The Devout Life

Am in the midst of about three separate discussions in various places on the idea of how, or if, it might be possible to reconstruct or restore the Before Time, a time which most of us have at best only the dimmest memories. Can the 'traditional society' be restored, either internally or externally, without falling into fantasy and self-delusion?

What does it mean, this 'traditionalism'? Does it refer simply to a tawdry nostalgia? If so, can it be of any value at all? Is it not, in that case, more or less worthless, a kind of drug that represents a dangerous trap, a lure of the unreal, as only the imagined past could possibly be?

Some have tried to live in it externally, by dressing up in old fashioned clothes, by buying art deco telephones and typewriters and listening to Arthur Schwartz on CD. Some have gone even further and submerged themselves in an elaborate fantasy world where only the parts of modernity they happen to like are included. They have submerged themselves entirely into subjectivism, oddly, in the name and pursuit of the objectivist "traditional" philosophy and worldview.

Given the state of things, the essential un-livability of the modern proposal, can they be blamed for trying to create a livable pocket-world?

What if it is something more? What if traditionalism is a word, a symbol, for something more real than that which we are being offered in the "mainstream" theatres of modern urban life? (since we are all unquestionably modern, and most of us are urban, either by geography and mentality or by mentality alone.) Is it possible for us moderns to move past modernism (loosely understood) into this more real thing? Is it possible for us to break out of the bubble in which we were born?

We certainly seem to want to restore something. I think it can be agreed that we want to restore some lost thing. The SCAdians, the Trad Catholics, the Monarchist Society, the proprietors of First Things, the SSPX (explicitly), the pro-life movement, even the hippies in a garbled way, wanted to restore some essential lost thing, something that we have a great deal of trouble indentifying, but of which we are all suffering the loss.

What exactly the thing is seems to be under dispute. The fact that we cannot decide even upon what it is we are trying to restore, does not, it seems to me, bode well for the possibility of finding out how  it is to be restored whether externally or internally.

When we say it is "Christian civilization" what do we mean by that exactly? Are we talking about the feudal monarchies? The Guild system? The monastic life? Is it possible to live in a mindset without the external supporting structures?

Maybe we say it is the 'traditiontal society', but of what, exactly does that consist? Can it include societies that are not Christian? Is there perhaps something, some philosophical stream underlying  and feeding all pre-industrial or pre-modern societies that has been diverted, or buried?

And exactly what does it mean to restore something? The world to which we refer, which we mostly imagine, may be something that one can live in hic et nunc. I know people who simply reject modernity whilst continuing to live in the midst of the modern barbarism, (come to think of it, that describes nearly everyone I know). They believe it is possible to maintain an "inner civilization", an inner discipline of mind or worldview. Does this mean that the traditional society is maintained in some real and objective way. And is it possible to live this way, with the outer realities of modernity constantly battering at the gates, without going mad or running off to Combermere or some other little enclave-in-the-woods?

And how real can it be if it is only a deliberately constructed and labouriously maintained inner mental structure? Are we not indulging in the same kind of fantasy-making as the re-enactors and escapists? Ultimately, what is the difference between that effort of mind and will, and that employed by those who will themselves to believe in any sort of alternate reality? Are we not doing what the separatist feminists are doing? Or even what the advocates of "gay marriage" are doing? Defying and divorcing observable reality in favour of something personally preferred?

Does the 'traditional world' require external structures or can it be maintained only in the will of the adherent? If we try to maintain this reality for ourselves, are we not then putting ourselves into the same trap as the gnostics who think that their fantasies are the same thing as reality?

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The First Transition: From Traditional to "Normal" or Material Society and on Towards the Inversion

When we come to the Normal form of society which followed upon the break-up of the integral spirituality of Traditional civilisation, we see a social order directed almost exclusively to the aims and purposes of this world. It is true that 'religion' continues to be followed by most people, but the very concept of 'religion' in the modern sense is new. It refers to a particular and specialised department of life which is the only one now specifically oriented toward things beyond this world and beyond the human state. Everything that is not 'religion' is now wholly mundane.

In many respects the Normal Society allows for expansion in areas wherein it was not possible before. As we have said, the industrial revolution with its attendant development of 'technology' becomes possible only in a Normal Society, as does the unfolding of a purely material 'science'. And, as we have discussed in an earlier chapter, many things become possible in the sphere of the arts now that it is no longer oriented toward things that transcend this world. The purely human and physical plane, now seen as the sole sphere of artistic endeavour, may be explored and developed in ways that were not possible to an upward-directed people, and the tremendous outward thrust of such a society is the most notable characteristic of the Renaissance period...

This is the nature of a society directed by the outward tendency, which constitute the natural urge to expansion on any given plane of being.

    What then would we expect of a society directed by the downward tendency, which is darkness or ignorance? Surely it would invert all those aspects of the Normal Society that still point upwards and partake of light, knowlege, and purity. Its art will no longer seek to embody beauty and harmony, but will deliberately conform itself to whatever is ugly, misshapen and grotesque. In dress, rather than seeking to be neat and attractive, people will prefer to be sloppy, unkempt or ridiculous in appearance.

Rather than the highest elements of society setting the tone and being emulated by every one else, the tone will be set by the lowest classes, other people increasingly coming to speak and act like them. Rather than attempting to support and maintain family life and personal loyalty, the propaganda of an Inverted Society will deliberately seek to break down the family, promoting a cult of 'personal independence' which cuts each soul off from those about her in an atmosphere of mutual distrust; each one isolated in the prison of induced selfishness.

    These are the things we should expect of an Inverted Society, oriented to darkness and seeking neither to raise us above the human state (as does the Traditional Society) or to develop to the full a healthy human normality (as does the Normal Society); but seeking in every way to drag human life down toward the infra-human--toward the grotesque and the monstrous, the miserable, the isolated and the vainly-grasping: toward the character of the demonic realms depicted in the lore of every traditional civilisation.

    These are the things we should expect, and these are the things we find in the Inverted civilisation that has developed since the Eclipse or 'social revolution' of the 1960s.