of the past was based on phenotype and ancestry making people unequal. Also many Progressives have a hang over of Christian values.It also useful in arguing against Christians if you can use their presuppositions against them. It should be easy to see the Progressive idea of equality does not have a bias against slavery. The second Christian presupposition that led to the end of the slave trade is more subtle, it is the doctrine of forgiveness. In Eastern religions we find the doctrine of karma. That an individual must work out her own karma. This along with another point we shall examine later explains why Eastern religion never had an anti-slavery movement. For by helping someone, and or free someone you interfere with their karma. To many adherents of Eastern religion, Christianity seems to be immoral by cheating karma.In that God can forgive an individual, so she does not have to out her karma. A modern example of this argument can be found in H.P. Blavtsky's: "Key to Theosophy"where she accuses Christianity to be morally lacking. The moral lack is that an individual can avoid living out their karma by forgiveness. This argument of course, has no meaning for Progressives. It is not karma that determines a persons fate, but government. The two above presuppositions shao why Christianity is so opposed to slavery, but do not explain why Christianity actually was able to do something about slavery. The classical pagans (Greeks and Romans) had no love for slavery, but never did anything to stop slavery. The classical pagans saw slavery as a necessary evil. Classical civilization was built on slave labor. The it the other reason that Eastern religions never had an anti-slavery movement. There was always an abundance of slave labor in ancient times and no metaphysical imperative to abolish slavery. So there was never a reason to look for an alternative to slave labor. There was also a presupposition in ancient civilization that learning was not for practical purposes. To illustrate this attitude of classical civilization we shall recall a dispute between Posidonius and Seneca. Posidonius claimed that among the blessings which humankind owed to philosophy (learning) was the discovery of the principle of the arch, and the use of metals. Seneca responded that philosophy (learning) has nothing to do with humans using the arch, or the use of metals. Instead philosophy (learning) teaches humans to be independent of all mechanical contrivances. That using learning for practical purpose is base and inappropriate. Humans should not try to improve on nature. Of course, in mythological civilizations, nature was thought to be supreme. That it was for humans to conform to nature, not try to make nature conform to humans wants and desires. Examples would be all the nature festival, and nature myths in mythological cultures. The idea that art is superior to nature comes from alchemy. Today, alchemy is considered a pseudoscience, but in earlier ages it was respectable, if somewhat eccentric. It was during the Renaissance that alchemical ideas were integrated into the mainstream of Western civilization. Francis Bacon is a good example of the idea of Art over Nature entering the mainstream of Western culture. Both Robert Boyle and Issac Newton studied and wrote on alchemy. The idea of Art over Nature became a presupposition of Western civilization, that humans can improve on nature and use nature for their won purposes. Let us look at some quotes from alchemical authors. ( all quotes taken from Stanton J. Linden's book: "Alchemy Reader") "Some there are that aske whether these twaine bee of greatest force and efficace. Nature or Art, whereto I make aunswere and say, that although Nature be mightie, and marvailous, yet Art using Nature for an insturment is more powerfull than naturall vertues as it is the bee scene in many things" Roger Bacon "What Nature cannot perfect in a very long space of time, that we comleat in a short space by artiface." Jabir Ibn Hayyan "I think Pyrophilius imbas'd metal is much to be preferred, as not only preserving the memory, but being as effect of such a victory of Art over Nature" Robert Boyle We shall now turn to the Progressive ideas on art and nature. It must be said, that Progresseivism like all religions is not completely coherent and has many sects, with differing agendas. Progressives generally hold the opposite of the view of Art over Nature. Progressives have encompassed the deep ecology movement and act upon the presuppositions of the deep ecology movement, this cannot be doubted. Arnie Naess would be a good example. The idea of de-industralizing, or rewilding, to return Nature to a wild state is an example of the presupposition that Nature is superior to Art. The goal of removing human artifice from Nature; to return Nature to a pristine state. Instead of harnessing and improving on Nature for human ends. The Progressive view is a reversion to the more primitive view of humans conforming to Nature, instead of making Nature conform to human desires. Of course, when a culture retreats to a more primitive view it is decadence; a reversion. Not all Progressives are deep ecologists, but they are part of the same movement. A civilization without industrialization would have to go back to slave labor, someone has to do the work. It would seem to be more accurate to call "Progressives"" Regressives" since they want to return to a more primitive view of the cosmos. So we can see that Progressives really have no metaphysical bias against slavery. That they condemn slavery when it is expedient, because there is no repercussion to their worldview if slavery is allowed.