There is much that I agree with in your post though I would reframe it somewhat. The Hegelian concept of a 'dialectic' is perhaps a good place to begin the reframing. It is the idea of an original position, I forget what he calls it, and an antithetical position being combined into a synthesis, and as Kierkegaard warned so long ago is a complete departure from classical philosophy and is the root of much of the modern problem.(this is not meant as mindless criticism or logomachy I think that it gets to many of the ideas that you were looking at.) The grand dialectic at work here is with The Future being some synthesis of Wokeism and its antecedent, which I will call Our Naivete for convenience, referring to our lives preWoke not some sort of civilizational naivete. But Woke is a synthesis of Our Naivete and Boomerism, it is our parents + our rebellion against our parents in a sort of bitwise addition.
(Bitwise addition is where a piece of information say 8 bits is added with another piece of information in binary form. Something like this: 00101010 + 00010000 = 00111010 such that you always get a 1 in a position if there was a 1 in either the antecedent or the antithesis in that position. This is intended to show the 'arrow of time' of modernness, but in reality can better be expressed by the idea that 'You can't fall up'.)
Boomerism may well have been created specifically for the purpose of being an antithesis to Nazism/Fascism. And Nazism was certainly and avowedly created as an antithesis to Leninism(which I use to refer to that special form of communism which seeks global revolution and domination). The modern world is continually moved by this force of dialectism, whether it begins with Hegel or he is merely the first to rigorously describe what was happening around him is another question. So we are living in a fantasy. Our being the Antithesis to the Left only pushes the system to a new synthesis of both positions unless we learn to dismantle the system that pushes. You will hear this discussed a lot as 'moving the Overton window' but no one seems to realise that this is the fundamental truth of modernity- the Arrow of Time applied to human civilization. The Modern world, up until say WW2, is commonly misunderstood or at least misattributed, because it was really a synthesis of the Pre-modern world with Modernity, it was the things that had been being slowly eroded away by this force. but since that time, the Modern world has had very little raw materials, speaking of society, philosophy, and religion to work with and has simply been carrying out an iterative process, more thoroughly modernising its own products until we are left with basically utter trash.
Left and Right are simply the two legs of the Behemoth, it is absurd to imagine that one leg is actually opposing the beast. The truth is that the Republicans don't have to be blackmailed or honeypotted, and we probably wouldn't either if we were in their position. I don't say this to excuse their treachery but only to get a good look at it. I remain firmly convinced that any solution must involve stiff consequences for collaborators, but I insist that we see our own collaboration. We remain caught up in this system that we were baptised into as babies.
Which is all very well and good, but I have no idea how to dismantle the system any better than anyone else. I particularly liked the part about education. The only real attempt at universal literacy was built on parents teaching their children to read the family bible. And as that has gone away literacy has pretty much become an anachronism.
Having just read your comments about Heraclitus, I must say that you are among the small community who understand and have a relationship to the Ancients. Having read the above comment (from Collingwood?) regarding the "barmy enclaves of Rudolf Steiner," I must say that no living human is large enough to dismiss him so casually, or at all.
Given the basis of wokism is that individual feelings are paramount, it amounts to a subversion of current American conservatism, the primacy of the individual.
Keep in mind that to old school Europeans, the conservatives were the monarchists.
What should be apparent is this conservative/liberal dynamic is not really based on solid core principles, but whatever is old, versus whatever is new.
The anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgement.
This goes to both basic physical dynamics, the natural cycles of expansion and consolidation, as well as how they manifest in the development of human culture and civilization.
The basis of Greek religion, as the core of Western civilization, were fertility rites.
The young god, born in the spring, of the old sky god and the earth mother. Yet by the time of the Olympians, this natural cycling had given way to tradition, as Zeus didn't give way to Dionysus. So the power of Christianity, in this situation, was that it offered a way around this set in stone religion. The royal blood, raised in refuge from the tyrant, come back to save the people/mother, crucified and reborn.
Yet by the time Rome adopted it as state religion, it too had started to calcify.
Remember that democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family as godhead. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture, essentially tribalism. One people, one rule, one god. So the Romans were more interested in the Jewish monotheism, than the Christian Trinity, because at the time, the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic. So validating The Big Guy Rules.
Logically though, a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through and animating the film, than the images and narratives played out on it. The new born babe, than the wise old man.
Ideals are not absolutes. Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. Any village totem or church alter is an ideal. If we assume them to be absolute and universal, than all the rest must be false. The clinical term for people who assume their ideals to be absolute is obsessive/compulsive. When the entire culture is based on the premise, therefore every ideology is universal, the rest is chaos.
So we need to go a lot deeper into the dynamics, than most people are willing, if even able, to consider. Fortunately the powers that be are doing their very best to crash the whole Tower of Babel.
Beautiful, I have the same sense that there is a deeper truth to all the madness, it just gets trapped in all the back and forth without coming down to rest in the mundane.
One of my education heroes is Japanese creator of Judo, Dr. Kano. The sport's main intention was an education tool for young beings. Sport or martial art are somewhat misleading terms. Perhaps art is best, but Kano masterfully developed a new technology rooted in the traditions of Japan's rich history of grappling techniques, but adapted to meet the new era. Through participation students learn to embody the deep philosophies of "the way". A true judoka, practicer of the way is well beyond a skilled grappler, they master the art of being themselves and share their gifts for the betterment of all.
There is much that I agree with in your post though I would reframe it somewhat. The Hegelian concept of a 'dialectic' is perhaps a good place to begin the reframing. It is the idea of an original position, I forget what he calls it, and an antithetical position being combined into a synthesis, and as Kierkegaard warned so long ago is a complete departure from classical philosophy and is the root of much of the modern problem.(this is not meant as mindless criticism or logomachy I think that it gets to many of the ideas that you were looking at.) The grand dialectic at work here is with The Future being some synthesis of Wokeism and its antecedent, which I will call Our Naivete for convenience, referring to our lives preWoke not some sort of civilizational naivete. But Woke is a synthesis of Our Naivete and Boomerism, it is our parents + our rebellion against our parents in a sort of bitwise addition.
(Bitwise addition is where a piece of information say 8 bits is added with another piece of information in binary form. Something like this: 00101010 + 00010000 = 00111010 such that you always get a 1 in a position if there was a 1 in either the antecedent or the antithesis in that position. This is intended to show the 'arrow of time' of modernness, but in reality can better be expressed by the idea that 'You can't fall up'.)
Boomerism may well have been created specifically for the purpose of being an antithesis to Nazism/Fascism. And Nazism was certainly and avowedly created as an antithesis to Leninism(which I use to refer to that special form of communism which seeks global revolution and domination). The modern world is continually moved by this force of dialectism, whether it begins with Hegel or he is merely the first to rigorously describe what was happening around him is another question. So we are living in a fantasy. Our being the Antithesis to the Left only pushes the system to a new synthesis of both positions unless we learn to dismantle the system that pushes. You will hear this discussed a lot as 'moving the Overton window' but no one seems to realise that this is the fundamental truth of modernity- the Arrow of Time applied to human civilization. The Modern world, up until say WW2, is commonly misunderstood or at least misattributed, because it was really a synthesis of the Pre-modern world with Modernity, it was the things that had been being slowly eroded away by this force. but since that time, the Modern world has had very little raw materials, speaking of society, philosophy, and religion to work with and has simply been carrying out an iterative process, more thoroughly modernising its own products until we are left with basically utter trash.
Left and Right are simply the two legs of the Behemoth, it is absurd to imagine that one leg is actually opposing the beast. The truth is that the Republicans don't have to be blackmailed or honeypotted, and we probably wouldn't either if we were in their position. I don't say this to excuse their treachery but only to get a good look at it. I remain firmly convinced that any solution must involve stiff consequences for collaborators, but I insist that we see our own collaboration. We remain caught up in this system that we were baptised into as babies.
Which is all very well and good, but I have no idea how to dismantle the system any better than anyone else. I particularly liked the part about education. The only real attempt at universal literacy was built on parents teaching their children to read the family bible. And as that has gone away literacy has pretty much become an anachronism.
Having just read your comments about Heraclitus, I must say that you are among the small community who understand and have a relationship to the Ancients. Having read the above comment (from Collingwood?) regarding the "barmy enclaves of Rudolf Steiner," I must say that no living human is large enough to dismiss him so casually, or at all.
Given the basis of wokism is that individual feelings are paramount, it amounts to a subversion of current American conservatism, the primacy of the individual.
Keep in mind that to old school Europeans, the conservatives were the monarchists.
What should be apparent is this conservative/liberal dynamic is not really based on solid core principles, but whatever is old, versus whatever is new.
The anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgement.
This goes to both basic physical dynamics, the natural cycles of expansion and consolidation, as well as how they manifest in the development of human culture and civilization.
The basis of Greek religion, as the core of Western civilization, were fertility rites.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30250/30250-h/30250-h.htm
The young god, born in the spring, of the old sky god and the earth mother. Yet by the time of the Olympians, this natural cycling had given way to tradition, as Zeus didn't give way to Dionysus. So the power of Christianity, in this situation, was that it offered a way around this set in stone religion. The royal blood, raised in refuge from the tyrant, come back to save the people/mother, crucified and reborn.
Yet by the time Rome adopted it as state religion, it too had started to calcify.
Remember that democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family as godhead. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture, essentially tribalism. One people, one rule, one god. So the Romans were more interested in the Jewish monotheism, than the Christian Trinity, because at the time, the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic. So validating The Big Guy Rules.
Logically though, a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through and animating the film, than the images and narratives played out on it. The new born babe, than the wise old man.
Ideals are not absolutes. Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. Any village totem or church alter is an ideal. If we assume them to be absolute and universal, than all the rest must be false. The clinical term for people who assume their ideals to be absolute is obsessive/compulsive. When the entire culture is based on the premise, therefore every ideology is universal, the rest is chaos.
So we need to go a lot deeper into the dynamics, than most people are willing, if even able, to consider. Fortunately the powers that be are doing their very best to crash the whole Tower of Babel.
Beautiful, I have the same sense that there is a deeper truth to all the madness, it just gets trapped in all the back and forth without coming down to rest in the mundane.
One of my education heroes is Japanese creator of Judo, Dr. Kano. The sport's main intention was an education tool for young beings. Sport or martial art are somewhat misleading terms. Perhaps art is best, but Kano masterfully developed a new technology rooted in the traditions of Japan's rich history of grappling techniques, but adapted to meet the new era. Through participation students learn to embody the deep philosophies of "the way". A true judoka, practicer of the way is well beyond a skilled grappler, they master the art of being themselves and share their gifts for the betterment of all.