CROSSROADS: BACK TO OUR ROOTS OR ENDLESS REVOLUTION?

On Oct. 6 we posted US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio's historical speech in Athens in front of the Acropolis (link). Rubio just followed it up in an interview with Breitbart News's Washington Bureau Chief, Matthew Boyle (link). In his speech Rubio spoke in poetic terms about the roots of Western civilization in classical Greece and Rome and how it is time for the West to retrieve its self confidence and values. In order not to rain on this extraordinary party, we left our critique of the content for the moment aside. It is debatable however if Greece (or Rome for that matter) is at all "the cradle of Western civilization," although the US has a better claim than Europe, given its Government system which is in large part informed by the Roman Republic. But that is not the point here either. We are dealing with that issue at length in our upcoming e-book, "Return To Athens". 

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In this post we want to limit our attention to a point that is unmistakably true, made by Susan Kokinda in a Prometheus Update posted just Saturday (above).

At of the 10:50 mark Kokinda starts her exposé on the order of the universe, a feature of reality discovered very early on in ancient Greek civilization.

It determined the Greek world view. Their religion, their philosophy, their politics and ultimately -- after centuries -- even modern science is rooted in the idea of the cosmic order the Greeks encountered in the universe so early on in their civilization.

A passage from "Return To Athens":

"(...)Hellenism is not just a way of life, a culture, or an ancient empire. It is a paradigm, rooted in the idea of the classical Greek polis, which is a pluralistic, self-governing city-state based on a community of relationships that is the concretization of cosmic harmony and order."

The values of present Western Liberalism on the other hand are individualism, utility and pragmatism (meaning the suspension of morality). Enlightenment values are expressed exclusively in terms of the economy. Very little else matters. 

The goal of the Greek polis on the other hand was not the maximization of wealth, goods, comfort or entertainment. It was an exercise in truth and beauty, because these transcendentals are a mirror of the great cosmic order.

The knowability of the universe may be self evident to many, but as Kokinda makes clear, this is not at all how the present power brokers in Europe are seeing the world.

This is a generation of postmodernists, who draw heavily on latter day Enlightenment thinkers like Emmanuel Kant, who held that no, actually "we can't know anything", let alone "truth". 

Kant's conclusion was based on a logical fallacy. But that did not stop his followers and successors, among whom thinkers like Hegel and Marx, to construct entire ideologies on its basis.

Almost three centuries and 110 million dead bodies later, we have reached a crossroads in Western civilization. Either we return to our roots, or the sons and daughters of Kant, Hegel and Marx will consolidate their postmodern grip on civilization, with all that entails.

For a preview into that future we only need to have a look at France today. The cycle of Jacobite violent revolutions is endless (link). It will also almost certainly mean pointless wars, economies in shambles and human lives lost in the black hole of bottomless nihilism. 

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