11 KiB
The curious British and the hearty Germans formed the two greatest nations of Europe. They were the Athens and Sparta of our time.
Like Athens and Sparta, they split the philosophy of the West between mind and body.
Like Athens and Sparta, they reached a crossroads: was it our ideas that got us here, or our genes?
In Greece, the warlike, monarchical, gene-worshipers won. They defeated the open-minded, democratic, and intellectual Athens. But Sparta declined shortly after, and all of Greece was never the same.
In Europe, it was the opposite. The open-minded, intellectual democrats won. This is why people today will read the terms “warlike, monarchical, gene-worshipers” as negative.
However, as 80 years have passed since the Great War, it is clear that history has repeated. The winning side did not really win. Britain fell apart just like Germany. The Empire is gone. Even Churchill was in dismay at how quickly Britain declined. He stated that he regretted the war; that it was “unnecessary”. He would be livid at Britain in 2024.
Like Athens and Sparta, the fight between Churchill and Hitler destroyed the future of their civilization. The Greeks, who led the way for so long, were conquered by a greater and more powerful Rome.
And so, the Europeans have been conquered by America.
America is different than the polities of Europe: more pragmatic, less traditional. The systems of Athens and Sparta were rigid, but Rome and America are flexible.
We have gone from Monarchy to Republic to Monarchy again. We have turned our nation into something which Athens and Sparta never were: an idea.
Athens and Sparta were not vague entities like Rome was. They did not have a system to accept and introduce foreigners into their land. They were a particular people in a particular city: not so with Rome, and not so with America.
Churchill loved the empire, and put an emphasis on helping lesser peoples to progress.
Hitler, on the other hand, believed in a more ancient form of progress, where one population displaces another on the land.
Neither Churchill nor Hitler were Christian. Churchill, much like Benjamin Franklin, was a scientistic believer in "basic human values" and the essential sameness of all religions. Hitler was a scientistic pagan, who simultaneously elevated pagan beliefs and leveraged science for eugenics and racial theories.
Both were rushed men, hungry to achieve great things.
Churchill was obsessed with preservation, while Hitler was obsessed with regaining what was lost.
Eighty years later, we can now see that both men lost.
Churchill's conservatism did nothing to stop the dissolution of the empire, and Hitler's defeat brought exactly the decline he predicted.
What can we learn from this?
It is clear that Hitler, not Churchill, had a more accurate vision of the future. Apparently, Hitler was more in tune with the demographic and national trends that were about to sweep through Europe. In retrospect, Hitler's desperate attempt to stop these trends betrays a deeper understanding of them than Churchill's simple desire to win a great victory for England.
However, one important lesson is that neither nation won while separated from God.
Churchill’s British Empire was an attempt to create a new Babel, and Hitler’s Germany was an attempt to mechanically favor German genes.
Neither worked, because both lacked faith in God. Both relied solely on science and man’s understanding to achieve their goals.
Athens and Sparta came before Christ, but one could surmise they suffered from the same problem. They advanced too far from God and from nature, and their societies could not support the weight of their aspirations.
Socrates, after all, was essentially an atheist. Athens was an expansionist empire much like Sparta. Sparta was a eugenic nation, much like Nazi Germany.
It seems this dichotomy between principles and genes is a common split in failing societies. They each insist that doubling down on one of these will bring them success, but neither actually does.
Territory vs. Class
The distinction between Britain and Germany can also be described as territory versus class. These can be thought of as the X and the Y axis, respectively.
Focus on territory is an outward and horizontal focus. This is why it is the X axis. It is a focus which requires borders, ownership, and often war. It is a focus which leads to the creation of geographic races over time, meaning races who have a strong connection to the land they occupy.
Focus on class, however, is an upward and vertical focus. It is a focus which often involves defining universal principles and morality, which can then be used as a pretext for a people to rule other lands which they do not come from. Being vertical, class is something which typically exists inside a nation as well as outside (when one nation conquers or colonizes another, the conquerers occupy the ruling class).
From this, we can see the differences of in Britain and Germany quite clearly.
Britain was a seafaring nation; a nation which built an empire from maritime trade and exchange. She was the the ruler of a multicultural global empire, and her dream was never to displace all the peoples she ruled but to extract resources from them. Britain wanted to rule the world benevolently as a sort of global aristocracy, which would enforce peace, prosperity, and good moral values. Indeed, this was the vision Churchill wanted for the British Empire [CITATION NEEDED].
Germany, on the other hand, was a mostly landlocked nation with a far less developed naval tradition. Germany's strength laid in her agriculture and her industry. Because of this, Germany was less a merchant nation and more a cultural institution of the land and regions it occupied. Germany was also quite militaristic, owing much of its success to the Prussians.
Interestingly, the class and land distinctions can also be used to describe Churchill and Hitler themselves. Churchill was an aristocrat; the descendant of the Duke of Marlborough. Hitler was a lower-middle-class son of a civil servant, who grew up in rural areas and small towns. When Hitler was a corporal in World War I, Churchill had already been a famous politician for decades, owing his start to the preceding reputation of his father.
Unlike Athens and Sparta, there was another factor. America, essentially the Rome of the time, had already risen to power. America profited off the division of Europe by inheriting the British Empire and beating Germany into submission by building a strong manufacturing and agricultural base.
In a sense, America united both the landlocked agricultural and industrial tendencies of the Germans with the Maritime and trading tendencies of the English. America has united both the people and the spirits of both countries. The Midwest, traditionally a base of agriculture and manufacturing, is where most German-Americans are. The coasts, typically a base of ideas and trade, are where most English-Americans are. [CITATION NEEDED].
The mind does not love the body, and the body does not love the mind.
The mind seeks greener pastures. Other cultures, other ethnicities.
The body rejects the mind altogether.
Hitler represents the last time the mind and body of a Western nation were connected: the last time they worked together.
Hitler and Churchill represent disconnection from the land.
Churchill preferred to ignore the land in favor of values, and Hitler became obsessed with controlling genetics.
Genetics are closer to the land than values, but both are fundamentally intellectual.
World War I was the first great destruction of the West, in which Europe displaced its aristocracy in favor of a frenzied obsession with the short term.
This is when the landed aristocracy was replaced with a political polarization that lasts into today: class versus territory.
Money and land, class and territory, are not supposed to be separated. They are the same thing.
This is the foundation of Western Civilization: the man, the landowner, the noble. This is who founded Rome, who brought the Trojans down, who ruled in the Middle Ages, and who created America.
These were men who cared about both lineage and culture. About both territory and class. And when these men went missing, the West went into free fall.
World War II represents the final dispossession: a complete loss of territory. Nobody wants more immigration, but it comes anyway. Why? Because we don’t rule this land.
This destruction began in the 1800s, with the Industrial Revolution. As they grew and multiplied, the factory workers and their employers began to displace the landed aristocracy. They replaced the long term with the short, the spiritual with the material, and the estate with the apartment.
This is because factories and offices are constructions of the human mind. The men who run and work in them live in the human mind, not in God’s mind.
If a man can be sustained by thought; if he can be sustained by the human mind; then only the present moment matters.
All that matters is generating new ideas.
Hitler’s racism is perverse because, although races are obviously different, a scientific approach presumed human ability to shape the races ourselves. Therefore, the implication is that the mind is actually still supreme.
Unlike in a man like Churchill, this fact is obfuscated. A man Hitler has the pretense of desiring nature, but really he desires his own mind. He maps his mind onto nature, whereas an escapist like Churchill simply ignores it.
The interesting dichotomy is that many people will say all this is the point of Christianity; the end goal of it.
After all, Christianity is domesticating. It allows more people to live in smaller spaces. It helps with establishing dense quarters like factories, and with producing docile workers who follow commands.
Christianity reduces territorialism. This is why it was called the religion of women and slaves. It encourages community over domination of space.
The supporters of the postwar consensus and of technology will say we are remaking Eden; we are reaching the end.
This is interesting, because the communalism and anti-territorialism of Christianity hearken back to ancient human ways.
It resembles many Africans, Native Americans and other tribes. These tribes do not have much individual property and are expected to help each other out at all times.
They also do not plan for the future; as Will Durant says, ...............
As James says:
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
The difference with primitive tribes, of course, is that they practice much violence.
In this sense, Christianity is like the mirror image of the Noble Savage: it is a promise of primitive man's communalism and lack of worry, sans any of the violence which accompanied those things.
And this is manifest in the factory.
Man no longer needs to be savage, because he is ruled from above. He needs to be docile, because he must operate within the giant and interwoven supply chain of the global economy.
The question at the core of everything is:
Is this Babel? Or is it Eden?