We have often pointed out the peculiar quality of the present day: praise of the modern ideals of humanist values, economical growth - sustainable or otherwise - human rights and scientific achievement are repeated ad nauseam, yet there's a strange atmosphere of vacuity about them that for the most people's sentiments was not as obvious in the final decades of 20th Century.
We posit that reason for this may just be that those ideals do not exist any more in any meaningful way.
Kali Tribune's Ministry of Logical Hygiene, Historical Continuity and Ego Euthanasia Management hereby issues a statement on ongoing self-righteousness pandemic. We take the common and pervasive notion of every day heroes (nurses, shop assistants, etc.), inflating into saccharine bubble all over the world, and attempt to demonstrate what it can teach us about the deeper causes of our historical moment.
Prompted by the passing of great English conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, we take the opportunity to sketch the distinguishing marks separating what it means to be a conservative and what it means to belong to Tradition, stances only seemingly similar but in actual fact worlds apart from each other. We take Scruton as an exemplary figure of contemporary conservative thought and his attitude towards religion as a starting point and argue that it has very little to do with what might be called a traditional attitude. Further we discuss the understanding of time, eternity and causality peculiar for traditional thought and explain how conservatism is in fact alienated from it. We conclude with a broad sketch of what we see as signs that modernity is actually over, taking into consideration an ongoing dissolution of popular art, i.e. the lowest form of the expression of modern spirit.
KT returns to roots - once more you can have no less than 14 pages of essay or 50 minutes podcast. Yet we also return to our old subjects, this time around the metaphysics of Chaos and the influence it performs on our minds. We inspect the idea that just could be lurking behind the set of postmodern projects related to indifference and dissolution of genders - the idea of the androgyny of God. Throughout the essay, we address the inadequacy of modern conservative thought when confronted with what are in fact a historically ancient ideas and principles driving the postmodern project; we employ the aid of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Gregory Nazianzen to explain why the Word of God has Father only and much more.
When discussing the roots of Communism and of what is called non- or semi-communist Left – which nevertheless keeps some latent causal relation to dialectical materialism – one crucial question usually gets passed over in silence. Namely, is there a single unique ruling principle to this systematical attempt to absorb the world in thought and, if yes, what exactly is it?
There's something so inspiring and at the same time so adolescent like in the rebellion against the world, "West", "rationality", and other overwhelming terms of which we are only vaguely aware what they mean. In this Micellanea we contrast this absolutely modern, yet not seldom past oriented, mentality with the authentic voice from the past - one of St. Augustine of Hippo.
Rene Guenon's book Theosophism: A History of Pseudo-Religion is more than just a demolition of 19th Century quack religion: it is, as our friend Deirdre of Luminar Podcast demonstrates in this video, a critique of some fundamental principles modern people take to be absolute truths - the uneasy fact that Theosophism was, and in certain circles still is, quite an adequate religion for people who fancy themselves world leaders.
In this podcast we inspect the differences between traditional and modern understanding of evil as metaphysical notion; we point out the crucial difference in mentality displayed by this differentiation - the one considering man's place in the world.
It is customarily to take the traditional notion of Evil as corruption of Good, as naive, not realistic enough or plain childish.
We argue that this belief is a tell tale sign of modernity coming to blows with its historical ancestry, because this idea dawns only when attempt is being made to understand evil as a real, positive, principle, i.e. in itself, as opposed to trying to understand it on the basis of the reality of Good, whose privation it in fact is.
Through some examples, a bit of analysis and even an anecdote or two, we point out how dangerous, vain and wrong headed this belief is.
The question of religion in relation to where one is from used to be not a metaphysical but rather a customs officer's one. Nowadays, things seem to have changed. As numerous KT readers seem to be troubled by this relationship, we'll attempt to throw some light on it - just a candle light, though. Don't expect too much.
In addition, we talk about Eastern European peculiarities and overall historical situation; also we talk about misguided internet evangelists and Alt Righters.
